This year (as every year), my students completed a Teacher Report Card and graded me.
As I promised, here are the data from my students. 70 middle school students gave me honest, anonymous feedback, and here it is.
Looking at numbers only, here are my four highest:
Seems to enjoy teachng
4.89
Tells us our learning goals
4.7
Tries new teaching methods
4.62
Grades fairly
4.53
And my four lowest:
Makes me feel important
3.55
Shows interest in students’ lives
3.6
Gives fair punishments
3.88
Has a good pace
3.88
I’m not gonna lie: those bottom four sting quite a bit. My degree isn’t in Math Ed, it’s in Youth Ministry and Adolescent Studies (math came afterward). It smarts that my lowest grades came from “pastoral” student interactions.
But my high grades are good “teacher” marks, so that’s good, right?
Hurrah for me.
Given that I teach adolescents, I have to keep in mind how their heads work (see here and here).
Every year when I give this survey, I take the “fair punishments” question with a grain of salt. Part of teaching adolescents means that emotional memories will burn into their developing minds (i.e. When Mr. Vaudrey listened to me talk about my parents), while memories without an emotional connection will be forgotten (i.e. Simplifying Rational Expressions).
I haven’t yet tried attaching the powerful emotion to boring lessons, but I’m not optimistic that it would work.
“You’ll learn to add fractions when I slap you in the mouth! Huh? Wanna try me?”
But back to the survey.
Every year, one or two students will try and stick it to me for that one time that they got detention for chewing gum in class twice.
Here are some responses that made me think:
How can the class be improved?
If [student name] got kicked out
By not letting the class run all over him
Talk to each student to make sure they understand the lesson because sometimes there shy or emberassed
Get to the stuff you say you will get to
He sometimes ignores me.(Even if i raise my hand). He always call on the same smart people and i feel as if i’m not needed.
Oooo, that smarts.
As you can see, there are pockets of brilliant insight in the survey (which is mostly text-speak).
Much like Steph Reilly‘s class, the tension between “managing the class” and “interesting lessons” is a valid one. Few students have classes where we can argue about things, and many students are uncomfortable with noisy learning.
For that matter, so are many teachers.
In closing, here are some student comments that reflect why I love to teach this age group:
What do you like best about the class?
I can talk to girls in class when I’m done with my work
how everybody treats eachother
I like that the class is fun. Everyday some how you make it fun! Haha (:
What I like best is that , the class is a good vibe everyday . It doesn’t feel like I’m in school when I’m in class. But above all , I like the lessons.
Your young and swagerific
What I like best about this class is that there’s not alot of pressure to have the correct answer, it’s okay to be wrong once in a while,
Yes! Huzzah!
Your friend tells you that they have Mr. Vaudrey next year. What do you tell them?
That’s bad because your apost to be in high school not 8th grade
It will be fun just don’t talk bad about lord of the rings because he likes the book.
You’ll have a lot of fun and he’s a bit of a Wack job
Anything else you want to tell me?
BYE HAVE A NICE SUMMER I WON’T REMEMBER ANYTHING ABOUT YOU JKJK HAH HAVE A GREAT SUMMER
Today, we had Day 2 of the Mullet Ratio. The best part of sharing digital media with other math teachers is the constant improvement of lessons. Today, I pulled in a bunch of ideas from last year’s comments, threw in some Photoshop, and had a pretty good day.
As many of you know, my fourth Period is Algebra Concepts, which means its students require more scaffolding and more explicit directions, plus usually some modeling.
And white space. Oh, man; that’s the best advice I ever got about worksheet making. Fawn Nguyen has excellent worksheets, not just because they challenge students to think conceptually, one accessible step at a time. Also, because they have a ton of white space.
My usual “Teacher Report Card” has been put to Google for quick data analysis.B
Here’s a copy that you are free to save to your own Google Drive, if you so desire.
Stay tuned for the data analysis. I’ll be posting the spreadsheet hereB unedited, because too many people are thinking I’ve got my act together, and it’s time to set the record straight. Here’s a paraphrased quote1 from Dave Burgess:
Looking at my classroom, some think that creativity just comes easy to me. This isn’tB easy for me. There were dozens of times I’ve brought new ideas to the class and they’ve bombed terribly. No, the reason teachers succeed is because they failB so often, and it’s usually messy.
In truth, good teaching is making lots of grand mistakes2, then fixing them. (Michael is a fine role model in this regard.)
In teaching, you rarely notice you’ve made a mistake until it’s too late.
More on mistakes with the follow-up to this post next week.
~Mr. V
Also, here is a hard copy for download, in case a digital survey isn’t plausible in your class:B Teacher Report Card – Hard Copy
1. English teachers, I know those two terms are contradictory.b) 2. See Daniel Dennett for more on this.b)
Two years ago, I had a student named Ricky. Every day, Ricky would regale the class with the bountiful meals that his mom would prepare. One day, it went like this:
Ricky: Last night, my mom made spaghetti tacos.
Vaudrey: Huh? That sounds terrible.
Ricky: No, they’re sooooo good! Do you like spaghetti?
Vaudrey: Yes.
Ricky: And tacos?
Vaudrey: …yes…
Ricky: That’s what it is! Two great things that are even better together!
Today, I ripped off two great blog posts, added a few sprinkles of my own “marinara” and had some pretty tasty learning for a Friday.
First, we discussed square roots and squares in terms of Cheese crackers, based on a sweet idea from Julie Reulbach. I modified the worksheetB to include a horizontal number line and a couple more columns for Perimeter and Area.
(This is a good spot to mention that I teach 8th grade, not 6th grade like Julie does. Plus I have a mixture of RSP students, discipline problems, and students who blow through any activity in half the time that I expected.)
Like the three men in this picture, respectively. (Clockwise)
We started by discussing measurements, and agreed that “cracker length” would be our standard measurement. Perimeter and Area aren’t hit very hard in our Algebra curriculum, but luckily the students remembered them quickly. The steps went like this:
Build a square that is two sides by two sides. How many crackers did you use? What is the perimeter? What is the area?
Now build one that’s three by three. Crackers? Perimeter? Area?
Roam the class, make sure that students aren’t making 3×2 rectangles.
Briefly discuss the difference between square and rectangle, begin to dive deep into quadrilaterals.
Realize that there are 19 days left and your Algebra students aren’t interested in the intricacies of polygon classification.
And it takes a special teacher to make “five interior right angles” interesting.
Around the time we got to building 4×4 squares out of cheese crackers, students were generalizing patterns all over the room.1 Here is some student chatter:
The perimeter is just four times the side length.
The number of crackers is the same as the area!
I need more Cheez Nips! “Can you do the math without them? What patterns do you see?“
This column is just this number times itself.
We just added by fours and got each one.
Do I have to build the cracker square? I can do the math without it.
This is pretty hard work for a Friday.
That last one made me feel good. I was worried about taking a 6th grade concept and porting it to my Algebra class, but it was surprisingly effective.
Especially with this:
This is the latest edition to my EduArsenal: the Yeti microphone by Blue. I plugged this bad boy into my classroom’s Macbook Air and voilC !
An instant video studio in the class, and I’m the director.
Less than half the videos actually got made. Here’s why:
The students wanted to make sure they understood the concept, so they rehearsed for several minutes and ran out of time to record.
How sweet is that?
Also, we followed the cracker activity with the Showdown.
Stolen–again–from Julie’s website, it’s just a bunch of quick square root practice. I threw in a one-on-one faceoff and give it a name like “ShowDown”, and the students are all about it.
Frantically scribbling roots on whiteboards, shouting and yelling, and debating each other; it was magical.
Even the fourth period–who is usually slow to jump on board with discussions–was arguing with each other over the fine points of simplifying radicals:
“No, look! If you have TWO of the same ones in the … thingy, then it’s just one of ’em!”
Close enough. I’ll take it.
Post-Script
Today, I didn’t have time forB this idea–from Sarah Hagan–to estimate square roots. It can be done on a low-tech scale with dice at students’ desks, but a SmartBoard could make it into a Showdown.
Of which–of course–I’m a fan.
Julie emphasized the estimation of square roots, while I was content to work on square numbers. Monday, we do Pythagorean Theorem, and I wantedB a day some food and a fun activity.
Because there are 19 days left. Judge me if you must.
The Auction takes place about every 6 weeks this year. (Not sure about next year.)
As the weeks have passed, I’ve found ways to quantify what the kids like.
And, due largely to my wife’s enforcement of a budget on my awesome ideas (I love you), I added a column to quantify my own investment.
The “Bang Per Buck” column divides the student cost (Poker Chips) over my cost (dollars). A low ratio means “not worth Mr. Vaudrey’s money”.
And I played the Price Is Right theme, which you can download here for free, along with tens of thousands of other themes.
Here’s this month’s cost breakdown, including currency conversions for my least viewed countries:
the rupee from Mauritius (an island by Madagascar, about 10 times the size of Washington, D.C.)
and Azerbaijan (Maine-sized central European country).
Because… why not?
My wife was thrilled to hear that this auction only cost $11.52 out of pocket.
Many cost boxes are blank because they were stuff I had around the house. The reason that stuff still sold is this: Hype.
Middle schoolers are the puppies of the consumer world; if you get them excited about something, they will pee money all over the carpet.
“Are those Hot Chee-tos!?! OMGOMGOMG!”
“Grandma’s Specialty Items” were just crap from the Goodwill box at my in-law’s house.
But, with added hype, it was one of the most anticipated items each period. Just put on a dramatic song, reach into the bag and slowly… ever so slowly pull out…
…another bag. (Each class burst out laughing at this point). Straight face again… open the bag… slowly reach in… and pull out…
…another bag. Then peek the corner of the item out of the bag. At this point, they just have to know. What’s in the bag?*
See the look on his face? He just HAS to know!
Another sweet hype-builder (or cost-inflator) was adding buzzwords to the description of the items. I learned that from McDonald’s and the home shopping network. “Deluxe” “featuring” “…but that’s not all” “you also get…”
Finally, the Box of Anything But Booze was just a bunch of Goodwill stuff in an old Bacardi box. The hype went like this:
“Students, there could be anything in there! It could be… a pony? A dictionary? Stickers? It could be anything … anything but booze.”
I put on the dramatic song and dramatically pulled a dollar from my wallet and put that in the box right before bidding.
…oh… shoot, I didn’t include that in my spreadsheet. I gotta go.
I have enough content in my head to talk about this project for hours.
Read the whole thing, and you’ll be rewarded with a ton of shared docs at the end (feel free to skip the reading and go straight there).
1. Pre-Game
As I posted a month ago, my students have been working on a half-hour lesson to be “Teacher 4 a Day”. The big state test is next week, and instead of blowing through 60+ sample test questions, I opted for depth of learning this year instead of breadth.
In past years, the “review everything” approach only served to remind the kids how much they’ve forgotten and overwhelm them.
Many students came in before school, after school, and during lunch to get advice, build presentations, and prepare worksheets. The filled in lesson plans, timing maps, and goal sheets, they prepared quizzes, and they got really nervous (some of them).
Do I have to dress up? What if I don’t have a dress? Can I wear a burka? Oh, God!
IfB students are the teachers in Mr. Vaudrey’s class, so then Mr. Vaudrey would be the…
“Bro, can I have summa those Hot Chee-Tos?”
I dressed like a middle school student and sat in the back of the class while the “teachers” led the lesson.
“My dad bought the new Call of Duty yesterday.”
The assistant principal (with whom I checked for Dress Code Violations each day) advised that I model perfect student behavior, even though I dressed like many of the kids that spend time in her office.
“Marco! … Hey! … Marco! … Text me!”
With my iPad and a seat in the back row, I opened up the grading Form I built earlier and behaved like a polite student.
Each group started by reading this:
Predictably, some groups attempted to do the minimum. Two boys on the first day half-heartedly wrote a sample problem in the corner of the whiteboard, talked about it, then assigned practice problems for the students. The “lesson” itself was no more interactive than a Khan Academy video, and they completely omitted the quiz. The group before them was no better.
I made a point to regroup and discuss, and after that period, I “put them on blast“.
Vaudrey: What are some good things you saw today and some things you would change? Hillary: Having a PowerPoint helped a lot. Fiona: Yeah, it kept the class focused. Ariel: When the class is doing something, they aren’t as noisy. Vaudrey: Yep. What are some things you would change?
[Silence] Vaudrey: You don’t wanna put anybody on blast? Class: Nope. Vaudrey: Okay, then I will. I’m not impressed so far. [gasps] Natalie and Amayrany, you guys clearly prepared and worked hard ahead of time. Nice work, well done. You other guys, however, could have done much better. You had three days in class and two weeks of Spring Break, and the best you could do was example problems on the whiteboard? You all have iPads, and I saw none of them today. Step it up.
I put on my best “Mitt Romney when asked about taxes” face.
Parents and teachers reading this will note that verbalizing one’s disappointment is one way to galvanize students to action. When I said iPads, two students in the back fist-bumped. My emphasis on hard work may have been a bit overzealous; one student wouldn’t get her Powerpoint to open and wept in frustration. She got an extra day.
3. The “Best Of”
This student had a sound cue to play a b quiz songb . Clearly, my own musical cues have made an impact.Friendly color scheme. Can’t go wrong.This group did research and found the SWBAT acronym, AND they read it out loud: “Students will be able to…” I was impressed.Occasional groups had hidden mistakes within their lesson. Some rolled with it better than others. It took about 4 minutes for this group to notice the problem was “unfactorable”.iPad students figured out how Google Image Search works.This was the solo project of one student whose partner did nothing. Despite the poor grammar, she absolutely nailed it, and I called her house to rave about it. I’m so proud, especially because she and I had lots of discipline issues earlier in the year.
Other highlights from the presentations:
“Mr. Vaudrey, I don’t see how you like this [teaching].”
“I noticed how Abby was strict and the class got quiet. The other two were giggling and the class was loud.”
“Since the discriminant is negative there is no solution… well, no real solution.”
“Oh, so they can talk during the quiz, but when I talk, I get in trouble?”
“Raise your hand and wait until I call on you! Don’t shout at me! I can give you a marker if you raise your hand!”
“You kids wanna try me today, huh?”
“You sassin’ the teacher?”
“You are not the brightest apple in the bunch.”
“If you’re talking during my quiz, that’s a zero. Yeah. I’m lookin’ straight at you.”
“No talking during the quiz.” “I wasn’t talking, I was singing.”
“If I see you talking, that’s a F!”
“My word is law! No bathroom breaks!”
Obviously, some students hammed it up with a captive audience, and several became drunk with power quickly. One “teacher” even called the principal to deal with an unruly student, which later spawned a great class discussion about a teacher managing his/her own discipline in-house.
I was giddy the entire week, sitting in the back row in Converse hi-tops watching the slow dawning of enlightenment on each student. Most of them said, at some point, “Mr. Vaudrey,B this is hard.”
“That’s right.” I replied. “And how long did you plan for your 30-minute lesson? I teach 90 minutes every day, several times.”
“Oh, man!”B Their eyes widened, “I don’t think I could do that.”
I’m sending these kiddos to high school in 34 school days, and they will have a new respect for their teachers.
4. Teacher Materials & Execution
Click here for the folder on my Google Drive with everything in it. They’re named below, instead of linked.
If you use it, please let me know. I’m curious if my effort to share this will be worth it.
Here’s the order:
First, distribute a list of the learning goals for the year. (This list was already changing a week after its inception. Modify it to fit your class.) Most students picked easy stuff from the single digits, or stuff from Quadratics (the most recent unit we covered). Next year: do this project before EVERY test. For the year-end lessons, force a spread of learning goals.
Next, I passed out the project description with the rubric. Students filled in how they would deliver the “Direct Instruction”, what the “Guided Practice” would be, and which “Exit Quiz” questions they would use. The following day, I passed out the lesson plan form. The Timing Breakdown came the following week. Next year: model the timing in columns during one of my lessons. “What am I doing right now? What are you doing right now?
Once all students had settled into planning their lessons, I built the Presentation Schedule so each student knew which day they were presenting (though one still managed to arrive to class with nothing done, lamenting “I’m goin’ today?!“). The Tutoring Sign-up was posted on my door. Next year: During in-class work, visit groups as they work and go through their lesson with them.
The day after they presented, each group completed a Peer Grading formB to assess somebody else’s lesson. The Grading Schedule details which day they grade. The iPad students completed the form online, linked from my skeleton Google Site (which I am still too ashamed to link). Also on that dreadful site is the Teacher Grading form that I used to grade each group.
Next week, all students will head to a computer class and complete the Partner Analysis form to discretely and secretly grade their partner. I predict some scathing reviews from fourth period.
Finally, I’m still developing an algorithm to grade each project as accurately as possible. I’m certain that it’s not worth the effort I’m spending, but it’s fun and I like doing it, so get off my back.
@MrVaudrey vV+pP+sS+aA divided by 4, where v, p, s, a are different weights?
Even today, I’ve been editing rubrics and spreadsheets and forms. We never arrive.
Let me know what you think of all this. I worked very hard on this project, and it improved with every minute of student presentation. I’ll post an update once I’ve arrived on a grading setup.
My wife has been watching the Bachelor, and occasionally, they will do a flashback to a part of the contestant’s past that is embarrassing.
This post is about my ugly ex-boyfriend, Standards.
In college, I majored in Youth Ministry and Adolescent Studies. I came into my first classroomb seventh grade at Edgewood Middle Schoolb as a youth pastor; ready to make friends with my students and receive their respect in return.
You can probably guess how that panned out.
That year was the hardest year of my life. I wept during planning period, sometimes at lunch, and even after school. In an attempt to fight back, I yelled, spewing venomous things at my teenagers, who sneered at my inconsistent discipline and became even more defiant and rude. Several times I called my wife or family and was talked off the ledge from quitting.
When I look back, there is one thing in particular thing that makes me wince.
Ohhhh!
Writing Standards
As a young teacher, I was terrified of calling parents for negative reasons. On the surface, I was uncomfortable calling someone older than me and speaking to them as an authority figure. Deep down dwelled a fear that they would turn the blame back on me, and I’d have no good response. Occasionally, that happened.
First-Year Vaudrey: Hello… uh… this is Mr. Vaudrey, I’m calling to discuss… um… David’s inappropriate jokes in class.
Parent: Well, David is standing right here, and he says that you laughed when he made that inappropriate joke, so why are you calling me?
Uh… yeah… but…
To avoid parent phone calls, I relied heavily on Standards.
In the opening scene of the Simpsons, Bart is “writing standards”. It’s an old practice, but a great way to keep kids busy.
Here are four reasons why it’s a terrible idea:
Number 1: Creates distaste of a Good Thing
It uses writingb something that should be enjoyableb and turns it into punishment. Some teachers (many years ago… hopefully) had students copy the dictionary when they were in trouble.
One wonders how those students feel about reading, writing, and big words after that experience.
Number 2: It’s Not Not the Worst emphasis on Negative
Standardsb by designb feature lots of “I will not…” The copious use of negatives is just ineffective. If I want a student to stop getting out of their seat, the prompt isn’t “Don’t get out of your seat!”, it’s “Stay in your seat.” Many of the standards I assigned began with “I will not…” which populated my class rules with a list ofB “nots”.
My psychologist sister recommended that my wife and I use “the positive opposite” when talking to our then-2-year-old daughter. The prompt “use gentle touches” is much more effective than “don’t hit.”
Number 3. It’s a Waste of Time
Writing standards doesn’t matter. It’s a hamster wheel. It’s a thing to keep student is diligently doing something besides bothering the teacher. Invariably, the students that acted out the most were the ones that needed my attention the most. Standards was a cop-out, a way to say “I don’t give a shitB what you do, as long as it doesn’t bother me.”
It’s a treadmill, in a class where they should be lifting weights.
This student was Special Ed, but not yet diagnosed. “Mike” spent about 90 minutes over three lunch periods writing this. Those 90 minutes could have been better spent in tutoring, perhaps learning his multiplication tables.B I took time that could have been used on academics and made his hand cramp.
Number 4:B The Bravado with Which I Assigned Them
Oh, how proud I was with my Standards! With increasing regularity, I sent students out of class to do them, pulled them in at lunch, even sent them home as a homework assignment. I bragged to colleagues that “corporal punishment is not dead!” I had a file folder bulging with them by Christmas, when I used them as gift-wrap for my family’s presents. I was so proud of that stack of student discomfortB because it appeared that I was managing my class.
I was not.
Instead, I was telling dozens of students, “This is a better use of your time than math.”
Now, several years later, IB never assign standards. When a student needs some time out, I give them a tangle tableB or an assignment that they haven’t finished yet.
Now, I’m telling them, “You need a break from the class. Use the time productively.”
Which is what IB want to communicate to them.
~Mr. Vaudrey
For dinner, my wife and I will sometimes get frozen pizza from the grocery store, and put a ton of vegetables on it. So we can tell ourselves it’s healthy and that we’re allowed to drink beer on a Tuesday night.
Don’t judge me.
Tonight, I diced vegetables while my wife bathed our baby.
Above: Much cuter than sun-dried tomatoes.
Our conversation went like this:
Vaudrey: How hot is the oven for this pizza?
Wife (from the bathroom): What?
Vaudrey: How hot does the oven have to be?
Wife: It says on the box.
Vaudrey: I already recycled the box, and I don’t want to dig it up, I just want you to tell mb
I froze mid-sentence.
Oh, God. I thought.B I have become my students.
Just like Zac Efron, but less gorgeous.
How am I any different from them when they ask me the myriad of silly questions, to which, they could find the answer?
“What page does this go on?”
“How do I factor a difference of two squares?”
“What’s five times eight?”
“What page does this go on? I forgot already.”
In recent years, websites like Khan AcademyB and MathTV have sprung up, hosting hundreds of videos to explain Math to students in their own home. The sites are met with resistance and gnashing of teeth from teachers, who don’t want our jobs outsourced to the internet. I’ve never been worried.
My discussion with my wife is why online courses will never replace the classroom for adolescents. The most efficient content-delivery system in the world cannot reproduce relationships. Students come to my class for the math, but they stay because conversation is how they build a framework to understand the world.
Regular readers will note that it’s been a week for second tries. Both of these items had solid first tries, so the second was bound to be good also.
About six weeks have passed since the last Auction in my class, and today was a minimum day for the end of the Trimester, so it was about time.
I began the day with hype. I teach in the portables, so if I make noise, 200 students can wonder, “What’s going on in Vaudrey’s class?” Dragging a 10-watt guitar amp outside, I plugged in my iPod and danced to some upbeat songs (mostly from Five Iron Frenzy, a late-90’s ska band). Also, I was wearing the cowboy hat, which signifies auction day.
You should probably have this music video playing while you read the rest of the post, if you really want to get the idea.
Column A, you can see the items up for bid.
Column E is what each of the items cost me out of pocket.
My second and third-biggest readers are Canada and the Phillipines, respectively. Canucks and Pinoys, I included a column for the cost in your local currency, color-coded by your country flag.
Row 16 shows totals. I was floored to see that my fourth period spent 1,000 chips in 40 minutes.
Here are a couple of highlights:
For the Potty Passes, bidding started at 2. Brian, still hyped from the Subway bidding war, immediately blurted out “58! … no, wait!”
Bidding for Nerds (Medium candy) started at 5. The next three bids were 91, 100, and 120. The hot ticket items are never what I expect.
I spent $30 and bought good behavior for 8 weeks. That works out to about $150 for a year. Not so bad. Read the previous post for why I am okay with doing that.
Also, the RSP teacher pitched in (because she’s great, not because her students contribute to a lot of the distractions), so it only cost $10 this time.
What I Changed For This Auction
Items that didn’t draw any bids last time were removed. The big ticket items returned, and I took a page from Dave Burgess‘ playbook on suspense and mystery with the Box of Mystery and Diapers.
What did you THINK I meant?
Students all received a small slip of paper with a list of auction items on it. On that list, if I had included “Box of a bunch of junk from my Aunt-in-law’s basement that we acquired when she moved”, that might not have been a big seller.
But oh, how mystery tickles the mind and arouses the senses! Suddenly, the kids just had to know…
… what’s in the Mystery Box?
Any of those items individually would have drawn no bids at all. Put them in an old cardboard box, and suddenly it’s gold.
And oh, did I ham it up. “You too, students, can tempt fate with a peek inside the Box of Mystery and Diapers! Could it be… a dictionary? Could it be… an inflatable fish? Could it be… a diaper? Only you, the adventurer of secrecy will peek inside the mouth of the lion, tempt fate, and emerge victorious!”
This morning, I re-read the previous post about the auction, so I was picky about noise they made between each item. I wrote up a List of Today’s Auction Items with Descriptions, and announced them while the showcase song from Price is Right was playing. It was magical.
The chatter between items was helped by my descriptions; students wanted to hear them, so all I had to do was start speaking, stop, and look at the offender. The rest of the class jumped on the chatterbox like he was an autographed OneDirection poster.
As with many class activities, the hard work before kickoff made the classtime itself really stinkin fun. I love my job. I get to listen to music from High School and lecture students (with a smile) about the evils of caffeine and processed sugar, all while wearing a cowboy hat.
