Brent Warner 0:00
I’m about to be observed by my boss, should I teach like I always do, or should I try to plan the perfect lesson? We’re going to talk you through the ins and outs of prepping for your upcoming evaluation.

Ixchell Reyes 0:26
Welcome to the DIESOL podcast where we focus on Developing Innovation in English as a Second or Other Language.

Brent Warner 0:33
I’m Brent Warner professor of ESL at Irvine Valley College and I’m here with Ixchell Reyes – award winning educator specialists in professional development and teacher training with an edtech focus. How are you, Ixchell?

Ixchell Reyes 0:46
I’m doing well. How are you? Brent?

Brent Warner 0:48
I’m doing pretty good. Pretty good. So today, we’re, we’re talking about the dreaded observation.

Ixchell Reyes 0:58
I know I mean, what are you talking about dreaded? Don’t ever say, Hey, I’m about to be observed this week. Do it. I

Brent Warner 1:06
think that’s the thing, too. Like, we want to kind of reassure people that even the best teachers out there, you know, anyone you’ve talked to, they’re like, ah, observations coming. And like, you know, it’s like, you’re, you’re supposed to be this rockstar teacher. And you’re, you’re anxious about it, or you’re worried about it too, right. And so, everybody feels this way, right? Sometimes we’re like, ready for it? We’re like, okay, cool. I got this thing, like every once in a while, it’d be fine. Like, you’ll be kind of in the mood for it. Most of the time. I think all of us are kind of hoping to avoid or you know, would be not be disappointed if someone said, Hey, you don’t have to do an observation this year.

Ixchell Reyes 1:42
Yeah, well, I think part of it is that someone is going to be in your classroom observing, right? It’s not like you’re recording without some someone like actually an actual physical presence of someone there. And so it’s a little bit more intrusive.

Brent Warner 2:00
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So let’s jump into the conversation. We’ll get right to it and got a few things we want to make sure that we talk through so. Okay, Ixchell so here’s the deal, right? You’re about to be observed. What do you do? Should you teach like you always do? I think this is the question I always have, right is like, should I teach like I always do? Or should I like plan this quote, unquote, perfect lesson that’s going to show all the things that I know, nothing at all into like one lesson somehow. What’s your take on this?

Ixchell Reyes 2:33
Well, there’s I don’t know, somewhere in the course of my credential program, one of my mentor teachers, at the time told us remember this is if you’re a new teacher, if you’re about to start and you’re you know, you have that anxiety of the first year teacher or the second year teacher, it’s not your time to shine yet, it’s your time to just show that you can do what they expect you to do. And your time to shine will come later. And of course, as you get more as you grow into the the teacher role. And as you get to know your school or your organization. And as you get to know yourself better as a teacher, you become a little bit more comfortable. And it’s then when you can start thinking about maybe trying something new, maybe not all the things because that would be overwhelming. And also that, you know, that makes it so that there are more chances of something going awry, or not the way that you want to do and it could just derail your lesson. But I think trying something new is a good thing. And it might just depend on where you are in your teaching career. But what do you what are your thoughts? Because I know…

Brent Warner 3:44
Yeah, I mean, I have both roles, of course. So I get observed. And I also do observations, like, of course, as a full time faculty, part of our responsibility is to go do observations of other teachers. So I’m on both sides of it. And I think the thing that I see, you know, the thing that I worry about for myself is like, trying to stuff in too much, right? For sure. Like, hey, I want to show this and this and this, I want to show that I have that I understand this, you know, concept and and that I’m good at conveying it to the students or whatever else it is. I think the one thing is like really slow down and focus on what you can do. But the problem here, I think one other thing to think about is how are you going to balance out your teacher talk time with your student talk time, because in a typically good class, like I want really heavy student talk time, right? But in an observation, I also want — we also need the teacher interaction, and it’s like, how are you explaining these concepts or whatever else it is, and I’m like, “Oh, I did this great 100% Student talk time.” (laughter) Like it was awesome, right? That’s good pedagogy. And then like the person is like you didn’t say anything the entire time the students just went off and did their activity, right? And so it’s like, so you do have to be, you do have to balance that out and figure out like, okay, am I going to throw in some just in time activities, right? Like, pre pre plan them, but like, but maybe kind of be like, Okay, we’re gonna do a little side note here, you guys, this will just be five minutes? Or how can you balance out that time? Because the pedagogy says something like 80/20 is your ideal goal or

Ixchell Reyes 5:31
The magical 80/20 the perfect 80/20? (Laughter)

Brent Warner 5:35
Right? And you feel that pressure as a as being observed here. Yeah, as a language teacher, and you want your students to be talking and doing all these things more, but then you’re also like, but right, today is a different thing, right? It’s kind of me being observed. And so I have to do some my lecturing or how am I interacting with the students or whatever those things are. So I think they’re all just things that we want to think through.

Ixchell Reyes 5:56
And it also depends on how much time you’re going to be observed. I know in the past, there have been, maybe not in my current organization, but in other places where they come in just for 20 minutes, and can you imagine, or 20 minutes, you’re at the mercy of whatever happens during those 20 minutes, whatever they get to observe you. But you’re lucky if they’re able to come in for the full hour, then the full hour or full lesson. Like if you have a full lesson, that would be great.

Brent Warner 6:25
And I’m also just gonna say here quickly, because I think some people get frustrated going “You didn’t help me with this!” I personally would probably aim for like a 50 to 60% of teacher talking time in a lecture – in part of my lecture, like almost half of the lesson, I would say like or more, I would want to be able to show that I know these things, I think that’s probably more than I would do in a normal class, or I would hope to do more than normal class. Of course, some days, we have full on lecture classes to right where it’s just like, hey, I just have to talk to you guys through these things. But But I think that in an observation time, I want to get a good mix of, of, you know, right kind of right down the middle somewhere of like, “Hey, me talking about things,” and “hey, you guys doing things,” and then also showing how you’re going to interact with the students when they’re doing things too. That’s an important

Ixchell Reyes 6:27
Yeah, and I think you have the, I think in your situation, you have the luxury of being maybe being more flexible with the teacher talk time. Whereas in my organization, it’s very heavily dependent upon the student talk time. And so that’s always the I think, for me, it’s always like, Oh, my gosh, I’m actually going to be speaking way more. So I have to think of what concepts I must pre teach for us to actually observe closer to 80/20 talk time. And that might be scaffolding in the lesson, or concepts of the lesson ahead of time, which normally I wouldn’t have time to do. But if it’s an observation, I still have to meet the objectives of the observation. And I still want to get good scores, right. And I don’t want to just be average, I want to if I can be above average. But yeah, I think there’s also another point is that you might be overwhelmed. Because ideally, you would want your you would have a mentor teacher that you could talk to about these, these situations and have them help you prep, or maybe just be there to listen to your lesson idea or talk you through some or you talk to them through your lesson. But many times, it’s your evaluator, who’s also the person giving you the feedback. So we were talking about how that can be problematic. Right?

Brent Warner 8:38
Right, right. Yeah, so So this is a little bit tricky, right? So when if if your evaluator or or, you know, it’s your boss going in there and giving you your feedback, of course, and that’s, that’s oftentimes what’s going to happen, right, and it’s like, this is the person holding it over me. So you get a little bit anxious about it, because you have to feel like you have to perform or you know, put on your, your dog and pony show. But I also think it makes a difference to there’s a different part to this, where it’s like, I’ve been observed by teachers, quote, unquote, teachers, or people who used to be teachers, and have not been in the classroom for a long time, or I’ve been observed by teachers who I kindly would say, I do not personally think are necessarily very good teachers, or, you know, maybe don’t understand pedagogy or things like that. And so then I get worried on the other side of it, it’s like, Oh, am I going to have to explain the metal level pedagogy that I’m running through with these types of activities? Because to someone who doesn’t know these types of things, so let’s say I’m doing, you know, a station rotation type of activity, which is, which is one by the way, a little hint that I like to do during observations if I can. And they’re like, well, you’re just had the students going out and talking to each other the whole time. And I’m like, Oh, do I have to you know, like, And then you feel like a little bit weird because it’s like you’re observing. Yeah. So it’s like, yeah. So there, there can be things like that, that can be a little bit tricky.

Ixchell Reyes 10:09
And I’ve had the opposite – or not the opposite but similar, where your observer may not be open to a particular pedagogical strategy, or they may not be familiar with it. And so again, to explain, like, No, this is part of the Samer model, or no, this is actually you know, research shows that blah, blah, blah, and you don’t want to be I mean, if that’s tied to your salary, or to your increase, or to your contract extension, you you’re a little bit more nervous about that. That hasn’t kept me from trying new things. Because at the end of the day, if you met the objective, and you can justify how you met the objective, then I, what is what it then it becomes like, are you just controlling the method that I’m using? Because it’s really not the objective.

Brent Warner 11:01
If you as the teacher know what you’re doing? It’s fine, right? You know, of course, and you need it, and you can you can back it up, but yeah, I do agree with that. So, okay, so then we’ve got a little bit of this idea of like, over planning versus under preparing, right. So there’s like the teachers who are like, I’m gonna plan out every single detail and knock it down and make sure that I have everything going, versus I’m kind of used to it. I’m gonna go by the seat of my pants. Something I’ll work out, right. And I’ll admit, like, I’ve done some flight, you know, seat of my pants observations for myself in the past, because I like, this is what happens to me for observed observations, sometimes for observations, but also like for presentations is like, Yeah, I’m like, overthinking, overthinking. And then and then at the last minute, I’m like, No, I’m not going to do any of that. (Laughter)

Ixchell Reyes 11:48
Yeah, that happens to me too!

Brent Warner 11:52
And it all goes in the garbage. And then I just end up doing something right. And it’s like, and I am experienced enough of a teacher that I’m not too worried about it. But I’m always like, is this a good idea? Should I really be doing this now? Because I spent so much time overthinking the process. And then I’m like no this like, and somehow I convinced myself that it’s no good. And I don’t know what’s your take on over prep this fly flying by the seat of your pants,

Ixchell Reyes 12:18
I think for sure if you’re newer to the teaching profession, you you tend to overanalyze and be very critical of what you’re going to do, how you’re going to transition. And that’s just because you’re growing into the role. But I think I’m of the, I think I tend to lean toward better to over plan a little bit than to be under Plan, because you don’t know what’s going to happen in the classroom that day. And many things could go differently. But if you have an extra activity, or at least you’ll have a strategy. And like you said, I’m similar to you where I start with something, and I think I’m going to do this, and I’m gonna try that. And then by the end of, of going mulling over it over that for a couple of days, I throw it away, and then there’s something else. But then on the day of the lesson, it turns out that oh my gosh, we finished a little early, the students were able to manage, guess what, I have the strategy for one of the discarded ones. And so then I’m able to come up with something that’s still relevant. So I would say, I guess over time, you also learn to manage how much you spend on one of those observation preps, because you also don’t want to use up all of that brainpower because you still have to teach after the observation. So it can you can just be completely stressed out. And you’ll learn to balance I guess, I’m still learning. What are some things that maybe we should be we definitely need to review before we we do an officer, we have the observation. For me, whether it’s your first evaluation or not your first evaluation, you’ve done several of them. I think the important one of the major important things is to be familiar with a rubric that your organization or your principal or your director is using. Also be familiar with the objectives, right? If you’ve already, if you already know that in a previous observation, you there’s an area of improvement are one that you would like to maybe showcase a little more, highlight it and remind yourself because it’s so easy on the day off to just go to just shift to whatever you’re used to. So you’re more likely to make that or leave out what you wanted to improve. Maybe plan out in terms of timing, timing is important and plan out the segments and how you’re going to transition into a different activity. What could go wrong, a lot of things could go wrong.

Brent Warner 15:03
Yeah, so I think I agree with you like, all of these are things that you want to make sure you’re at least planned out for. And so, but the biggest one that I think a lot of people skip is like, what is what am I being evaluated on? Right? And like, and it’s like, just being a good teacher, it’s like, well, yeah, but you, you know, like, there are these specific things, right? Like, and it might say, for example, you know, your interactions with your students, right? And you’re like, Well, if you turned your entire lesson into just a top down lecture, because you wanted to show your ability to teach those skills that we were talking about before, then you’re gonna get lower marks or not applicable on some of your interaction with your students, right. So you want to make sure that you really know what like, like you said, what your institution is actually observing you on and plan your lesson around that.

Ixchell Reyes 15:54
I want to maybe add one more thing that when you again, if you’ve been at the same institution, for several years, and you think, oh, it’s the same rubric, nothing’s changed, it’s still very important to get to know that rubric. Because it also, once you’ve planned according to the rubric, then it also gives you justification for how you met that goal, how you met that objective, how you met that point, because as an observer, because I also observe instructors, and I’ve also been on that, and you have to rely on the fact that that observer is also taking good notes and and giving examples of how you’re meeting that. But if by chance, they omitted something, and you’re able to say, no, look, I did this, and here’s, here’s the objective that was met this strategy, then you’re also able to justify how you were able to do it. So the more familiar you are with it, the better the more confidence you have, and that you met that objective. Yeah, absolutely.

Brent Warner 16:50
Okay, Ixchell let’s talk about some of these common pitfalls. Few of these areas where, you know, where people’s making mistakes. So when you go into a lesson with it with your students, you know, do you tell so that sometimes the teachers will have I’ve seen teachers do this before, where it’s like, they’re like, Oh, we did this lesson last week. But now I’m being observed. So we’re just gonna do it again, right. Now, this is, I know, for some people, this is gonna sound crazy, but it does happen. does happen.

Ixchell Reyes 17:22
You know, to me, it’s like, what, uh, I understand, I understand why a teacher might approach it that way. But what a waste of student time. And if I were the student, I would say, No, I don’t want to come on that day, we’re going to repeat the same thing. Why should I get up early to go do the same thing we already did if we did it? Well. And I think it is important to let the students know that they’ll be observed but that the teacher is being observed, right. And it’s important to let them know ahead of time that that’s going to happen. I also think that someone who might be of that approach, it’s sort of it’s self insulting, right? It’s like saying, I’m like, My teaching is not good enough. That you can just watch me do a lesson without having to. What’s the word? fabricate. Like, it just seems fake? Well, yeah. So it’s like the scripted.

Brent Warner 18:17
Yeah, it’s the difference between a, you know, a comedy show and an impromptu, you know, like a scripted comedy show versus an impromptu one. It’s like, well, there, they both have, you know, you can see like, hey, the best of I guess, right, but like, the truth is like teaching is impromptu, right. And so you need to be able to show on your feet, right? It’s exactly

Ixchell Reyes 18:37
one of the things and we’ll I know, we’re gonna talk a little bit more about this, but it’s the way you’re you’re thinking as the teacher who’s being observed how you’re going to approach what that means for you being observed. What else what have you observed?

Brent Warner 18:52
Technology fails

Ixchell Reyes 18:56
Me! Me last week!

Brent Warner 18:59
You had a tech fail in your observation last week?

Ixchell Reyes 19:01
I did. I sure did.

Brent Warner 19:03
Okay. What happened?

Ixchell Reyes 19:05
So I didn’t trust the computer. I’m assigned the app that had been assigned to that, like our classroom computer, because usually something glitches and I thought, nope, this is not going to happen to me, because I know I want I’ve prepared, I’ve over prepared and so I brought in my computer, except I forgot that you have to plug in an extra plug to get it to work as a touch screen, SMART Board. And in the rush of like, trying to make sure I forgot. So when I went to touch the screen, it did not work. So I was like, alright, it’s okay. However, that was my tech fill. But I already knew that my lesson wasn’t dependent on that. So if that happened, I don’t think anybody even noticed I told my students at the end, guys, guess what happened to me. You didn’t know. But this happened. So yeah,

Brent Warner 19:54
Yeah. I’d say for me, I’d say I’ve had those types of things before so in observations, I do not try to bring in any outside tech. So I always like whatever I have that I normally use, that’s gonna be one. And then the second part, get there an hour early before your lesson or how if you can, if you can get into the room beforehand or whatever, and make sure that whatever you’re normally using is actually working. Because sometimes, you know, that went down

Ixchell Reyes 20:21
People borrow things.

Brent Warner 20:22
Yeah, people took something out of the room, or, you know, suddenly the projector bulb is burnt out, or, you know, whatever else it is right? And so, so make sure that you’re really prepared for that. I think that’s big.

Ixchell Reyes 20:32
I think, with technology, one of the, one of the challenges I have is, or when I teach my teacher, my teacher candidates, I tell them look, because I have to observe them as well. Plan for have a plan A and then have your no tech plan, just in case because guess what? And so I have that same approach, I always have a plan B, which is a low tech to no tech plan. And it means that doesn’t matter. Because ultimately, if my teaching is what makes that lesson, then it doesn’t matter whether I use technology, or I don’t to use technology during my classroom observation, unless they have particularly asked me to showcase something I’m using with technology, then that’s a whole different conversation. Yeah.

Brent Warner 21:24
And sometimes you could even on your lesson plan that you’re going to give to your to the observer, you can even have like, you know, alternatives, or Yeah, absolutely. Or something like that. Put that in there.

Ixchell Reyes 21:36
Yeah. And it could also be, for example, and I’ve told my trainees this, if anything happens during your lesson that is not according to what you had on your lesson plan, you simply pause and you say, normally, we would have done this, but since it’s not working, this is what we’re going to do. And you sort of give that background explanation to the observer. And that saves you from like, you know, having to fumble and try things again, and then you get nervous, and then you lose your rhythm.

Brent Warner 22:05
Yeah, you know, all these things, you’re totally right. I’m just thinking through all that as we’re talking about it, too. And one more thing that I’ve seen as a as a pitfall that we didn’t add on here, but I want to add, have your lesson plan ready for the observer? I have, I have observed many teachers, they’re like, oh, I don’t have it, I’ll give it to you later. And then they give it to me later. And it’s like, it’s like, a pair, you know, kind of like a weirdly broken up paragraph with just like, here are the activities that we’re doing. And so I’m not saying that you have to make a full on crazy lesson plan that’s like perfectly detailed in the ways that we got into our grad schools or whatever. Although that doesn’t hurt, right to show that you really know what you’re doing. You don’t have to do that every time you do a class, right, but but I would say, if you’re showing that you’re not prepared with like your plan for the class for the day, that is saying something to the person who’s observing you as well. And

Ixchell Reyes 23:01
I think, depending on what the place requires, what your organization requires you to have on the day of the observation, I’ve had schools that ask you to fill out a form. Before you do that, I’ve had schools that ask you to have a full lesson plan with a copy of every single item for that observer. I’ve had some who want it ahead of time. And if you’re not sure, you could just simply ask, Hey, do you require a lesson plan? Do you prefer one I like to give here’s the material, I like to have anything that the students are going to be using. Aside from the textbook, I like to have a copy for whoever is observing me and I train my teacher trainees to always have a copy of every single item, all stapled and ready to go. And and so again, it just shows that you are thinking of also outside from the observers perspective, which shows that you can manage, okay, yeah, absolutely.

Brent Warner 24:00
Okay, so then, during this, you have a couple of opportunities as well here, right? So how would you frame your your lesson here for like, how do you communicate what you’re doing to your observer ratio, I guess, is what I’m getting into.

Ixchell Reyes 24:17
A lot of the times I kind of I talked to the class, I don’t talk to the observer, of course, because there’s supposed to be like a fly on the wall. And I’ll tell my students, all right, we’ve reviewed this yesterday. And so that again, just the key phrase, we’ve reviewed this that tells my observer that we’ve done it, I might say, Now, I want you to tell me, or let’s go ahead and go to the board and I want you to explain to me why this is important. I want you to tell me, so I asked a lot of why questions because if I’ve taught the objective to my students, and they’re able to give it back to me, in whatever format, they are, give it back to me then the person who’s observing me knows that I’ve made them aware of that and that might look different. Depending on the topic that I’m teaching, it might be a grammar lesson. Or it might be a speaking concept with a language function, the target language function. But I like to do a lot of that, what I would normally would have the observer, what I might explain to them later, I like it for it to come from the students. So a lot of the times I also write on the board, and I, I synthesize what they say, so that basically what is in my lesson plan, or what the objective I’m supposed to teach is ends up being written on the board somewhere, because that’s also a cue for my observer to remember, like, look, this is what I’m actually doing. But a lot of it comes from the students, and I tend to frame it that way.

Brent Warner 25:44
So I think the thing that maybe a lot of teachers don’t see, they kind of just go go into this. And it’s like, you can really control it kind of like this, like, you know,

Ixchell Reyes 26:51
Yeah, it is!

Brent Warner 26:52
Mind ninja stuff, right?

It’s manipulation (laughter). But it is!

Yeah, you can control the what people are paying attention to while you’re doing, you know, this observation and so, kind of how are you moving? Right? It’s like, it’s like the magician, right? It’s like, well, don’t look at what’s going on in my other hand, right? Look at what’s going on in this and I want you to pay attention to, to what I’m doing here, right. And so you can do that. And I think that there’s also a part of this too. So that’s, there’s two parts, right? One is during the lesson, right? Hey, here’s the things that I want you to be paying attention to the while we’re going through all this. And then the second part is during your feedback, so when you’re going to go have a feedback loop with your with your observer. Sometimes they’ll try to do it right on the spot, right? It’s like “Class is over. Let’s talk about it right now.” I personally prefer and I probably myself would even ask and say, Hey, can I have a little time to reflect on this? Can we talk about it tomorrow, right? I don’t want to wait a long time. But I want to get it done within you know, as short of a time period as possible. So that I can kind of think about it, I can kind of get some ideas inside of here. And then I can tell the person what I think because one of the questions that the observers always going to ask is, what do YOU think you did well? (laughter) So Ixchell, I know you have a good little mind trick here for this?

Ixchell Reyes 27:17
Yeah, and this came from my graduate program, and it was on, you know, oftentimes, you might have an evaluator, like, let’s say, your principal, that doesn’t know you, because they have 90 teachers they have to observe. And you’re really have to rely on the fact that they’re going to take good notes, and that they’re going to make the discernment between what are on how why you made the decisions you made during the lesson. But it could be that they didn’t catch that and they didn’t understand and they’re just going to assume so a better strategy is to be ready with your reflection on on what you did. So have some responses on your during your feedback session, whether that whether that happens, unfortunately, right after the lesson, or a few days after, but if you’re guiding the observer in the areas that you want to focus on, rather than leaving it up to them, because maybe perhaps they didn’t even catch anything, and now they have to ding you on something, or they have to write something right. If you let them know, no, I had originally planned to do this much. But this is what happened instead. And this is why I think it still worked, or this is what didn’t get done today, perhaps but that’s not a weakness, that means that students needed more time. So I as a teacher decided to give them more time so that I don’t have to reteach tomorrow. So you’re giving them the strategies that you used to differentiate to manage the group. Or, again, like you said, we’re making so many of these decisions on the fly as teaching is happening, right. But if you guide them into focus on that, then that gives them also the way to write something back. And they might have feedback for that.

Brent Warner 28:59
You mentioned this briefly before, too. But the idea that if this is your multiple times being reviewed, right, whatever, you got your feedback on, like needs improvement or you know, shows, you know, grow grow in this area, right? Make sure you talk specifically about how you did that this time around, right? Because like, because then it can kind of show that you’re, you’re paying attention to these.

Ixchell Reyes 29:23
Absolutely, mm-hmm.

Brent Warner 29:24
And so I had in the past, I was like, okay, needs to improve your board work, right? Like my board work wasn’t as clear as it needed to be or as clean as it needed to be, or I was under doing it or whatever it was. And I said, Okay, so this time I really built board work into that. And then I talked about it when I got the observation. I said, Hey, last time when I was observed, we talked about the board work as an issue, because you know, those observers are looking at their previous ones and saying, “Did you catch those things?” And so so that I said, Hey, I did through this and I was working on figuring out the board work. I still don’t think I’m as best as I could be, but I’m doing a lot better and I’m still continuing to kind of build that skill set as I go.

Ixchell Reyes 30:01
Absolutely, absolutely. Plus, it shows that you value what you’re doing.

Brent Warner 30:05
Yeah, for sure. And that and that’s really what the real goal is, right? We’re not gonna have a lot of time to talk about this. But the real goal should be, how do I use this as an opportunity to make myself a better teacher? Right? I think we feel pressured because it’s like, oh, well, this is gonna be am I good enough to keep my job, right? And so it’s just feels like it’s about holding up right hold, keeping your head above water. But if we can switch that mentality around a little bit and say, hey, I want to switch it into how am I actually using this to grow and become a better teacher? That is a really powerful shift and something that can help you out a lot.

Ixchell Reyes 30:42
All right, so it is time for our fun finds. And this time, I have a place in San Antonio. So if you’re in San Antonio, this place is called Chicken and Pickle and I think you’ve probably noticed that pickleball tends – is a it’s a trend right now. No, I never heard of pickleball before, but

Brent Warner 31:04
Oh, no, it’s been going big for a few years. Yeah. So it grew really popular during COVID, I think. Okay,

Ixchell Reyes 31:11
Well, that’s fairly recent. So anyway, there’s this place in San Antonio, where you go and it’s kind of like a family type diner. They have a lot of chicken items, but they’re organic, and they’re very healthy. But they also have pickleball courts and they have cornhole, cornhole tournaments,

Brent Warner 31:33
Love those cornhole tournaments,

Ixchell Reyes 31:36
I never even heard of cornhole to like, came to San Antonio, but yeah, but

Brent Warner 31:42
Ixchell has never been outside in her life. (Laughter)

Ixchell Reyes 31:44
And I live I live under a rock.

Brent Warner 31:48
So chicken and pickle. That’s fun to say, too. So mine is it’s an account actually found this on, I think on Instagram, but I think it’s on multiple things. It’s called Text to song. And they basically have these text messages between people. They’re kind of like these kind of ridiculous text messages, but then they turn it into a song, and then they sing through it, and then they play play the text. It’s a lot of fun. So, so anyways, if, if you’re just, yeah, it’s an account, there’s one on YouTube, I’ll put the link to it. And you can kind of watch some of these videos, but it’s just, it just gave me some real laugh out loud. And sometimes you just need some, like, actual laughing and so. So they’re, they’re put to like clever, you know, like, kind of fun, like, power ballads and like, you know, fights between a mom and a daughter on text messages, or you know, just different things like that. They’re just funny. But yeah, we can all use a laugh. So, text to song, it’s out there on the internet.

Ixchell Reyes 32:53
All right, for the show notes and other episodes, please check out DIESOL.org/ 104. That’s for episode 104.

Brent Warner 33:02
Oh, there we are. Also make sure to sign up for the mailing list. I’m working on kind of reviving that. And so sharing out some things and having a little bit more of a regular process for it. So if you want to be on the mailing list, if you say hey, sometimes I missed episodes, and I didn’t you know, I didn’t know that it was coming out or something. We’ll make sure to send you reminders, but no junk mail. And I think we’re only going to kind of do it maybe once a month to start. And so so it won’t be it’ll be only from us. No junk. No, no, no anything else and no selling of any information, of course, as we know what it’s like to get all that stuff. So you can find me on the socials at @BrentGWarner.

Ixchell Reyes 33:41
And you can find me on the socials at @ixy_pixy that’s i x y underscore p i x y.

Brent Warner 33:50
And for our mystery language global phrase, we have… (PLAYS AUDIO). So if you can figure out what that means. Let us know send us a message and hopefully it’s something useful to you. It’s a bit of a it’s a fun one last time so thanks so much for listening to the DIESOL podcast everybody.

Ixchell Reyes 34:16
Thank you