Hey Reader!

I'm off work this week, my kids are with grandparents, and my wife is visiting her brother and sister-in-law.

Just like Kevin McCallister, I'm home alone (but without the burglars and antics).

Here I am in my office writing this email:

My main objective this week is to make headway on the A&P 2 course I'm launching in August.

I'm about four videos into the first unit (endocrine system), and I've found myself doing two things in almost every video that remind me of the real difference between a legitimate "course" and the regular YouTube videos I post on my channel.

The first is referencing other lessons.

Regular YouTube videos have to assume the audience knows basically nothing, and that they'll get all the information on the topic in this one video. They may not watch more of my videos, and if they do, they might watch a random one instead of the one I'd expect. There's no real order, and they might skip around between channels.

But in a course, I've curated the whole sequence. I can talk freely about what's coming next. For example, in the second video of the endocrine system, I cover all the endocrine organs and their main hormones and functions at a bird's eye level. A few times I go into more detail on glands such as the pituitary or adrenals...then I pause and say something like, "But don't worry about memorizing all that just yet. We have another video later in the unit that does a deep dive into these pituitary hormones. For now, the main thing you need to know is that the hypothalamus controls the pituitary, and the pituitary regulates most of the other endocrine glands."

That's something I'd never be able to say in a regular YouTube video. It just wouldn't make sense.

The second is referencing the practice activities I'm building.

Here's an example. Learning the types of hormones (lipid-soluble, water-soluble, steroid, amine, peptide/protein, prostaglandins) can be confusing...although I did find a great way to simplify it and make it easier to remember. So in my Types of Hormones lesson, I point students to a drag-and-drop activity I built where they practice sorting the hormones and descriptions into their categories:

In my YouTube videos, I try to always include a blank diagram for viewers to practice with, but I can't point to interactive practice activities that not everyone has access to.

That's what's been super fun about building this course. I'm planning a real curriculum to guide students through, showing them exactly what's important to know at each step, then giving them practice activities they need in order to lock that information in.

I feel like a teacher, gosh darn it!

Because even though my time at my school is almost over, I'm still a teacher. That's what I love doing.

Thanks for being on this journey with me :)

-Justin

P.S. If you want to get first access to the course when it launches, and get more behind-the-scenes updates, join the waitlist.

And if you want to improve your memory and test scores in content-heavy science classes, there's more info about my Memory Lab program here. Find my other resources here (which are all included in the Memory Lab).