Transcript
Speaker: Hello, welcome to Things Fall Apart at the Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: I'm Chris.
Speaker: Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker: A special thank you to our patrons that make this podcast possible, two of which are Mike Laughlin and Skylar Prim.
Speaker: Thanks for keeping us afloat.
Speaker: You can find all of our podcasts, resources for free for educators, as well as all of our thoughts on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: You can also find a link to our Patreon to support us and keep us going.
Speaker: Thanks in advance.
Speaker: Our resource, releasing at the end of this month,
Speaker: details gradeless assessment.
Speaker: Everything from the benefits to going gradeless, to a plethora of different assessment options, as well as ways to convert into actual grades of a school or district requires it.
Speaker: So look out for that.
Speaker: The resource we just released, called Don't Get the Wrong Idea, explores different myths and misconceptions that students have, such as how to get into college or the value of an SAT score.
Speaker: You can find that resource for students on our website.
Speaker: Mandy Freilich is the director of innovation and technology in the Ripon Area School District in Wisconsin and author of The Fire Within, Lessons from Defeat that have Ignited a Passion for Learning.
Speaker: This collection of stories from educators describes how adversity is met with strength and everyone grows as a result.
Speaker: Furthermore, Mandy is a Google for Education certified teacher and ambassador for Canvas LMS, a keynote speaker, presenter, and professional development lead.
Speaker: Thanks for coming on.
Speaker: I appreciate you giving up your time.
Speaker: I'm excited to talk to you about your book.
Speaker: So let's just start off with this first question just to kind of see where the discussion takes us.
Speaker: So it features 11 different stories from 11 different educators, including your own.
Speaker: And at the beginning, you reminisce on why you began the book.
Speaker: You talk about how there's a lot of responsibility on a teacher's shoulders, including your own.
Speaker: And therefore, when we have struggles, it's overwhelming.
Speaker: It makes us vulnerable.
Speaker: Can you just go into further detail about what you hope people take away from the book?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So there's a few things as people read the book that I hope they take away.
Speaker: And I really do think that people read it from, you know, a couple of different kinds of lenses.
Speaker: Well, one might be that they've actually gone through something like this, and one might be that they actually haven't.
Speaker: And so I think in those two with those two different lenses, they're going to get very different things out of the book.
Speaker: But overall, you know, I really want people to have the courage to tell their own story and to work on destigmatizing mental health issues.
Speaker: Um, you know, their story is their story, regardless of if they've gone through trauma or adversity or neither, which I don't know if there's many people that haven't, but, uh, you know, um, whether they've, you know, they've gone through that, their stories are different, but all of their stories make up who they are.
Speaker: And, um, usually, uh, stories can involve whether it's their own or somebody else's mental health.
Speaker: So really working on destigmatizing that.
Speaker: So we know it's okay to, to talk about it.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Another takeaway would be empathy for kids and just other adults going through these same struggles.
Speaker: So I was very cognizant of my story and trying to allow people into kind of the way my head worked when, you know, things were happening or what I was thinking.
Speaker: And I know a lot of the other contributors did as well.
Speaker: And so for me, I
Speaker: the cognitive piece of knowing what somebody's thinking is really powerful and knowing how they're, or how or why they're reacting.
Speaker: Um, and also can, you know, develop that empathy as well.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: Not all the stories are relatable to kids.
Speaker: I mean, there's obviously a professional adversity in there as well, which wouldn't be the same.
Speaker: But overall, kind of knowing that our kids are going through these stories as well.
Speaker: Knowing that we're not alone, that it's been just incredible how many people who have reached out to me and I know to the other contributors as well and have said,
Speaker: Your story is just the mere image of mine.
Speaker: And for so many years, I lived with this.
Speaker: I'm totally alone.
Speaker: I can't talk about it because nobody's going to understand how I feel.
Speaker: And here I said it.
Speaker: And now all these people are like, oh, my gosh, the same thing.
Speaker: You know, the same things happened to me.
Speaker: I felt these same things.
Speaker: And it's just it's made me feel less different.
Speaker: Um, and, and, you know, kind of created a community around that.
Speaker: Um, and, you know, there's, there's the piece in the book about how the brain works, um, working on trauma and mindfulness.
Speaker: And then I really want to make people aware of secondary traumatic stress and then hope, um, you know, hope that things can get better and that we can take, um, take positive pieces out of even, you know, the darkest things that happen to us.
Speaker: Yeah, and just to ensure that everyone listening kind of gets what's going on, the book is basically stories of you and other educators going through probably some of the darkest moments and how they've kind of affected your lives, recollecting on different issues of mental health and how they stem from serious problems, whether it be from parents or bullying in school or even from teachers and how that's affected people.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
Speaker: And I think there's a shocking number of people that are experiencing issues like this that are not seeking help or are just kind of holding it in because it's not something that people want to talk about, even though it's a major issue.
Speaker: And schools are extra guilty of this because schooling already...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: what I would consider to be like shallow mindfulness practice.
Speaker: So like doing yoga in the classroom, for example, I'm not saying that's bad, but it's not an overall philosophical look at the major issue, which is why are the kids not happy to begin with?
Speaker: And what structural changes can we make to school in order to make it more
Speaker: Well, part of it's bearable, but also more loving, which school should be that kind of thing.
Speaker: You have to go there.
Speaker: It's not meant to be a prison, right?
Speaker: It's meant to be something that you enjoy doing.
Speaker: And that's not going to get solved if everyone just pretends everything's okay for everyone.
Speaker: You know, it's sad, but it's true.
Speaker: that anxiety and depression rates are rising, especially amongst teenagers and young adults.
Speaker: And there's a lot of different reasons why this might be the case.
Speaker: People point to social media, you're increasingly connected, but you're also more disconnected because you're not having that person to person moment.
Speaker: You also have the political landscape is not going too great.
Speaker: And there's just a lack of focus on mental health issues in general.
Speaker: There's that stigma that exists.
Speaker: So based off your own experiences, you've already alluded to this.
Speaker: Do you think it's easier than to talk to students and relate to the problems that they're going through based on the trauma that you've suffered?
Speaker: Yeah, I really do.
Speaker: And also adults with with mental health issues as well.
Speaker: And people, I feel a little bit like people who have gone through a very traumatic experience have this sort of like beacon that brings them together.
Speaker: And a lot of times I'll find myself becoming friends with somebody who, when digging deeper, we have very similar circumstances.
Speaker: But it is easier for me to talk to anybody with those things because I know the right words to say.
Speaker: I know that assuming that, you know, like I've said it before, if you have anxiety, I know telling you not to be nervous is not going to help.
Speaker: You know, I also know that helping people find ways to self-regulate is super important.
Speaker: People need strategies to deal with these things.
Speaker: And in part of the issue in dealing with these things for, you know, teachers and educators is that
Speaker: we are not trained to deal with these.
Speaker: We're not psychologists.
Speaker: We're not counselors.
Speaker: And, and we really don't even know how to provide such personal strategies for kids.
Speaker: And I agree.
Speaker: I think, I think yoga, breathing and those types of things are very, very low level of mindfulness.
Speaker: However, I think we just, we have not provided people with what they need in order to do those things in the classroom.
Speaker: And this year, our school district actually hired a part-time mindfulness coach.
Speaker: She went for a certification.
Speaker: We spent quite a bit of money on getting her certified.
Speaker: And she's going to be part-time in the classroom, part-time mindfulness coach.
Speaker: And I'm really interested to see what she brings, because I have not personally been in her classroom since she had started the certification, but I have heard that the difference in her classroom is just...
Speaker: it's very, very, very different from before till after she has implemented the mindfulness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And talking to the kids, I mean, like I said, I just know the right words to say.
Speaker: I mean, not all the time.
Speaker: We're not, none of us are perfect all the time, but for the most part, I can.
Speaker: I had a friend of mine recently whose sister tried to commit suicide and she was obviously distraught and didn't, you know, went through all of those kinds of
Speaker: feelings of what was she thinking and how could she do this?
Speaker: And, and, and so I, I tried to explain to her in the most academic way possible, how some like how my brain thinks of that kind of thing, you know, how my brain works.
Speaker: And it's, it's this constant battle between the logical and emotional.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And I hope that by being able to work really hard in voicing how my brain works, that that helps other people understand the way their own bodies are working.
Speaker: To be completely honest, it's a tough read in a sense, not because it's difficult to understand, but because it's so emotionally heavy.
Speaker: I mean, these are things that we need to talk about, but at the same time,
Speaker: The reason why people don't usually want to talk about them is it's hard, right?
Speaker: It's harder than just reading a bunch of books and studying the benefits of mindfulness.
Speaker: You have to actually emotionally take in what other people are going through because you can't really empathize until you really know the traumatic events that exist, especially if you're not someone who has
Speaker: had as rough as a situation as many people have gone through in your book or you know as many many many students go through and training someone to do that in a traditional PD environment
Speaker: seems like it would be quite difficult to do like it would be very difficult to lecture on uh or complete a worksheet on true mindfulness you'd almost have to hear it from someone someone's personal experience which is what you're doing in your book so it's a good read uh but it's one of those things where it almost has to go back to teacher training and what is the goal of the teacher right and
Speaker: In my view and in our organization's view, the goal of the teacher isn't to be the content distributor.
Speaker: Their goal is to be the mentor or the coach or the guide.
Speaker: They don't necessarily need to really know that much content information.
Speaker: More so, they need to know how to learn and how to help people.
Speaker: Their goal is to be there to be the facilitator, which is so shockingly different than the traditional model of teaching, which would be someone giving a quiz every single Friday and people just kind of along for the ride.
Speaker: And especially as our world has become increasingly easy to find information on the fly…
Speaker: That's becoming less and less relevant to becoming a memorizer of facts.
Speaker: We need people that are emotionally capable to handle working with students almost like maybe non-certified guidance counselors in a way, especially since at many points, if you are a teacher practicing mindfulness in the classroom or very open emotionally, you're
Speaker: You tend to be many students guidance counselors for better or for worse.
Speaker: I mean, I've had I'm sure you've had as well plenty of experiences with students coming in and having to deal with some pretty serious issues and just being like, well, I'll try my best to get to the guidance counselor.
Speaker: as soon as I can, at least, not because I don't love them, but because that terrifies me.
Speaker: But, you know, it's important that we're able to at least try to help people because that's the human beings.
Speaker: Of course, you know, we would expect that we could help people in general.
Speaker: So I don't want to like tell your story because I think it's kind of awkward given that, you know, you're here.
Speaker: It's just kind of it's kind of a weird thing to do.
Speaker: But in summary, you had a lot of emotional issues growing up because of an abusive family or a family member.
Speaker: And there's a point in your book where you talk about when you work with adults, like coworkers, for example, you don't want them to be emotional or wildly like you like them to be very stable.
Speaker: And you incorporate that into your classroom as well.
Speaker: You want to be like that, you know, the solid thing that people can latch on to.
Speaker: And that's pretty common teaching strategy.
Speaker: People always say that you're supposed to kind of be the face of what you want to do.
Speaker: But I brought in this quote, and I sent it to you beforehand, but it's from John Holt.
Speaker: And John Holt was, for anyone that's not familiar, a guy in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s who was a huge part of the unschooling movement.
Speaker: He was hypercritical traditional education, and he said a lot of really interesting things.
Speaker: And a quote from his book, which is from How Children Fail, is almost not necessarily the antithesis of that idea, but I'll kind of let you hear your thoughts on this.
Speaker: So he says,
Speaker: There's a paradox here.
Speaker: Many of the adults who hide themselves from children, pretending to be some idealized notion of quote-unquote teacher, might well say they do this in order to make themselves consistent and predictable to children.
Speaker: The real me, they might say, is capricious, moody, up one day and down the next.
Speaker: It's too hard for the child to have to deal with that changeable, unpredictable, real person.
Speaker: So instead, I will give them an invented rule following and therefore...
Speaker: wholly predictable person.
Speaker: And it works exactly backwards.
Speaker: Children, unless they are very unlucky and live at home with adults pretending to be model parents, which may be a growing trend, are used to living with real, capricious, up-to-one-day and down-one-day adults, and with their sharpness of observation and keenness of mind, they learn how to predict these strange, huge creatures and how to read all their confusing signs.
Speaker: So, you know, in summary, he's basically talking about how
Speaker: being that kind of what he would say robotic kind of singular mood teacher actually does students at a service.
Speaker: What are your thoughts on, on that quote?
Speaker: Uh, well, I love this quote for so many reasons.
Speaker: Um, and, and I think it's true.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I don't think there's anything wrong with having the desire to be the one constant stable thing in some kids' lives.
Speaker: You know, the reasons why we keep the mental health issues under wraps, I mean, it's really done with the best of intentions.
Speaker: I think that there are ways to show kids your emotional side without dragging them into some of the
Speaker: symptoms of a mental health disorder.
Speaker: You know, there are ways to still show your emotion, age appropriately to the kids without showing that.
Speaker: You know, if you're working with little ones, well, I'm very, very nervous today.
Speaker: I feel like today I might need to take some extra deep breaths, you know, because my dog isn't feeling well.
Speaker: And so I'm just a little feeling nervous about that today.
Speaker: Obviously, age appropriately.
Speaker: But I always say that, you know, I have these core beliefs about education that I've kind of developed over time.
Speaker: And one of them is that we need to model the behavior that we want to see.
Speaker: And some might interpret that as being like that, that kind of no emotion, robotic, being calm, cool, collected, you know, organized, always smiling and happy as being what we want to see.
Speaker: But what I really want to see is
Speaker: is the ability to self-regulate.
Speaker: And I want kids to monitor their feelings.
Speaker: I want them to have strategies to deal with those feelings.
Speaker: They need to know when to talk to somebody and to be honest about what they're thinking.
Speaker: And the only way that they're going to do that is if the teacher is modeling that.
Speaker: And the kids are unbelievably smart and sensitive to the people around them.
Speaker: And they're going to be able to spot a phony a mile away.
Speaker: You know, but there, there, it's a, it's a balance.
Speaker: It's a pendulum.
Speaker: You know, it's, you can't just be on one side where you're robotic and, and running, you know, there needs to be emotion and education.
Speaker: It's why most of us got.
Speaker: got into it is because we loved learning.
Speaker: We loved kids.
Speaker: But it also can't be the completely emotional side of a mental health issue as well, where you're actually dragging the kids down, obviously.
Speaker: So it does need to be that balanced.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that philosophy.
Speaker: I think that a lot of it just comes down to transparency.
Speaker: I know personally when I was in school, I remember consistently the teachers that were the most robotic, the ones that were always kind of on it, those were actually not the teachers I typically enjoyed having because one, they tended to be kind of boring.
Speaker: They also tended to be, they just felt non-authentic.
Speaker: Like there's something very humanizing about going in front of your classroom and saying,
Speaker: It doesn't have to be anything crazy.
Speaker: Just like, I'm tired today.
Speaker: We're going to do this because I'm tired.
Speaker: Like that might sound like you're being a quote unquote bad teacher.
Speaker: But to me, that's just being a person.
Speaker: Like you don't have to be this superhero.
Speaker: You're someone who is relating to them as a fellow human being.
Speaker: And it sounds so obvious to me in my mind.
Speaker: But at the same time, we've kind of held teachers on this pedestal.
Speaker: You talk about this in the book as well.
Speaker: that they can't show any emotion whatsoever because if they do, it's weakness.
Speaker: And if you're the kind of person that's running your classroom in the sense that you're the authoritative ruler and you show weakness, that's going to be a big deal.
Speaker: Kids are going to revolt.
Speaker: But if you are someone who is constantly human, and I'm not saying every single day you're going to go in and be like, we're doing worksheets today, guys, because I'm tired all the time.
Speaker: That's going to be ridiculous, right?
Speaker: But there is a certain place for showcasing some form of emotion as well.
Speaker: And I want to add this on those teachers that tend to always be on it.
Speaker: The days where they're not on it and you catch them on a bad day tend to be very destabilizing.
Speaker: I remember so many times those were always the teachers that had anger management problems.
Speaker: And, you know, it'd be like happy smiles, happy smiles, happy smiles.
Speaker: And then like week 30, the teacher would just flip out of nowhere.
Speaker: And that was like almost traumatizing.
Speaker: Like I remember like it was just like, I don't know like what to expect from you anymore, as opposed to, you know, the teacher that intentionally distances themselves and say, like, you know, you guys are gonna do this on your own today, which is that's okay to me.
Speaker: Like that just makes sense.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And well, and when I taught, so I taught elementary school and, and there were times where I distinctly remember, you know, we would be going through a really tough math lesson.
Speaker: And let's face it, if it's tough for the kids, it's usually tough for us too.
Speaker: Like math was not my strong suit.
Speaker: And we would go through a tough math lesson.
Speaker: I'd be like, all right, guys, I need a break from this.
Speaker: Let's go play kickball for half an hour.
Speaker: And we would go play kickball.
Speaker: And every single time, I never regretted doing it.
Speaker: But every time I would feel guilty afterward, I'd be like, shoot, now I'm behind in my math lesson.
Speaker: How am I going to catch this up?
Speaker: What if the kids didn't get what they needed?
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: I always felt guilty about it because the overall feeling is you keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.
Speaker: You never take those breaks.
Speaker: But, you know, I loved laughing with my kids.
Speaker: That was one of my favorite things about teaching.
Speaker: And you can't do that when you have put yourself on such a
Speaker: Even if your persona that you've developed is happy, happy, happy, are you seriously happy all that time?
Speaker: I wanted to be honest enough with my kids that they knew that if I needed help in a moment, that I needed to take that moment for myself.
Speaker: And every single time, without fail, my kids were there for me.
Speaker: above and beyond any adult that was around me, you know, and they, they understood it and were empathetic and were sweet and kind.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: You know, and like I said, that's those connections.
Speaker: That's why I got into teaching.
Speaker: The idea that you just brought up of that philosophy of, quote unquote, wasting time is incredibly valuable.
Speaker: I mean, any research will show you that especially young children and adults or adolescents, I mean, need those breaks as well as adults.
Speaker: in order to learn properly the kids will learn more academics if you give them more breaks right like you you should be considering play as a core component of your classroom and people conflate that a lot of times with saying like well i play review games or uh you know my kids are up and around uh doing uh what are they called the uh
Speaker: I can't remember what it's called, like when there's posters on the wall and like you walk around and you take notes on them or whatever.
Speaker: So, you know, like there's this idea of like conflating being active in the class and taking breaks with something that's truly academic.
Speaker: There couldn't be something further than the truth.
Speaker: Going outside and just being outside for the heck of it or playing a game or spending a plethora of days on team building exercises and playing games with each other beyond just the first three days of school.
Speaker: I don't understand why a teacher would collect a note card with all these cool things that kids love to do on the first day of school.
Speaker: And then a month in, no one knows what ever happened to those note cards because nothing of that's ever coming up in the class.
Speaker: It's just business as usual.
Speaker: And if you're going to develop a true relationship with a child, you have to actually do things that people do in relationships.
Speaker: A parent is not constantly drilling their kid on what to do in their lives.
Speaker: They spend quality time with them.
Speaker: It would make sense that a teacher who is there for a pretty sizable amount of a child's life would be spending that time truly getting to know them through these experiences.
Speaker: And that sounds like a very...
Speaker: academic way of putting it.
Speaker: Because I mean, push comes to shove, you're just being a person.
Speaker: Again, it's just that's what people do.
Speaker: It shouldn't be something out of the ordinary for that occurring.
Speaker: I think it's I think it's interesting, though, you know, have you heard of the Neuralink by Elon Musk?
Speaker: Kind of, but go ahead.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I had I was speaking with some teachers and I had brought up
Speaker: this Neuralink that Elon Musk has come up with.
Speaker: And when I learned about it, it's been about a year now.
Speaker: It was already established and everything.
Speaker: It's a growing company.
Speaker: And what he wants to do is he wants to put a chip
Speaker: in the brains of people who, um, he wants to start out with people who have disabilities in order to give them some of their functionality back that they've lost, but eventually put it in, in, you know, everybody's brain and it, and it essentially works as a computer.
Speaker: And one of his reasonings is that, um, he feels like artificial intelligence is going to grow so quickly.
Speaker: He wants to give humans, the human race, a chance to compete with it.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: I had and he says, you know, everyone's like, oh, 30 years out.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Eight years.
Speaker: I would available for general public in eight years.
Speaker: Now, I don't know if this will really happen or not.
Speaker: The guy's pretty smart, so I don't put much past him.
Speaker: But I had brought this up with my some of my teachers.
Speaker: And their first reaction to that was, well, teachers will become extinct.
Speaker: Nobody, you know, nobody will need them anymore.
Speaker: And I thought to myself, you know, if your reaction is that once kids know all the content, teachers will be obsolete.
Speaker: What are you doing right now to focus on kids' social, emotional well-being?
Speaker: Like, do you focus so heavily on content that you really wouldn't know what to do if kids had a computer in their brains?
Speaker: Because right now, most of them have computers in their hands.
Speaker: So for me, you know, my kind of reaction to that, well,
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: I because I get to work on, you know, deeper thinking skills and I get to work on relationships and social emotional stuff and and all of those things that computers can't teach us.
Speaker: And I don't have to teach them the facts anymore.
Speaker: That's you know, that's amazing.
Speaker: But if your first reaction to that is nobody will need me, then it makes me question what your focus is in your classroom.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a fascinating take.
Speaker: Yeah, that's very interesting.
Speaker: For some reason, I can't get past the, I don't know if you've seen Altered Carbon on Netflix, but it's kind of a dystopian reality of what that could potentially bring, but that has nothing to do with what you're talking about.
Speaker: Just, I can't get that idea out of my head.
Speaker: There's a lot of dark consequences that could come from us, like starting to like download Matrix style ideas, but regardless, that was a good point.
Speaker: So yeah, then I'm curious then,
Speaker: how we actually incorporate these techniques in the classroom.
Speaker: Because obviously, I don't personally think that most teachers do this in a devious or nefarious manner.
Speaker: I think that most of them don't understand that either one, that's not their role, and they don't feel like it should be, or two, they don't really know what to do, and they're scared of doing it, myself included.
Speaker: I mean, there's been many times where there's been issues where I've just
Speaker: you know, chickened out because it's scary.
Speaker: Like a kid is losing it or crying or mad or upset.
Speaker: Your first instinct as an educator is to just send them to the guidance counselor and hope for the best and cross your fingers and then never talk about it again.
Speaker: Whereas there are a lot of techniques that you can use in your classroom to get people to open up emotionally beyond just that logical thing that you're trying to get out normally.
Speaker: And the first thing I thought of
Speaker: and it's an activity I've done in my class many times, is an activity from Ashanti branch and it's featured in The Mask You Live In, which is also on Netflix, the documentary is really good.
Speaker: It's all about recognizing and empowering specifically male students, the documentary that could be used for anyone.
Speaker: And the activity is students write on this mask they've created out of paper
Speaker: on one side how they want the world to view them.
Speaker: So typically kids will write like cool or nice or whatever.
Speaker: And on the other side,
Speaker: they tell them to write down anonymously words that they are scared of people knowing about them or things they don't want the world to see.
Speaker: And then they crumple it up, they throw it randomly, and kids pick it up and they read both the things that they want to see and things that they don't want to see.
Speaker: And usually, and I've done this in my class many times,
Speaker: 99% of students have something very – something that you typically want to talk about on that other side of that sheet of paper.
Speaker: And it's very moving, but it's also very depressing to see all the horrible things either students think about themselves or the things that have happened to them or just in general the trauma that exists across human life.
Speaker: I'm curious then –
Speaker: Practices such as that, are they good to introduce into the classroom?
Speaker: Like, are there specific ways that we should address emotional well-being without making the problem worse, per se?
Speaker: So I'm certainly no expert on SEL.
Speaker: Most of my expertise comes from just experiencing it.
Speaker: I think there's a few things that can be done.
Speaker: The first is just kind of stepping back
Speaker: into the teacher role, teachers need to be just as cognizant about what's going on with them as they are with their students because they cannot address the SEL requirements of the kids until they're taking care of themselves.
Speaker: If we are burnt out, if we have secondary traumatic stress, if we are going through some sort of adversity that we're dealing with, it's very, very difficult to then take on somebody else's as well.
Speaker: Um, so I think that that's one of the most important things, um, actually that can be done in a classroom as a teacher, making sure that they are taking care of themselves.
Speaker: As far as the kids go, one of the things that I know that I was guilty of as a teacher and, and since I've left the classroom, I've learned so much.
Speaker: I actually left the classroom because I was burnt out.
Speaker: Um, and, and, but I didn't know it.
Speaker: I didn't know that's what it was.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: I've learned so much since then and in reflecting on some of the things I did, I would do anything to go back and change the little itty bitty moments that I remember brushing a kid off.
Speaker: where I had one year in particular where I had girls that were very, you know, they were kind of known as the drama girls, right?
Speaker: And like one whole entire class of girls who it was, she was looking at me from across the room, tell her to stop looking at me, you know, she was giving me the evil eye, she took my book, you know, all of these kinds of things.
Speaker: And then it would continue out on the playground and they would come in
Speaker: And there were many, many times that I did something like this.
Speaker: So-and-so, what happened?
Speaker: So-and-so, what happened?
Speaker: Okay, you know you shouldn't do that, and you know you shouldn't do that.
Speaker: Say you're sorry.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And it was because, and why?
Speaker: Because I had to get onto the math lesson or I had to, you know, I had a million other things to do.
Speaker: I had 10 kids waiting to talk to me and I just needed it to be done quickly.
Speaker: But it's those little things that we do like that, they impact kids forever and ever.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And, and essentially what I did there is I not only blew off their concerns, I made them feel unimportant.
Speaker: I didn't at all solve their issue.
Speaker: I did not teach them how to work through it.
Speaker: I did not acknowledge the hurt that they felt because we were adults and I can't tell you how many times I've heard adults say, well, just wait until they have grown up problems, you know, but
Speaker: perception really is reality and, and, and what they're perceiving their reality to be is all wrapped up in their friends and, and, and what their world is, you know, and blowing those kinds of things off.
Speaker: I was, I was definitely not helping, helping the situation because they interpreted that to be a real issue at the time.
Speaker: Um, and one of the, like, I, I,
Speaker: use this as kind of an example.
Speaker: I'll never forget when I was, I was in sixth grade and this is what I try to do.
Speaker: I try to remember, I try to put myself back to when I was there, you know, um, when I was in sixth grade, I was kind of awkward and, and I went into a new school and I didn't have a lot of friends and these girls kind of, um, adopted me as their own.
Speaker: And, um, and I felt so lucky to have these particular girls cause they were funny.
Speaker: And, and at one point in sixth grade, one of them pulled me aside and she said, um,
Speaker: Mandy, I need to take a moment to help to, you know, to teach you how to tight roll your pants.
Speaker: And, and she, and she showed me that kindness.
Speaker: She helped me tight roll my pants.
Speaker: And, and, you know, it's, it's,
Speaker: it's those little itty bitty things.
Speaker: And now it's not a girl and not another teacher, but a teacher also didn't come up to us and say, what are you doing?
Speaker: You know, and go sit down and, and you guys don't need to be talking right now.
Speaker: The teacher also didn't do that.
Speaker: So it's sometimes those little things that we do and do not do that make the biggest difference in kids, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's, there's so much to unpack there.
Speaker: I love that notion of people think that this is a grandiose idea,
Speaker: But a lot of it's common sense.
Speaker: I know in one of the stories, I can't recall the specific name, but one of the adults remembers as a student a situation where I believe it was where a teacher made them present in front of the class their failing grade, the fact that they did poorly and how that was very traumatic to them.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: A lot of teachers, for better or for worse, believe that you learn from failure in a very dark way.
Speaker: There's a big difference between acknowledging that you're not doing things well versus embarrassing someone to do better.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And there's that mentality of it's.
Speaker: I don't want to overgeneralize, but there's that coach mentality of making someone do it because when they were a kid, they just got pushed through their problems.
Speaker: And that's not really truly how it works because sadly, a lot of those people that went through those situations have a lot of traumatic problems.
Speaker: They just don't talk about them because they're too macho or they just want to keep it within.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And I realize it's a giant overarching statement about what occurs, but there are a lot of situations in school.
Speaker: I remember so many times in middle and high school where myself or a friend or just anyone in my class was called out or singled out or...
Speaker: embarrassed because of something they were doing, which in retrospect was not a big deal at all, but because the teacher felt so in control and so just autonomous over their classroom that
Speaker: They wanted to demean others.
Speaker: And I don't know if that was intentional, but they just were it's again that control factor in that in that way that they want to constantly move on to that next thing because there's that constant rush coupled with probably their own burnout and unlikeliness of enjoying their job much that day.
Speaker: It all just kind of manifests itself into a major problem that a lot of students and teachers are facing.
Speaker: And the other thing you said, which I thought was a really good point, was that teachers feel really burned out because of all the things that they're doing.
Speaker: And because of that, the problems that they might have might exacerbate.
Speaker: They might, one, quit, or two, become more emotionally unstable amongst their students.
Speaker: They might just become very robotic and try to hide it, or they might lash out more, become more of a dictator, because they're just kind of done with it.
Speaker: They're just, you know, their flame has extinguished.
Speaker: They no longer want to go through all those motions because they think it's too much.
Speaker: And ironically, a lot of the ways in which schools are trying to push for academic achievement are making teachers that are great teachers leave.
Speaker: For example, the first thing that comes to mind is grading.
Speaker: To me, grading is not really assessment.
Speaker: They're very much different from each other.
Speaker: And the teacher that spends every single day grading 100 papers and never has any time for themselves is doing themselves and their students a disservice.
Speaker: It's not making their kids necessarily amazing learners.
Speaker: And it's certainly putting a lot of pressure on the teacher.
Speaker: To me, it's not normal at all for a teacher to go home and have hours of work to do.
Speaker: They might push themselves to do that because they're just interested in their craft.
Speaker: But it shouldn't be a requirement that every single day I go home and spend three or four hours on grading things.
Speaker: It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker: And I think that
Speaker: I would argue a majority of teachers feel like they should be doing that because the narrative has been put forth that teachers should be doing that or else you're a bad teacher.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And that seems to be like a, just a major overarching problem that connects itself very heavily to emotional and social wellbeing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, and, and the other thing too, you know, is that we, um, I have this, I have this other book coming out later that it's, it's called the hierarchy of needs for innovation and divergent thinking.
Speaker: And, and basically what it is, is it's, um,
Speaker: It's a structure, an organizational structure to give teachers a better shot at being innovative because I think that they have these teachers so much on their plates, but we add more by not having the structures in place for them to be able to teach, right?
Speaker: We've got, you know, if you walk into a school that has a really negative culture and, you know, a really negative climate and the culture is just not
Speaker: It's not very strong.
Speaker: And you're trying to work in that environment where you're listening to teachers complain about kids and you're listening, you know that your administrator is not supporting you.
Speaker: You have all these other things going on in your head that's taking up kind of the brain space that you need to take care of other things.
Speaker: And I think that goes for personally as well.
Speaker: If you are dealing with all of these other things,
Speaker: all of these other issues that, that actually could be resolved, um, in, you know, climate and culture and leadership and things like that, you're not taking the time to deal with personal issues or you're working extra to make up for that, or, um, you're taking on extra duties in order to, to kind of balance that out.
Speaker: And it's, it's just not giving you the headspace to deal with other things.
Speaker: So, um, absolutely.
Speaker: I think that's true.
Speaker: And, and one of the, one of the major, um,
Speaker: symptoms of true burnout is detachment from the things you love.
Speaker: So it makes sense that if you, if you love teaching and it's, what's burning you out, you're going to detach from it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that sounds fascinating.
Speaker: We'll have to have you back on and talk about that book when it comes out.
Speaker: Cause that sounds absolutely incredible.
Speaker: Thanks in advance.
Speaker: I want to move into, really quickly, the criticism I feel like would be most applicable to the book.
Speaker: And a lot of times when people talk about talking about depression or anxiety or even suicide, people conflate that with almost –
Speaker: glorifying mental illness.
Speaker: And what I mean by that is people are probably familiar with when 13 Reasons Why came out, there was studies that somewhat showed a correlation to increased suicide rates or increased numbers of diagnosed depression because people were either acting out their sadness because it kind of related to them in a way or
Speaker: Or because people started to talk about these problems, they were concerned that they might be more prone to act on them because it's coming to the forefront.
Speaker: So what would be kind of the response to that concern that the more we talk about emotional issues, the more likely those emotional issues might well up?
Speaker: So I guess I would question whether is it that there's more emotional issues or is that that people are becoming more aware and so they're then asking for help or seeking help or doing, you know, something to act out on that.
Speaker: And, you know, it's kind of the same thing.
Speaker: Like when we started diagnosing autism, right?
Speaker: All of a sudden there was this huge spike in kids' lives.
Speaker: diagnosed with autism?
Speaker: Well, were there more kids with autism or were there more diagnoses of the issue because we knew what it was and we talked about it?
Speaker: You know, I don't really know, but I think, I do think that it's really important for people to understand that they're not alone.
Speaker: I think people often
Speaker: who have mental illness feel like their feelings are weird.
Speaker: Um, and, and I can tell you that I've got, I have thoughts run through my brain all the time that even I think to myself, seriously, like, that's what you're thinking about right now, you know?
Speaker: Um, and, and I deal with it myself, so I, I should expect those things to,
Speaker: I really think that it's about bringing awareness to those types of thoughts and feelings and making sure that people understand that they're not alone and that there is help and that it is a thing.
Speaker: We can't hide this anymore.
Speaker: If I had a broken leg and I tried hiding it from people,
Speaker: broken leg.
Speaker: I don't understand.
Speaker: It's important for people to understand it's a medical diagnosis.
Speaker: People need help for this.
Speaker: And the more that we try to push it under the rug, the less likely that people are going to get the help they need.
Speaker: So I'm certainly not trying to sensationalize mental health issues.
Speaker: But I do think that especially in education, it has been pushed under the rug for so long and we are going to have an entire generation of both kids and teachers.
Speaker: who have these issues, who just don't know what to do with them because we've spent so long not talking about them.
Speaker: I agree wholeheartedly.
Speaker: I would assume personally that the majority of young adults suffer from some form of mental crisis in some way, shape or form, because there's just so many different things to be concerned with.
Speaker: You would just imagine that at some point someone has suffered some form of trauma.
Speaker: And if they haven't, I would imagine that that amount of structure that they would always be okay would lead to some other emotional problems of some sort.
Speaker: Because, you know, too much of a good thing can sometimes be a bad thing as well.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I do, I do really, really, one of the things that I emphasize is that
Speaker: especially when it comes to trauma and adversity and things like that.
Speaker: That is completely perception.
Speaker: You know, it's in and.
Speaker: their perception, again, is their reality.
Speaker: And it is not our job to judge whether something should or should not be traumatic.
Speaker: It is simply our job to shift their perception, you know, to try to help them with that, to try to shift their perception to see that maybe, you know,
Speaker: Maybe they need help or maybe they need strategies or or maybe maybe it wasn't maybe give them facts so that it wasn't really what they thought.
Speaker: But it's not our job to tell them they're they're right or they're wrong.
Speaker: That to me should be the number one qualifier for a teacher should be that they love their students.
Speaker: And that's a strong word choice, but I do think that does really matter.
Speaker: There's a major difference between a teacher that went into the profession because they think that their content is so important that everyone has to know it versus...
Speaker: someone who goes in because they really want to help kids that's a giant difference um and you know there's a there's a place for people that are very much content focused and i would argue that would be either professors or maybe even like a curriculum designer but not someone who is just instilling upon the minds of others that banking model of education where you think
Speaker: Your sole goal is to invest in students for this greater outcome instead of seeing them as a whole person that I guess would be growth mindset way of looking at it in general.
Speaker: What then do you feel is the overall next step, the next goal for teachers in the classroom for this mindfulness thing?
Speaker: What resources would they use?
Speaker: What technique could they incorporate tomorrow?
Speaker: What could they take away from this book or this podcast even that could make them better at what they're already doing?
Speaker: I really, really want educators to begin to figure out
Speaker: you know, how to regulate their own emotions and how to be self, you know, self regulators and watch for changes in how they feel so that they can catch things early.
Speaker: Because I do feel like I am 100% that everything we do is for students.
Speaker: But in order to get there, we have to take care of ourselves.
Speaker: And we have ignored that for a really, really long time.
Speaker: And so being aware of things like
Speaker: how personal and professional adversity, just adversity, not necessarily trauma, can affect the way you're thinking about your job or being aware, reading about burnout.
Speaker: I had this absolutely amazing interview with this brand new teacher.
Speaker: She was incredible and we were so excited to get her into our district.
Speaker: But the one thing that she said in her interview is she said, I know about burnout and I love my job so much that I don't believe I will ever have it.
Speaker: And very naive.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And and I thought, well, that would be something her her mama would probably be super proud of.
Speaker: It was a red flag for me because I was I was so there.
Speaker: I loved teaching and I never, ever thought there was any way that burnout would happen to me.
Speaker: And so just making sure that they understand that burnout is a true thing.
Speaker: It's an actual thing.
Speaker: It's not just like being in a meeting too long, you know, and recognizing the effects from that.
Speaker: And then also the secondary traumatic stress is really important.
Speaker: Knowing that just working with kids who have been through traumatic experiences can bring on, you know, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder is important.
Speaker: Just kind of that idea where knowledge is power and making sure that you're listening to your body and that you know what the effects of some of these are.
Speaker: One thing that makes me think of as well, obviously start with self-regulation as you're saying, but I think too about how teachers regulate their emotions towards students.
Speaker: Like not seeing students' actions as malicious automatically is
Speaker: For example, a student is late to class.
Speaker: That does not mean that they are out to get you or that you should be mad at them.
Speaker: I mean, there's a time and place for discipline, but there's also a time and place for empathy as well and restorative justice and understanding the reason why it's a problem versus dishing out a punishment instantaneously or those sarcastic remarks like, oh, thanks for joining us today, Chris, that kind of thing.
Speaker: It just gets underneath kids' skins and first off, it will make them
Speaker: embarrassed and sad and probably not like you very much and it'll probably make the problem worse to for a kid that is having a bad day or is going through some kind of problem those kind of statements and those kind of overarching assumptions about what a kid is trying to do are going to hurt them a lot more than you might think from that very minor action i'm not saying that every single classroom has to be kumbaya and like you know teachers can't ever punish a kid in some way for doing something wrong but
Speaker: There has to be a level of empathy in everything that you're doing and kind of assume the best in many ways.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, and what would what would a teacher say?
Speaker: You know, I really think that I think that those types of things like blaming kids for stuff like that, like like they're doing it to them on purpose.
Speaker: I really do think that those are some of the first signs of becoming disengaged from the profession, because it's
Speaker: you know, our focus is supposed to be students.
Speaker: And so if you start blaming them for things like they're doing it on purpose, you have forgotten how you got to where you are in the first place.
Speaker: But, you know, the other thing is, how would you feel if you walked into a faculty meeting and you were five minutes late, maybe because you were working with a parent or maybe because you were going to the bathroom and you weren't feeling well or something and you walked in there...
Speaker: And the administrator looked at you and said, well, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker: You know, so nice of you to to, you know, bestow your presence on us.
Speaker: And like, what would you ever say if somebody truly said you would be dumbfounded and mortified and angry?
Speaker: And why would we expect kids to feel any different if we treat them that way?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, arguably they would come out worse because they're not as used to it.
Speaker: I know how I would react.
Speaker: I get pissed.
Speaker: So, I mean, I wouldn't get mad at a student if they did the same.
Speaker: I kind of relate.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker: Again, I would encourage anyone to check out this book.
Speaker: I think it's very well written.
Speaker: I think that the points are very well made.
Speaker: Again, it's not a happy read.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think you're going to read this and go like, man, I feel
Speaker: I've relaxed after reading this book.
Speaker: That's not that.
Speaker: I mean, I had to take a few breaks with this one.
Speaker: But I again, it's that it's a tough pill to swallow, but it's one that's needed.
Speaker: You have to acknowledge these things existing or else they're they're not going to go away on its own, just like any other major problem in the world.
Speaker: You can't just, you know, bury your head in the sand.
Speaker: It's a real problem.
Speaker: And this book does a really good job at recognizing, one, that these problems are out there, but two, most likely a lot of people will relate to at least one of the stories that are inside.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks.
Speaker: Thanks for that.
Speaker: And I really hope so.
Speaker: That was what we, you know, kind of what I was going for in collecting some of the stories that I did is I know that there's more trauma out there besides, you know,
Speaker: being abused, you know, having abusive parents or anything like that.
Speaker: And, and the contributors, I can't say it enough, how incredible they are at allowing you into a very, very personal part of their lives.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: people have said over and over again, I feel like I've never met this person and I know them so well just from their story.
Speaker: And, and, but you know, that's what we were hoping for.
Speaker: We were hoping for they were going to show their bravery to give others courage.
Speaker: Hope you enjoyed this podcast.
Speaker: We want to connect with you and hear your thoughts.
Speaker: Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Medium, and other social media, and be sure to check us out on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: If you want to support us in our endeavor of starting a movement towards progressive ed through high-quality resources, consider supporting us on Patreon.
