The Supersized PhysEd Podcast
The Supersized Physed Podcast is dedicated to providing new ideas, activities and inspiration to our physical education field. Each week a new episode about various physed topics comes out, sometimes with a guest, sometimes it's just me!
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The Supersized PhysEd Podcast
Transforming Physical Education with Tim Taggart of Tagg Time
Greetings PE Nation!
Recently I had a fantastic conversation with my fellow friend and colleague, Tim Taggart, who discusses his journey in creating TAGG-ED Balls and transforming physical education through innovative games that enhance literacy and math skills. By sharing engaging strategies and tools, Tim inspires educators to cultivate active learning environments that foster student success.
• Insights into Tim's transition from employee to entrepreneur
• Overview of TAGG-ED Balls and their educational benefits
• Importance of collaboration with teachers for product development
• Role of 3D printing in creating custom educational tools
• Engaging game examples using TAGG-ED Balls for literacy and math
• Discussion of the positive impact on student engagement and learning outcomes
• Importance of building connections with classroom teachers for holistic education
• Encouragement for educators to innovate and adapt teaching practices
Take a listen and reach out to Tim!
Dave
Follow Tim online:
Website: https://www.taggtime.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TAGG-TIME
Twitter (X): https://x.com/timgtaggart1
IG: https://www.instagram.com/taggtimellc/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=tagg%20time%20llc
Pool Noodle Lightsaber 4 square! https://x.com/timgtaggart1/status/1849284443069878440
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Website for the book: https://www.teacherchefhockeyplayerbook.com/
Hello and welcome to the Supersize Phys Ed podcast. My name is Dave and today I want to share an interview with you by the one and only Tim Taggart. I've known Tim for a long time. He is the founder of Tag Time and the Tag Ed Balls that we're going to talk about on the show. He is an innovator in every way. We discuss all things from 3D printing to China, where he gets his equipment and everything in between the games he plays, the places he's been and I just really love talking to him. I could talk to him for hours and hours on end and I really hope you enjoy my conversation with Tim Taggart.
Speaker 1:All right, so here I am with Tim Taggart of Tag Time. How are you tonight? I am with Tim Taggart of Tag Time. How are you tonight? I am great, awesome, it's great to see you. I know we've definitely met a few times and we've we talk quite a bit and we've it's been a little bit, but I'm glad to have you on back on my little podcast here. Can you tell us about Tag Time and how it started us, about tag time and?
Speaker 2:how it started. Yeah, of course it's kind of a rocky start, I would say, not by how tag time started, but how it came to be, and so it's a nice story In the end. I think it's a good story. And so April 3rd will be two years ago that, unfortunately, like a lot of people you know, my former employer terminated my employment, and so I was left with three months to figure out what my next move was going to be, and my wife of well, now 20 years, but 19 years at the time said you know, we've been married 19 years. The entire time that we've been married, you have talked about having your own company. And she goes this is the universe putting it in front of you, and it's time for you to walk through that door. And did it so really with great support from my wife, who has been absolutely amazing. Couldn't have done it without her.
Speaker 2:And I kind of joke that Nadia is the employee of the month every month for a year and a half, but the truth is she, she really is. So Nadia is mostly behind the scenes. She does all the accounting and bookkeeping work for us, and I am out there running around doing as many workshops as I can going to every convention uh, that I can fit onto my calendar and you know, to promote tag time. So it basically I took because I've been in physical education for 28 and a half years roughly maybe 29. But it doesn't matter at that point. So a long time, and so I, over the, I started on customer service for a small company in Minnesota, just answering phones, taking orders, you know, helping people with orders, those types of things. You know helping people with orders, those types of things. And you know, over the course of my career, I've been to India, been to Thailand, I've been to Cambodia, taiwan, china, you know, visiting with factories, been to Germany, which is awesome. I loved it and I still love it, and so I have all the connections.
Speaker 2:I've worked with teachers for many years where they so many people have great ideas. So one of my favorite things about this profession is that I think every physical education teacher I've ever met they are especially visited their school. They have created a game that they're really proud of and I just say, hey, I'm not coming to sell you anything, I just want to see what you do. You know, show me the game that you created. That's what I really want to see what you do, you know, show me the game that you created. That's what I really want to see and and I love it because I'm I mean, I've been to your school. I've never, yeah, you know, tried to push you or sell you, you know, on anything. I just want to see your program and learn from you and you know, that's where my education comes from.
Speaker 2:It comes from teachers like yourself and, like I said, everybody has an awesome idea and sometimes I can take that and I can turn it into. Like you know, I'd love to take credit for my pool noodle lightsabers. This is just, the handle has a flexible uh end, so if you drop or you fall it won't break. But, uh, you screw a pool noodle onto that and now I have a pool noodle lightsaber, which is pretty cool and it's fun, and I 3d print all of these in my garage, uh, so my printers are busy, uh, making those almost around the clock actually. But this came from a teacher. She's like you know, wouldn't it be great? And I said it would be great and I can make that happen, and and I did, and it's a big hit and I've been. I think I've used them in the last four or five state conferences now and it's a big hit, people really like them. So that state conferences now and people, it's a big hit, people really like them.
Speaker 2:Um, so that's what I love to do.
Speaker 2:It's my favorite thing is to get idea. Now a lot of the ideas are shockingly coming from me. Um, you know less from teachers over the years and more from myself, but it is my favorite thing. I mean, I know the factories, I know who can make what, I know what can be quality, what can be affordable, and then I go and do the workshops and I show teachers how to use these with your students, and that is what I love the most.
Speaker 2:National conference last year in Cleveland I had a teacher from Michigan come up to me and this is a game I've been doing for a while called UFO or flying saucers, and she goes that game is my students favorite game and it's cool, yeah, and it's it's fun to think about it and every teacher should think, should look at this, just take a step back and do it. But there are over a million students in America playing games that I created and when you sit back from what you do every day, you don't pay attention to that and that's amazing, and I would like we can do this real quick exercise with you. And so how many students at your school that you have?
Speaker 1:It's a little under a thousand this year.
Speaker 2:Let's say nine, fifty ish, and so how many years have you been at this school?
Speaker 1:At this school.
Speaker 2:It's my fourth year, your fourth year. So you can take four times a thousand. So there's been four thousand students just in your five years here. Now, if you look at this, how?
Speaker 1:many of those students do you think will become PE teachers when they graduate high school? Wow, that's a good question.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't know what have you found? We're going to lowball it. And I know you're a good teacher. I mean, I've watched you. You have a great program. Thank you, I love that. What do you call the man with the arrow?
Speaker 1:Webster, webster, yeah, webster is awesome. I love those videos.
Speaker 2:You need to start making more of those videos. I haven't seen one for a while. I know I need to get those from every grade Before you start to compete teachers from every grade. Then they become teachers. They're going to play the games that you did and I'll bet you they'll have their own Webster. Maybe they'll have a different name, but they'll have a Webster too. And think of the impact over your teaching career of those students If they're the similar you know, if they have a thousand students a year and you know 1% of their students become PE teachers. That comes from you. That's your line of assessment, or not assessment. A sentence that goes back to you You're going to easily have over. I mean, how long have you been teaching now, dave?
Speaker 1:Quite a while PE 14 years, but overall 22. I mean really longer than that with long term subbing and stuff like that, like 23, 24 years total.
Speaker 2:I mean I guarantee you, when you're done teaching, that there'll have been a million students in America will have played games that you created. That's crazy. I think that's pretty cool, and when you sit back and look at the math, it's pretty easy to get an idea of the impact that you have. You know, because it's not just the students that you see, it's the students that go on and become PE teachers, and then every student they touch is a student that you know you're responsible for. Yeah, it came from you. I love it. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you actually made me think of I just taught, not that I made up music montages. I make you know these music mixes, these little pieces of uh, usually famous songs.
Speaker 2:But I just taught a teacher.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just taught a teacher. A teacher came to see me in our district you know how I, just how we run things and then I went to her school, which is really cool because it's powerful, because we hardly ever get to do that. But our principals both agreed and you know, I took a day off, went to hers and and she likes that so much that, uh, over break is this is literally a. I mean, a week ago, um, I went, we, we met at a neutral place and I, I just taught her how to make those music mixes and now she's teaching them to her kids and uh, so it's kind of like what you're saying about the multiplying effect there.
Speaker 1:Um, and aside on about Webster, here's the problem with Webster. There's no problem with Webster, it's just well. The thing is they don't. That company didn't make him very good, the quality wasn't very good, and so, um, he was, for they discontinued him and so he's been hard to find. So every time he when I say he, uh, my version of him, I guess, um, he loses air very fast. And so I've done patch jobs on him, on multiple versions of him, and it's been really difficult. And finally, on eBay I found two more like so I was going to phase him out almost. And I found two more recently, like it just popped up on eBay. I'm like, oh, it grabbed him right away and so I started them up, because I I just introduced him to kindergartners not that long ago and they just love him. I mean, it's, he's any.
Speaker 1:It's funny again, this isn't a, uh, a webster podcast, I guess, but, um, just just having him to teach, you know, I know, but I haven't do, like, um, I call, I do what's called, match me, so I'll have, uh, you know, he's out like this and I'll have him. Okay, everybody match, match webster and they'll put their arms out. You know, go like this, this and and we can, like you know, make different things and they'll match him and, uh, we have them do funny skits and things like that. And especially when I had my former paras at my old school because he's the one, my one former para he brought Webster to my attention at a like a sports camp we were doing and I'm like, oh, we got to bring him to PE and so so, uh, that is cool, yeah, um, yeah, I never saw the origin story for him. Yeah, that's, that's webster's origin story um, did you ever go to my former school, or no?
Speaker 1:You were just saying you did. I thought you did. Okay, that's right. That's right, okay, I was. I could remember each other for a long time. Yeah, I was actually trying to think before we um started talking today, did we meet at either shape florida or shape tampa? When I first actually talked to you, like met you?
Speaker 2:in person. In person, we met in shape, florida, but okay, I talked to you for a little while on instagram. Yeah, we were talking back and forth. P dave, yeah, I reached out to you, I think through right instagram. Yeah, and you know, introduced myself, and then, uh, we trying to remember if we collabed on some games or projects I was working on. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've been up at shape Florida Right, okay, yeah, I mean we've. I know we've met a bunch of times and talked a lot, so and, by the way, I do as a side note, but it's a good. I really admire your and over the years you're like your creativity of making new products and, um, I love hearing about how you, you know, would go to china and and test products, and I know we've talked about that in the past. So, um, do you have a certain company or a certain place? I mean you don't have to tell me the name of the company, but I'm just saying do you have certain people that you always work with and and that, how's that go?
Speaker 2:yeah, so found is one. It's really important to visit the factories in person, one. There's just things that you want to do. You want to make sure that they have 24-hour security. Reason that's important and nobody thinks about this is if they don't have 24-hour security and you have a container that's ready to ship, well anybody can just sneak into the factory. It is kind of, you know, james Bond-ish, but people can add things to your shipment, you know, and it could be any number of things. You know it could be, you know, counterfeit stuff, it could be drugs, it could be who knows what. And when that comes into the US they have somebody here waiting for it and you know that person then goes and tries before it gets inspected, tries to take that stuff off the container before it's cut. So you want a factory that is 24 hour security and then you don't have to worry about that because you know if that is found in your container, well you're going to be responsible for it and that can be a big problem in Tim's or anybody's world.
Speaker 2:And obviously, child labor. One of the crazy stories that I have is from india. Almost every factory. When you walk in, in english in a giant sign over the door it says no child labor. And you're like I had an interesting thing to post um over the doors, but we saw it again and again and again and it wasn't what you thought. The sign wasn't really for us, even though it wasn't English, so I do think it was a little bit for us. But they have children who actually will come and ask for work, and so they have signs posted at the entrance letting them know that, hey, you know, don't ask. You know so it is still. You know, it is still happening out there and is something you want to be concerned with.
Speaker 2:So when you go and visit, visit the factories, you get to see how they're made. Um, I've been in factories that are very sketchy, uh, super dirty, um, shockingly like a big building and only about four people working in it. Uh, only have lights turned on over the machines that things are being made. Um, the quality was fantastic, but at the end of the day, you're like I really want to work, you know, with a factory. You know, like this and the main factory that I use now I swear you can eat off the floor. Um, it's just spotless and I've done. You know, every time I go there I do tours. Um, there's a couple brothers who are running the factory now and you know you can tell when you go through the factory with the owners. You can tell what kind of people are they by how their employees act around them. You know, I've been in factories where uh employees look nervous. Every time we walked into the room they stood like to military attention and just stopped what they were doing and it wasn't until they were acknowledged and told to go back to work that they went back to work. But you could tell a visible nervousness. And again, this is a company you want to work with, um and I have. You know a lot of companies do. Actually, most uh are buying from that factory that I was in.
Speaker 2:Um, the crazy, the crazy story was a playground ball factory that no longer is there. The machines broke down and unfortunately it was too expensive and they they, I think went out of business. But I was there looking. You know we had playground balls and they had five big machines. So you can imagine five in a big row, probably spread out over about 75 feet. And one machine was when I used to work at nascar nascar ball playground balls with the logo are rolling down the machine, uh. The next one had gopher. Uh, balls were rolling down the machine. The next one after that was flag house, uh. The one after that was school specialty, I think. Another one had us games, and so there were five of us, five of the catalog companies, all had their playground balls coming off of the machines.
Speaker 2:Um, at the same time, you know, going into boxes and being wow, yeah, that was. I've never seen that. I mean, I've seen other boxes, you know, and products being made for other companies, um, but that was the first time that five you, you know. So one of my things I mean I'm not on the Cadillac side anymore and one of the things that I would really recommend to teachers. When you're buying, almost all the equipment comes from the same places but people put a different name on it, and so when you're shopping by price, I mean I have a lot of cool things that you can't get anywhere else but I really recommend.
Speaker 2:I mean, at this today's day and age, toledo Sports is the best company out there, quite honestly. Prices are good, service is good. The only small, family owned catalog company left. All the others have been bought up by other companies. Palos bought by another company. Palos bought by another company. Flag House was bought by another company.
Speaker 2:The only one left is is Toledo Sports and it was, you know, ran by a former physical education teacher, I think, tom McNutt, who is a wonderful guy I think he's 82 or three or so up there, you know, and his son, uh, is running all the day today, but tom still, I believe, goes in every day. He still does all the local deliveries. Uh, it's pretty cool and their prices, if you compare their prices are are the best and I'm telling you it may have a different name, but it's coming from the same place. You know, most likely, um, and you're going to save a ton of money if you, if you shop there and you don't have to worry about the quality at all so that's great and yeah, I definitely want to support, uh, especially mom and pop kind of.
Speaker 1:You know. I mean because, because we were mom and pop grocery store, I mean literally mom and pop, my parents and so we always liked to support we had stores for 22 years, actually, more than that- my family owns Fleet Supply, which are tractor supply stores.
Speaker 2:I grew up working in the family business Unloading trucks, stocking shelves, all those things helping customers, yeah. So that's neat that we both came from a family business background. Oh yeah definitely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool. So tell me about, well, let's go to 3D printing. You talked about that for a moment and just if you want to kind of expand on that, what you've been doing and yeah, so that's actually.
Speaker 2:It's a really good crossover story, and so I started 3d printing about, I think, five years ago, um, and it all came from. I wanted to. I wanted to be a storm trooper, yes I could tell.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm 52 years old but I'm still 12 years old on the inside. Then my wife said no, it's too expensive, and I think a stormtrooper armor at that time was probably like seven $800. And she goes you're crazy, I'm not letting you spend that for a toy costume that you can wear on Halloween and you'll never wear it again. And she would have been right. So she did, let me buy a 3d printer and I realized hey, I have a 3d printer, I can print my own storm stormtrooper outfit, which I did, and then I can print all of them and so I have made a complete uh, first order stormtrooper head to toe and I wore it for one halloween for about four hours, lost 20 pounds. I think my feet hurt for a week from walking with it's probably like 30 pounds of 3d printed armor that you're going around in the neighborhood and it's all. You know. You can hardly move right and stuff. But it was great, fun, people loved it, lots of pictures. And then I went from that and made a short trooper which is a lot more easy to move, a lot more, um, less armor, easier to run around in more comfortable boots. You know, basically, doc martin, so you can't go wrong with that. And then I downsized from that and I made a Mandalorian not the Mandalorian from the show, but one of the side Mandalorians and those are great. You can sit, jump, you can do whatever you want, and those are very easy to move around with.
Speaker 2:So I have an Etsy store called Imperial 3D Prints and I sell a lot of Star wars cosplay items, but so the crossover is just a matter of time that now I have been making 3d printed products, um, for physical education, and I think it's. I mean, it's what I like to do. I have a mind that never shuts off. I mean I'll dream of a game and I'll wake up at three o'clock in the morning, walk across the hallway to my office, turn on this computer, open up word, type you quickly the game idea that I dreamt about, and then go back to bed. And then in the morning I look at it and sometimes I'm like what? That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:But every once in a while, though, I'm like, hey, that is pretty good, and then I try to remember all the details and build around it and some of those games I have played in my workshops. But so, like when I had the teacher reach out and say, can you do 3d printed lightsabers? And I'm yes, yes, I can. So we have, I mean, there are, I have, I think, seven different ones. Yeah, this is a little bit tricky here, there we go. That's better. Yeah, perfect, a bunch of different ones. Of course, six color sets, but I do custom orders. I've had, uh, people want black, white, pink ones, but I can do rainbow colors, whatever you want. Um, the filaments is out there. I can obviously 3d print it for you. Um, and then one of the other cool things and this is comes from I mean, I've done well over a thousand workshops in my lifetime. Yeah, one of the banes of my existence. And tell me if this sounds familiar.
Speaker 2:But you're playing a game, you want a ball and you want to put it every three feet down the center line. It doesn't have to be dodgeball, so don't think you know that I'm talking about dodgeball. I know some people immediately go there. But you put the ball down and then what does it do? Does it stay where you put it. No, it has a. They all have a life of their own. They all like I want to be here, I'm going to go over there, and so if you're going to have students run up and grab the ball, well, sometimes the ball is a foot on their side, so it's not fair.
Speaker 2:So I took my spot markers and I have with my 3D printing business. I have a laser engraver and I have a CNC machine. So I use my laser machine and I cut out a hole in the middle of all my spots. My laser machine and I cut out a hole in the middle of all my spots. What that does hold this up here. So now I can take any ball, set it in the hole and it stays exactly where I want it. Perfect, I love it.
Speaker 2:You can do the same thing, of course, with saucer cones. But the problem with a saucer cone is, if I mean, we're in Florida, so you teach outside, the saucer cone doesn't stay where you put it. The other problem is students run up, they're going to kick the saucer cones and they're going to go sliding around, or a student. When you put the balls back on, they push too hard, the saucer cone collapses, and then you got to fix it. So I'm using, you know, a high quality spot.
Speaker 2:This is made at the factory that I use in thailand and you throw I mean these stick, I mean you throw them, and they whoops. You know they will say I know they don't know you're good, yeah, they're good, they don't slide around so and you're not going to trip on them and kick them. So it's a perfect solution. It really is. And then I knew from day one, when I put a hole in the middle of the spot, that I was going to make this. Then I've named a lot of um equipment over the years and most of the names are silly, but this one I like. So I have a spot and I have a t, so I call it the spotty spotty. Is it a?
Speaker 1:t for spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's perfect so that goes on, the bottom goes through here and now I can take a six inch ball, I can set it there and I have a kicking tee. Or if I want to practice you don't want to hit, you know, use golf clubs I was just thinking first tee golf as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go, and that I'm glad you said first tee, golf. Yeah, I would not use a real golf glove, that's metal. Because, right, classic, if metal meets plastic, you know, like rock, paper, scissors, metal wins every time and you're going to chip this. But the first tee, those are vinyl or kind of a vinyl plastic. Yeah, that's going to be fine, that's not going to break this. But using a ball like this or using a tennis ball, this is a great tee.
Speaker 2:And then again this and this was a pure luck on my part, didn't know this so this creates see how it opens a book, it creates its own suction so when you put this down on a floor or on, like a tile floor, wood floor especially it will not come off, it will slide around and it'll stay there. And then I knew, when I created a spotty, that you know it wasn't over. So we now have this attachment. It's just like a like a nut and a bolt. You just simply twist it, put it in the middle and then I have a pool noodle here. So this is a pool noodle holder.
Speaker 1:So you take any pool noodle slide it there and you've got an obstacle course and stuff like that. Is that oh or no? What do you got? Yeah, yeah absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Now I have obstacle courses, I have targets, so because of the suction, this doesn't not fall over. I can throw balls at this. It will wobble back and forth but it doesn't fall down, it is. I will never use a cone again because with these so what happens when you have cones?
Speaker 2:Student, you set up your course for the day students run, they hit a cone. You have to go and put the cone back again and again and again. Right, you know, like, like nascar, cars always go off of. You know they always crash it, lap their the third corner for whatever reason you know. So there's always one cone that gets hit every time. So you spend the whole day setting it up. With these you don't have to do that. Once they're set up, you're good. And then, because you can see, there's all this space here on the bottom. So if you are teaching outside, like I know you are, you know this may not, this probably can't get the suction on the asphalt because it's dirty and there's gravel, so you won't get the suction. But you can stack more secret spots on here and add weight and you will get the same outcome. Once you you're done, it will stay there all day if a student hits it it'll wobble, but it's going to stay put the whole day and so it's just unlimited uses. And obviously there is a batting tee attachment coming, uh, so that's next. I already have a prototype of it, um, but so you will be able to put six inch foam balls on there and use a jumbo bat and knock them off.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, what I love about the pool noodles is everybody's got them. Uh, go to the dollar store, get them. They're about 25. Um, you know, we're lucky in Florida you can get pool noodles year round. Not everybody else can, so stock up in the summer, and that's my. Everybody was not in Florida. That's my advice to you. But the dollar store is best place to get pool noodles. Um, I mean, they're cheap, they're going to get bit broke. Or it's best place to get pool noodles.
Speaker 1:I mean, they're cheap, they're going to get bit broke, so just go there and get them. Yeah, that's awesome. I need to get some of those from you. Actually, I mean, cause you don't have the tag ad balls, which we're going to get to in just a moment. What other products either have you seen? I know you've, you're working on a bunch of stuff and what are the ones that you that you see to PE teachers are using around the, maybe the country? I know you've been to some places recently, some state conventions what do you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean the one of the number one things that I've been selling.
Speaker 2:These I call them stompers. Uh, some people know them as as cannon launchers, and they know them as cannon launchers because I call them cannon launchers. Um, when I brought them to the US probably let me do some quick math maybe almost 15 years ago, honestly, yeah, and so I went to a. There's a trade show in Germany called the Nuremberg Toy Fair. It is the largest toy show in the world and you know, sadly, physical education isn't dominating the retail market and so there aren't factories dedicated just to what we do for a living, but the same factories that make toys make cool things like this. And so I found this factory and I still use them today and I met this place over 20 years ago and I didn't even know what I was going to do with them. I'm like this is cool, you stomp on it, a ball goes shooting out, we'll figure it out. And so I brought them in. And then people are like what did he do with them? I'm like this is cool, you stomp on it, a ball goes shooting out, we'll figure it out. And so I brought them in. And then people like what did he do with them? Like I don't know. You know, get a couple, and so I'm like, all right, obviously I have to figure this out.
Speaker 2:So I created just a couple kickball games um with them, and one is two base kickball, which I think a lot of people play that already. You just have one, one spot, like where the pitcher would be one spot for your home base. You kick the ball and you run back and forth to the two bases and every time you touch a base you score a point. And so I do the same thing with stompers. I have at least three, three different directions. If you don't do that, you turn the stopper one way. Everybody runs over there. You turn to the middle.
Speaker 1:Everybody.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. To keep the the outfield honest, you have to have three at three different directions and then you just stomp on one and start running back and forth. Um, and I've, of course, tweaked that game and I do a couple different ways, but it is um, it's fun. And students this I'm not going to say we should be getting you know crack cocaine to our students, but they are addicted to this, like like a drug addict is addicted. Yeah, those are awesome, they're so much fun. And I just finished a stomper book. It is currently at the printer. I'll have physical copies of the book by the end of January. So it's, it's there now and I'll be doing the proof pretty soon. And so that book has 40 different games in it and I'm really proud of it.
Speaker 2:Um, I had about 15 plus oh I don't know 15, 16 games that I had created over the years. I tried to do one or two new games a year. So if you came and saw my workshop um, you know, at shape, florida this year, and then you come to our workshop next year, you would always get one or two new games with the stoppers, and so you're not seeing me do the same thing I. One of my pet peeves is presenters who do the exact same thing every year. Um, yeah, that's I. I get it. There's always new teachers, but I mean, so I I'll do maybe one or two things I've done in the past for the new teachers, but I always try to make sure that, if you like my workshops, every time you come to one you get new, new games from it, um, that you can do and you learn about new equipment that maybe you didn't know existed. Uh, like the stompers, which is pretty cool. Yeah, so I love that.
Speaker 2:Um, I did collab. I want to make sure I mention, uh, dan green, um from pennsylvania and he's a current, uh elementary physical education teacher and I've known dan, like yourself, for many years and we kind of started collabing over new product discussions and things of that nature and he was a huge contributor to the stopper book. Um, he, you know he helped with the formatting, he did a lot of the proofreading, uh, he asked a lot of good questions, um, and we bounced some games back and forth and we came up with some new games that had never have still have never played them, but I'm one thousand percent confident that they're going to be really good games, and so it's good. And then the real fun thing before we forget about this so this is a secret that nobody knows unless you have the book or get the book. But I have a contest is still on the inside back cover of the stomper book. So I'm going to talk about that today.
Speaker 2:If you follow me on social media, you saw me post this trophy, or a different version of this trophy that I'm holding, which you can see. It's a little stomper. It says unbelievable on it and then it has a five gallon bucket on top and then there's a ball on the edge of it. So the challenge you everyone's familiar with the impossible shot. So my challenge is an unbelievable shot, not impossible, it's just unbelievable. It's fun. And so if you can shoot a ball 75 feet into a five gallon bucket and you record it, tag me on social media. A five gallon bucket and, uh, you record it, tag me in social media I will send you a free trophy that you can give to the student who made that unbelievable shot and then you can tell them that or her that they are unbelievable.
Speaker 2:I think it's fun. I mean I know it's really gonna get a big kick out of it and I can't wait to start seeing the the attempts, you know, because there'll be more attempts than success. But it's easy to do. Stoppers shoot a ball well over 100 feet and you can, even if you are kindergartners. I've seen them shoot the balls, you know, 30 feet high and pretty far. But just take a three pound medicine ball or three pound bowling ball, which most schools have, just drop it from like waist or chest height onto the stomper and it will launch that ball a hundred feet. Wow, pretty cool. So for students who don't have the ability to stop just but they can just drop a ball, I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2:And honestly, even students who who can stop. It's fun to do and it really adds a consistency to it, more so than when you just use your foot.
Speaker 1:That's great yeah, yeah, you know, I have the, the former version of that from your former place. Yeah, you do, so I'll have to get the new ones from you. I'll get the new ones from you yeah, it's been an evolution.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, the early ones used to crack and then, um, the the tubes the tube part on the end had a hard plastic insert, so they didn't. So I never imagined silly me that anybody would jump on the tube, because clearly you jump on the dome to make the ball go. But students were jumping on the tube and the hard plastic insert was breaking obviously. Yeah, um, so now flexible, so you don't have to worry about that. It very nice. Abuse these. I had a set that I used, for it was four years before one broke. Um, so they are very durable. Um, I know people who had experience with the original ones. They have spikes on them. The spikes, um, wouldn't let the stompers flex and they would cause cracking.
Speaker 1:But after the first one or two years I redesigned them to the smooth version I like how you are constantly trying to improve the quality of the products as well yeah it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I believe that if you buy something, you know, whatever it, you buy it from me you shouldn't have to buy it again next year. You know it should last you for a long time, for years. Then that way, if you only have, you know, three, four or five hundred dollar budget, which is kind of the norm, you can buy different equipment. Uh, I and I know a lot of teachers that they buy the same order year after year because the quality of the equipment doesn't hold up right. So they bought, you know, basketball, soccer balls, what they buy them again every year because the quality isn't there. So they never get to buy anything new or anything cool.
Speaker 2:And I want you to build an empire of physical education equipment. Yeah, and it's like my daughters, who one is ninth grade, one is eighth grade and their middle school is three years, six, seven, eight. They did the same games for three years. They hated it because they were bored, not because they don't like doing it, they were bored. They want to do new things, cool things. Um, you know it's so you, you know, don't be in a routine and if you always have the same equipment, you know it's very hard to get and you don't need equipment to do games. I want to do preface that there are a lot of great games and I have some of those great games and I've seen other people do great games with no equipment whatsoever and it's fantastic. But when you do have cool equipment that I'm going to tell you right now the teachers who do have stompers this is a treat. When their students come and see these set up on the floor in or in the gym, their students get all excited and you don't have any problems with engagement. Uh, engagement is is there, um, one of the fun things that I do. So when you see me make videos and I have a youtube channel which is a tag hyphen time, um, you know, on youtube have a dozen or so videos there. Yeah, all the girls there are my daughter's friends from over the years. Yeah, I've seen those videos. Yeah, yeah, they're fun. And one of my favorite things is well, one they always told me they wish I was their p teacher.
Speaker 2:Uh, they go because these games are fun and then, and if you watch, not all the girls are, you know, um, athletic looking, I don't try to politically correct uh, go squirted around the edges, yeah, but you know, and I like I go. So what do you think? I mean, I know even my own daughters, who are very skinny, they don't run. You know they don't like to run, they don't do that. But I say, how much do you think you ran today doing these games? And they're like, I don't know I go. You ran a couple of miles, um, doing these games. But I go and they and it's kind of funny, you see a little light bulb go off that they don't even pay any attention to the amount of exercise that they're getting when they're having fun. And I mean on my website, on my business cards, little you know, nike has just do it. I hope we don't get trouble for that, or maybe we'll get. Give us a royalty. I'll just take a high-hanging fruit shoes or some polo shirts, all right.
Speaker 2:So my tagline is teaching through active play, and I believe that if we teach through active play, we'll never have a problem with engagement. We will have the best job in the world. Because if your students are having fun, I don't care what your day is when your students are having fun. I don't care what your day is when your students are having fun, it's fun. Yeah, you know, maybe you're angry at your spouse, or a principal said something or who knows what, but your kids are having fun. They're going to pull you out of that funk and they're going to bring you, you know, to a fun at least until lunchtime, or you go home. But if you come to school every day and your students are having fun in your classes and they're being engaged because they like what you're doing, you simply have the best job on the planet. I mean, we do it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really believe it and it's you know, and I feel bad for them when I hear teachers like oh, my kids don't want to do anything in the US. Well, what do you do? Oh, we play this. This is all they'll do, so we just do that one. Oh, we play this, this is all they'll do, so we just do that one. I've heard that a lot lately and it's like but I can, I promise you, if you pull out lightsabers, you know, with pool noodles, they will be engaged. I guarantee it, and I never use the lightsabers to actually fight with them. We don't do any battles or anything that. My favorite game with them is to play four square using a balloon, and so I want to see that video. Yeah, it's. I need to see that.
Speaker 1:That video on on x has about 7 000 views um you send me all those and I'll link that up in the in the show notes here. I want to see, I want to see those and yeah, thank you, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's, it's so fun, and so when you have cool things like this, they're engaged. I'm I'm telling you they will do it. For all my middle school and high school PE teachers that listen to this. I'm going to give you a little secret. They love the play of the games they played in elementary school. They want to play Sharks and Minnows. They want to play the flag.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they want to play all those games. It is nostalgia. It's like an old person wanting to buy the car they had when they're in high school. You know they love getting that. It brings them back and they will have fun. Now here's the the. Now I won't say it's a secret or a trick. You can't do it all the time, but if you do it, you know, like throwback friday, he will eat it up. But then then, if you do that again on Monday and Wednesday and Friday, they're over it. Yeah, they're over it, but hey, throw it out there once a month. Do an element, do elementary game day. Your high school kids are going to love it, I promise, and it'll be fun. You're going to have a ton of fun doing these. You know very basic games, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we, you know very basic games.
Speaker 1:Um red lake, yeah, we, even we did that with a flag. You know, I coach flag football, my son and daughter. My son is in ninth grade and we did sharks and minnows once or twice with at the end of practice and a flag football practice again. These are ninth and tenth graders playing sharks and minnows. I mean, you know, and they loved it again. And you're right, you can't do it all the time. But I have fourth and fifth graders even that will request some of the younger like songs. I would do with the younger kids, not the baby, not like Baby Shark, but like some of the other songs they did when they were younger or they were talking about Webster. They're like where's Webster? We haven't seen him in a while and I'll bring him out. But if I brought him all the time, they'd be like OK, I get it, you know, it's true, but they do like it. So let's uh.
Speaker 1:Well, actually I'm going to go back to one thing you said because, uh, my favorite author is Robin Sharma. I don't know if you know who that is, but he's like a, like a motivational speaker and like self-help guru kind of thing. Okay, either way, um, he, one of the things he harps on is you know, don't teach. He didn't say teach, but he's saying whatever profession you're in, don't do the same thing for 30 years and call it a career. I put teach in there. Don't teach the same thing for 30 years and say I did it. Keep innovating, keep adding different things. That's why I brought the Rail Yard Obstacle Course. I know you've seen some of my videos. I write grants for things that are thousands of dollars and bring them to the school. I'm the only, I've got to be the only uh person. Well, and now, at both my schools, because I brought the rally yard to both my schools, I've got to be the only teacher in the district I'm positive that has the rally yard obstacle course. And again this you're talking like 10 grand worth of equipment I got for free by writing, you know, grants and grants and stuff, and, and so equipment will last forever.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. And then now I want to talk about, obviously, your the, the tag ed balls. We need to, we need, we need to go to this because these are amazing. When you came to my school and brought them to me, which I was so grateful for, um, that, just you know, brought a whole new set of games, set of excitement, and I use them. I literally use them. I know I told you earlier, uh, we use them today, um, for the younger kids, but we, I use them, uh, right around Halloween for K through five. And they were just amazing and I'll go into some of the games I played, but do you want to talk about those briefly?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, I would love to so it. In my 28 years. I mean, I've done a lot of fun things. Stompers are super fun, lightsabers are now um, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:But what feels the best and I get the most satisfaction is tag end, and it is a a set of balls. It's 150 balls. They come in seven different colors and they all have letters, numbers on them. So here's an orange, one has a capital e if I rotate it lowercase e. And then there's one number ah, everything's backwards one number on the. And so there are a set of blue, red and yellow balls, all have your letters and numbers on them. And then your orange, purple set those over here.
Speaker 2:So, I'm sorry, green, yellow and purple balls have all your math symbols on them, and so you can make anything you want, any word, you want any email address or website, whatever you want you can do using tag head balls. And then we have black ones that just have the logo on them. That's it and my website, but just a logo. These are your wild card. So, even though there is 40 red, 40 orange, 40 blue, you know there's only four a's. Maybe you do need a fifth a for whatever reason, but there's definitely only one x, y and z, and so you know if you can think of a word that has two x's in it, or you know two z's, or whatever. I mean, it's out there but I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, anyways, like buzz right buzzer yeah, got it.
Speaker 2:So you only have one z for sure, that's red. I can take the black wallet card ball. I can add it next to that one when I come over and ask you. You you spell buzz, b-u-z, black tag head ball and I'll say what is a black one and you tell me it's another Z, you nailed it. If you tell me it's not, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to take it away until you try again and I won't give it back to you until you give me the right letter and then, once you do, I'll hand it to you.
Speaker 2:And a lowercase. Now, this concept isn't anything new. Teachers have been putting letters and numbers on tennis balls for I don't know 20 years, maybe longer, a long time, but I don't know anybody else really doing capital letters and lowercase letters. So when you spell a word like Florida, the F needs to be capitalized and everything else should be lowercase. So it really does go the extra mile, not everything, like when I do workshops that people spell, you know words, and they're all capital letters. I'm like why are you yelling at me? And you know, and they kind of laugh and they realize all right, so you know, fix it, otherwise I'm not giving you a point when you spell those words, but I love it. So it's 150 balls. One set is good for a class up to 100 students. Technically you could go up to 120 students, but that means every student has a ball with a letter or a number and I don't want that. I want there to be some balls that are on the side so you don't know what's there. Because if I'm having you do game activities and do different things, you have to spell your sight words and every option is on the table. Well then, you know, kind of defeats the purpose a little bit um, but when not every ball is there it becomes a little bit like scramble. So in the book I have 76 activities and I'm not gonna say exactly but just try make easy. So kind of like scrabble. You know you get a bunch of letters that are mixed up. You spell words. You know at a certain time.
Speaker 2:So many of the games are similar in fashion, where you do different skills, you collect the balls through different challenges and then when you bring those balls back, you know you're going to have a random assortment of balls that match your team's color and then you have to use those balls to spell as many sight words as you can, um, and then you know when you're out of words, you put those balls back into the playing area and then you do the challenge. And some of the challenges are as easy as having, you know, two or three balls in a hoop and students have to throw a beanbag from a certain distance away lands in the hoop. You get to collect those um, and then those balls come back to your team and obviously the other teams are doing it at the same time. But the real basic, I mean there's seven different colors, so obviously you can teach your colors. I think that's what you did today. You were using color recognition, obviously letter recognition. There is over 22 years of research that proves that this method works, that when you put letters and numbers on balls, you use it. The research is based off twice a week with your students and I can guarantee you, if you do this twice a week, you will improve their math and literacy scores across the board.
Speaker 2:Your students who are dyslexic. They will improve the words per minute that they can read. They improve their understanding of what they've read. I mean, if you're like me, I have some ADHD and if I'm tired. At the end of the day I may mix up a couple numbers. So I don't know if that's just exhaustion. I got you. Maybe someone tapped me with a. You know, my brain isn't quite there, not saying I'm dyslexic, but I have definitely switched numbers around. I'm the person who, if I don't like the book, I'll read a page and I have no idea what I read. I'll read it again. I have no idea. The second time, maybe the third time. I got the concept but I can't remember. So when you're doing activities using tag head balls, your retention goes up. It improves that skill. I love it because you're working together with other students and different things.
Speaker 2:A real basic game is what I call um word wizards, and so the. There's two different ways. Well, like, we can actually play the game. Uh, live, if you're up for the challenge and I yeah, I guess I picked a terrible ball. I'm gonna pick one so the game doesn't go on forever. Um, so I'm gonna pick this blue as a letter u. So if I have a ball, that means I'm and I have to tag other players. So obviously, boom, I've tagged you. You have three seconds to say a word that starts with the letter U Umbrella, umbrella, perfect, and this was K-1-2. You'd be free to go. I go tag somebody else, but we're going to do the advanced version. So you said umbrella I. So you said umbrella. I'm going to say under. We're going to go back and forth to one of us. Oh boy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, ok Up Ultraviolet Understand.
Speaker 2:Stand. How long did I say we had five seconds or three. You're good, shoot, you got me. So I, I lost, I keep the ball. I go to tag someone else. You beat me. You get to continue on. Had I won, I would hand you the ball. Now you become the tagger and then I'm free to run away.
Speaker 2:But what I love about this game very simple rules, yeah. Very easy to get into and to start playing. And what happens is will every person you tag is going to give you different words that start with the letter U? And if I played this game and I had the U at the end of it and we said what between the two of us, five words. At the end of the game I probably know eight words or nine words, because everybody I tag is going to tell me a different word. Not everyone's going to use the same word. So that's how it works. Um, it works through active play. We are going to improve our understanding of literacy, math. So obviously that's an individual game. There are other games where you work together in teams to do the same concept and I just absolutely love it. The favorite thing that I see with tag ed is I'm gonna just kind of sidebar.
Speaker 2:So when you play soccer, you know, know who plays soccer. It's very obvious who's on the soccer team outside of school. And even though you know, like I have a trophy now for the stoppers but there is no trophy in PE. But the soccer player thinks, hey, if I score 10 goals in a soccer game and I don't pass the ball to anybody, I'm going to win a trophy. Hey, there's no trophy Now. That same player who won't pass a ball to the other teammates because you know it's the most important thing in the world to win that game. You put them in a game like this where you have to spell sight words. And I'm digging on soccer players. I'm not saying you're not smart, but right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with the averages here. You have smarter kids on your team that know how to spell possum, you know, and if that's one of the words that you have to spell, you know what.
Speaker 2:Your soccer player is going to go to Dion and say hey, dion, what do you need? Tell me what letter you need. Oh, we need to know. All right, is it Olin, are you sure? Yep, okay, I'm going to go get that. O, I'm going to come back here you go, dion. Now what do you need, player? Is that I can run really fast, but I am not the best feller. So now the same player that will say Dion isn't a good soccer player. So now the same classmate that I wouldn't pass a ball to, I am going to for advice because Dion is the path to victory. And so you will see it.
Speaker 2:I've had teachers come back and tell me like yep, yep, you know, I've watched it, it's happening and it just you don't say anything, just sit back and observe. And it feels good to see this role reversal. Students who normally don't interact with other students, you know, because you have your athletes and then you have your brainy students. Now roles are reversed, now the brain part becomes more important, but the athletes, because of their drive to win, go to them because that's their chance, that's how they win, and so now they put the same students you know that they don't interact with usually in a position of authority over them. And I just love it. I mean you can't tell. I mean I love it, yeah, yeah it's, it's awesome, it's one of the best things.
Speaker 1:Um, no, I love these, uh, and I, you know from that, I again I kind of made up a few games that we kind of. I know you saw the videos and I've tried to share some with you and talk about it, yeah, but but you're, you're right, let me talk about that for a minute. I, I know it's the same thing, because we would do, uh, I'd give each group, um, fortunately this year, I usually only have one class at a time. I used to I, I think you probably know this, but I, I would always have two classes by myself and then the other coaches would have a class each. So I would give each group, uh, again, it was like six teams of four, basically, right, add maybe seven teams of four, if there's, but about four per per line, and they go down, get a ball, bring it back, and we'd add taggers. And I know you, uh, I shared with you that we did some blindfolds, so they have to guide their partner down there. I said round one, they could kind of touch them as far as their shoulder, like they can guide them a little bit, or their elbow, and then after that they have to use verbal commands to get them to and it actually find and all those I called like. The house was like a witch's brew. I think I called it the the witch's house. They had to go in there and find the ball and bring it back, um, but what I noticed was the teams that won were the ones that worked really well together and, um, I guess, let me back up for a second.
Speaker 1:I gave each, each group, a clipboard, a piece of paper and like a writing, you know, pencil or pen, and they would spell words, write it down. You know, mix them up again, spell another word, write it down. I give them a couple minutes to make as many words they could. And it was phenomenal seeing, uh, this one group it was, I think it was a whole group of girls. They got like 51 words in like two minutes. They just kept going like and kept moving, the, moving around, and it was amazing. And then I the. The funny part is they would come in, um, these groups, like every day would be like what's? Because I do, I kind of give, you know, like a small prize to the group that has the most words, but then also the group that had the longest word and it started off. I wrote some of these down because I went back in my pictures on my phone just for this.
Speaker 1:It started off with a real short word. It was I think sadness was the winning word at the time I think it's seven letters two, four, six, seven letters, and that was the word to beat. And then it became and that was like at the time I'm like okay's an awesome, that's, that's a long word. And then, to appease me, some of them came up with what was buffalo bills. So it was two words, but buffalo well, let's talk about the seven. And then, uh, one of the days it was my birthday, so they spelled out like happy birthday, which is very nice. I appreciate that. I saw that. Yeah, okay, did you see that one?
Speaker 1:So then it became and, but, but it was a big thing in the school, like the kids would ask me in the morning like what's the longest word? What, what is it? How many letters? And um, okay, so I have two words. Then yeah, no, it was really neat. Um, okay, so that became it was happiness and rearrange, I think are nine each. And then uh, so then they were trying to beat that like the next group, and then it became actually they didn't know. My dog's name is actually peppermint, but someone came up with the group came up with peppermint, and that's 10. And then the final word, um, and I had to look this up to make sure it was one word, not two. Uh, the group came up with dragon fruits and that's 12 letters and that was the winning word this year. Uh, because I did for a couple weeks, uh, but again one class per day, you know. So it took a little bit, uh, but yeah, dragon fruits was the, but it was a big deal, like they really were like what's what's longest word or you know this whole thing, and um, the kids had a blast with it and that was.
Speaker 1:I did that with third, fourth and fifth. Um, third, as far as the blindfolds, fourth and fifth, mainly, I think I tried it with third, it just it didn't go super well. So, fourth and fifth with blindfolds, uh, like second and third, more the spelling part k and one was more. Uh, well, with kindergarten is more, like, you know, separate the colors, like we talked about, like just put them in. You know, group them together and find certain letters. Oh, if you have a, if you have a number one, you know find it. They have to dig around and look for it. Um, and first grade was kind of some basic things with that too, and and, but it was just amazing and again we're using it this week. Even, like I told you before, um, we're just having a blast with them and, and there's so many variations on the games you could do, um, so, yeah, I appreciate that and it, and one of the things that I will say is that this I spent over six months making this, this manual, and all the games.
Speaker 2:I mean there is 76 games in here, I believe. They all have pretty good pictures, descriptions of them. Try to make it almost, you know, one or two just per page so they're easy to see the images and easy to follow through. So they're easy to see the images and easy looks great, to follow through. That said, there's over 30 for literacy, over 30 for math, and then fun games, you know like charades and you know tic-tac-toe and I'm in there a couple times, you are some of the games uh, some of the games are from you, which is only a couple two
Speaker 2:or three. I um really appreciate that quite a bit. Yeah, of course um, a couple other teachers around the country as well uh contributed, but yeah, a majority um game came premier, or my experience. But this book, while it is written, you can do the games exactly as written. I know you've already created your own games, but this is not meant to be really your bible.
Speaker 2:I want this to be your crutch. So so you get a set of tag ed you have. You know, your school is maybe still struggling from the COVID times. Students are still behind on math and literacy and they're not at grade level like they should be. This is an accelerated learning program. It will get them back on track. It will get them back on grade level. So, funding grants it qualifies for grants up and down. Title two funds title four funds it qualifies for that.
Speaker 2:Very easy. Yeah, it's not a problem. But the book is just meant to get you going and get you rolling. Anytime you want to need a new literacy or a math game, you can go through the book and find one pretty easy. But I know from personal experience once you're used to it, once you're comfortable is, I think, the keyword using tag end, you will immediately start using it with games you're already playing and then you will start including math and literacy in the games that you're already doing.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe you tweak one or two things so that works out, but it's not, it's not hard, it's not something to be scared of, um, by any means, and it really does feel good. Um, and I know Florida not every state is this way, but we're both in Florida, so Florida, uh, if your students improve their math and literacy scores, you make more money. It gives you a little extra. Um. Now, you know, before we really didn't have a lot to contribute other than that healthy body, healthy mind is a better student, you know, is a student who learns better. So we did take care of that aspect. If we have, you know, if we see them enough, obviously. But now the physical education teacher can actually be one of the driving factors that improves the math and literacy by using tag ed.
Speaker 2:And's cool, that is really really cool, um, and I was one of the very first things I would do, um, is go to your classroom teachers and say, hey, I need the sight words for next week and I want them, you know, by friday. And then you use the sight words, you do games. They have to spell the sight words for the following week and when they take that test on Friday, I guarantee you sight words test scores go up. Yeah, and then you'll have to ask the teacher again. You know, for at least three weeks You'll have to ask them every week hey, can I get that? Get that, please give it to me. The fourth week you'll come to school and it'll be there, it'll be in your inbox, you don't have to ask. The classroom teachers will see the difference. They will see the improvement in those sight word scores.
Speaker 2:And two things are going to happen. One, they're going to come to you and say what are you doing? You keep asking for this and I give it to you. But it's kind of a nuisance. I didn't really think of it, but now I'm seeing that you keep asking for this and they make the connection that, hey, the scores are up. They want to know what it is you're doing. Second thing that's going to happen is hey, I have a. We have a test coming up on history. These are the questions. Can you use these balls to teach them the answers? Yeah, yeah, we can do activities where they have to solve the puzzle, solve the real problem. Just so happens that the answer happens to be the answer to this question on your history test that you're struggling with. It's amazing. You know historical dates and times. It's a no brainer. The balls have numbers on them. You know the war of independence, all those things. They can just put the numbers.
Speaker 2:You are now working with the classroom teachers hand in hand or hand in ball, let's make it fun. You know that. Teachers hand in hand or hand and ball, let's make it fun. Um, you know that's corny, I know, but um, now we're really working together and it's no secret that physical education teachers that have a bad I'm gonna back up. We don't have a bad right. We're not doing anything wrong.
Speaker 2:Uh, most of us are awesome and engaging and doing a great job, but classroom teachers don't always see us with the respect that I believe we deserve. I know we deserve the respect, isn't there? Tag Ed will get you that respect. It will change how classroom teachers see us. It will change how your principals see us, how the school board sees us superintendents see us. It will change the perception of physical education. I know it, I've seen it. I know a teacher who used this method and became teacher of the year in Texas a while back. It feels good, it works, it's awesome. On top of it and I'm sure you can attest to this these are like magnets when you roll these out to your students. These are like magnets when you roll these out to your students. These are like magnets. They are so attracted to them it's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is such a good tool and they are instantly engaged. Yeah, I love them and they wouldn't. They don't. They wouldn't hurt anybody either, because I know it's I. Just when I have the kids yeah, when I have the kids put them back, I do have them, roll them back in the house, but sometimes you know, some kids might throw them and but they're not going to hurt anybody. They're, they're real soft, they're they. They bounce nice. Again, I've mostly done on grass so far, but they've been amazing and I, I guess I guess, real quick before we wrap up, I did I did want to add that we've also done math.
Speaker 1:We haven't talked a lot about math, but I know there's numbers on them. Obviously We've done math concepts. I guess or they'd have to make equations, or I'd give them a target number and say, okay, your target number is whatever, 15. And they'd have to grab a ball. Let's say they grab a 5. And they grab a multiplication sign, and then they grab a 3. And then equals, because you have all that stuff in there, and so they'd have to create equations, or they have to write them on that clipboard, like I was telling you, um, I'd say just, yeah, make some one of the math games that I like.
Speaker 2:It's super easy. You just take, you know, one ball or two balls and you will put them to see, if I make sure in the right order here so you can make the sum. You know the sum is 26. And then I'm going to take these and I'm going to take an equal sign and I'm going to put them in front of 26. And then there will be these are my many spots which I didn't talk about. So, just like the secret spots, these are small as a whole, so the ball sits there and it won't roll away, it'll stay right there. And they're small, so they're perfectly sized. And so I set these in a row, so you have your sum on the end with the equal sign, and then with your clipboard, they have to create as many different ways to make the sum 26. And then what I like to do is because you'll have, like my daughters, oh, 25 plus one, oh, 24 plus two, 23 plus three, and they'll do that but say you know what? I'll give you a double if you do subtraction. Subtraction is worth double the points. Oh, so now they got to figure out. Hey, you know what I'm going to give you triple if you do multiplication. Oh, so now it's 13 times two. Twenty six. Yeah, that's a double or that's triple. You know what Division times four, you get four points for every equation that uses division. And so now we're improving. You know they're challenging them at a higher level. They don't have to do it, but it's an option. Right, you know it's, it's private.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my, my absolute favorite math game is I call it's called fastest math in the West. And because I have three colors, you can have three teams going on, and so I put a circle in the middle, and so the circle is I call it a quicksand. So how the fastest math in the West works is we're on team, so you're on the blue team, you have a six, I'm on the red team and I also have a six, so excellent. And so anybody can tag anybody and you're trying to trap the other. So the red players want to trap all the blue and orange players in the quick sand which is in the middle. And how you do that is you run around and you tag, but it doesn't matter who tags who. You have to add six and six together. Let me fix it six and six together, which is 12. Whoever says 12 first wins the slower student. Or if you said 13 or 11, you said the wrong one.
Speaker 2:You go into the quicksand. So that's how you get players in the quicksand. But the beauty of it is, you know the getting a blue ball here. So blue player ended up in the quicksand with your number six. Another blue player can come over. You're going to hold the balls next to each other. The player in the quicksand with the number six.
Speaker 2:They're going to do subtraction. So being slow at addition puts you into the quicksand. So subtraction gets you out of the quicksand. Oh, I like that. The student in the quicksand has to say eight minus six is two, and then the student who's helping them, helping them get out of the quicksand with the eight, will say yes, that's correct. Or if it was wrong, they'll say no, try again. And then the student in the quicksand tries again uh, k one, maybe second grade students. They can do it together to do the subtraction. Subtraction is a little bit harder so they can work it out together.
Speaker 2:When a student is getting another student out of the quicksand, in the beginning I always say they're safe, so you can't tag them, but once they've played it for a while, or the older students. Now I say you know what? You're not safe, because I want the student in the quicksand to learn um, to learn how to put somebody else before themselves. So if I'm in the quicksand, you're coming to help me and an orange player is going to come and tag you. I'm going to yell dave, run, look out, I'm going to take the ball, I'm going to hold it away. So visually you see something's wrong. I'm going to step back. So now there's a second visual cue something's's wrong. Tim's acting funny and I'm going to say Dave, run, run, run. You know Susan's coming, run. And then you have a warning to run away.
Speaker 2:My other option is to say eight minus six is two and run away and say ha ha. And I know you're going to get tagged by the orange player, you're going to lose because you don't know they're coming. And then you take a place. So I have a choice can be selfish or I can put you ahead of my own needs, you know, and so I like that. I don't know any other games where we can really teach um that the concept is to put somebody else ahead of you. You know their needs above your own. That that's the right strategy. And then, of course, you can't just go down the line and get your whole team out. You know you get one person out, you gotta go back. You know it's kind of an honor system. You know you got to tag or be tagged before you can get a second person out. But it's awesome and it is a great way to teach basic math.
Speaker 1:I love it. That's why, again, I love these tag eyeballs. These are awesome. And again, anybody listening to this you have to throw out to the phys ed community.
Speaker 2:I my favorite thing in the world to do is to come to your school and do professional development workshops. Yes, I love it. I am the most affordable presenter in the country, I believe only 500 a day plus travel, so whatever it costs me to get to you and 500 a day on top of that. So, and we do full day professional development and we I don't do lectures, we don't do boardroom stuff. There's nothing on the chalkboard. We will simply you will learn games for the whole day, so it's fun, and I know these are games that I've done all over the country, so I know they work. I know your students are gonna love these games. Then it's not only gonna make your job easier, I think, but it's gonna make it more fun too yeah, well, I appreciate.
Speaker 1:uh, again, I again, I love talking to you because I know you and I could talk about and you could definitely talk about equipment and games like all day and night. So thank you so much, tim, I appreciate it and we got to get together again soon. Hopefully you can even come down to my school and check out. We're doing the tag ed balls and, yeah, we'll put a blindfold on you.
Speaker 2:I'll do it. That's the most fun day in the world.
Speaker 1:Awesome and I'll put all these links in the show notes. I'll do it. That's the most fun day in the world Awesome, and I'll put all these links in the show notes. So definitely check them out. Check Tim out on tag time and with his tag at balls. Those are amazing. So, thanks again, tim, and yeah, I appreciate it. We'll talk soon. Thank you everyone for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. As always, go to supersciencephysedcom for more information or jump on my sub stack. I would love to have you as a part of it. I send out newsletters about twice a week with podcasts and different things I'm writing on there different tips, strategies, games, what have you. So please join the sub stack. I'd love for you to be a part of the chat, the part of the ongoing discussion. Take care, pe nation. You guys and girls are awesome. Let's keep pushing our profession forward, thank you.
