In this podcast, we're joined by Dave Burgess. Dave is a prolific educator who has written Teach Like a Pirate, co-written P is for Pirate, and has transformed his works into the organization Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. - which focuses on inspiring educators through motivational public speaking and workshops, as well as a publishing company of various popular education books such as The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros or Alice Keeler or Matt Miller - so on and so forth. Likely if you've been involved in a Twitter PLN or seen the education section of Barnes and Noble, you've seen an element of Dave's work.

Dave and I discuss a fundamental job of educators: inspiring students to learn. Dave is no doubt inspirational himself - constantly preaching an obviously passionate notion of delivering creative, thoughtful lessons to students. A huge question I had going into this was: how do we create passionate, inspired lessons in an outdated system? Dave and I discuss this topic at length and talk about how banding together is so important in the modern world.

Oftentimes, we fall into a rut of apathy or "slacktivism" when our passion and drive slowly dies out if confronted consistently with negativity. It's not that teachers don't care about kids - almost all teachers go into education with this goal - however, their flames have diminished after years of boring PD, top-down hierarchal standards, and silenced voices. Teachers must band together and demand change. It's easy to rant about problems - but without action this just diminishes the flame further of those who cannot see a way towards change. The more that understand the why behind their practice - those who embrace best practice and fight systemic change in a positive manner - the more that will join them. This movement is the purpose of the Human Restoration Project: we must bring humanity back to education - change the systemic issues!

It is our hope through these podcasts, our blogs, and resources that we can offer some inkling of progress towards a national (or even global) movement towards progressive education. A movement that challenges systems, inspires educators, and brings everyone together to "defeat" those who earn to make a profit or begrungingly take the easy way out.