Teacher gains fans via video

‘Tipster’ spreads creative methods

Monday, December 9, 2013

CONWAY - First-grade teacher Dustin Smith is best known on the Internet as the “Teacher Tipster.”

But even before he adopted that moniker, Smith, 31, was known as a teacher with plenty of creative ideas to share, and University of Central Arkansas professors often took classes of prospective teachers to observe him at work.

Hoping to reach even more current and prospective teachers, Smith decided to start sharing his ideas via Facebook and YouTube.

Now, about four years later, Smith has 166,000 Facebook followers who can read his site for tips as well as updates on when he has posted a new YouTube video. He has posted about 120 videos so far.

To find him on Facebook, online users simply type in Teacher Tipster. That’s also the way to find his website, www.teachertipster.com.

Followers of Smith, who lives in Conway with his wife, Suzy, are from “all over the world,” as close as Conway and as far away as Asia, he said.

“It’s a pretty humbling thing to get messages from China or New Zealand or Austria,” said Smith, who teaches at Woodrow Cummins Elementary School.

He graduated from UCA and is in his 11th year of teaching.

“I have some unique ideas on how to use music and games” to teach children, he said. “I’m trying to help teachers find their creative side and open their eyes to new opportunities.”

When he decided to place a few videos on YouTube, “It was pretty slow going at first,” he recalled.

“Probably my wife and mom and sister” were the only ones viewing the videos then. But, he said, “Word started spreading, and now it’s been a pretty fun ride to share so many tips with so many people.”

Smith said he’s “always enjoyed thinking outside of the box” - finding something at a dollar store, for instance, and thinking about it in a different light.

Examples include teaching a math skill with the help of an ice-cube tray, and using a stuffed alligator’s mouth to teach first-graders about the similarly shaped greater-than and less-than symbols in mathematics.

“We practice eating the larger number,” he said.

Smith offers disciplinary tips, too.

He once brought a baby doll to class.

“I told the kids to keep the voices down low because the baby [was] sleeping,” he recalled. “At first, they kind of giggled. Then they jumped on board. Kids love using their imagination.”

He tries to use inexpensive products for his tips.

Ways to teach basic math facts or sight words, for example, include the use of small, decorative paper cups with math problems or words written on the bottoms. Students who get the right answers can stack the cups.

“We stack them up like pyramids and call them power towers,” he said. “That [activity] was just a way to make flash cards a little more exciting and motivating to the kids. … They love getting creative with the types of towers they do,” sometimes making walls instead of pyramids.

Smith has put this idea into an online video at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ySAaWqEJrwg&- feature=youtu.be.

Smith doesn’t charge for his most of tips. On his website, he also gives away worksheets that teachers can print out for use in their classrooms.

He charges 99 cents each for a handful of mobile-phone and tablet applications, or “apps,” that he and a friend, Randy Smith of Conway, developed. The men are not related.

Smith said the comments he gets from other teachers keep him “motivated to share and do all this extra work.”

He estimated he puts about 20 hours a week, during weekends and at night, on the tips with the help of his wife, who operates the camera.

“I’ve had teachers tell me they were burned out, and our site has reminded them that teaching can be fun and exciting. A lot of these teachers have a lot of pressure on them, and there’s a lot of things to keep up with, and they forgot why they got into teaching in the first place,”Smith said.

“Some of my favorite comments are the ones that tell me they received a new spark and that they’re motivated to try some of [the tips] in class,” he said.

Mark Cooper, a UCA professor of early childhood and special education, called Smith “ingenious in his teaching.”

Cooper, who also is director of UCA’s Mashburn Center for Learning, taught Smith in college.

“He teaches with creativity, with imagination, with tremendous compassion and is just an exciting person to be around for children, as well as all of my students who are able to observe him,” Cooper said.

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/09/2013