Mr. Clarke Think Aloud #2 | Fart Strikes, Millennial Christmas Lights, and Failing Out Loud

Hello friends! Welcome to another Mr. Clarke Think Aloud. On the episode, I discuss how hilarious Millennial Christmas lights are, the different interactions of students making fun of my pimple, wondering how many farts count as strikes through a classroom management lens, other egregious things students have expressed to me over the past month, seeing how different students are in a one on five setting versus the traditional classroom setting, some literacy learnings over the past few months as I dive into detail on the Word Connections program and the value I am seeing in it and how I have adapted it for my students, encouraging students to fail out loud, some announcements for December, and, much more! Thank you for tuning in and hope you enjoy the show! 

Thoughts shared on the podcast are purely our own and do not represent the views of the Anglophone South School District or the relevant jurisdictions associated with my guests.

Transcript

Lucas Clarke (00:00.8)
What's up guys, welcome back to another Mr. Clark Think Aloud. I know my former students, some of might be listening and I know they just miss those days of hearing Mr. Clark just yap away all the time about random tangents. So here I am to give them what they want. Getting into about four months here in New Brunswick now, honestly loving it. Dust is starting to settle on the move here, but to kind of go into today, I'm going to do a bit of.

ranting a little bit, not really ranting, but a few silly things that I'm going to go through. Got a few stories from some things that have kind of gone down in my, it's kind of funny being in my new role where I mostly talk to students when they are, we're in a much more like smaller setting, like you're kind of one on four. find you get a way different view of the students, you know, and kind of get that kind of constant class performance that you're used to seeing.

As always, middle school kids are always going to give you the least expected things that you're going to see. I remember one thing I think about is the social awareness. Obviously, I had a pretty big zit on my head there a few weeks ago and people were asking me more than once about it. Honestly, you just walk down the hallway and they're like, what happened to your head, man? I'm like, dude, you just got to be cool. Let me live my life. It's a zit. I don't have that clear sale or that good cream for it anymore.

I actually did try to put like some stuff that I got like the little beeswax thing I got from Greece, which is actually a kind of a of a godsend and it worked, seemed to work. But another student came up to me and again, social awareness says, hey, Mr. Clark. I'm like, hey, like how are you doing today? How's it going? And they're like, my mom popped a pimple in my ear today and it went everywhere. But I don't think she got all of it. She even showed it and they put little bit on my finger. I was like,

That is the craziest conversation I can ever hear to walk into a classroom and just have that story be said to you after just hearing hello. So yeah, I was like, cool. That's good for you. know, like, it's happened to me this week. That's all good. No shame. Yeah, that was definitely one of the unexpected ones, I would say for sure this week. Another one was one of the kids was like, Mr. Clark, your chin is massive.

Lucas Clarke (02:25.262)
I'm like, no, I think that's usually a good thing. Like got the mewing thing going a little bit. He's like, yeah, not a good look. I was like, cool, not bad, cool. Thanks. He's like, it's like American dad. Like your chin is way too big. I'm like, okay, cool, man. Thanks. Appreciate it. Gets all trimmed down the beard to kind of get rid of that attempt at a pronounced jaw, I guess. But again, the things you think are good. Students keeping you humble all the time. I recently started getting into trying to...

learn a bit of the early stage literacy stuff. So I will get into some actual teacher stuff here in a minute of some things I'm kind of noticing, things I'm learning, things I'm picking up on, being able to, again, actually get students into a place where they are comfortable making mistakes. Because again, they're not putting that performance on for 30 people in the room. They're just doing it for the group they're comfortable with, especially in front of myself, which I try to kind of create those empathetic conditions to kind of

get them to fail out loud with me, but there was one student, I started doing some UFLY work. And I know this might narrow it down to whatever student, it's a funny story. So we sat down and I said, like what? So first off, I've never done any UFLY stuff. I kind of wanted to just, honestly, like let's just sit down, we'll go through it. I did read through some like the front matter and stuff. I kind of understood the purpose of it beforehand anyway. So we started with the letter U.

And the second I sit down and I'm like, okay, so you gotta go through the different sounds it makes, like the different kind of blends it has with different letters. So it's the letter U. And then at the end of each UFLY lesson, it gives you a list of words you can go through. So UFLY, it's the University of Florida Linguistics Instruction. I don't actually know what that stands for. But.

it gives you a list of words. And one of them, as we're going through, it's obviously like I'm kind of like letting them read through it, correcting mistakes on the fly, having them repeated to me, kind of going through that repetitive practice and kind of getting the automaticity, the big fancy word. And they come across the word nut. And they say, like, what does that mean? I'm like, how do you define nut? Like, I have no idea how you would do that. So was like, OK, like think of peanuts. They're like short form, like you'd have nuts on the table. She's like,

Lucas Clarke (04:45.09)
Like a crazy nut. Sure, whatever. Like whatever works for you. If that's the memory recall that you got, by all means, that's totally fine. So yeah, those are some of the there's another story. I did jot it down when it happened and it was just kind of a classic. was one of the one of my students, a girl who's maybe three foot eight, very, just like the smallest little like grade six girl and

I said there was one of the words we were talking about and she said, there was something about like, like it tastes like poop or something. And I said that to make a, it was the word taste as one of our word connections lesson. So I was kind of using a, I don't even know how it got to that point. I think it was like we were, so I guess long story short in the word connections program, you have like a bunch of prescribed activities in it, which I'll get into in a minute.

But one of the first activities is learning new spotlight words. And then with those spotlight words, you do prefix and suffix work with them. So anyway, I have them write sentences with those. And one of the words is taste. And I said that. And she's like, how would you know what poop tastes like? And then everyone laughed. It's kind of a be-there moment. But I thought it was hilarious. But I couldn't remember that one in full, what happened before that. But yeah, so that was kind of a funny one.

Another thing I've noticed is that I have a weird fear of ladders. Don't know why. I don't know if it's just, I remember when we first moved into our house here, got the wifi set up and we've got overhead power lines in our area. And the guy from Rogers showed up. He's like, yeah, he's like, think you're already good. I don't want to have to like drill into your house or anything. And I think it should be fine. I think I can just plug a router in. We should be good. I was like, cool. Sounds good, man. Let's do it.

And he comes up to me about an hour, about a half an hour later and he's like, Hey, I'm actually going to have to like wire, like a wire across the road and then wire from the pole in through your house and drill holes. was like, okay, I'll get this. Fine. I see this man get a 30 foot ladder and go out by himself. No help. And the whole time I'm like, okay, there are different types of men in this world. Him and I are different because I would absolutely not be doing that. You could not pay me enough to do that.

Lucas Clarke (07:07.01)
But I don't think I'm alone because I've noticed in my area, there's a lot of people around my wife and I's age and we don't have any Christmas lights up outside yet. We got a couple of like small things that we bought just for out front. And I'm like, F that. I don't want to go up and put Christmas lights. I don't want to get a frigging ladder and potentially fall off and have my wife hold me on the ladder because I know she's not going to be able to catch me if I fall off it. But I noticed that all the houses in my area are like

barely decorated, there's like none actually up on the roof. So I think we are into the era of millennial, I think I'm Gen Z, I think, but we're into a new era of Christmas lights being put up by men too scared to go onto a ladder, which I can relate to, and I get. And there's one kind of close to our house, it's kind of funny, he only has like one tiny string of lights on, but then.

it comes onto the ground and the Grinch is there stealing the lights. So think maybe next year I'll probably copy him. I will definitely take that and plagiarize that idea so that maybe I'll just put up one string of Christmas lights and kind of solve that myself. So that one was kind of funny. For the actual kind of more serious side, I was definitely struggling a little bit with like not necessarily, I mean, I'm a teacher. I can lesson plan with anyone. You give me a course, give me a curriculum. I can read through it.

Yeah, look at the outcomes, try and plan accordingly, ask around for resources, kind of put that package together. That's kind of a formula that you kind of learn to go through in your first few years. Like I've mentioned before, I just taught social in my first few years. So pretty smooth transition for me coming from that background anyway. But I did notice that it was weird kind of being in this like academic support position where I'm like a co-teacher, but I'm kind of doing my own thing sometimes as well.

But going through the initial kind of data collection, was, so New Brunswick actually does this really cool thing where, and as far as I know, it didn't exist in Fort McMurray. And again, I think it would be a cool idea for them to implement where I am in literacy and numeracy, technically under the umbrella of both in my new position. They actually have, so obviously grades six to eight, there's a learning coach for six to 12, and there's actually two of them.

Lucas Clarke (09:30.658)
You got like two learning coaches. You've got a person like above them for six to 12. And they've got like a coordinator who kind of oversees everything. They do that for literacy and numeracy. So as far as I understand, their like entire role is dedicated to kind of onboarding. And even if you've been in the district for 15, 20 years, you can contact them at any time and they will do what they can to make an appointment to be and come and join you at your school. They'll teach a lesson for you to help.

plan a unit with you. It is honestly such an incredible resource. And in a meeting with my learning coach, I just kind of voiced, I'm like, you know what, I feel like in this role as academic support, like am I what an EA used to be? But I'm like, technically a teacher, or I don't have a homeroom. Do I spend one day with a teacher every two weeks? To me, I don't really see the utility in kind of these sparse pop-ins and...

also not being on the hook for doing any planning, because that can start to cause resentment, I think, if you were to have this person who's technically at an equal, I guess, let's be honest, on the pay scale, same as you, but they can just come into your class kind of at their leisure, and you've got to do all the planning, you've got all the behavior responsibility. So I said, you know what? I don't really feel like I'm making as big of an impact.

kind what the last few months have been, is she gave me a Word Connections Literacy Program. basically, I'm pretty much through about a quarter of this program. So basically what I did is I've kind of targeted in my AST role. So I think I get the tiers mixed up sometimes. don't know, there's tiers and acronyms and all this stuff, everywhere in education. But as far as I know, I'm a tier one interventionist. So I guess my best description of that is,

You kind of hear different definitions of it, like the bubble kids, the kids who are kind of your between 40 and 60%. They don't use percent here in middle school. But now how do you find those students and how do you target them? Now, obviously, I did like a Burns and Roll. I think I talked about on the last Think Aloud, where you kind of test every student, see what level they're at. And then accordingly, for example, if there are students in grade six, seven or eight,

Lucas Clarke (11:52.696)
who are roughly maybe one to two grade levels below. That's kind of who you're, like you're not necessarily with the students on personal, with students with personal learning plans or who have learning disabilities. They would require their own programming, their own assistance, their own form of differentiation. so technically I'm like a mid-level support. So what I then took that connections program and did was,

kind of put them into groups of four, four to six. Some classes I had eight students in that I would work with. So I've actually ended up like dedicating four periods a week to that class to do two periods per each class per week. That's the goal. Obviously things change in your school all the time. There's assemblies, there's special things you guys do. There's no school on Fridays. So it does kind of change up from week to week still, which I'm really enjoying. But it's been awesome because I feel like now I'm still

scratching the itch of guess having control over my own space, if that kind of makes sense. One of the teachers was actually moved out of a classroom earlier in the year, so they're kind of freed up a classroom, so I'm kind of swooping in there and just doing my thing with literacy. And what I think so far, so this Word Connections program is 40 lessons.

Lucas Clarke (13:16.728)
Program is 40 lessons, which is honestly long, but I'm really starting to get into the idea where, like technically just by definition, if I say two periods per week, that's 20 weeks dedicated, 20 weeks of time dedicated that if you do one lesson per class, each lesson takes like 40 minutes, give or take, can kind of speed it up here and there. I'm really starting to kind of come into the idea where not everything has to be rushed.

I feel like we as teachers kind of put these weird like deadlines on not that you want to go in and do nothing. That's not at all what I'm saying. Really if your teacher that does nothing I think that almost becomes too boring. I think that's more so this like weird fear of boredom maybe that I have that I can't really sit still with the not really knowing what to do before this. But honestly I think it's gone very well. I still kind of do like my little data sheet that we were working on with the new holistic curriculum here.

but it's awesome. I honestly, it's so far through the first eight lessons, it's the exact same thing pretty much every time. So, so far, they, they learn like new prefixes and suffixes, like every second lesson seems to be the pace. And then you do like some sound, like, so we're looking for you do like, like an O and a U, maybe like the two like blended sound and you kind of go through some practice with that. I'm still very much, like I said, learning that like you fly sound connection again.

I can help you write your grade 11 or 12 social studies or history paper till the cows come home, but actually getting into the elements of how words are constructed and how sounds are made, that is a whole new world to me, even though I did have some science of reading practice before. Yeah, this kind of goes into the science of reading for word study and fluency, which is kind of like some of the big ideas that are in the New Brunswick curriculum.

Yeah, long story short, kind of starts with the prefixes, the suffixes. You actually learn the definitions of what these prefixes and suffixes are, hence word study, kind of seeing how the components of the words are, how it changes the meaning of the word to make it simpler so that it's a bit more concise in what you're trying to communicate. The first lesson uses the word unfriendly as the main example of how to actually understand that with the students. So you've got obviously un means not.

Lucas Clarke (15:43.254)
And then Lee is like an active version of that. So it's like an unfriendly thing to do. seeing the students actually understand that there's like different components of words that have meaning, not just like a word with a term, I think has been interesting so far. But then you also see like, okay, if I've got my three prefixes, or now I've got my 12 prefixes so far, and I give them five words, well, these five words can turn into like 23 words. Once you kind of go through how all these connect. So

I'm really seeing the value of how these words are exposed to students a lot and how much more words they're being exposed to at their grade level. The whole point of this 40 lessons is that it technically, I 20 weeks, again, depending how quickly you wanted to go through it and how many students you're dealing with. If you really wanted to rush it, but again, trying to build a relationship with the students, not trying to force too much on them too quickly.

you can probably do it in about three, four months, or sorry, three months maybe if you wanted to, maybe even two in like a private setting. The goal is to bring them up around three grade levels in this three to four months from what I understand. And for, already kind of noticing the degree of difficulty kind of moving up a lot where eventually for fluency, they'll actually do like a beat the clock where, and again, this could be a good practice for if you knew, even if you don't have this program and email me if you want it.

more than happy to share with anyone. As far as I know, it's a public document that I can share and they they'll get like, I think it's like 20 words. And then if I read, if I read it all very quickly and I read it in 13 seconds or 25 seconds, I go through that, I record it, and then I try to beat my time. So it gets them more used to that automaticity and the fluency and kind of builds like kind of makes them make the mistakes, which I'm kind of seeing the

value and actually seeing themselves read a word, but then actually still make the mistake, but then correct it. That's kind of been really eye opening for me. Then you do a speedy read, which is same idea, but then then they get 40 somewhat smaller words and they get 30 seconds just to say as many as they can. And so again, same idea, getting them to like read as quickly as they can, get as many as they can. And obviously saying them appropriately. I started to dock

Lucas Clarke (18:05.866)
where I would add a second for each one, because the students could start to get it competitive. And then I'll start to rush through it to get a good time without actually saying the words correctly, which is not what you want. And then the first few times, there's like eight sentences of reading toward the end. I was like, that's not that serious. It's just a few words. But I'm really starting to see the value of actually getting the students to read that connected text to the words. It's usually the prefix.

prefixes that they learn and the speedy reads that they have, those words are all actually flowing into a connected text to wrap up the lesson. So sometimes because I'm a goofy goober, I like to kind of take my time and I go on tangents and all that stuff. So sometimes it takes a whole hour. don't get to the connected text, but I'll start that up next time. We'll do our sounds. I'll review the prefixes from last time, take 10 minutes, do the text, move on to the next lesson. So yeah, that's been fun. think that...

It can be kind of weird to just do reading testing with students. So part of the way that I've kind of twisted it and made it my own so far is that when you introduce your three prefixes or suffixes for the day, then you make your new words. So it'd be like taste and harvest and chop, but that becomes like chopped and chopping and harvested and harvesting and then taste and tasting, tasted.

all these different words that they are being introduced to and making and building like the build a word is the act the name for the activity in the program. I'll actually go and I think students don't if they don't write long sentences, especially if they're a struggling reader, they're likely probably not going to blow you away with their writing skills. So I'll actually get them to look okay, if we got five words, but you've got tasted is you taste, chop and harvest. Those are your three.

Okay, write me one sentence that has all three of those words in it, but you have to use it with the prefix or suffix added on. So like, I was harvesting the crops while my mom was chopping vegetables that were going to be delicious when I taste them for supper later. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I'm like getting them used to the idea of using words like and and while and so to actually extend their sentences and then using.

Lucas Clarke (20:31.794)
man, there's a name for our comma. Like the phrases that you kind of put in the middle of sentences to kind of extend them. But anyway, like getting them used to expanding on their thought mid-sentence and actually trying to establish that. It's been really cool to see them try to like push beyond that initial barrier of like, I used to write like the dog is red and likes to run to like these long elaborate sentences.

with these five new words they've learned. So that's kind of been really cool, I think, to see the value in that so far. And again, that's, think, like each of those activities you can kind of do, I think, if you had a class of 30 and you're like, you know what, sit with a partner, here's three words, here's your suffixes and prefixes, go write me five different sentences, come together as a class, read them out. You're getting so much exposure to new terminology, even.

It was kind of hilarious. One of my students actually asked me what the word vocabulary meant, which I was like, like we're so focused on, we're trying to learn new vocab. I'm like, these kids don't even know what the word vocabulary means. So let's actually focus on the word study, the tangible tools. So yeah, I guess there's 10 minutes of me yapping about my literacy, I guess, knowledge. mean, literacy experience that I've kind of gone through so far.

I think it's really cool. do think, I'm honestly still stumped about how to move into more of a co-teaching role, because again, I'm honestly mostly just teaching groups of four to six most of the day within this literacy program to kind of, I don't want it to last all year. I think that can just drag it out too much for everyone. I think it's more of like a medium intervention is kind of the purpose. And like not a week or not six months, but two months, three months.

I think that seems to be the best way for this to be utilized. It's not too much all at one time. You're not getting the students bored of it. I twice a week, even though the activity is pretty similar, it's still stimulating because it kind of adds like a new thing to their routine. think that's personally, that's the way that honestly I would like to learn. If you have the opportunity, if you have the time, why would you not wait all year? Like you're not dealing with semesters and.

Lucas Clarke (22:45.8)
what I'm actually tracking is on a formative data sheet for my role. So it's not actually being added to their report card. So yeah, I think that's been, it's been valuable, I think for sure. So yeah, the literacy program has been sweet. I know that we recently, we were, are into report card season. actually recently did a consultation for an AI report card site. I'm obviously not affiliated with them, but I did just want to.

say that I think report cards are a little silly. And that's even coming from experience because I had a student once, I've always been like, honestly, this is like my after dark confession time. I hate like the paperwork of teaching. I don't have to do that much of it anymore with my new role yet, as far as I know. We'll kind of see how the rest of this year goes. Like I didn't have to do report cards this time around, but I remember,

especially no class size cap in Alberta, no cap. They would have, I mean, if I had four classes in a semester, each with 30 to 40 each, mean, by the time you personalize, if you take like time to personalize 10 comments, it's gonna take you at least a half an hour. So kind of magnify that or magnify, multiply that by 12. Like you're looking at easy, dedicated time, eight to maybe 12 hours, but that's again,

with my ADHD or whatever you want to call my weird brain, that's like 20 hours of actual time, sometimes up to even 40 hours if you have teachers that teach like all these random like personal wellness and health and all these random classes, they still got to type it. I think a lot of teachers are going to AI and that's kind of what I was referring to at the meeting from before. I'll post a bit more about that when it's, because they're going to actually have me do like a review of their website and kind of see what it's like.

So I'll expand on that a bit more when I get there. I know for a different one, Magic School AI, again, kind of lets you do everything. And they also have a report card function. So I think even a few years ago, it was kind of already starting to be like, OK, put in your course description, then do your descriptor of how they performed, and then the sandwich method, and then kind of have your personalized comment to wrap up toward the end.

Lucas Clarke (25:08.554)
I'd say I would take the time to personalize most comments because like at first I'll say I'm a new teacher. I kind of enjoy it. I've enjoyed my time with the students. But I did have a student want to.

wrote me a very nice note and got me a gift. Not long after giving them my, so I noticed over a while they started to kind of like be a more comfortable in my class. I'd always try, I'm always trying to like get them to do things and this is kind of like a soft story and maybe even a self gloating one but I will gloat because I did enjoy the story. And in their report card I said so and so,

I really hope they continue and I'm using vague so you don't know like what gender or anything they are. I really hope they continue to break out of their shell. That's all I said. I don't remember that being like, I remember actually I do remember writing it but I don't remember thinking that would be a significant. And they said that was the moment that they actually like, it was like a shattering moment for them seeing that like someone noticed them in their shell that they were breaking out of it.

They wrote me this long note and I still keep it in my desk. Honestly, this year has been pretty sweet so I haven't had many tough moments, if I'll be honest. Again, I do see the utility of the report cards and I know it's a broken record, but seeing all the teachers go through the hours and hours of going over every single one, the time it takes administration to do it. It's like, if you think about it, in New Brunswick, they dedicated a day to report card writing.

you're dedicating hours of admin time to reviewing them. Like you're looking at like, if you're looking at like a thousand teachers, like 6,000 teachers in New Brunswick that do that, or three, I think it's like 3,000 teachers here, then think about that amount of time, like that's probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more on like salary time, work time, assigned time, especially with, parent-teacher interview is a little bit different, but that's also, maybe I'll save that one for next time after PTIs are over.

Lucas Clarke (27:19.886)
That's like hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on something like we have to reach out if a student is failing or if they're going to get a bad grade beforehand anyway. And then the students whose parents show up to parent teacher interviews aren't the ones we ever actually want to talk to. So I'm like, give me your ethical qualms about keeping report cards. I get it. But how much are report cards worth to us? Is it worth hundreds of thousands if not?

Again, across Canada, teachers go and do an report card season twice a year. You're looking at tens of millions of dollars of useless time, I'll say, I think for the actual, maybe for when I post a reel for this one, I'll try to find some stats on like how many hours are spent and I'll kind of put that even just for minimum wage, like how much money is actually being spent on like time, time directly not dedicated to improving instruction or actually providing the feedback.

for the issues that are being seen in the classroom. So anyway, that's my own thing about the post-report card season that we're going through here. So yeah, I had a few more things I kind of wanted to go through, but I know I've gone on pretty long here with a few stories. I will say there was another one in my literacy group, because again, classroom management, we're always thinking about like, okay.

Like what actually will classify as a strike in your class? Like what are you gonna sit down and be like, no, if you, obviously if you swear, say anything inappropriate, like a strike one or like get out, have a talk, et cetera, like your kind of, your scale or I guess your personal steps or what it takes to get a strike. And I had a student fart four times, like two feet away from me and I was like,

I didn't really know how to react, because I'm not used to people full on farting in front of me. That's not something in high school I'm used to. I think maybe I've had a high school student maybe once or twice do it. It happened once, I was like, ha ha, that's funny, okay, walk over there, let it go away. And did it again, and then again, and then a student looks at me, they're like, are you not gonna give him a strike for that? Like, are you not gonna, I'm like, does a fart count as a strike in your?

Lucas Clarke (29:39.502)
In your scale, your levels of discipline does like fart one strike one fart two strike two like I didn't know. At first I thought it was just kind of hilarious. I'm like this is the guy is an absolute animal. And of course it was a guy. This guy's an absolute animal just like full on farting in front of me. And like there's a girl in our group too. So he has zero shame of like farting in front of men or women. And so yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's a poll. Do you discipline students if they fart in your class? But like even

the farting in class is one thing, because again, you're trying to get a laugh out of the rest of the class, whatever. That's just classic junior high behavior. But it's like four of us in a room. Like, we're at one table, and you're like, I'm just going to let this go four times. Like, this is absolutely unhinged behavior. So yeah, that was another one that I just, I don't know, left me a little bit stumped, if I'll be honest, in the last few weeks.

But so before I wrap up here, I will say there's a few good quotes. Maybe I'll go on for some reflection in the next Mr. Clark Think Aloud in December. I will say I do, if you couldn't tell, love to talk and I love to rant. I love to discuss these ideas and tell some stories. But I will continue to do the Mr. Clark Think Alouds every month.

I think it could be just a cool opportunity. I was going to even discuss Trump's election win and like the whole kind of controversy around the Department of Education that he was kind of talking about. And I saw the something like McMahon's wave or something with secretary, which is just like a whole other thing. Again, classic teacher. Teachers will hate on Republicans and conservatives, but maybe I'll share some information as Canada does not have one. Department of Education at a federal level. So maybe I can get into that a little bit more next time. So.

To finish off, just wanted to talk about what December will look like. get, I get, no, again, I'm not getting millions of downloads on these podcasts, but I do appreciate all of you who are actually taking the time to listen. I might actually re-record like a different preamble and say this at the beginning as well of this episode. It it keeps me going. I obviously did the podcast.

Lucas Clarke (31:47.47)
Realistically, it doesn't take a whole crazy amount of time. I reach out to people on Instagram. They say, hey, yeah, let's do it. Let's book a time. I kind of go through a plan, share a doc, have some questions, and kind of guide the conversation. But I hate structure as much as anyone. So usually, they're pretty free firing as we're going. But for December, I'm obviously painfully aware that no one gives a shit about lesson planning or...

What do you do for classroom management on December 23rd? Like it's Christmas break, like Mr. Clark, leave it alone. So December is gonna be a little bit different. As far as know, I think the next episode that's coming out after this one will be Leroy Slansky, and he's like an expert on incorporating play into the curriculum and into your classroom. He has like a play is the way program, super interesting guy, had a great conversation. He's located in BC right now.

actually at a school on a reservation, so we had a really cool conversation about that. Then it'll change up for a bit in December. So, still going to do my weekly routine, but like I noticed that the weekly routine actually ends up for every Tuesday, being on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. So again, no one's going to wake up Christmas Eve morning and say, Mr. Clock After Dark, I wanna listen to like...

random education facts with random professors on the internet. No, so I think for December, surprise, Mr. Clark after dark is gonna have the first Clark Brothers episode, which is gonna be super fun. My brothers and I are going to record an episode here. It's not gonna be live. If you know my brothers, you know why. And we will record an episode and I will post it on December 23rd. So it won't be on Christmas Eve.

But I think we have a lot of stuff planned for it. I think it's going to be awesome. It's going to be funny seeing them on camera kind of getting comfortable with it all. And then I have Aaron Hunter, whose episode is going to be whatever the first Tuesday in December is. He's a children's book author of The Tales of the Magical Postcards. He's super interesting guy. went from the US, went to Germany.

Lucas Clarke (34:03.084)
I think there's one more episode I'm going to slot in there. I'm not exactly sure who I am going to do an episode with a man called the teachers PT. So the teachers personal trainer, obviously, just like it sounds, he's a teacher who he's a personal trainer who specifically tailors his training and clientele toward teaching, which I think will be an awesome first episode for the new year. So at the end of this year, you're going to have a Mr. Clark after dark.

Brothers edition for Christmas Eve. And then I've kind of gone through and found a few like funniest moments of Mr. Clark After Dark and I'll probably do like a little think aloud and a commentary I think on some of the best moments I think I've seen from the past year. The times I've laughed, people say I have a very pronounced laugh. So I think that'll be fun. think so I'm put that together for the New Year's Eve episode. So that way it's not just.

me kind of it's not just education. It's Mr. Clark my life and kind of my people and going through that stuff. So again, as always, thank you all for tuning in the show. I appreciate the support and thank you for not being scared.