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Welcome to the funtastic world of the Fabulous Learning Nerds! Scott Schuette and Daniel Coonrod and Zeta Gardner are Learning Executives with over 50 years’ experience between them. Together they share new ideas, learning tools, approaches and technology that increase learner engagement and impact. All while having FUN! To participate in the show and community please contact them at learningnerdscast@gmail.com
The nerds are all about creating a community of learning, innovation and growth amongst educational professionals: Instructors, facilitators, instructional designers, learning and development professionals, trainers, leadership development professionals, learning metric gurus, sales enablement wizards and more. So, if you want to learn, connect, grow and have a good time doing it, The Fabulous Learning Nerds Podcast is for YOU!
Daniel (00:00.873)
you
Scott Schuette (00:02.874)
Hey everybody, welcome to another fantastic episode of your Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm Scott Schuette, your host, and with us as always, even during the holidays, Dan Coonrod.
Scott Schuette (00:19.47)
Dan!
Daniel (00:21.183)
Scott! What's up man, how you doing?
Scott Schuette (00:23.77)
I'm surviving the holidays, how about you?
Daniel (00:26.335)
Surviving the holidays. Yeah, man. I'm gonna I'm gonna steal that I am also surviving the holidays
Scott Schuette (00:31.962)
The holidays are to be survived. Yes, I was just having a thought. I need to ask, could you decorate the outside of your house for the holiday?
Daniel (00:40.945)
No, no, I'm, I'm, I'm, I think we've talked about this. I am not, I'm not anti-Christmas, but I, I'm not like a big holiday person, man, except I love Halloween. I think today is, today is like, what, the, the 63rd of October. I mean, as long as you keep Halloween in your heart, it's there year round for you.
Scott Schuette (00:42.157)
You don't.
Scott Schuette (00:56.628)
yeah, yeah, for sure.
Scott Schuette (01:02.586)
Something like that,
Scott Schuette (01:06.788)
There it is for sure. Yeah, no, everybody down here in Florida decorates their home for the holidays. My neighbor even did so and he normally doesn't do that. And when I was ponticating or pontificating, excuse me, was, I know pontificating. was thinking about, well, inflatables and what a scam inflatables are, you know, the inflatable things you put in front of your home and you, you pump them full of air and they inflate up and whatnot.
Daniel (01:19.788)
Ooh, fancy word.
Daniel (01:35.049)
Yeah.
Scott Schuette (01:36.524)
And they all last about 18 months at most before they die. And so I'm just thinking, you know, they're super expensive. These more expensive than you used to be, and they, don't last at all. And I'm wondering, like, if you're going to buy one, buy the protection plan, like go to a Home Depot and spend the extra 10 bucks on a protection plan, because it's going to die. You maybe get two seasons out of it and then it's dead. But, but from a storage capacity perspective, it's not too bad. The,
The big animatronics are insane this year and I couldn't see myself putting one of those up for the entire season either. And they're like five, 600 bucks for a big giant Grinch that sings one song of, one lyric of the song every two minutes or something like that. Which is crazy.
Daniel (02:27.317)
I will say the best so far Christmas decorations I've seen near us, Zayda and I were driving around the other day and we saw somebody that's doing like a ghost of Christmas past decoration in their front yard. It's like a skeleton riding a sleigh, a bunch of zombies, like all tied to the sleigh, like pulling it along, climbing out of the ground. And I remember slowing down and stopping and thinking to myself, one, that is awesome.
Two, how do that person's neighbors tolerate them year round being that awesome?
Scott Schuette (03:01.87)
I know. don't know. That is pretty awesome, for sure. speaking of awesome, there's ages in the house.
Scott Schuette (03:18.989)
See ya!
Zeta (03:20.27)
God, Merry Christmas, my friend. Pretty good, I would say.
Scott Schuette (03:21.646)
How are ya?
Scott Schuette (03:29.018)
I like how you said, you know, we gotta get a drop for you is gonna be the Ed Grimley, I must say. Remember Ed Grimley from Saturday Night Live? You don't? Martin Short, Ed Grimley? And he would bounce around and play his triangle and he was like, oh, that's such a great thing, I must say. Yeah, you just totally reminded me of Ed Grimley by saying, I must say, that was his thing. I know it's a deep cut.
Zeta (03:38.18)
No, no.
Zeta (03:45.457)
my goodness, I remember him! I don't remember his name.
Zeta (03:54.21)
Why, thank you.
Scott Schuette (03:56.367)
We have lost half our audience. They're like, what the heck? That's a very important tie into what we're talking about later. Did you have a good Krampus knock? guess is a better question.
Daniel (04:05.129)
Ooooo
Zeta (04:05.592)
So far so good. I'm really enjoying the lights around here. got to, I know you love superheroes. I don't know if you've played the game Dispatch. I got to play that. So that's been like the highlight of my season. Definitely very, very cool.
Scott Schuette (04:21.656)
I've seen cuts of it. Can I play that on Xbox or do have play it on the computer?
Zeta (04:26.958)
I don't know, I played it on PC, but I can look it up to see if it's available on the Xbox. Yeah. I did. I sadly went through and at the very end I got a bad ending. So of course I started over from the beginning and replayed it. It was so good. Yeah, I did. I did. I failed as a mentor. I was not a good leader. You would probably do much better than me, Scott.
Scott Schuette (04:29.85)
I have to look it up. Did you go back and replay it?
Scott Schuette (04:41.816)
You got a bad ending. Man, that's pretty, that's.
Daniel (04:47.157)
Aww.
Scott Schuette (04:49.402)
I don't know. I don't know. It looks cool. The game looks cool. And it doesn't look like it takes forever to play. So.
Zeta (04:55.14)
It's really fun, cinematic, and just, it's, I love the characters. You fall in love with the characters. It's a, it's a, definitely a journey. It's very fun.
Daniel (04:55.792)
Nah.
Scott Schuette (05:02.97)
Well, that's great. Well, it's stories, character driven journeys, learning all groovy stuff. That's fantastic. We're going to learn more fantastic things from our friend Sam.
Zeta (05:09.795)
Yeah.
Sam (05:18.67)
Thank
Scott Schuette (05:24.43)
Sam Sam Sam
Sam (05:27.298)
What's up everyone?
Scott Schuette (05:30.458)
So, are you decorating your new home for the holiday?
Sam (05:33.966)
I like to envision myself as someone that would decorate a home. But at the moment, the process of moving in and getting everything set up has kind of taken the time that would be needed to set up the home. I really wanted to decorate
Scott Schuette (05:41.422)
Okay.
Sam (05:58.638)
for Halloween and I really had to decide between do we get a fridge or do we get the 15 foot tall skeleton and I think sadly the right choice was the fridge
Zeta (06:16.856)
just saying that's an easy decision. Yeah.
Scott Schuette (06:17.294)
I was gonna say the right choice is the skeleton, mean, you know, where else are you, you gotta get the skelly.
Sam (06:23.296)
I know man, it's like, I drive past one like every day and it just like, it called to me. And I could have it, yeah, I could have it in the backyard looming over and crawling over the house, which is the idea I had. I want to just every year get more skeletons to add to the yard.
Scott Schuette (06:31.342)
Yeah, we can go on next year. They'll be back.
Scott Schuette (06:44.474)
Wow, that sounds cool. Yeah, they're just
Sam (06:47.843)
But you know, think the topic is Christmas and well I see no problem with having like, you know, the big skeleton with a bunch of smaller skeletons with a sleigh.
Scott Schuette (07:02.34)
Pretty much, there you go. That would work for sure, absolutely. Well, hey, listen, I would love to continue to chat all about spooky holiday stuff, but we've got a very special guest with us, everyone, and we're gonna learn all about him in a little segment that we call, What's Your Deal?
Scott Schuette (07:26.66)
J-son
Jason Hazel (07:29.732)
Hi everybody, thanks for having me.
Scott Schuette (07:31.95)
What's your deal, my friend?
Jason Hazel (07:34.424)
Well, I've worked in social work for a number of years and I transferred from social work into the special education field teaching at an online school working with about 40 special needs students.
Scott Schuette (07:47.994)
So what made you transition into special needs?
Jason Hazel (07:53.252)
Well, social work with adults, the way the program's set up, I don't know, it's different from state to state, but most states you attempt to do as much as you can for the people you're serving, but your resources are so limited that at the end of the day you come home and you don't feel as though you've really accomplished anything. for someone like me, that's a very difficult pill to swallow. I've been a helper most of my life, and that job was, I
going into it, believe that I was going to make a difference, but my hands were tied with all of the lack of funding, lack of programs, and lack of care in the general community. So when the opportunity come up to focus on children, especially like special needs, special education students, I jumped at the chance to make a move that would be a little more in line with the things I could pull off.
Scott Schuette (08:47.93)
Well, that sounds awesome. We're really glad that you're here. We're really glad you made the choice to do some things and make an impact. know that that can be frustrating to folks. We signed up to do certain things and we can't get those things done. It makes life difficult. So I think that that's great. And I think you're doing some really great work. And folks, we're going to learn all about his work and how it applies to all of us in our Topic of the Week.
Scott Schuette (09:21.914)
All right, this week we're talking about creating content for your audience. And before we get into that, hey Jason, I just have one question for you.
Scott Schuette (09:35.896)
Yeah, so why is that important? Can I just go ahead and create content the way I want to? Why is that important to us?
Jason Hazel (09:45.284)
Well, I I suppose in some situations it could be. In my situation though, it's definitely important. mean, every child I work with, I have 40 students and I provide each one with specialized educational programs based on their needs and whatnot. So I can't do assembly line education with these kids. I have to do each kid, meet them where they're at and do the lesson and the progress monitor, which is what we do to
assess how well they're doing individually for each kid, because each kid learns at a different pace. Each kid has their own way of doing things. And I guess that would translate to groups of people as well. I work primarily with just individuals, like, you know, like one student about an hour a day and I get about 40 of them in during the week.
Daniel (10:42.271)
So let me ask you, you say you've got about 40 students, right?
Jason Hazel (10:47.76)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel (10:50.941)
I mean, these are, are, can you talk us through, when you say special needs, maybe you just clarify for our audience, kind of like, what do you mean like that in that space?
Jason Hazel (11:00.516)
Well, I work in the special ed department, and each of my students has what's called an IEP, which is an individual education plan. They're usually given to kids with specific learning disabilities or health problems that make it hard for them to access education as someone who doesn't have those particular deficits or needs. So the students I work with primarily all have
the gambit of needs in reading math. they have language deficits. have attention span deficits. I have one kid who's in stage three kidney failure and the only reason he's in special education is cause he can't go to a brick and mortar school and he has to, his, his, his sleep schedule is very strange because of the, kidney dialysis that he's on and stuff. So I have to
arrange my meetings with him whenever he's available so I do it around his dialysis and he gets that about three times a week.
Zeta (12:05.514)
wow. Yeah, I have a question. You were talking about how in your profession here, you have to identify their needs and then tailor to their needs. I was curious, how do you identify their needs for each individual child?
Daniel (12:06.643)
Yeah, wow.
Scott Schuette (12:06.68)
Yeah.
Jason Hazel (12:21.818)
Well, generally when a student comes to the school, they go through an evaluation process where usually it's a teacher and a school psychologist and they do a battery of tests primarily based on what the parents feel the need is. You look for those particular things before they qualify for an IEP. So a parent could say, well, my kid has a bad attention span and they could go through the evaluation process. And it turns out that they just
They just don't pay attention because they're 12 and they're okay. They don't need to have an IEP. They just might need to pay attention more. But a lot of times what you find is you have students that were going to brick and mortar schools and they were lumped in with other groups of people and they were misidentified. I can't tell you how many times I'll reassess a child when they are assigned to me and I discover they have this whole barrage of needs that were completely.
Zeta (12:57.603)
Right.
Jason Hazel (13:19.084)
missed at a brick and mortar school. And once we identify them, they go on to be straight A students where they were failing every subject at the brick and mortar school because their individual needs weren't being attended to. But it's all done through an evaluation process through school psychologists and a teacher. I rambled there a little bit. I apologize.
Zeta (13:37.004)
No, no, you did fine. You basically highlighted that it wasn't just one thing. It was actually a myriad thing. Like it's not just observation, but it's also like tests that you can use to measure, which is good. Yeah.
Daniel (13:38.325)
You
Jason Hazel (13:47.576)
Absolutely. It's, it's, it's a team effort. There's probably there's the psychologist and then there's the, the social workers come in and then depending on what their, their disabilities, if it's a health thing, their doctors may be called in to provide information on like, maybe they have to use manipulatives like calculators and things because they can't see properly. We've had some students that have like visual problems where we've had to send them special magnifying screens to put over their computer to help.
I know we have a dyslexic student where there's some, it's a device that they put over the screen that aids in them reading without the word shifting. It, I'm not a hundred percent sure on how that works. I just know that he reads better now. like that's, you know, that's, that's
Sam (14:28.12)
I know exactly what that is. As someone with dyslexia, that extra layer usually has a color gradient, helps narrow in those words so that they stop moving around or they stop shifting and it looks more recognizable as individual letters.
Jason Hazel (14:31.13)
Well, Sam, you might be able to explain it better. I just know that he received one and he reads much better now.
Jason Hazel (14:50.426)
Yeah, and this particular student, when he came to our school, they didn't know that was available. His brick and mortar school never provided that for him. So he was struggling around with reading. And then he got to us. We did the evaluation. And then we sent him one for free. And he's been taking names ever since. I'm extremely happy to have him as one of my kids.
Daniel (15:13.577)
That's awesome. So you mentioned like all of these students, they have their own like unique needs. And I know that's kind of like what we're talking about today. What does that look like to make 40 unique like learning plans for students? Like in the corporate space, if somebody said that to me, I'd be like,
Jason Hazel (15:35.622)
Well, I'll tell you, like most Monday mornings, that's my general reaction whenever I look at everything I have to do. But once you get onto a system, it's not too bad. First, it depends on what their individual education plan says. There's four categories generally that I work with, and that's reading comprehension, written expression, math computation, and math application.
They can range anywhere from like a third grade level up to an eighth grade level. In eighth grade, if they go past eighth grade, generally they're not considered, they're not, they don't functionally require the IEP at that point. If they're doing past eighth grade work, generally that particular goal is, is considered, you know, full. But, you know, I've seen years that are reading at a fourth grade level because they, the way they were taught moving from a brick and mortar into this more personalized environment.
You know, they, didn't get the attention that they needed. So I look at those kinds of things. I see where they're at. see what their goals are that their parents want them to achieve. And then we start small. You know, we start with like maybe a small portion of it's reading. For example, I'll have them like look for keywords and sentences and we'll spend a week or two working on that. And then you, you assess them. You give them a little story to read. You get some questions in there. PowerPoint. I know we mentioned that. I think we were talking about that before the.
Scott Schuette (17:01.145)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Hazel (17:01.626)
the show started, PowerPoint's like, that's the only thing I really use on a regular basis because it's one of the mediums that's the most easily transferable back and forth and can be edited on the fly as we use it. And then, you you just, you spend about a half an hour putting that PowerPoint together once you know what you're doing. It helps that I've done this for three years. So I have a lot of back information that I can pull.
Daniel (17:08.643)
Ha ha.
Jason Hazel (17:30.254)
and recycle and change a little bit. But you still want to customize it for each student. So yeah, it's probably about three hours out of the day on Monday is spent figuring out what the kids need for the week. And then generally, probably at the end of the day, I spend a couple hours putting that all together for the next day for the students. So Mondays, I'm putting it together for the kids on Tuesday. Tuesday, I'm putting it together for the kids on Wednesday.
and then Friday for the kids on Monday.
Scott Schuette (18:04.228)
So you hit on something really important that I think that I want to ensure that our audiences kind of pick it up on it, then picked up on it yet. I want to help us get there. You just can't create blanket learning for everybody based on your student needs. Is that correct? Yeah.
Jason Hazel (18:21.11)
absolutely. mean, if I, you know, I could give, for instance, like reading comprehension, if a kid's reading at a third grade level, I can't put him in a, in the same sort of a curriculum as someone who's reading in an eighth grade level, he's going to be completely overwhelmed. So, you know, you can't mix and match like that. And I think the unfortunate thing is, and I, don't mean to browbeat brick and mortar schools. There are good brick and mortar schools that do good work with special education.
unfortunately it's just the school I work for. tend to get the kids who are coming from poorly generated special education programs in the brick and mortars that they were, that were in their area. So a lot of these kids have never had any kind of customization. They've been stuck in a room generally with like five or six other kids, all at various levels. And they, they are taught at the same pace, even though.
You know, they may have drastically different, disability levels. Even their disabilities could be drastically different. You know, an ADA, an ADHD student is not going to do well with a behavioral, student with a behavioral program because they are going to feed off of each other. It's going to be very, very, problematic for the teacher to keep those two in an education frame of mind.
Scott Schuette (19:41.795)
Yeah. But to piggyback off of that, and again, all that's really awesome, but I feel like a lot of us, like we don't even consider, you know, who our audience is, isn't even part of the equation, right? So like, Hey, we have to deliver this learning on X to this group of people go, and we just go into the cupboard and get out the peanut butter and we just, you know, spread that peanut butter learning all over.
Because it's easy and it's yummy and it's going to be great. But you know, how impactful is it going to be? I mean, understanding who your audience is and what their wants and needs are. And more importantly, what's preventing them from being successful? I think it's super important. The super important question. If we all have to ask whether we're teaching special ed children or special needs children or adults that are going to be helping customers on the other end of a phone.
get through some stuff. Having that understanding of where your audience is and what their needs are and what opportunities they have, think it's just a critical part of content design.
Zeta (20:51.318)
And definitely, think I think that's testament to if you tailor the course, people can thrive.
Scott Schuette (20:59.63)
Yeah, absolutely. It was so funny. I was having a conversation with. my goodness, our friends from Mighty Lance earlier today because I was looking for some additional stuff and and I'm like, I got 15 minutes to talk to you. I need to do this and you do that. I got already got Dan and Zeta there. They're buried in some other stuff, you know, so it and he goes, OK, this is great and I'll let you go. You got one question. Yeah, what's that?
Zeta (21:09.033)
cool.
Scott Schuette (21:26.916)
Who's your audience? What are their problems and what are their needs? And I'm like, my God, thank you so much for asking that question because a lot of people wouldn't have asked that question. So I think it's super duper important. And one of things that we should have, it's a foundational exercise from a relationship perspective. Cause otherwise you'd spend all this time creating stuff and then wonder why it doesn't get used or doesn't have the impact.
That being said, would you go ahead and share some of your best practices and or experience that you've had when you're thinking about content for your audience that has really helped you help them be successful?
Jason Hazel (22:07.994)
Well, I mean, the first week of school, I don't do any, this is going to sound bad, but I don't do any teaching the first week of school. The first week of school is I meet them. I talk to them. We shoot the breeze. We get to know each other. I find out the things they're like, they're, they're into. I try to build a rapport with each kid. So I get, I have an hour each kid at the first week of school. I'll talk to them. I'll talk to their mom. I'll talk to their dad.
And then I'm taking notes the whole time. They don't see that I'm taking notes. They just see my big goofy face on the screen and we chit chat and talk. And at the end of that, I have a blueprint now on how I'm going to gear everything I'm doing for them. I was telling Dan and Zeta earlier in the day, we were just like talking shop and things. And I was mentioning that I have a student who is a huge Gettysburg fan, like him and his mom go every year to Gettysburg.
He can recite the Gettysburg address front to back, back to front. But he has a reading comprehension problem. Anything not related to that particular document, he has a hard time with. And I've tailored all of his reading comprehension stuff to civil war trivia. Like he'll read passages from civil war stories. And because it's something that he's interested in, because it's something that he enjoys.
He focuses on it and he wants to know more. So he wants to do more reading. we, you know, we've, we've gotten to the point now where he's gone from fifth grade reading, comprehension skills. He's, he's about to master eighth grade reading comprehension skills. And I think by the end of the year, we're going to be working on written expression and he'll probably master those goals and then graduate this year with, without a need for an IEP to follow him if he decides to go to college or not. So just.
tweaking it so that he's interested in what you're doing made a huge difference, a huge difference in his participation and understanding. Like if you make it relate, then he gets it.
Daniel (24:15.839)
I love that. think that's like...
So often, I mean, one of the basic things that we as learning and development professionals have to do is think about like, how do I need to speak to my audience? Like Scott, you're like, hey, just talking about like, hey, who's your audience? Who's your audience? Knowing who your audience is so you can dial in like the things you're making is like, I mean, I don't want to say it's job number one, but like Scott, Zeta, like it's up there, right? Like I'm not like crazy.
Zeta (24:49.486)
No, it's definitely up there. Being able to speak their language is huge when you're trying to talk to your audience.
Daniel (25:02.335)
So Jason, to ask, what's it look like? What's the optimal way that you find to keep people engaged? Not just making content for everybody, but is there a step after tailoring content for everybody that you're like, it's vital for this kind of stuff to happen?
Jason Hazel (25:26.406)
Well, mean, in my situation, you know, I've got 40 complete different personalities that I'm working with throughout the week. So that fluctuates wildly from, from student to student. But what I, what I have found is that if you allow them to feel that they're have at least half control of what's happening, instead of you barking at them and telling them this, that, and the other thing, you know, you, make them a participant in the learning environment.
Daniel (25:34.516)
Yeah.
Jason Hazel (25:55.364)
You you find out like what they think about that or, you know, well, if we're going to read about this, is there something you would like to read about that we can focus on next time? You present them with a way that they can participate with the subject matter where they have...
possession of it, you know, like they feel like they have control of their own educational experience. And I find that whenever I'm able to get that across to a student, they tend to want to keep coming back. They tend to participate more often. And, you know, they tend to enjoy the learning experience. And a lot of them have said that, you know, no one's ever done that for them before. Everybody, it was assembly line education. They were in the special education room. Teacher comes in, okay, math today.
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, here it is. And then maybe one of the five kids in that room got it, but the other four were completely confused because they had no agency about anything that was happening. So I would say that would be my secret sauce, I guess.
Daniel (27:03.541)
No, it's awesome. 100%. 100%.
Jason Hazel (27:08.814)
No, granted. mean, I work individually too. Like I, my, the people I work with, it's one-on-one, you know, me and the kid occasionally mom and dad will sit in there too. every once in a while I'll have another teacher who sits in with us if I need some extra assistance. Cause you know, I, I, I too have my limits. Like certain kids have maths that I stare stupidly at the screen because I'm an English and history guy and I got thrust into math. And when math gets to a certain level.
Daniel (27:29.939)
Ha ha ha ha!
Jason Hazel (27:34.926)
I bring in the professionals because I don't want to set the child back. But on the whole, it's me and the student. I know in your situation, you probably have classes of multiple amounts of students. So it might be a little more challenging for you to develop that kind of a thing.
Daniel (27:39.423)
Yeah.
Daniel (27:55.929)
I mean, like, you know, like in the, I mean, like, you know, for working in the corporate sector, working, you know, privately, not in public. mean, there's, there's definitely its own unique challenges and like building content. Like I'll say like, usually the content I'm building is either, is usually focused on specific groups. Like I don't think I'm.
building content very often that's like for this one person. Maybe sometimes it's one person requesting it, but I don't think very often I'm building content that's like for like this person. Usually it's like, okay, cool. We'd like you to build content for this executive group. Hey, we'd like you to build content for like this startup. Hey, we'd like you to build content for this learning group, you know, this group inside of our business. So, you know, like as you're talking about building content, individual one,
I love that there's that care and attention going in to young people who are struggling and who need that attention. Love that that's happening. Two, corporate land, no, there's no way. If I looked at someone and said, hey, I just need to take 20 hours and develop some stuff for this one person, I think most people would be like, oh, no, no, don't do that.
Zeta (29:25.444)
Yeah, if only we could spend one on one with our with our learners, I think we would have everybody passing 100%. But yeah, a lot of times in the corporate world we have to build for the majority. Sadly.
Scott Schuette (29:43.82)
Earlier you alluded to this franchise that some people know called Five Nights at Freddy's. You had an interesting story about that. I'd love to hear that.
Jason Hazel (29:54.468)
I do. I had a young fellow who had a written expression goal on his IEP. He had a hard time doing any kind of written assignments. He didn't have a grasp of punctuation. He didn't have a grasp of capitalization. He's a 10th grade student writing at about a third to fourth grade level. And his parents were really concerned. He's going to be going through high school.
He's hoping to get into either the workforce or go to a secondary education situation after high school. And you need solid writing skills. A teacher in college is not going to pat you on the head and let you do something over again. That's just not how college works. So you need to be ready whenever you... And that's, we do transitioning to college and make sure they have the right skills for that if that's what they plan on doing. Well, this young gentleman...
I needed to figure out how to get him to write stuff. He didn't want to do it. He was very against it. And he mentioned one day that he and his brother were playing Five Nights at Freddy's and the game scared him, but he really liked it. Now I just happened to have a young son myself. Now my son's a little older than he is, but when Five Nights at Freddy's came out, my son went loco for it. mean, I, I couldn't, I was tripping over Five Nights at Freddy's merch in our house. Like I, to this day, I think I still have.
I don't know, there's some kind of a yellow chicken creature, think Chica, think its name is or something. Yeah, it's still on the dash of my car and I don't know why it's still there, but, I still find books and stuff all around the house, but regardless, I had a background in it. I knew vicariously through my son, what he was talking about. So I started developing writing exercises in the Five Nights at Freddy's world. I would come home and then I would read through some of the books that my son had and I'd.
Scott Schuette (31:24.538)
Chica, Chica.
Zeta (31:25.444)
Chica, yeah.
Daniel (31:27.027)
Hahaha!
Jason Hazel (31:49.934)
write maybe five or six paragraphs and leave it at a cliffhanger and then have him complete the story. And we would just gauge his writing on a rubric I would develop, but it was all taking place in this Five Nights at Freddy's environment with it. He was just completely, enraptured by. So we spent six months just writing Five Nights at Freddy's stories and him honing his writing skills to where he was understanding now he knew how to use quotations properly. He knew how to.
You know, write complex sentences and simple sentences and all just because he was interested in continuing those stories. So through that, that silly video game, which I still to this day do not understand the, the, the pull of it. I tried playing it a couple of times and I, I don't know, I just didn't get it, but you know what my son did and through him, I was able to get in touch with this kid, what made him interested. And then through that, I was able to develop a lesson plan.
with that as the environment he was in. he's now riding on grade level and doing well.
Daniel (32:56.283)
awesome. That's awesome. I love that.
Scott Schuette (32:59.802)
No, totally get it. I think that's really great. Finding those things that can pull people in the hooks, the what's in it for me. mean, making learning fun and engaging is super important. Um, one of the last things I know you want to touch on was this idea of, you know, other people involved, not just the, you know, the content or the, excuse me, the instructional designer or the facilitator of, of said content, but a whole bunch of other people need to be involved in the learning process. Could you go ahead and expand a little bit on that?
Jason Hazel (33:30.512)
Well, sure. mean, every kid I have also has other teachers. So like I'm focusing on these particular skills that they're lacking in. So as a special education teacher, I'm helping them develop their writing, reading, math skills. I also do executive functioning skills, like kids who can't do a schedule or can't stay on point. work on certain like techniques to remember to do this. I teach them how to set alarms on their phone for when their classes start so they know when to get online. And it sounds super simple.
But they've never had that experience. like when you give them those kind of little clues, you know, like they're now going to class on time, they're doing this on time. But that's what I do. But they also have their regular curriculum. You know, they have a math teacher, an English teacher, a social studies teacher, any electives they have. And all of those teachers have to follow in the IEP, which is the individual education plan, something called an SDI, which is a specialized.
Especially developed instruction is what SDI is. And these things are, say the student needs to be given completed study notes every week so that they have the study notes completed and they have them available. Every teacher has to follow those. So I have to be in contact with all of the teachers and make sure they're following all of the requirements the IEP has laid out. I mean, it's a legal document. has to be followed or our school can get in big trouble for that.
I work with the school psychologist, the school psychologist, make sure that all of the psychological needs of the students are being met and they do the reevaluations. I think the biggest thing that a lot of people don't take into consideration is the bringing on board of the parents in teaching the students. mean, I, I, there have been several parents who, who were just shocked when I was asking them their opinion on things.
They were never given that opportunity before they were presented with an IEP and they just signed it because they thought, okay, well they know what they're doing. then, you know, I, I'm because of the way our school set up, I can actually work with them for hours just going over it and working on it. So the parents become part of the team. And then, you know, you have an IEP meeting and we have all of the people I mentioned before, all the teachers, we have the psychiatrists, we have the school counselors, we have the social workers.
Jason Hazel (35:52.92)
And the parents all sitting down at the table. Now it's on a zoom meeting, you know, we're not face to face necessarily, but we're all giving input. We're all sharing the experience and we're all making sure that that child is getting everything they need. So in a perfect world, that's how it's supposed to happen. Like that's, that should be, an IEP in special education programming should be, a village, so to speak.
Scott Schuette (36:19.322)
Hmm.
There you go. Very well said. Hey, listen, we're getting to that point where we're going to need to start thinking about wrapping things up. But I wanted to give you the opportunity to go ahead and talk about things that are super important. Maybe you didn't get the chance to address here tonight. And or maybe just go ahead and leave some really key takeaways, things that you really want to make sure that our audience remembers from our discussion around creating content for your audience.
Jason Hazel (36:46.456)
Okay. Well, I mean, I, I'm as a special education teacher, I am biased. I'm extremely biased on, on the kids. They are my number one priority. And I would say to anybody who has a child with those kinds of needs in a school environment, if you have an IEP, that IEP is, is a living breathing document and you have every right to make any additions or subtractions or changes to that document to make sure that your child is getting everything they deserve.
I know that special education has taken a hit as of late federally. The federal government has cut a lot of funding for the special education programs and it's, I'm not going to say it's dark days, but it's scary times at least for that kind of thing. But I think every parent should know that they are a team member in that IEP process and they shouldn't be afraid to ask for anything they want in those IEP.
as being part of the team, they have a right to choose the content their children are getting as well. So there, I think a lot of parents aren't aware of that. And they're not aware that those IEPs are legally binding documents. So if you don't, if your child's not getting what the IEP says they're getting, you know, you have a legal leg to stand on if you want to make that happen.
I can't say enough that, you know, special education kids sometimes get the fuzzy end of the lollipop sometimes. They're put in situations where they're ignored or they're put in a room with other kids that might not be the best fit for their educational needs. And I'm just super happy that I'm in an environment now where I can, at least 40 kids I know are getting everything they need. and if,
If a parent doesn't feel that their kid's getting that, they should look for somewhere else to take their child. If the school can't provide that sense of well-being, then definitely look for other educational opportunities. I don't know if that matches the content that you were talking about exactly, but.
Daniel (38:58.131)
No, it was good.
Scott Schuette (38:58.274)
Nope, it's all good. It's all good, my friend. Hey, thank you so much for joining us and talking about the things you do. You're doing really important work. And there's a lot that we can all glean from your experiences and your kids' experiences. And maybe we can inspire people to really pay attention to how they want to deliver the learning in the most effective way possible, whether you have special kids, special needs kids or corporate, you know,
employees that need education, those kinds of questions, those kind of thought processes, those kind of best practices apply to everyone. So thank you. Hey, could you do me a favor? Could you go ahead and let everybody know how they could get in touch with you?
Jason Hazel (39:44.006)
Uh, sure. They can co I have a, I'm old school, so I have an email address that you can use. Uh, it's jhazel082675 at gmail.com. I monitor it frequently. Um, that's probably about it. I'm not a big social media guy. I'm, I'm a little long in the tooth for that kind of thing. So Dan had to explain to me how to get onto this podcast as a matter of fact.
Daniel (40:09.685)
Ha
Scott Schuette (40:10.392)
It wasn't that hard. Come on, you're doing all right. It's okay. You're doing great. We're doing great. Well, hopefully we delivered it in a way that met your needs. So there it is. At any rate, thank you so much for joining us, Jason. Again, we'd love to have you back on and I sincerely appreciate the work that you're doing for those kids and you keep up the great work you're doing. Daniel San.
Daniel (40:12.437)
Hahaha
Jason Hazel (40:14.724)
I'm learning. like, you know, I don't.
Zeta (40:14.948)
You did good.
Jason Hazel (40:37.2)
Thanks, thanks for having me guys.
Daniel (40:39.868)
Yes, Scott.
Scott Schuette (40:41.018)
Could you give me a solid, could you let everybody know how they can get in touch with us?
Daniel (40:45.829)
Absolutely. All right, guys, you know how this works by now. Email us at nerds at the learning nerds dot com. Email us any, any, let me pick up on that. You ready?
Scott Schuette (40:57.146)
Go ahead, do a pickup. Yep.
Daniel (41:00.359)
Email us at nerds at TheLearningNerds.com. Email us any questions you may have. I think this week what we would love to know is...
What audience are you struggling to create content for today in the roles that you have right now? We'd love to know. If you guys are on Facebook, you can find us at Learning Nerds, for all of our Instagram peeps, Fab Learning Nerds. And lastly, for more information about us, what we do and updates, www.thelearningnerds.com. Scott, back at you.
Scott Schuette (41:32.986)
Okay. Here's where we will wrap things up, set you up for success. Jason, thank you so much. This is great. I'm going to do a quick out. If I can remember what I'm doing. I'm a world a little rusty tonight. Holy smokes. That's, uh, it's I know, right? That's what happens when you don't do it every week. Um, at any rate, um, we're going to go around the horn and we're going get to the end. And I'm going to say, I'm Scott and Dan say to Sam, and then you just say, I'm Jason. Okay. And then that'll be it. So what questions do you have?
Zeta (41:44.541)
man, it's been a while. Yeah, I know.
Jason Hazel (41:59.301)
You know?
Scott Schuette (42:03.822)
All right, I'm gonna take that as no questions, which is great. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and pick things up and get things done. All right, here we go. In three, two, one. Hey, thanks Dan, thanks so much. I really suck, let's do that again. Three, two, one.
Zeta (42:05.614)
think we're good.
Daniel (42:06.077)
Alright.
Jason Hazel (42:20.294)
you
Scott Schuette (42:23.022)
Thanks, Dan. Hey, everybody, do me a favor. Could you go ahead and hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, share this episode out with your friends? Really great stuff here. No matter who you're teaching, it's great stuff. Do me a favor. Also leave us a review either on iTunes or wherever you get this podcast. It's going to help us deliver better value to you. And guess what? It's going to help more people find greater information like Jason shared with us tonight. And with that, I'm Scott.
Daniel (42:49.15)
I'm Dan.
Zeta (42:51.02)
Zeta.
Sam (42:52.878)
I'm Sam.
Jason Hazel (42:54.692)
And I'm Jason.
Scott Schuette (42:56.187)
And we're your Fabulous Learning Nerds and we are out.