Episode 8 - Kevin Honeycutt - Outside the Classroom

Recorded live at the Hartley Outdoor Education Center during the Outside the Classroom Camp-Style Overnight PD Experience, this episode features a conversation with nationally recognized educator, speaker, storyteller, and self-described “unicorn protector” Kevin Honeycutt.

What started as a discussion about karaoke and camp culture quickly turned into a deeper conversation about connection, creativity, belonging, and what makes great schools and great educators stand out.

In this episode, we discuss:

🦄 Protecting the “unicorns” in our schools and why creative and passionate students and educators deserve more than tolerance—they deserve support.

🌲 The magic of camp-style professional learning and why stepping away from our daily routines can help us reconnect with the joy of learning.

🏫 “Bend the system to match the kids instead of bending the kids to match the system” and what that mindset looks like in practice.

💡 What gives Kevin hope about the future of education and the educators who continue to show up, learn, grow, and serve kids.

A special thank you to everyone who helped make the Outside the Classroom experience possible, including:

• Kevin Honeycutt

• Mark Lyons

• Saginaw ISD

• REMC Association

• Hartley Outdoor Education Center

• Outside the Classroom

• The organizers, presenters, volunteers, and staff who made this event possible

🌐 Learn more about Kevin Honeycutt:

https://www.kevinhoneycutt.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

All right, everybody. Welcome back to episode eight of the Honoring Educators Podcast. Today is going to be an especially unique uh discussion. I am out at Hartley Outdoor Education Center. For those that are aware, it's out in St. Charles, Michigan. It's owned and operated by Saginaw Intermediate School District. And we are currently in the middle of our outside the classroom outdoor PD experience. And I'm sitting here with an extremely charismatic, engaging, I could use lots of different words. But my guest today, his name is Kevin Honeycutt and he comes to us from all over the place. Many of you may have heard of Kevin. He's got a lot of content out on all the different platforms and things. But we've got a really great opportunity to kind of listen and learn from him over the last day and a half or so. And we've had an opportunity to sit down and kind of record a pretty brief episode here. So I was not going to pass up that opportunity. So I just want to welcome Kevin. Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and chat with me. This is a really unique experience, and it's an actual joy for me to be able to sit down with somebody like you. So I have a number of different kinds of questions that I'll be asking you that tie to this kind of specific event, but also kind of tap into some of the things I've listened and learned from you over the course of the last day or so. So we'll kind of get into those. But before we dive into any of that, Kevin, I want to give you in a moment to just kind of briefly say to the audience, hey, this is Kevin, and this is who I am, and this is where I'm from, and this is what I'm about.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Cool. All right. So first of all, thanks for letting me do this. This is fun. And just to get to talk to a brother is it's really nice. Um, you know, I'm that kid in your class that you're worried about that you take home at night and you worry about. Um you know something's up at home, but if you know too much, you'll have to report it to authorities and break trust and you'll lose me to another foster home. So I'm that kid that that keeps you up at night. So, but I made good. And um, you know, out of all my siblings, yeah, this the statistics weren't good. Uh, and I love them all, but you know, poverty and trauma takes a toll, and that's not making excuses. I've never been a person about that. But it's hard. So I beat the odds and I became a teacher. And because it was the one job that I I looked up to because it was teachers who saved me. So I became a teacher in a small town, and I did that for 13 years. Um, and then I got head-hunted to be a staff developer uh because of stuff I was doing. And I didn't even realize the best teachers don't know they're good. They just don't. They think everyone's like them, and then you meet them and they're Jedi's, and you realize, oh my God, they're really great, and they don't know it. This is part of what you celebrate in your podcast. That's exactly what I celebrate. So because I travel all over the world, I meet these Jedi's from everywhere, from Hong Kong and from from from um Shanghai and from Australia, New Zealand, London. I've been everywhere, literally, and great teaching is the same everywhere I go. It's people who are willing to take a chance and help the kids shine, even without a policy, before there's a policy, because they know the kids are bleeding out and there's no time to wait for the right triage. You've just got to move and you gotta do it now. So I collect those people and I collect those stories, and I've become this sort of storyteller and this weaver of tapestries of beautiful teachers. Um and so that's kind of what I do. Now, yes, I collect all kinds of work. I've got 30 years worth of worth of junk drawer. Um, this stuff, and I collect the stuff that worked. And what's been interesting is I'm back in the classroom now because a teacher in my district uh quit at Christmas and I came in and started teaching um again. And the here's the the question is uh I'm 59. Do the things that I thought worked still work? And I've got people who will say, if you haven't taught since COVID, you're not qualified. Kids have changed, everybody's changed, and parents are mad, and no one cares, and blah, blah, blah, and kids trigger, and they're there's a lot out there. There's a lot of negative out there. So I just wanted to I just want to see, does it still work to meet a kid at the door, to build a relationship, to build a relationship with mom and dad, to to to to help them see things in themselves? All these old teacher things, do they work? Guess what? They do, they still do. So you can get sidetracked by all the negative, but I think if you focus on the things we know that work, this thing's still worth doing, you know. It costs a lot, I know.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

No, that's beautiful. And it's something that comes up repeatedly in this podcast is get down to the brass text. What works and where do we start? And it always starts. I'm thinking of many of my former guests that are going to be listening to this going, I already know what John's gonna say, and we're gonna talk about relationships and connection. And it actually is gonna bleed into my first question is um for anybody that's not here uh over the last few days, um, and during Kevin's um keynote speak or uh speech, he talked about creating a karaoke culture. Now, Kevin has been pretty much singing, it sounds like for the last couple days, many, many years. Um, but I'm surprised you even have a voice after kind of going through yesterday. But I want to ask you this what does karaoke culture mean to you as it relates to education? But then let's talk about this event. How does this event kind of create a bit of the karaoke culture? Were you able to witness some of that while you were here? Um, so I want to take this in two realms. What does karaoke culture look like in a in a school community and why is that so important? And then what did you see that kind of taps into that here at Outside the Classroom?

SPEAKER_00 5:50

That's a good well, well, well phrased question. Uh, as I've traveled all over working with teachers and in schools, um, what's become clear is that um people won't take a chance if it's not a take-a-chance kind of culture and if it's not supported. And I go to some schools where their academics are good and their grades are good and all of that, but but no one will take a chance. And what occurs to me is as a teacher, I notice that if kids childhood is about taking a chance and finding out who you are, who you might want to be. You try on things like clothes to see is that what I want to wear. And if people make fun of you because of the clothes you try on, um then um then you can't really learn. You're in a straitjacket. A lot of times I'll say gifted kids are the most at risk because they won't risk a B. They want an automatic A and they want another guy again, A. They won't do anything they don't already know how to do, which is a trap. So karaoke culture is about creating a culture that celebrates risk, celebrates emergence, celebrates people taking a chance. So the question was, how is this gonna work here? I do these at Wild Heart teacher camps, I do these everywhere I go. And everyone underestimates. Look, karaoke is the is the most pedestrian of things, it's it's the most trailer parked thing you can do. And so people think, well, it's a cute little thing, but it doesn't matter. Purists in arts think it's nothing and will turn up their nose to it. You know, usually if people walk in a bar and they have a beer or two, they get brave enough to sing, you know, a song. And almost everyone can say, if I said, What's your karaoke go to? Everyone knows their best karaoke song, usually. So I've been doing karaoke with my students um to build karaoke culture, a supportive risk-taking emergence kind of culture where we're all waiting to see you win American Idol. Uh, and it's not about the singing. Please understand, it's bigger than that. I want karaoke culture in art and in writing and in math and in everything. Remember, kids are, I think school should be life practice. Life practice, right? Finding out who you are and who you might want to be. So, so if you can't experiment, you're stuck. You're already done as a third grader, and you're never gonna get better. You ever meet someone who's like as an artist, they're still in third grade because they never got better than that. Somebody scared them or something happened, and they just stuck there. They had to rest in development with regard to visual arts or whatever it is. So it's the opposite of that. So last night the big test was how are they doing at the beginning? You saw the beginning, there was a reluctance for God's sake. And I don't think anyone was going to be mean. I'm not sure what it was. It wasn't apathy. I think it was just it took them a minute to get on the motorcycle. And I was starting to uh I didn't give up, but I didn't have a bunch of prizes to get them started. And we didn't have an open bar. If I go somewhere and teachers have an open bar, oh my god, karaoke starts in five minutes. What typically happens is you got an hour or two, and uh everyone's reluctant, they're all wallflowers, and then then they get warmed up the last 20 minutes. Well, there's not a time in 20 minutes. You can get what, five, ten songs in 20 minutes if you're lucky. And now you've got 50 songs, and that breaks people's hearts because they they don't get to do their songs. Oh, when these teachers jumped in here, oh my god, did they jump in? It wasn't just karaoke, they were doing line dancing, uh, and uh it became a thing. And there was no one on the sidelines passing judgment. That's the question. Uh is that going to happen?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

And that's karaoke culture right there. That is people are if you're not engaged in what what's happening in the moment, you're celebrating and you're cheering on, and you're certainly not discouraging other people doing what makes them feel good in the moment.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

And if you can't sing, dance with your friends. Like we had a couple people come up and they said, Can someone help me? And I said, You got your sisters back here, and the girls came up, the girls came up and the guys came up, and uh they were dancers on the side and whatever. So, in whatever it took, they they did that, they lived up to that idea.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

So I want to tip my cap to you for creating that karaoke culture because I think that you know it we're all new here, like many people know some people here, but not everybody knows everybody. And um, so I think we're all kind of tiptoeing into it to start, and then all of a sudden it kind of gets going, and you've just kind of created that. Um, for the listeners at home that do know me personally, I was a backup dancer last night to Pink Pony Club with my orange team here at Outside the Classroom. So just paint that picture for yourself that the culture was created in a way that John LaFever felt comfortable enough to get up and do backup dancing to Pink Pony Club. So if that's not a testament to a karaoke culture here at Outside the Classroom, I don't know what is. He did a great job. Let's jump into the next kind of layer of this, is just the magic that happens at a place like this, an event like this. And it sounded like listening to you around the campfire last night that taking part in outdoor kind of experiences is not foreign to you. You do these things you're talking about in Colorado. But what about here having the ability to go outside? Like right now, we're recording this while there's a hike going on for some, yoga going on for others. Um, yesterday we were outside um exploring and doing all sorts of different things. So, what what is the magic beyond just having fun? You can go to lots of places and have fun, but what's the power, what's the magic that happens at a at a function like this?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

And when you were a kid, did your family ever take a road trip? Sure did. You know, it's the other space, right? The the non-home space. And when you're teaching, and I love the church that we are, but it is a church, it is a cathedral, and you you can't paint on the walls of a cathedral. You it is what it is, it already holds the sway over everybody, whether you know it or not. And it was all chosen by some architectural firm uh without asking kids their permission. So, in many ways, we teach in these places that sometimes baffle me a little bit. So when you're in there and there's all that sort of history, it's really hard to have big new ideas in those places. But if you get people off campus, outside the church, out to the grass and the bugs and the wind and the breeze and the rain, and there's something just freaking transformational, you know, about that nature thing and getting in touch with nature again. And I think it resets all of us. I can dance and sing karaoke in front of these strangers because I won't be back here for a while, or maybe never. So this is my moment. So no one in the hallway is gonna judge me for the rest of the year if I do this crazy thing. And so I think it's important. I don't care where you take them, but you take them somewhere other than school to have these big uh revelatory experiences. And every time I see this, it happens every time. It does take a certain uh cook in the kitchen to mix this stew to get it, and that's karaoke culture, to get the expectation in such a way that no one would boo anyone. And if they come up and they're off-key, what do we do to help them? We got kids who come up on the spectrum, and they're in a way, maybe cognitively, they seem off-key. It's because we're all too hardcore pressed to to to pay homage to the way music is written. Make new music, for God's sake, and make it all about drums or something else, change the rules. I say I'm a fan of bending the system to match the kid, not bending the kid to match the system.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah, I have I have a specific question. Let's go there. You just led into it. You said that yesterday during your keynote speak. So again, you may have been looking all over the room. I got my phone out and started frantically typing. That that meant a lot to me, and we'll talk even off the off radar here about why that hit me so hard. But that really mattered to me. So if you didn't catch what Kevin just said, he he's talking about why don't we bend the system to fit the kids that we have instead of trying to bend these kids to fit into a system that's maybe already created. So let's talk about that. What does that mean to you? Because I know what it means to me, but I'm probably putting my own cognitive spin on it. What does that mean to Kevin?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

When I I went to school in 20 states, and my dad was an alcoholic and a criminal. People say military brat, no, son of an alcoholic outlaw. So I was that kid who landed in a public school, was there a month, and moved. Um, so I got to see firsthand school culture across the country. And there are certain things that are the same everywhere. One, you quickly comply or you're gonna die. Comply or die. Um, whether whether it's the teachers, whether it's the system, whether it's the testing, whether it's your compatriots, lore of the flies, there is something that happens there. And uh so you learn right away, shut up. But should you? Should you? Aren't you supposed to be trying things out and auditioning? You know, um I like to say good teaching allows kids uh to audition for a part in the brain's production of understanding. And it would be nice if that was less structured and more like improv. Wouldn't that be cool, especially when they don't know who they are yet? But if I've got you wearing a strait jacket in third grade, where else is there to go? Right? So um, you know, how do you bend the system, right? So if it's about meeting kids where they are, you know, and making sure that every kid feels comfortable, um, and finding a way to let them happen. So I had teachers like that in some schools. It was usually an art teacher or just a weird teacher. And almost always that teacher was in trouble. They were suspect. That's how you knew. They were in the office as much as the kids because they were doing things without a policy behind them. And a lot of this comes from fear of liability. Uh I like to say sometimes we're so fair, it's unfair how fair we are. We treat every kid like they're the same and we're hurting kids. We're hurting them, literally. So I look for those. A lot of teachers, I believe, are refugees from the system who came back to fix the system. I can spot them in every crowd. In every crowd.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Are there some here today?

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yes, yes, a lot of them. And an event like this attracts a huge number of them. Per capita, most of that room was them. I didn't see any that weren't them. And these are the teachers who do what it takes. They have some more wounds and they have the 10,000 yard stare because they've been through the wars. And when they come to something like this, they really do need a couple of days of therapy just to sort things out and to remind themselves they're not wrong. One of the things I said yesterday is sometimes you can judge the quality of a person by the quality of the people who don't like them. That's one of the other quotes I take down. Because the people who chafe, they're comfortable with status quo. Uh status quo does not help. You don't have status kids, uh, so status quo doesn't fit a lot of those kids. So you got these two different audiences. You got the ones who know we've got to do something different. And they'll take a chance and they get in trouble to get their hands slapped, right? Um, but they do what it takes. So anyway, an event like this, you're gonna be surrounded by other people like you. And what you have what happens, I think, is you find your family, you find your people. And then if you stay in touch with them, uh in my school, the first school I taught in, I would say almost no one knew me in that school. Like the people who would come to know me were people living in other places that I found on social media. I built my own family of support because it didn't live where I lived. And if I was gonna survive daily, you've got to find your people who remind you that you're on the right course.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

I was all over the place. No, I love it because I, you know, I feel like I found myself there before, and I'm sure I'll find myself there again. You know, I remember I've said this to people in meetings where I'm like, I am so glad you said that because it makes me feel like I'm not crazy. Like we're looking at this from the same angle or we're thinking about this in a similar way, but I'm over here going, I might be losing my mind. But there are other weirdos out here. So it actually bleeds into the next question. Weirdos, and then your term, unicorns. We can think about this as students that are unicorns and also staff members that are unicorns, but you didn't talk about just, hey, let's accept the unicorns. You want to protect the unicorns and kind of lift them up. Let's talk about that because I I feel strongly that we are surrounded by, and when I say weirdos, I've used the word nerds on this podcast a lot. And people are like, Well, you're calling somebody nerd. No, I'm a nerd. You're a nerd. We're all nerds if you're doing this kind of stuff. Weirdos, unicorns, these these people that maybe don't fit the mold. We got a lot of them here, but what where does that that philosophy come from? And what's the importance of not just accepting our unicorns in school culture, whether it be students or staff, but to actually protect them and support them?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

I appreciate the dichotomy of not just accepting. I didn't say that first part, and that's really important. Um, accepting is tolerance. Um supporting and protecting is something different. Um, I feel like um invention, right? So creativity and invention are the same thing, and we're living in a time where you can invent yourself, you can invent your company, you can you can become an entrepreneur, you can do all these things unless you're talked out of it by a system that scares you, right? So it's important, right, to do that. So I think a lot of kids, they come to school as a unicorn, and I'm a fan of sharpening their horn, not amputating it. And I think with some teachers, if you if they were actual unicorns, or they look like horses, and if you could scratch just below the surface of their forehead, you would see the nub where theirs was amputated, somewhere along the way. And those are the refugees that come back, and so they look out there and they see that kid, and you can think two ways. Oh my god, kid, I gotta teach you to hide that horn. We gotta get rid of it before you get damaged. If the culture is mean and you feel like you can't change it, you're gonna help your kid hide. But man, to create a culture where everyone's got a sharp horn and you just teach them not to stab each other. Um, and that's harder. I'm sorry, did you get into this because you wanted to work at the drive-thru at Arby's? Or did you get into it because you want to manage the mess that human education is, you know, and it'll keep you young and wear you out at the same time. But man, we're only here for a short time. Why not go into the weeds a little bit? So I look around for the unicorns, of course, and the ones who almost God love the ones who almost lost their horn because I can I can do that and protect it. Now, the only way I can do that is teach them what I do, and that is to shine first. The best way out of darkness is to make your own light. So I help them find their light. Once their light is on and it's in the trophy case, they're okay for a while. But they gotta do more and they gotta do more and they gotta do more, or people forget and then they'll nullify them later. There are moments when we just forget what's important. But I think if you create a culture that celebrates that difference all the time, and that we have a herd of unicorns, and it's okay. And you'll find some kids who they kind of um amputated their own horn and they went back. And they'll say, Do you got some glue? Yes, we'll get some glue, hunt, and we're gonna get you back in the herd again. Uh and I love that. And that was Karaoke last night when no one was doing it, and suddenly we had a whole dang herd of pink pony unicorns, including you, um, out there. See how we did a callback. Yeah, there you go. Very nice. Um, that happened. And when that happens, once it happens, it can't unhappen. But part of what we gotta do is put it in the trophy case. And this is what we don't do, okay? If if if you your school kind of um is a great place to visit, but I can never know how good you are and your kids are unless I go there physically. You're hiding the kids' resumes, and you what you have is you have you don't have a global school, you have a snow global school, and that's cute and all. Look at our school, our kids are above that. Average, they're awesome, but you're they're stuck behind glass. And any kid that has the temerity to get a glass cutter, it gets a detention. And any teacher that breaks the glass is called to the mat. I will never work there. I will not waste my heartbeats in such a place like that. There's gotta be a place where I can build a safe place. And then hopefully, usually moms and dads demand it once we have it. But you gotta feed it. People protect what they've learned to be proud of. Write this down. People protect what they've learned to be proud of. So if we're humble and we never talk about what we do right, they'll start listening to the bumper stickers that are against us. And that's happening right now. Lots of people are talking about education and they're getting it wrong. But we're so busy doing the good work, we're going to die of that. We've got to learn to talk. And I don't mean picket, I mean talk. Celebrate how great our kids are and why it's important. So when the taxpayers at the cafe are defending you, you're on the right track. Now you got to feed that. You got to give them something to say because they're gonna get they're gonna get asked. So why do we waste all this tax money on this new program? Oh no, I'll tell you why, because what we believe is that every kid should have a place in school. And so what we do is we're trying to broaden our approach to to to building every kid up. Oh, I didn't know that. Well, you didn't ask. And we've got super secret Facebook groups that are starting fires and burning us and effigy. And again, this is this is too important to fail. So people of good conscience and the crazies, we've got to get together. There's a book called Don't Think of an Elephant. And it's a political book, and it doesn't matter what your political stripe is. It's about this idea of tagging, calling what we do something. All right. And there are think tanks who thought about this too. If you call it this, no one can attack it. Well, I want to call our stuff something. So if I'm starting a new initiative, I'm calling it every kid wins. Hard to be against that. I was just gonna say, are you Hitler? You're against that? So it's it fits on a bumper sticker, but taxpayers who are busy and have lives can hold on to it in the cafe and then fight back when someone has it wrong. And people have it wrong, especially right now. So if we were gonna sit down and have a think tank and just write 20 positive belief statements about what we're working on and why. Why, right? So it's not enough to do the right thing. You've got to communicate that you're doing the right thing and make other people want it to again. People support what they've learned to be proud of. That's work I know, but it's necessary work down.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

That's beautiful. To wrap up, Kevin, I know um this type of event, uh, because we're thinking outside the box, you know, I'm gonna give it another shout out for anybody that's listening. They're gonna hear this name a bunch. But one of my one of my closest buddies that work, Mark Lyons um and Katie and the Stagina ISD and the facilities and people that came from all over the state. This isn't just local people. There are people from all over the state that kind of converge on Hartley for this few days of outside the classroom. Um, how does that give you hope? How does that tie into maybe the the mission that you're on? And and and what do you see here that kind of makes you go, we're still marching in the right direction here?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

I want this to last four hours, my friend, because you ask really good questions. Um that's a good question. Um right now I've been thinking really hard about this. How do we bring America back together? I mean, someone uh really thought it was powerful to make us hate each other, and the algorithms are doing it too. It all started when you could uh I might get granular here for a minute, okay? When you could choose a feed uh in your blog, and then you would only read one column of the newspaper of the world. And before long, all you read was what you wanted. It was incestuous. You you drank your own bath water and called it Perrier. And it just kept happening. And so I was doing a workshop one time at a conference, and I had everyone Google something with their laptops, and they did. And then I said, Okay, everyone take your laptop and hand it to the person to your right. Now Google it again. And they did, and it got different results. And they all went, What? I said, Yes, the web is learning you and it's gonna feed you what you want. And so what happens little by little, we got so polarized that we lost the ability. There's there's a guy, Shelby Foote, he was a historian, and he had this wonderful like North Carolina draw, and he said, uh America's government system is based on compromise. But before the Civil War, we lost our ability to compromise, therefore, we had a civil war. Well, we're there again. So, how do we get that back, that ability to compromise? So I think it's something like a tent revival. Get everyone in the tent, and I know even the ones that voted for the other person and the ones over there that voted for the other person, forgive everyone first, otherwise, get over it. What makes us the same? What can we agree on? Right? And I know, but it seems like there's nothing. That's not true. It's all been muted for expediency for someone to make money uh from the war that we are having. And I tell people, get out of the foxhole. The generals who are controlling this are up on the hill on horseback, and bullets won't reach them. Don't die in the foxhole. Fly over the battlefield and be smart enough to see the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is educating kids, getting them ready for the future, not burning the whole thing down. Um and I gotta keep remembering, someone's making money because we hate each other. I will not hate you. So we get in the big tent revival and we sing a couple of songs we agree on. We have some karaoke, we sing kumbaya together, and we dance, and we remind ourselves. Remember when we were just kids? I didn't know who you voted for or who you would ever vote for. We just played kickball. Yep. Remember that? Let's do that again. Can we do that again? That's what built this country. That's what made this country happen. And we're raising kids in the midst of all of this chaos and this craziness and this meanness and this awful. Oh my gosh. So who's leading any of that? Who is role modeling the positive course, right? There is a positive course here somewhere. Who's doing that? And I think it takes a certain amount of bravery. Now, I think you got to be careful and it takes some coaching. You can't touch the third rail or you're done, right? So don't die on that battle. You ever have something happen at school and you think, I'm not gonna die on this on this hill, I'm gonna live for the larger battle and help kids on the other end of all of this. Um, yeah, that takes some intelligence and maybe some wisdom. And I think a first-year teacher walking into this without any guidance at all, can you imagine? Especially if you were student teaching during COVID and you never it's just a lot. And I think our veteran teachers, I want to make sure we're helping the younger teachers and passing this on, right? And try to uh reincarnate or revive the embers of the passion we had before before so many things happened. I'm worried about education per se right now. Globally, I'm worried that we're having this reset, you know, not the dark ages, but not far from the dark ages, you know, the where we just throw away everything we were doing because a lot of it was good. Was it all perfect? No, no, but um we can do better, but I don't think we have to go way backwards and throw away a lot of things for that to happen.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Sure. Hmm. I got all kinds of uh I I could ramble on for in closing, I want to say a few things. Um, when you come to an event like outside the classroom, you know, we were so fortunate to have Kevin here this year. And so I show up and we do all these amazing things, and and and we're doing activities and you're going out so outside exploring. But last night we had a chance to listen to your keynote. And I remember you saying at one moment, you could talk for hours and hours and hours, and we got to try to condense it down to this this little bit. But within that keynote, I'm listening to somebody that at one moment is a musician, at one moment is an author, uh, a comedian, an educator, an inspirational talker. I mean, you check a lot of boxes, and to be able to come here and to kind of experience that whirlwind, um, and then to be able to kind of interact with you in those different ways, kind of out on the bonfire last night. And you're kind of taking requests, and we're singing all the songs, Darius Rucker, and uh, you know, all of it last night. It was an absolute blast. And um, I guess it speaks to the the nature of this type of an event and to have somebody like you come in and kind of share yourself and your your story, your resources. I mean, you said you got 30 years of resources, and you're trying to give them away. So, part of what we'll do here is we'll kind of uh we'll put this episode out and we'll kind of share who you are and some of your information. So people that might be listening that go, I've not heard of Kevin, but this is interesting, and he's got a lot of experience and a lot of things and resources and knowledge. We'll give them uh an arrow so they can kind of come find you and and and get some of that information from you.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

I will send you a list that I send out to districts that is all my free stuff. And and uh look, no ego. Um, I know I've got my way and we've all got our own way, but I would well I would welcome anyone to take anything I have and make it into what they need. I think of it as Betty Crocker recipe cards, but you get to control the recipe and let your kids cook with you the way they will cook with you. But if you just need a starting place, I'd love to be a part of that.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

But so for anybody that's listening here, Sam, what are you even referring to? I mean, he's got how to play music videos, he's got how to draw videos. I mean, it's the you get you open the door and you take a look into this guy and you go, there's a lot there. So uh we're gonna we're not gonna do any justice here in a 30-minute podcast episode, but I really do appreciate you taking a few minutes. I know we got a lot of other events going on. If anybody can hear the mic might be picking up the doors opening and closing because we are at an event right now, a PD event, and people are all over the place doing all sorts of cool stuff. So we'll wrap up here and we'll kind of get back out there to doing that. But I want to genuinely say thank you for taking a few moments to talk to this guy here in Saginaw about your story, um, kind of where you've been and where you're where you're going, but maybe even more importantly, where we as a group of educators are going. So thanks, Kevin. Exciting to be here.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Great people. Yeah, and they open up and start telling you what they love, you know. And I was sitting with teachers today and they're they're showing me lesson plans, literally, and showing me pictures of proud kids, and showing me when they want to do that. You know, it's just like any teacher, when kids open up to you and they start showing you things and you don't have much time. You know, we had yesterday, and yes, the campfire, yes, the karaoke culture, yes, all that. That's all necessary just to prime the pump for people to open up to you in a very short time. And the same thing we do every August with a new batch of kids. It's no different, it's a human thing. It's not a teacher thing, it's a human thing. So anyway, I'm honored. I can tell I'm talking to a brother here, uh a brother with less gray in his beard. Um I'm catching up.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

You have more hair than me though, so is it?

SPEAKER_00 33:01

No, because I think I just know, like it, yeah, it is what it is. But I think, yeah, life will life will wear you down. But man, you know what? I think that as we get older, our powers get more acute. Cognitively, there's this moment where you're like, you're not quite as physically adept as you were, as strong as you were, but man, you've never been more present with regard to strategies, and you get in a hurry. Um, can I share a metaphor on the way out? I was talking to somebody earlier about this today. As I've gotten older, I I started thinking more about mortality and how much time we have. I can feel the reaper gaining on me. And so I started thinking, how do I distill this down to helping people understand what's important, why we should be in a hurry to leave a mark on this world? All right. And I don't mean our name on a plaque or an edifice or a you know park bench. Not that. I mean leave a legacy. I like to say a good teachers plant the seeds of trees they won't sit in the shade of. So, so what does that look like? So I think of it this way. All of you out there listening right now, imagine you're on a raft and you've got your own raft, your kids have their own raft, your wife has her own raft, everyone has a raft, and you're by yourself on your raft, but it's your raft. And you're floating down the river at a moderate speed toward a waterfall. And the waterfall is the end, and we all go over. Everyone, pharaohs, kings, everyone goes over. And you can hear the falls louder as you get closer. So there's a sense of urgency that happens there. And you've got crazy relatives who do bad things, make bad choices, and they're flying by you on their raft with two Evanroods, Evanroos strapped to it with rooster tails, smoking with both hands and drinking, you know, too. And you're like, God, uh God, you're gonna boat the waterfall faster. As you see that, and you go, okay, okay, okay, I can't slow my raft down, but I can keep from speeding it up. So I'll get my diet in order. And now what can I do with my time? I have this many heartbeats, and then we go over. And behind you, look behind you. Those are all your students, and they're not far behind you, y'all. We don't live forever.

unknown 35:04

Right?

SPEAKER_00 35:05

And your wife is over there, your kids are over there, and you'd like to lash your rafts together, but you can't. You can't. The kid gets in the car, she got her license, and now you've got to have faith that she's not gonna die today in a car wreck. And you could really have a lot of anxiety easily. But here we all go. So, what can you do? What can you do? So I've decided it looks like this. My art lessons are on a billboard playing in perpetuity. As people come down, they can learn to draw with me. On the other side, they can learn to play guitar with me. The wisdom that I have accumulated is on signs along the river. And I'm challenging all of you to make signs along the river, to make the time that kids have on this world positive and to leave a legacy that helps other people. Not through the what not with their name, right? But a legacy of some kind because we're all going over. So, what will you do with the time you have left on the river? Being out here with actual rivers and things like that, it reminds me of that metaphor, it's one that's kind of sticks with some people.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

All right, Kevin. So, as our time is wrapping up here, we're gonna take a swing at something. Um, you know, you've probably been on lots of podcasts, had microphones in front of your face many more times than somebody like me. So here's a question for you. What is a question that you would love to answer that nobody has ever asked you? Where's a rabbit hole you want to go down that you the door's just never been open? You get to open it and climb on down it.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Yeah, we hear people say, What's your why? I think why would be a good one. Why are you still teaching? Why? And then um I'm gonna answer my own question. Um, you know, we all live a certain amount of time and then we're done. And so to me, I think investing in what's going to happen next is something every human wants to do. Pharaohs did it wrong, kings did it wrong, they built monuments with their name on them, the next pharaoh came along, chiseled it off, put their name on it. None of that's permanent, it's all ego. Um, but actually investing in the future through kids, I think it's the closest thing to permanent we get. And so as you feel yourselves running out of heartbeats, it's like running out of Girl Scout cookies. And you think, God, how did I eat so many thin mints so fast? Well, they put fewer in the box, but that's another thing. Um I'm in a hurry. I can feel the reaper gaining on me, and I'm in a hurry, as many of us get. Um, and I want to make a difference for the future. I think that's what like a lot of professions let you invest in people. But man, when you're writing on kids with permanent, beautiful ink, I don't mean mean ink, permanent, beautiful ink, and they call you. And the cool thing is if you've been in this a long time, your students find you in their 30s with their kids and they find you on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and they tell you how you did. And uh you realize you never needed a walkthrough evaluation that that you were doing the right thing. If you want to find a profession, I think clergy might be something similar, uh, medical profession might be something. People who work in ambulances, EMTs, um, they help people immediately with something. But my you're shaping kids for the rest of their lives. Yes, I feel that awesome responsibility, but man, I welcome that. And teachers in that room, um, yesterday and today, um, they do too. Every one of them is a fool for the kids they teach, right? They'll do whatever it takes. Um, how do you not want to breathe the same air with people like that? So when I do these back to school things in August, um, I get bus drivers coming up saying, I want to be a teacher. Everyone says that. And I say, You are from your position, you are. You're the first person they see, and the last person they see. You set the tone for the day. We're all teachers. We might not get paid the same or be treated the same, but that's what we everyone in a child's life can be a teacher.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Can I tell you something? Yeah, you've said so many things that I you catch me nodding my head because what you're saying matters to me is, and I've said this, I have a what we call a Genesis episode where I explain why am I doing this podcast? And I tell people in that episode, I say, there's a reason it's called the Honoring Educators Podcast and not the honoring teachers podcast. And what you just said is exactly why is because if you show up and you're working in education in any capacity, and I can name a couple things that you said. You just talked about the bus driver. I know there's people listening right now, because we've done PDs about it, about the first person that a kid sees in the morning might be that bus driver. And after a really long day, a really hard day, it's the last person they see at the end of the day. And to pat them on the back and give them a high five and say, but I'll see you in the morning, that is huge. You talked about something else yesterday about your baloney boats and how important it is for the lunch lady to maybe pick up on a kid that needs a little something extra, right? And maybe they're gonna take a risk to do that. But that kid's gonna get two baloney boats or maybe even three. Um, that's why it's called the Honoring Educators Podcast, because in this world that we play in, this pond, everybody matters. And I feel like that light doesn't shine enough on some of those other professions. So when we've talked off off air about, you know, how do we fill the pipeline of people in the future? You know, you can go drive the bus in for the city, or you can come drive a school bus and make a positive impact on you, can be a custodian anywhere, but why does it matter to be a custodian in a school? And we get to listen to custodians talk about how do they actually make a positive impact? So again, you've said a couple things here that got me nod in my head going, This guy is cut out for this podcast because you you speak the language. Um, so I'm just honored to be able to kind of share that space with you. So thank you. Yeah, thanks, Government.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

Now, was there something else like you were talking about?

SPEAKER_01 40:47

One word. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So so one question, again, I I feel like I'm outside of my normal mode here, but one one thing that we also ask um all guests here on this on this podcast. Well, let's ask you one word to define the ideal educator. Of all the words in Kevin Honeycutt's head, if you had to pick one word to define the ideal educator, what word would Kevin land on?

SPEAKER_00 41:12

I think the one you can't live without is present. Fully present, right? So it's almost like uh playing tennis, and wherever the ball comes over the net, you've got to be there. And but you've got 26 kids at the same time, so God bless you and good luck. But being fully present uh for other people, right? And uh making sure that you're you're reacting every day. And yes, you go home exhausted, exhausted, but that's the role of parenting, yes, and and also being a good teacher is just seeing everyone, right? Being present and enjoying that awesome responsibility. It's hard when you first start because you go home to a family and you've given all the worms to the baby birds at school, and your birds are hungry and you're so tired. And it takes a while to get the balance right. You can really shoplift from your family accidentally because when you see the need, how do you say no? Um, so getting that figured out, but part of being present is seeing every kid, their needs, their potential futures, and investing in them every day. That's what brings satisfaction, I think, to us.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

That's beautiful. I'm gonna make a connection. My last episode, I interviewed a mom and a daughter. They're both educators, they're both teachers, and the the daughter was saying, now that she's in it, she's in the arena, and she's saying, How in the heck do you have the energy to go home and cook a lasagna? Or to and she she gave her mom a lot of kudos for that because now she sees that I'm pouring so much into these kids that how do I have anything left in my tank? And those are things that we have to learn over time and time management and prepping and all of these things. But um, that was a tip of the cap that she gave her mom, and I get Anna did because she said, you know, you you grow up and appreciate all the all the effort that parents that our educators put into all the stuff that happens after school. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

So my oldest son became a teacher, and now we get to have those conversations. And now that I'm back in the classroom, and his wife, uh, my daughter-in-law is also a teacher. So we have all the, and my wife is a former teacher, so we sit around the table and we have these kinds of conversations. And it's just fun to hear him being an educational advocate, and I know he has passion too. Different kid, different than me. But and that's the beautiful part is we don't all have to be the same at all. But we have to have something. We have to love all kids, we have to make sure that we want to be here for them and be present for them and all of that. But how much fun is it to have that next generation come up behind you? And you do feel this sense of completion, this sense of um, I'll say learning and teaching dynasty, you know. Um, that feels good.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Yeah. All right. Well, the word of the day is present. We'll even let Ken Kevin have two words and we'll slide in fully present there. So, because to be present is one thing, to be fully present is another. So thanks again, Kevin. I appreciate it.