405 - TikTok your PD

Ever thought of TikTok as more than just dance moves and viral challenges? In this week’s episode of Restart Recharge, we're shaking things up by diving into how TikTok can be a game-changer for teacher PD. We're joined by the one and only Dr. Tyler Tarver, who’s not just a big deal online with over 120 million views but also a guru when it comes to making learning fun and accessible. Tyler’s going to walk us through his adventure from YouTube to TikTok, showing us that a little creativity can turn those quick, catchy videos into powerful PD tools that fit right in your pocket. It doesn’t matter if you're already a TikTok aficionado or just curious about what it can do for you and your teaching; this episode is packed with down-to-earth advice, real-world wisdom, and plenty of laughs to boot. Join us to find out how you can make PD not just informative, but downright enjoyable.

Follow Tyler on his socials!
@tylertarver - X/Twitter
@tylertarver - Instagram
drtylertarver -TikTok

Check out his Website!
TarverAcademy.com

Podcast Team
Hosts- Katie Ritter & Matthäus Huelse
Editing Team- Matthäus Huelse, Jeremy McConnell, Justin Thomas
Social Media/ Promo Team- Alyssa Faubion
Producer- Matthäus Huelse


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Transcript

Matthaeus: 0:53

Calling all instructional coaches, curriculum specialists, teachers on special assignment, or whatever they call you. I'm Matthaeus Huelse

Katie: 1:01

and I'm Katie Ritter. As instructional coaches, we are often responsible for our own professional learning and can sometimes feel pretty isolated in our role.

Matthaeus: 1:09

That's why we're here. Bridging the gap with a wealth of tips, tricks, and building a community of coaches.

Katie: 1:15

So hit the restart button with us.

Matthaeus: 1:17

Recharge your coaching batteries.

Katie: 1:19

And hopefully you'll leave feeling just a little bit less on your own coaching island.

Matthaeus: 1:27

Welcome back to Restart Recharge. Today's chat is all about TikTok. No, it's not the dance challenges you're thinking of. Think bite sized wisdom, creative flair in PD programs, and engaging with your community. We're exploring how those quick, catchy videos can turn into another tool on your belt. So whether you are already a teacher, influencer, or if you're just scrolling the socials to stay in the loop, we make sure to give you what you need to know about short form content. In today's episode, we're excited to have Dr. Tyler Tarver joining us. Tyler is a Titan in the realm of educational resources, boasting an impressive digital footprint with over 120 million views and a community of 500, 000 subscribers online, the mastermind behind tarveracademy. com. Tyler has. penned four insightful books, including the much celebrated The Baller Teacher Playbook, and sprinkled his wisdom across multiple podcasts, including ours now. With a rich background that spans from the classroom to the principal's office and beyond, even stepping into the shoes of so called fake assistant superintendent, Tyler's journey in educational, uh, Tyler's journey in education is nothing short of remarkable. Armed with a doctorate in educational leadership from Harding University, and recognized as a Google Innovator, Google Certified Trainer, and Apple Distinguished Educator, Tyler's dedication to empowering educators is unparalleled. And just for the record, we're pretty confident that he's not a horcrux. Welcome to the pod, Tyler.

Tyler: 3:00

Hey, thank you for having me. I just, uh, just been a marvelous day so far

Matthaeus: 3:04

Oh, great to hear that. We always love to hear that we're making someone's day better.

Katie: 3:08

Tyler. I feel like I have so many questions based on a couple of those nuggets from your intro, but I'm going to save those for later. Maybe you'll weave them into some of your answers here as we go through, but we are so excited to have you on the podcast. We, for just some super quick background for you, we've been having a lot of conversations on the podcast. You know, our, our primary audience is instructional coaches. And so we've been having a lot of conversations about how professional development has really been shifting and our audience is tasked with leading and developing a lot of group professional development in addition to that one on one coaching role. Um, so we've just been kind of talking about how teachers don't seem to have the bandwidth, um, to, to attend group PD. formal in service time is becoming less and less. So, we've kind of been talking and exploring what are different, maybe more non traditional options that we could look at for PD with teachers. And so, with your background with these videos, that's an amazing reach that you have. Um, anyone who has seen a video or had the pleasure of engaging with you in person can understand, um, how just formal Fun that your videos are. But before we even dive into that, how did, how'd you get started? Like, what was the aha for you to start creating this short form video content?

Tyler: 4:29

Great question. Great, excellent question. Uh, almost too good of a question. If you ask me, it's borderline steroid check. You know what I mean? That was a good question. So, um, I've been on YouTube since like 2007 or eight, I started upload. I was like one of the first education, like. Putting it on there whenever nobody people like, what is the YouTube? You know, all you knew was like a reference Sandra Bullock had on their proposal as the only shout out YouTube had. And so I was putting my math videos up there and, uh, did that for a while. But it was like, like you said, longer form is kind of the traditional way, right? Here's a 20 minute lesson on geometry, planes, lanes, trains, and automobiles. And so I'm like doing that just to help my students. You didn't like make money from it. It was just like I put it on my burner account, you know, and I put it over there and uh, and made it available and then everybody could access it. Well, a few years ago, it was 2019, I was like, uh, you know Eric Kurtz, right? Eric Kurtz, great Google Trainer. He had this list. It was like checklist of everything you need to know to become a Google Level one educator. It was like, you know all this, you'll ace it. You don't have to know all of it, but if you do, you're good to go. And it's like, I mean, 150, a hundred, I mean, it's a couple hundred like checklist.

Katie: 5:33

Yeah, I know exactly the

Tyler: 5:35

Yes. Okay, good. So in 2019, I was like, man, I would really, cause I've always done the side thing of like making, you know, speaking and helping teaching, training, all that. I was like, how cool would it be if like there was this checklist, but you could click it if you're like, oh, I'm check, check, check, I don't want to do this. Click. And you can watch a quick video showing you how to do that. And I was just like. I'm going to do that. So I hit up Eric, I met him a couple of times and I was like, Hey Eric, is it cool if I use your checklist? He's yeah, just give me creds. I was like, I got you fam. So I duplicated it. And then I spent like three months every night from like 9 PM to midnight, making and editing a video for every single one of them. And then I'm like sitting here thinking like. I'm about to break education. This is going to be the greatest resource teachers have ever had. And I put it out there and it was like, it was like pooting in the wind. Nobody saw anything. Nobody cared. And it like, literally I upload, I actually lost followers because I accidentally uploaded them all at once. And people were like, I don't need a hundred videos on how to use my Google drive. And so they like unfollow us. Great. This is awful. Well, that was 2019. Again, nobody cared about how to use Google. Some stuff happened in 2020. Around the first quarter, if you will, right at the end of the first quarter of 2020, and then everybody was like, okay, how do I use Google? How do I use Google classroom? And I was like, I got this resource. I got this resource. And I had like played on Tik TOK a little bit, like on Instagram, it's just like pictures of my kids. And I'd had a Tik TOK, but it was like, I was just like filming my son, uh, like picking him up at daycare and then like me doing dumb dunks into the pool. Like I was just being just silly. I had like eight views and I was like, I know, I'll just like, maybe I'll put it on this. And so I made a quick video. I was like, Hey guys, I know you're trying to learn it. I took all these Google resources, put them in this Google sheet, um, or in this, in this Google doc, if you need them. It'll help you with anything you need with Google. And it like blew up, like it, it literally crashed a Google doc. Cause too many people were trying to get in there. And so like, I learned from that, trying to be like, Oh, people need to access, make a copy and it just, they piled, it was like, it was like black Friday at target, like everybody's like, you know, and I was like, this is a great way. To spread this out. So I just started posting short videos on Tik TOK and I've been doing it ever since. And it's just like quick tips, how to's making resources, just giving free stuff to teachers, um, as much as I can and putting it on there. And you know, that's the thing, like people learn from Tik TOK. I can talk about it all day. I'll quit y'all. I'll just answer the question you asked. That's

Katie: 7:56

we love it. Take, take it where you want to go. If we want to drive a point, we'll bring it back to it. But for sure. So I'm curious. So then when you took it from., because the, each individual skill on that checklist could probably be done in a couple of minutes, right? It's not like, ground up, you're teaching everything about Google Sites in a single video. I assume your initial videos were still small, but maybe not quite as small as like the TikTok, Instagram Reel, like short video format. Is that, am I, is that an accurate assumption?

Tyler: 8:28

Yeah, absolutely. And the tick tocks, it's like, it's very like, bam, bam, bam. It's almost too fast for like 80 percent of the audience, but they have a place where they can go and it's like, Hey, here's Tyler talking in a normal tone. Click here, click here. You know, it's like, it's kind of how we picture tick tock, Instagram video. It's very fast paced, you know, cause everybody's trying to jam it into a minute versus if you go to YouTube, it's like walking into a movie theater. Like you're like, I plan on staying here a little longer, you know? And so it's like offering both instead of forcing them to do it. To come to how I want, I was like, here, I'll give you so many options. It's everywhere. So like that checklist, I converted into a Google cheat sheet for teachers. And then I converted that into a Google cheat sheet for students. And then I stuck it into a little, like a little, some sales, put it in some docs. I put on the back of like 18 other resources. Like I put it everywhere. I'm like, I want it to make it so accessible. You don't even know that there's an

Katie: 9:18

Yeah, I love that, um, that analogy of going to YouTube. You're going, you're going to the movie theater to stay there a little bit longer., and I think that's a great takeaway if we think about our coaches thinking about how could they use some, you know, create some short form video content themselves for their teachers. I think that you hit a, like a key takeaway that they need to keep in mind when you said it's. TikTok are those like one to two minute videos, probably too fast for your average listener, but it at least shows them really quickly what's possible and what they can do. And then sounds like you're primarily directing them at the end to a follow up resource to that movie theater, maybe the longer YouTube video or one of the documents you've created something. So catch their attention, show them what's possible. Possible and then get them to another longer resource if they need it. Would you say that's like a little bit of the recipe that you're using or what's maybe a better recipe summary that you're using when you create these videos?

Tyler: 10:15

No, that's it. And honestly, the way I picture, like before I hit record on like a tick tock and I say, tick tock, my tick tocks, they go in, they auto post to like Pinterest then I, you know, download them, re upload them YouTube shorts. So they're going everywhere. I just call them like my short videos and I do like three a day. Per channel. So like six a day that I'm posting. And it's like, when I think of why people watch things on the internet, there's only two reasons people watch stuff, entertainment or education, they want to be entertained or they want to learn something best is when you can do both. But, so whenever I'm going in there and I'm about to hit record, I'm like, okay. I'm going to hit them with a problem. Like, Hey teachers, do you ever struggle with staying organized and drive? You know, in my head, I want my audience to be like, yes, that makes them stay. That's the hook. That's something that applies to them. If it doesn't cool, keep scrolling. This isn't for you. You know, my drive is great. Go look at a cat playing a piano. I don't care. All right. But they stay there. Then I'm like, do this. I think it'll help. It'll save you 10 minutes a day. And then at the end, I can be like, plus I got more videos, free resource, link in my bio, and I throw that at the end. So it's like, the hook is the problem. Then I add them value, immediate value. Like, I don't care if I've got a thousand percent more value at the end in my plug. I'm adding them some value to where if that's all they do is watch my video, they

Katie: 11:27

That's awesome. Yeah. I was, that was gonna be my next question is how do you catch their attention? But thank you. So good little hook. State the problem right up front. I think sometimes we try to dance around it and like. Build up to the why or the purpose., so I like that kind of back to like journalism 101, like state your state, what this is going to be about in that first sentence right there. So people will keep reading or watching, um, if they want to. Yeah.

Matthaeus: 11:51

And, uh, I'm sure we're going to have people, our listeners jump onto your Tik Tok and trying to figure out what Tyler Tarver is all about. Uh, can you tell us what is expecting them? What, what kind of videos are up there? What, what is coming their way?

Tyler: 12:02

Uh, most of the time I'll do like, I've started doing like more meme stuff because like teachers at this time of the year, teachers don't want like, Oh, cool. Inspire me. We're about to hit testing season. Get out of my face, Tyler. I don't want your dumb little resources. And so I'm like, like, I'll try to like, I'll do a lot more memes this time of year, whereas like in the summer, I'm very like resource heavy, here's a tip. Here's a resource. Go here, take this, you know? And then in a couple of months leading up to the summer, I'm very like, Hey. Also, I'm doing a summer training for three hours virtually. If you want to join, I'm doing a workshop. If you want to get like, here's something and here's the, like the, the end, the last, like three to five seconds changes depending on what time of year it is. So it's a lot of memes right now, like education focused memes, you know, using CapCut, tossing stuff on, putting a classroom in the background and be like that one student who walks 40 times, you know, whatever, cause they got a new outfit. So it's just like stuff like that to connect with teachers and entertain them. And then, uh, and then I'm alternating that with like resources and tips.

Katie: 13:00

I feel targeted. High school me feels  targeted by that, Tyler.

Tyler: 13:04

you know, if the dress fits, wear it and flaunt it. That's what I say.

Katie: 13:08

Oh, that's hilarious. What, what's, What, would you say, what's, your, like, top three most popular videos? What was the topic on them?

Tyler: 13:16

Oh, okay. So my, actually my, My biggest YouTube video is a video from like 10 years ago. It was slope intercept form. I filmed in the summer. I was using a PD day to clean my room and I was just like, I'll film some basic videos, filmed it. I think like I might've been the first time I'd spoken that day. Because I'd been in my room by myself. So I was like, I sounded like this. Hey everybody. Welcome to math. Most boring. So I was, I was terrible, but it got like 2 million views. Like it's, it's steadily been like a popular video. So that's YouTube, but. And this is not even, it's not even education, but I have one video that I did, it was about, I think it's like eight seconds long, 10 seconds long. And it is not even close. It's my most popular video of all time. There was a, there was a report and it turns out it was a fake report, but whatever I made the video. So as a report, this chick was talking about this nurse on her deathbed that said she swapped 5, 000 babies while she was a nurse. Yeah. Terrible, right? Terrible. It wasn't true. It wasn't true. Okay. So they, they debunked it, or at least that's what the comments tell me. Okay. So that lady's taking nurse swap 5, 000 babies on her, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then it switches to me and it's like a stitch and I'm looking at it like super confused. And then I like pan over and my youngest son, he's a, he's black and he's sitting there and he wasn't paying attention. He was watching TV and he's sitting on my shoulder and it's like, looking at me, looking at the news article. And then I lean over and look at him. He's like squinting, like really thinking. And then it's me going, Amanda, like I just figured something out and I'm telling my wife, you know, like my kid got switched and I don't know. Apparently it connected with audiences that video alone across platforms across TikTok and Instagram alone I think it's probably got like 55 60 million views and so it's It's crazy. That is by far, it's got more views than like all my videos combined. It's insane.

Katie: 15:00

Well, yeah, it's, it's like a, a funny, jovial, thing that I'm sure blended families that are, you know, come together in all sorts of ways could relate to. Um, so that's super funny. I'm curious though. Um, so think thinking of this, right? And this is, um, not just this, but you are like content creation, your Tarver Academy, writing books. I mean this world now, keynoting, presenting, traveling, that's your full time gig now, correct? You're, you're not currently,

Tyler: 15:30

organization too. I work for an organization as well. I'm director of learning and development. So like I oversee all the learning departments there, but I like, have fluidity so I can like work at night. If I'm speaking there in the morning, I can work in the afternoon. So they give me flexibility. To work that stuff around it, you know, so that's fun. That's the main one, but I still, so I still get that organizational field, working with teams, building out things. And essentially what I'm doing for them is I oversee the departments and we've got like a college there and then a certificate program and all these other things, but one of the big things we're trying to do is essentially what I'm doing with education, I'm trying to build for them as well. So like a subscription area, a model for their employees to learn. Do courses, um, at their own pace. It tracks their learning. They get, you know, certificates for that. So like I'm building out essentially their own infrastructure as well. That's like the big project we're working on.

Katie: 16:17

Okay. That's a, that's amazing and all, all wonderful. And, um, I guess what I meant by that was, um, for our coach listeners, right, that maybe don't have as much flexibility in their, their work day where they can't dedicate, um, maybe as much time as you are able to creating the video content, um, where they may not create like Entertainment content where yours is like hilarious and it drives your goals that you have for your content. Our instructional coaches may not share that same entertainment goal, but they do share the education goal, right? Of like creating short form, uh, PD content for their teachers. So I'm curious, um, what, what is maybe some practical advice you would give to instructional coaches or leaders, anyone who's tasked with trying to educate, right? teachers. Where would you maybe suggest that they get started if they're interested in, um, looking into, to short form TikTok style PD that they could create for teachers?

Tyler: 17:18

Great question. Okay. So here's what I say right out the gates, I would go find the top 10 frustrations your teachers have. What are their big problems? And then try to solve those problems in bite sizes. Most teachers, one of their big problems is time. They don't have time to do everything they want to do. Okay. A lot of mine focus on how can I save teachers time? Hey guys, here's a resource. Make a copy, delete my name, put your name. That just saved you three hours. Go into Gmail, automate this, this and this, create a template, save you 10 minutes a day. Figure out what your teacher's problem is. Maybe their problem is they just got a new. Platform rolled out from the state that they have to fill out once a month and they don't even know their login password. You know what I mean? Like they don't know any of that stuff. Hey guys, passwords are trash. I know it because I have to reset them for you all the time. Here's what I recommend. Get this app, put this in here and then you can use it. I trust it. I think you should use it and I don't get commission. Just letting you know, you know, like figure out every, every barrier for them, every frustration for them and then chip away at solving those problems. that's what I

Katie: 18:22

Yeah, that's a great strategy to take, because then you, you take their top challenges, it's top of mind, and then that's what you connect to that hook at the start of your, your videos, if someone was going to employ kind of that same recipe for trying to create videos. So, immediately connect that, that, uh, difficulty to that hook that you, um, shared as a, a good way to get them interested in watching the videos.

Matthaeus: 18:46

For sure. Tyler, we're going to take a really quick break for commercials. We're going to come back right after a couple minutes and we're going to keep talking with Tyler about TikTok ing your PD. and we're back. We're still talking with Tyler a little bit about TikTok ing your PD using short form video content. Now, uh, one of the questions that I have for you, it's, it's kind of interesting. If I would be going in again, our audience has a lot of questions. Uh, instructional design coaches, anything in that regard. A lot of what we do is trying to prove the impact that we're doing, right? Showing that we're doing something that is making, that's moving the needle in our building, right? If I want to do this and I want to go, go to admin and be like, look, this is making a difference. What kind of advice would you give to someone like to maybe collect data? Do I look for the likes? Do I look for the, to the engagement in my TikTok videos to kind of show like, look, we're making, we're making an impact.

Tyler: 20:48

Yes. I mean, anything you can show data wise on paper, they're going to like, you just say it works, trust me, like they don't, they don't have the context you have. You know what I mean? They haven't seen the comments, the likes, the interactions, the thank yous and the DMS. They haven't seen it. And so honestly, what I recommend if you're doing it, it's, it's, if you're doing it right now and you're going to meet with your admin tomorrow, Then you could just find some research studies like intelligent. com did one about how people learn from not only YouTube, but Tik TOK, you know, I think the last poll I saw that they pulled 2000 students and over 51 percent of students had searched for math help on Tik TOK. Okay. People go where they're, people go where they're comfortable and maybe your teachers aren't comfortable with Tik TOK. Well, cool. Offer a Facebook PD. I did that last summer. I did a Facebook PD. I did a YouTube PD. I've done Tik TOK conferences. Like I've done stuff around the thing. People feel comfortable where they have their community. And so you could pull your teachers. If you have a little bit of time for the meeting, pull your teachers. What social media do you like? Cool. You take that, say, Hey, 80 percent of our teachers love Facebook. Let's do a live stream that goes on Facebook and we'll do it through there. And we'll do a training, you know, we'll do a town hall, whatever, figure out what they're comfortable with and then do it, but there's a ton of research. So I had to do it. My dissertation, I had to like break down like 60 plus research studies. And a lot of it focused on students learning and it's peer reviewed. Like students learn through YouTube, whether a teacher tells them to go there or not, whether they're Students are going there. It's in the 90 something percentile of students will go to YouTube to learn something for their class. And most of the research studies that compared it saw, I say most, every single one said students are better and more successful when the teacher guides that. So let's level that up to educators. If educators need to know how to do something, guess what? If they can't ask the friend on the hall, they're going to Google it. And. You probably didn't make that resource. It might not be tailored to you. It might not do it the way you want. Well, guess what? You want it tailored, make it and tailor it to your audience, make the trainings for them. And then here's the cool thing. You have that every year after that, like, uh, three summers ago, I almost killed myself because I offered, I offered, um, 150 hours of virtual trainings for teachers because everybody was still doing remote learning. So I was like, Hey, I'm going to have six hours of training going every weekday for three months. Okay. And so I did them, all of them were like new in June and then I had them repurposed as premieres in July and then August and like thousands of teachers would do their trainings through that. That's cool. One summer. Great. I made some money, a little bit of money on it and teachers got trained. I took all that, stuck it on my website and I was like, Hey, for 200 bucks, you can have access for life to all these videos. So like, if you create the content in a way where you can make it evergreen, That can help your teachers for the next 10, 20 years, depending on how your programs and technology changes. Like classroom management, it's gonna be pretty similar. You know what I mean? Just depends on what devices you're using, but classroom managers can be similar. That three hour PD can serve you for years, you know? So it's like, be smart in how you create this content to be evergreen stuff that helps teachers that are still in high school right now that are going to be teachers in 10 years at your school.

Katie: 23:52

Yeah, I think that's so smart because these platforms update so frequently. So when I think of in particular, like our instructional technology coaches, right? Like a lot of the work you're doing training on using Google tools, other tech tools, right? they update so frequently that is as evergreen as you can possibly make it, I think is super helpful. Tyler, I'm also interested just to build on Matthaeus's question, I think, and I love That you're citing research around this too. Um, Matthaeus and I both are into that kind of stuff, but, um, so I think it's super interesting. I love to hear that there is sounds like pretty updated research even around TikTok and kids learning. Um, and so obviously I think that's, uh, amazing to equip, to use data and bring it to admin. And we talk a lot about that in particular for coaches who, um, are often still seen as kind of like a luxury role and not like a guaranteed third grade. Reading teacher role. Um, so we're big on having data to show what you're doing is making an impact. But I'm also curious because I don't necessarily think that this is something that our coaches would need to go get approved by admin to start doing and embedding these little short form videos and newsletters or sending it out on social media or whatever it may be. I think this is very much something that a coach could be empowered to start and do on their own and doesn't need the blessing of an admin. So I'm curious. How do you judge a video to be successful, um, and having like reached the audience that you want?

Tyler: 25:26

And you're, you're speaking to them. This is my love language, which we're talking about right now. So thank you. Um, so, so this is actually, so my dissertation was, um, how to engage students with online educational YouTube videos. So what we did was we took videos, we looked at the style of video. Is it a screen recording? Is a person only, or is there a combination? And then we looked at the link from one to 10 minutes. Okay. And then we compared what are the things that matter? So when we were looking at the data that matters to the hope this answer your question, this is what matters to me. First thing we had and we analyzed was watch time, okay? If I hit the like button but I quit watching in four seconds, what did I get out of that video? You know? So, watch time matters because you're getting the content. So we're judging what keeps a student, what keeps a viewer watching educational content, okay? How long are they watching? Which ones do they watch longer? All that, alright? Second thing we looked at were likes. It's like, oh, good video, click like. Okay, it's a pretty basic one. Next one, and this one is what I value the most. That are, that is the comments. the comments because that is your engagement. That is your community. Okay. We all think of like, think of the, um, the platforms are y'all, y'all are on Tik TOK, right? One of my, one of my favorite things to do on tick tock when I'm watching as a consumer, when I'm watching a tick tock and I see a video and I think of something like, does anybody see that poster in the background? Or this feels like, like, you, you know, you get a vibe on certain videos. You're like, there's something an undercurrent of this video. The first thing I do is I tap on the comments to see if somebody else noticed that and started the conversation. And guess what? Most of the time. They have. And then I joined the conversation where I feel validated that I saw that. Comments are my favorite of all the things I analyze. Comments matter the most to me because that is your community engagement. That is the stuff that I think really connects people to stuff. Like when we all went online, it was hard. Not just because like, Oh, kids have to work from home. The hard part was you have no community. We turn into a business. Here's the checklist for today. Watch this, do this, turn this in. We lost that community and our students felt that. Okay. You have to be very intentional and online stuff to do that. I think in any social media thing, building that community and getting that comments is the number one indicator I look for. And the fourth thing that we study were shares. Like what makes someone go, I need others to see this. So those are the four things I analyzed in my, in my study. And so yeah, it's, I don't know, peer reviewed, I think. I don't know. I don't know how that works if I'm the one that did it. My peers reviewed it. They were really rude and I fixed all their mistakes. So thanks readers. You know what I'm saying?

Katie: 27:53

Oh, that's awesome. Curious then, um, looking at like upcoming social media trends or insight, what should coaches be on the lookout for? Cause I think sometimes, you know, it is. It's, it's hard for coaches to keep up sometimes, right? With like creating and sharing in so many different spaces and platforms. So I'm curious, what, where do you think it's time worth spent right now and coming up and AI is changing everything now, um, as we move forward, what do you think about that? Where should coaches invest their time? Any trends or platforms that are kind of up and

Tyler: 28:31

I think personally, and this is what I've kind of leaned into over the past, like, really the past three to four months when I've really invested in it, I think self paced courses is going to be a big, big push. I think that, I mean, this has been a push in education for students for, what, 10, 15 years at least? You know, seat time versus mastery. Like if I know how to do everything, why am I wasting an entire semester sitting here? Can I not just work ahead? And you know, that's whenever I was a principal, that's what students could do at our school. We had waivers. They can move ahead. They have to wait on their classmates. And so I think so, or if maybe I need more help, cool. I can watch the video. I still don't get it. I have a few extra resources and then I can go back and do it. Like it's more about educating the person as opposed to putting in the time. And we've been doing that with students the past, 10 or so years really strong. I think that we're going to start seeing that filter up finally to the educators. There's some teachers in our buildings. They don't need us to hold their hand and sit through a six hour PD. Like they're checking emails because they know how to do everything, maybe better than the presenter. That's fine. Guess what? Why don't you work from home, pick three classes, and knock out this, this, and this, and you get a little extra time because, I don't know, you learn things throughout the year, not just in the summer. You know, like, why can't we reward their time by letting them work at their own pace? And so, I think, and that's what I started doing, I started creating self paced courses. Do, you know, five to fifteen minute videos. And then I actually use AI. I'll take chat GPT. I'll break it down, hit all the key points, main learning goal. I give them personal application questions. And what I do is I go in and I have AI generate that from the video. And then I go back into AI and I say, pose yourself as Tyler Tarver from Tarver Academy. Rewrite the following. And then I rewrite all of their stuff. They analyze from my video. As me, and then I edit it to make it even more like me. And then I put it on there. So it's really weird and meta, and I don't know who's doing it. Me or the robot me, but I'm really excited. It's helping because that's the thing. AI is cutting out the busy work of being a human. So, um, I think, and again, it's going to cut out a lot of the busy work for students. So we got to figure out that balance, but that's what I'm like, I think courses self paced courses from people who are making engaging content, like we're done with boring stuff, like make it applicable, make it entertaining. Nobody wants to sit through Khan Academy videos and turn here, go here. Here's like, we've all sat in those PDs. We've like, even if it's good content, we're just like, can you please not like, can you please not, you know what I mean? Like, I think more people need to step up and make it personalized for our audience, which is great. Cause they can, if they're coaches, they can do that for their people, but also try to make it engaging, make it have personality. I think that's really important. Personality authenticity. I've told you like 80 things. I'm gonna quit talking. Y'all are great. Thank y'all for having me.

Katie: 31:05

No, I love it. I wanted to follow up on so many things just because I think you're nailing it. Couldn't agree more with the on demand courses. I think that's huge. And I just, before it sounds like Matthaeus has a question, but I would love to see what A. I. Tyler, like the tone and the comments come out. Looking like, if you could just like email me on the side, follow up. I'd love to see how you trained AI Tyler with like your snarky, hilarious side

Tyler: 31:36

it's it's he's he I like I'm like, oh man, I'm extra even the robot knows it. You know what I mean? It's like a lot of emojis a lot of exclamation points a lot of calling people chicken nuggets You know, it's just too much and i'm so sorry

Katie: 31:48

I love it. I love it.

Matthaeus: 31:50

That's awesome. Okay. So here's another question. If I'm an instructional design coach or even a teacher, maybe, uh, and I want to jump into this, but I'm not, you know, I maybe I'm not so confident. You have got amazing energy. You, you made us, you keep us laughing the entire episode long, right? How do you encourage someone to maybe that is on the verge of maybe making the video, but it's not quite sure because it seems a little weird. What do you tell them? How can you push them over the edge?

Katie: 32:12

They hate hearing their own voice. Good question.

Tyler: 32:15

the thing if they hate their own voice. Guess what don't watch your video make the video I never watch my own videos. I hate my voice, too I make the video unless somebody else watches when you talk in front of people. Guess what same voice It's the same voice. If you hate it, you hate it in front of humans, not just the internet. Don't re watch your stuff. Make it, make sure you didn't cuss, hit publish. You know what I mean? Like, that's the thing. And anytime I get too wrapped up, and I'm like, Oh, man, this is a little bit, like, should I? And then I'm like, I'll be dead in a hundred years. Doesn't matter. So I just post it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, who cares? Like, if I look dumb, I got a booger hanging out. I don't know. I'm just gonna post it anyways, because hopefully it helps somebody. And that's the thing, like, my Slope Intercept Formula video, I hate it. Like, I am so bland, so boring, but guess what? Not only did I help the students I had that year in class with that, that 100, 150 students, I've helped over 2 million students in the past 12 years from that one 5 minute video. So, maybe, instead of the little insecurities, the little things that we dislike about ourselves, and maybe they're valid, maybe we do have a weird, I have the most Southern accent on planet Earth, okay? I sound like a woman that yells people at a Hobby Lobby, okay? Like, I have the worst voice ever. But if I can throw something out there and help people and save them five minutes a day, or fix a little frustration in Google that they didn't know existed because they just hadn't heard somebody talk about it. I'm going to do it because I want to help people more than I want to feel good about people not hearing my weird voice.

Katie: 33:35

I love that advice so much. I think that is so important and I do think that educators are very humble and they never want to brag on themselves or promote themselves a lot of the time and I Do you think that holds some people back from like taking this next step of doing something like this? So I love getting that advice from you. Also, you have a great voice. There's nothing wrong with it. You're just normal. Like the rest of us don't like to hear the sound of your

Tyler: 34:03

I've, I've made YouTube videos long enough to get the comments. I know how I sound.

Matthaeus: 34:06

Yeah.

Tyler: 34:07

Sorry.

Matthaeus: 34:09

Um, one, one more little question for someone that wants to jump in any kind of trends that you would give them as advice or kind of means that may be an easy win, easy, easy in to maybe, uh, you know, get them started with a video idea. What's currently trend?

Tyler: 34:22

Uh, yeah, start with the big, uh, easy problem. Something that you've taken for granted. So like, if there's something that like you show the teacher down the hall or you show a teacher and they're just like, Oh, thank you. I didn't know that was there. Make that. That's an easy win. And you remember, just start with, Hey, do you get overwhelmed with Gmail? Do you ever miss your emails and you forget to check them? Here you go. Click this setting. Go to, you know, unread first, have your email set up like this. It'll help a lot because if the teacher's not doing that, that one little tip for 10 seconds. alleviate a ton of stress and frustration. And here's the cool thing. If they're coaches, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I got a better answer. Ignore that last one. You ready? Here's what I did. And I did this when I was at a district. So I made stuff online for random teachers, but also I had teachers in my district that would have issues. They're like, Hey, I can't do blah, blah, blah in this. Like, I don't know how to do this in this program. You know, normally we're like, okay, well, when's your prep? I'll come over there. I'll go to your building. I'll walk in and I'll show you how to do it. I just told my teacher, like, look, just email me what you need. Cause they're emailing me all the time. So I was like, here we go. I take their problem. And then I go in, I do a screen record and I go, all right, if you're having trouble with this, do this. And I made a video and I just emailed him. All right. Whenever you get a chance, watch this and it'll walk you through it. Let me know if they have any issues. Here's the cool thing. If they had a question on that, guess what? I'm going to get in like three weeks, a question from another teacher. That's the exact same thing. And then I just take the link, send it to them and I put it on YouTube and I have it available. I made a bunch of videos because my teachers need to help us stuff. And I made it in the process of doing my day job. And so it's like, you're doing this anyways, just document what you're already doing. That is my tip for teachers wanting to step into this document, which you're already helping people with.

Katie: 35:59

I love that. And that might start off as this final question, tip number one, but what are your over overall top three tips for coaches or education leaders that want to get started tick tocking their PD?

Tyler: 36:14

Great question. So first thing I would do is I would. What I said document what you're already doing. That's the easy one because you're already doing it You just haven't hit record while you did it. Okay, so document what you're already doing. That's tip number one You said three right number two if there's somebody you like Start off by emulating their style. Okay, so i'm about to launch my podcast There's a podcast I love listening to where at the end they do something called life advice. I'm straight stealing that People can send in any question and I answer it. I'm stealing it. Guess what? I'll give him cred for like two or three episodes and then it's mine. Okay. That's how education works. Okay. You, you give them credit three times and then after that you always go, you know, it's like, I always say, because you have been saying it, quoting someone else. Okay. Michael Scott, Wayne Gretzky. Y'all know, y'all know the quote. All right. Then, uh, if I'm saying so document what you're already doing. Number two, um, emulate people that you like because if you like them, you like them for a reason. So emulate them until you find your own style and your own voice. And number three, be yourself. And I know that's so cliched, cliche, generic, blah, blah, blah. I think that too many people try to be this like, this polished version of themselves online. Okay? Online is not, like, it's not, it's no longer online and then real life. Okay, online is real life and for a lot of these young people it's more real for them They're more real online than they are in your class That's more them and their personality on their Instagram page in the stories than it is whenever they're sitting, you know, third row, fourth seat back in your class. They are able to express themselves there. Be authentic and have a personality and know, just like in your building, there's some teachers you connect with and they connect with you. And there's some teachers that don't. That's okay. You don't have, not everyone has to like you and connect with you, but if you use your personality, you're going to, at least going to connect deeper with some people and not on a generic white bread, wonder bread level with everybody.

Katie: 38:01

I love that. Tyler, thank you so much. This is, I could go on, I think, for hours talking to you and just picking your brain. You are truly always such a, a joy and a bright light and you have such great, deep, valuable insight in education, but you do it in a way that brings your personality and keeps it so fun. Um, so before we kind of wrap up here, where can everyone find you? What are maybe some upcoming, um, conferences that you might be, late spring, in the summer, website, social media handles, anything you want to promote that you have going on, latest book release?

Tyler: 38:39

Oh my gosh, this is so nice. Okay. So I've got a couple of things coming up, but I'll just get it. Can I give three and I'll be quick? Okay. You ready? So this is a lot of instructional coaches, right? Okay. So when I first started getting into it, I started out working for a company. And then like my day job was like, no, you have to be here. And so I had to cancel a couple of weeks in advance. They got really mad and it didn't work out. And they were very like, those are our presentations. Do not use them. Give them. I was like, okay, chill. And that bothered me. Okay. And so, you know what, I know how much work you guys know how much work it is to create a presentation. So one of the things that I'm very big about is. I want to give them my presentations and I tell people here is a, here's a 280 slides. It's six hour training on Google. Take it, make a copy, delete my name, put your name on it and use it. Okay, edit it, make it for your people, whatever. So like I have a Google presentation that anybody can access. And then I have, I have like a membership thing on my website. It's called the honor roll. So it's like tarveracademy. com slash honor roll. And you get a bunch of stuff with it, but for your audience, what they get in there, when they go in the honor roll, there's like three bucks, you join the honor roll and they get access to all of my presentations, my keynotes. I've got AI trainings. I've got Canva trainings. I've got four different variations depending on my, like I've got engagement stuff, like it's like, I think 40 or 50. Like Google slides presentations that they're allowed to go in file, make a copy. And then make their own and then like clean it up. You don't want to just use what I made, but you guys know that it saves a ton of time and stress. A lot of that stress is just getting started and I don't care if you change 90%, you had something to start, you know, to spark your brain. So if they want that, that's in my honor roll tarveracademy. com slash honor roll. I'm doing a in person AI training this summer. It's whatever it's on my website. Who cares? Um, I'm also, you know, I've been laying out those courses. So I've got, you know, I've got some course, I've got a Google prep for the Google level one educator course I released recently, got a chat GPT for teachers to save time. So like using it for email and lesson plans and, you know, an AI policy for your class. So I got that course done. And then I also got, um, one I'm about to release this week is. Like different things you can do with your students, which had GPT, like have your students put this in to help them learn or, you know, build on the learning that you're already doing. So I've got it all at Tarveracademy. com slash courses. Nope. Sorry. Yeah. That's one of them. Who cares? I've lost my brain now. Tarveracademy. com slash honor roll on a roll gets everything. They're the, they're the chosen ones. Um, they're, they're Neo in the matrix. So if you want anything and you want to give me money, cool. If you want my free stuff, I've got 80 plus free templates. Tarveracademy. com slash resources. So

Katie: 41:07

That's amazing. And I'm sure they can find your TikTok on an Instagram on your website. But what is your actual handle? We can't forget that. The whole website, or the whole episode's about that.

Tyler: 41:21

So I had, I got on musically and then I realized, oh, this is for like 14 year old girls, so I didn't. But like then whenever TikTok bought musically, I lost Tyler Tarver. So I'm Dr. Tyler Tarver on TikTok, and then I'm just regular Tyler Tarver on Instagram. And then I'm Tarver Academy on YouTube. I try to make it as confusing as possible.

Katie: 41:40

That's okay. We're following. What about Twitter?

Tyler: 41:44

I'm Tyler Tarver there. If you just search Tyler Tarver, I'm that guy. I'm either talking about education or I'm talking about Sports cards. So,

Matthaeus: 41:51

Sports cards. or sports cars?

Tyler: 41:54

Cards. So like, yeah, so, I do a bunch of sports. No, I'm, I'm not rich enough to, I do education. I can't buy cars. I just buy little pictures of strong guys shooting basketballs.

Matthaeus: 42:03

All right. Check it out.

Katie: 42:05

Oh, awesome. Tyler. Thank you so, so much.

Matthaeus: 42:08

You've been an absolute blast to have on the, on the podcast. I mean, we're having so much fun. I'm trying to look into whether or not I can replace my German accent with a Southern accent just to kind of emulate you. Like you suggested. I don't know. That seems like a lot of fun.

Tyler: 42:20

No, you, you're winning. You're definitely, I'm second place. You've got the baton. You're looking back. You're waving by as you finish the race. You won.

Katie: 42:28

Okay. Well, I tripped coming off the the start line because I just have Midwest accent, so nothing cool.

Tyler: 42:34

Well that, you're good. That's, you're, you're, you're safe. You're in the safe zone, okay? You're not gonna be standing up there like he is, but you're gonna beat me, okay? I say y'all way too much to win any award.

Matthaeus: 42:44

Tyler, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Listeners, if you want to give us some feedback, please go onto Apple Music, Spotify, leave us a rating, leave us a comment, go into our social, see, find us on Instagram, find us on TikTok, find us all over where you might, might be looking for us., it's at RR coach for all of our handles. And yeah, please let us know what you think. And thank you so much, Tyler, for being here and hanging out with us.

Tyler: 43:08

Thank y'all for having me.

Katie: 43:09

Thanks, Tyler.