How a culinary teacher turned thrift-store games into classroom magic
Tisha Richmond on Dragon Smart, student-run coffee shops, and turning Plinko and Guess Who into learning hooks
“My magic is not your magic.” — Tisha Richmond
Tisha says that line as both permission and invitation. She’s spent nearly 30 years in education—mostly culinary arts—and the last decade refining playful, repeatable ways to make vocational classrooms feel like places students want to be. This episode landed just before she started year three at her current school; she’s teaching four levels of culinary and launching a student-run coffee shop this year.
The children's book that became a mother‑son project
Tisha carried a story for years and eventually realized it read like a children’s book about different kinds of intelligence. She called her son Tommy, read it to him, and suggested he illustrate it. Tommy (still under 25 when they started) learned Procreate, refined pages through a surprisingly intense editing process, and hid little Easter eggs in the art.
What came out of that work was Dragon Smart, published through Dave Burgess Consulting in December. Tisha and Tommy now read it together at conferences and classrooms. The concrete payoff here is less a publishing checklist and more a model: give students a real, constrained creative task, expect iteration, and let the final product strengthen relationships as much as résumés.
“We grew stronger as a mother and son bond through it all.” — Tisha Richmond
Thrift-store games, iterated in class
If you imagine Tisha’s classroom, picture shelves of games from Goodwill and a teacher who plays each one before she introduces it. She looks for the affordances—the part of a game that could map to content—and then prototypes with students.
Examples she actually uses:
Plinko as a lab selector (ramen flavor determines the group’s lab) and as a lesson hook
Guess Who repurposed with velcro cards for kitchen utensils, international dishes, or culinary tools
Topple and other clearance finds turned into review activities or team-building prompts
She stressed iteration. Sometimes a game bombs the first time. Sometimes moving it digital—Canva slides, Google Slides, or a simple web form—fixes pacing and engagement. Her approach is: tell students you’re trying something new, invite feedback, and refine. That inclusion changes student buy‑in.
Small infrastructure, big lessons: the coffee shop plan
Tisha is starting a coffee shop as a classroom business this year. She’s not alone: Ryan runs a coffee house at his school and shared a handful of pragmatic lessons from the field—details you won’t find in a how‑to checklist but that will save a first‑year teacher headaches:
Check deliveries visually (a tiny pebble in a bag once jammed a grinder).
Unplug and clean machines when things clog—distilled or filtered water reduces mineral buildup.
Know basics of milk chemistry: whole milk froths differently than oat or skim for latte art.
Those granular failures (grinder jams, hidden pebbles, calcified pipes) are teaching moments. Tisha’s takeaway: expect the surprises and build troubleshooting into the unit—students run the business, so troubleshooting becomes part of the curriculum.
Podcasting, Canva, and classroom reach
Tisha started the Make Learning Magical podcast in the car—literally recording early episodes on Anchor.app while driving to Portland. From there she learned microphones, editing, and when to do solo vs. guest episodes. She also worked as a Canva learning consultant and co‑hosted Spark Joy and EDU with Liz Boswick.
Those side projects feed her classroom practice in two ways: they force distillation (what’s the one teaching move that matters?) and they create resources teachers can adapt. Her books include Make Learning Magical and Make Learning Magical for the CTE Classroom; both are in circulation among Ryan’s culinary staff right now.
Practical scaffolds you can steal tomorrow
A few classroom moves Tisha described that you can apply without new budgets:
Open the room at lunch and let students play educational games you’ve retooled—low stakes but high engagement.
Build a simple rotation where a game acts as a “hook” (Plinko → lab assignment) rather than the whole lesson.
Move some tactile games to digital versions for pacing control (Scramble as Canva slides worked better than the physical version in Ryan’s classes).
The honest teacher confessions that matter
Tisha and Ryan traded a steady string of candid moments: lessons that worked for years can stumble, a project that flops in one year may thrive the next, and sometimes the best learning comes from shared failure. Tisha’s line—“My magic is not your magic”—is not a distancing move. It’s a reminder that a technique’s value lies in the adaptation, not the copy.
If you want the nitty‑gritty—how Tommy hid Easter eggs in Dragon Smart, the exact Plinko setups Tisha uses for labs, or the coffee‑shop troubleshooting checklist—give the full conversation a listen. It’s practical, generous, and full of classroom-sized experiments you can try this semester.