Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where Art Teaches Me To Overcome Fear

00:00:00.000 classes in session and welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session now today you just get me

00:00:09.880 you just get me um but what i'm gonna do i think is the idea that actually was handed to me

00:00:18.660 is recap the school year i am just now ending the 2021 2022 school year my gosh

00:00:29.160 And it's been, well, it's been a significant climb, incline, a few detours here and there.

00:00:38.040 And I thought recapping some of my most memorable moments, student stories, anything you guys want to sort of know about and you've asked me about, I'm going to do it right here.

00:00:48.660 So for those who don't know me, welcome.

00:00:51.800 You have 40 episodes to catch up on.

00:00:53.420 Where the hell have you been?

00:00:54.960 I'm a teacher.

00:00:56.480 I teach grades 7 to 12.

00:00:58.100 I teach things like history, society, politics, things like that.

00:01:02.440 Let me recap what's gone on in this last year.

00:01:04.880 Listen, COVID's been hard, guys.

00:01:09.540 It's been a situation, right?

00:01:12.940 Everybody's had a hard time with it, teachers and students alike.

00:01:16.920 And I think it's really changed a lot of the dynamic in school, in the classroom, and a lot of social dynamic.

00:01:23.640 And we're just starting to see things, I think, turn around right now.

00:01:27.740 So let's start at the beginning. Last semester, we all come in fully masked. I can't even say the

00:01:35.180 word anymore. It's like gone from my head. Fully covered, spraying everything, wiping everything

00:01:41.440 down, different lunch times. Nobody can eat together. I'm eating in my car. I'm eating in

00:01:46.500 my classroom, door shut, spraying every five seconds, trying to make sure that nobody gets

00:01:51.540 the next variant that's on the table, right? But as that's going on, you can see the kids are A,

00:02:00.380 incredibly happy to be back at school, but B, very tentative. So it starts to play out a little

00:02:07.040 bit in their coursework. And what I see having the biggest effect is, well, two things. Number one,

00:02:15.400 their ability or their choice to socialize has kind of evaporated. So you see them at lunch when

00:02:25.360 they're allowed to be, you know, wherever they're allowed to be, either eating. The only time they're

00:02:29.400 allowed their mask off is when they're eating. But anytime they're anywhere else in the school,

00:02:33.020 the mask's on and they have their phone in front of them. And so right away, Ryan and I, Wayne,

00:02:39.900 who's the owner, Ryan and Deb and I have noticed this is not good. All these kids are going to

00:02:46.860 class, doing their thing, but they're not having any fun. They're not socializing. They're not

00:02:52.420 interacting. And after a while, a lot of people talk about mental health and yet 100% that's a

00:02:58.840 thing. But what happens with school is that if you don't get some joy, if you don't find ways to get

00:03:07.320 joy out of school, the school part tends to get a lot harder. And the math classroom and the

00:03:14.500 history classroom, as joyous as I try to make it, starts to get so tedious that fixating on that

00:03:22.180 for the entire year with no joy, with nothing fun. I'll give you examples of some stuff we do

00:03:28.900 with nothing fun. The kids start to lose the ability to focus. And then that's when their

00:03:36.000 education obviously takes a hit. Having a good time and socializing is an integral part to all

00:03:43.480 of us, to everybody. The idea that we could all do this online, we could do it online, we had to,

00:03:50.260 but now we're sort of fighting fear because a lot of kids are still very afraid of getting COVID.

00:03:59.020 And so they don't want that interaction and they're wearing their mask and everything like

00:04:02.700 that. And a lot of things are very limited. We still don't do gym. We still don't do extracurriculars

00:04:07.540 like that. Everything is on a whole. And we start trying to figure out how can we bring back the joy?

00:04:14.780 How can we bring back the fun? So at Metro, we start doing things like trivia days. And I mean

00:04:20.800 trivia days like, and we do this school-wide competition where there's prizes and everything.

00:04:25.940 And so kids get very, very competitive, very, very funny. We do fun things, right? We do fun

00:04:31.460 things like trivia about the teachers, random things. What's Joe's favorite movie? Where's

00:04:35.740 Dominic from? What's Ryan's favorite song? Everybody knows it's you two. It's really boring

00:04:41.660 and monotonous, but nonetheless, and we do these things because, and then the kids start to engage

00:04:46.300 and you start to see that happen a little bit more. Now I had the luxury, luxury might be the

00:04:54.680 wrong word. I had the joy of teaching the grade seven and eights. And in grade seven and eight,

00:04:59.520 We created a course called Global Issues. And that Global Issues course kind of traverses a lot of different aspects of, well, pop culture, of social media, of politics, of history, of religion, of culture, of the environment.

00:05:18.660 and it kind of pulls on all of these things because what I wanted more than anything else

00:05:23.340 is to get my young kids, right, involved, invested in things that they're passionate about.

00:05:30.460 And grade seven and eights are passionate about everything. So they jump right into that and they

00:05:36.180 love that, right? So you can kind of see the conversations. I made those classes a lot less

00:05:42.640 about sit down and memorize. In fact, I threw it all out the window and I threw it all out the

00:05:48.120 window because i had to two reasons number one they needed something else they need they needed

00:05:57.860 something else other than to be told and taught how to sit down be quiet write an essay and memorize

00:06:03.020 all those things are necessary at other points but they needed something more they needed to have an

00:06:09.320 opinion they needed to feel engaged they needed to understand that in this class even if it's just one

00:06:15.760 that they're going to come. They're going to learn. They're going to have a conversation.

00:06:20.180 They're going to get an opinion. They're going to write it down. They're going to do the work

00:06:23.300 because there's still a lot of work, but they're going to do the work and they're going to see

00:06:26.660 themselves grow and they're going to see their academics grow. And they're going to understand

00:06:32.120 what having that opinion is really about. And I think, I think if I could have done that more

00:06:38.440 with other classes, it would have been better. And as the year progressed and these like seven

00:06:46.040 and eights really did sort of take charge of a lot of things, I started trying doing it with

00:06:51.560 the other kids. The older kids were harder. The older kids were more shut down. The older kids

00:06:57.920 didn't want to come as much. The older kids had other responsibilities. And it was interesting

00:07:05.100 because everything kind of changed in that first semester.

00:07:10.120 Now, in that first semester, I'm also going to say something

00:07:12.320 because the second semester gets fun.

00:07:15.660 But that first semester, my vice principal started trying to see

00:07:19.780 if he could produce and put on the play Sweat by Lynn Nottage.

00:07:24.680 Now, in November, he starts casting and the kids are into it

00:07:28.580 and they all want to do it, but they're all still wearing masks

00:07:30.760 and we're all having to isolate.

00:07:32.020 All of that is still very much going on. But nonetheless, he's like, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. And if things change, amazing, right? If things change where we can actually put on the play and we're allowed to take off our masks, amazing. If it goes the other way, that's okay too.

00:07:51.840 So we kind of took a gamble.

00:07:53.400 He kind of took a gamble on that.

00:07:54.960 And you really got kids tuned in.

00:07:56.720 And again, this is what makes the difference in kids' lives.

00:08:03.160 It's not, I think school is incredibly important.

00:08:06.740 I think education is incredibly important.

00:08:08.320 But if you don't find a way to get to their heart and their soul, you're not going to

00:08:13.160 get anywhere else.

00:08:14.680 So he starts doing this.

00:08:16.200 Now, I'm not a part of it at this point.

00:08:18.220 Listen, guys, I've been teaching there for 20 years.

00:08:19.900 for 20 years, Ryan Seeley has been trying to get me to be a part of a play production

00:08:25.140 the entire time. And every time I say, go away, I'll do everything else. I do publicity. I do

00:08:32.060 the posters. I do photos. I do video, whatever. I don't want anything to do with the play. I'm not

00:08:37.720 an actor. It's terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. But this year was different. This year, we've all

00:08:46.160 been through something pretty big and for the last few years and this year I said to myself come

00:08:51.480 September when things arise TikTok's been a great thing for me right pod this podcast I've had I now

00:08:58.580 have have started speaking engagements at companies and for different schools and things like that

00:09:03.440 everything is kind of adjusted so I've started saying to myself when something arises

00:09:08.460 as long as it's something I I that is good for me no matter how scared I am

00:09:16.160 no matter how tentative, I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes. And if it goes to crap,

00:09:21.200 okay. So that's a mentality. And I said that out loud. And guys, I swear to God, by saying it out 0.99

00:09:27.260 loud, I feel as though I summoned what was about to happen to me because heaven helped me. It all

00:09:32.700 changed come second semester. Now come second semester, here's what also happens to me. I have

00:09:38.260 the, the, just the joy. And I use that so sarcastically of teaching grade seven and eight

00:09:45.200 gym. Listen guys, grade seven and eight gym. For gym teachers out there, heaven help you. God bless.

00:09:51.540 I have nothing but admiration and respect. I didn't want to teach it. My grade seven and eights

00:09:57.020 knew I didn't want to teach it. They knew I had to teach it. They didn't understand why I didn't

00:10:01.820 want to teach it because gym is their favorite subject. So when we started, we still couldn't

00:10:07.000 do gym just yet. So how did I have to start with these grade seven and eights? Well, I started with

00:10:11.600 health. Because we had to do a lot of health. So we had X amount of weeks of health. And I just

00:10:18.340 packed it all in the beginning in hopes of we could take our masks off eventually. And even

00:10:24.580 if we couldn't take our masks off inside, depending on which way that went, we'd be able

00:10:27.820 to go outside. So at the beginning, here we jump into health. But guys, this is what changes

00:10:35.560 everything. When you're forced to do crap you don't want to do, and all of a sudden you're met

00:10:40.620 with a group of students these little 12 and 13 year old kids who have such joy and passion and

00:10:49.100 and and even they were so excited to eventually get to gym they were even excited about health

00:10:55.980 and we break i broke up health into like food nutrition stuff but not boring food nutrition

00:11:01.980 like we watched food inc i don't know if you guys have seen food inc but it's super important

00:11:06.060 we talked about big things in that section right because i'm not going to sit down with

00:11:09.900 the food chart no i'm not that teacher guys if you thought i was going to be that teacher you

00:11:14.140 have not been paying attention we watch food inc and we talk about healthy food what healthy food

00:11:19.580 means manufactured food all of my kids know what the number one drug is and it ain't marijuana

00:11:25.020 they all will tell you flat out it is refined sugar and we've had these big conversations

00:11:31.420 about food ink i had them looking up the good and the bad points of the movie i had them

00:11:36.220 I had them fact checking this documentary and they loved it. They were in, they were all in,

00:11:42.940 they were asking me to pause the movie so that they could write down notes and, and understand

00:11:47.660 what's a GMO or understand who Monsanto is or whatever. And I'm getting all of that amazing

00:11:54.220 feedback, right? We did mental health. They loved it. Listen, grade seven and eights know mental

00:12:00.700 health. They know what they need. Adults tend to get in their way and tell them what they need,

00:12:05.340 but grade seven and eights pretty much know and they're pretty articulate about what they need

00:12:09.740 in fact it was the grade seven and eights and and that age bracket that first said to me

00:12:15.500 and educated me and said um joanna shouldn't we really do something where we get to know whatever

00:12:22.380 everybody's gender pronoun what they what they prefer what their identity is and i said sure i'm

00:12:28.140 sure they'll tell us and and these kids said no no but we should make it everybody tells us so

00:12:33.580 So nobody feels excluded and nobody feels as though they are the only ones that are going to do it

00:12:39.360 because they have something different to say than maybe what you'd expect.

00:12:43.600 I said, absolutely. So what did I do?

00:12:46.320 Well, first day of that semester, we started filling out cards

00:12:49.240 and I started asking kids a bunch of questions that included.

00:12:53.060 And then what do my grade seven and eights and I have this big discussion

00:12:56.080 about mental health and identity and what that means and what does that lead into? 0.50

00:13:00.640 Well, we led into sex ed. Some of the funniest stories that you'll ever see happened in that class surrounding sex ed. And guys, they were attentive. A couple of funny stories. If you see these TikToks before, because the kids are hilarious. A couple of funny, funny stories where we will explain, you know, obviously we explain what a period is.

00:13:24.900 Now, I do my health class and my sexual education class, boys and girls, right?

00:13:32.080 Boys, girls, he, him, they, she, it doesn't matter.

00:13:36.180 You're all together.

00:13:36.860 Want to know why you're all together?

00:13:37.920 Because it matters to all of us.

00:13:39.260 So we all need to be educated.

00:13:41.440 So we, one of the first things we started talking about, we started talking about puberty.

00:13:45.300 And here's where it gets funny.

00:13:46.460 I say to them, what's puberty?

00:13:48.300 And somebody puts up their hand.

00:13:49.640 They say, oh, well, you know, when your body changes, I'm like, okay, that's pretty general.

00:13:53.220 You're not going to be more specific.

00:13:54.400 and they get a little shifty right because this is this is the part of of this is they're gonna

00:14:00.160 feel uncomfortable my job is to make them feel comfortable enough to talk about the things that

00:14:06.400 they need to talk about and ask the questions they need to ask that is the number one job of all 0.99

00:14:11.200 educators and when you say stupid crap like in the in florida we're not allowed they're not 0.99

00:14:16.720 allowed to talk about gender or or sexuality or whatever in elementary school i'm like you're 1.00

00:14:21.360 ridiculous you're absolutely asinine because those are the places where kids feel absolutely 0.99

00:14:26.960 comfortable they feel absolutely comfortable to talk about body parts it's just natural to them 1.00

00:14:32.000 it's natural to them to us somehow it's somehow sexualized to them it's just a body part we put

00:14:37.920 that on them how dare we how dare we get in the way of their healthy education anyways grade seven

00:14:45.600 and eight up here works different in fact doug ford if you're listening i don't follow your 1998

00:14:51.200 healthcare curriculum. I follow Kathleen Wins. You want to come at me? By all means,

00:14:56.440 because you're ridiculous. And to think that we would go back to 1998 when our levels of 0.97

00:15:03.140 education and awareness were so pathetically backwards and stunted, I will never. So these

00:15:10.320 grades seven and eights, by the way, educating me, right? We start talking about puberty and yada,

00:15:14.860 yada, yada. The kids are like, okay, well, you develop. Your body develops. I said, great.

00:15:18.660 what happens well you get hair places absolutely you get hair and then we start talking about

00:15:24.560 um just development in general like well how else do you develop when a kid puts up his hand kind

00:15:29.380 of sheepishly he's like you know you develop and he points to his front and his butt kind of he

00:15:34.020 goes you know like in the front and the back well the class laughed for a solid 20 minutes

00:15:40.080 front and back development to the point where they all wanted because we talked about getting

00:15:45.560 school like sweatshirts but they all wanted personalized sweatshirts that because I gave

00:15:50.160 them all nicknames by the way I gave them all personalized nicknames each one has a hysterical

00:15:55.080 sort of background story they wanted me to chirp them a little bit and their sweatshirt said

00:15:59.620 front on the front and then on the back it said and back and underneath it was their nickname it

00:16:05.400 was their best thing that they've ever had they all thought it was just perfect right they're

00:16:09.600 walking around with a shirt that says front and back on it anyway so we're howling and laughing

00:16:15.320 And, you know, and then we go through what puberty means and we go through all of those

00:16:19.460 different things.

00:16:20.300 And eventually we end up talking about how a baby is made, where a baby is made, what's

00:16:26.520 in a uterus, where the egg comes from, where the sperm comes from.

00:16:29.520 And they ask a lot of very serious questions, right?

00:16:32.360 And I answer them to the best.

00:16:33.820 Some of the time in my head, I'm blushing a little bit, but all of these kids want to

00:16:38.280 know are genuine, simplistic answers to their question.

00:16:42.320 they don't want my bullcrap you know uh whatever nervousness or sheepish they don't want that

00:16:49.900 and in fact the more that i do that and if i express that the less they learn right the less

00:16:56.620 they learn because they're now going to feel uncomfortable because i'm uncomfortable number

00:17:02.940 one job of a teacher don't be uncomfortable work through it work through it out of a classroom 0.97

00:17:07.660 don't bring bring your crap and put it on those kids anyways so we're going through it all we're

00:17:12.900 talking about period second hilarious story what's a period right and so the girls the girls that 0.95

00:17:20.220 were in this class they already had their period so they knew and they didn't care and they're just

00:17:23.920 like it's so annoying and they were just kind of being talking like that but the boys didn't know

00:17:28.280 most of the boys didn't know in fact one of the boys before we even talk about this what did the

00:17:32.160 boys put up his hand in because one of my rules was in grade seven and eight you guys got to get

00:17:36.780 up in the morning and shower, you got to start using deodorant all the time. And when we start

00:17:40.580 gym class, you're going to put it on at the beginning of gym class and at the end of gym

00:17:43.540 class every day. It'll smell good. Why? Because puberty makes it smell not so good. We get all

00:17:48.540 these hormones and we don't, we sweat and we smell. So we're going to make ourselves well good. And

00:17:52.500 hygiene is super important. And this one little boy puts up his hand. He said,

00:17:56.540 Joanna, I brought deodorant today. I said, that's amazing. Is it a good smelling one? He's like,

00:18:00.740 it's so good. I tried like seven of them and I got this one. And he goes, do you know,

00:18:05.440 I went home and I told my mom about puberty and she already knew about it I said really that's

00:18:11.480 amazing and he's like I was really I was upset with her because she didn't tell me about puberty

00:18:15.900 and and and then she said yeah Joanne is 100% right we went out and got all this stuff anyway

00:18:20.440 I love it when somehow I I know more than their parents do anyways so we start going through gym

00:18:27.300 class and we get to the period stuff well guys the boys were silent they're like what happens

00:18:34.920 with the bleeding and the, and they are just beside themselves. Right. And at some point a

00:18:41.100 guy puts up his hand at the back of the room, but he wasn't big at that just so much. He puts up his

00:18:44.860 hand and he goes, so how long do they bleed for? And I said, I don't know. I said, it depends on

00:18:51.040 the girl. Right. I said, but on an average, let's say four to seven days. Well, the boys lost their

00:18:57.540 five to seven days they screamed they were they were irate one of them wanted to know how does

00:19:04.700 the girl not die in that process because that's just in their head it's just so much

00:19:10.920 another guy's like apologizing to the girls i'm so sorry you have to go through this how do you

00:19:18.020 go through this how do you why do you have to come to school guys never have you seen more empathy

00:19:23.280 from young boys for girls going through their period than when they discovered what the heck

00:19:28.340 it was. But anyways, we worked through all of that, right? So we worked through all of this.

00:19:32.720 We talked about sexuality. We talked about gender identities. We talked about the way

00:19:39.420 television portrays things. We talked about that kind of mental health and how it informs sexuality,

00:19:45.940 how it performs identity all of this stuff which was amazing and at this point you can see my grade

00:19:54.340 12s starting to come out of their shell a little bit more again it was hard with them and i'll tell

00:19:59.620 you how i really pulled them out because i had to change the way that i taught this semester

00:20:06.100 so eventually these kids get into the gym and we start playing dodgeball and basketball and

00:20:10.580 soccer and baseball and more dodgeball and more dodgeball and then i tell them guys i'm going to

00:20:17.580 do fitness testing with you i don't know if any of you old enough to remember canada fitness testing

00:20:22.380 up here but it was god awful and everybody hated it i kind of liked it because i usually got

00:20:26.700 whatever gold whatever the highest was when you got this little badge right and i explained that

00:20:31.560 to the kids i said when i was a kid this is what we did and they said can we do that i'm like i'm

00:20:35.920 sorry you want to do Canada fitness testing they're like yeah so guys I came up with eight

00:20:41.960 different Canada fitness like you know comparable Canada fitness tests and I told them at the

00:20:49.160 beginning as long as they completed it they'd each get a badge and I sent away for all of these crazy

00:20:55.180 like sports badges I got like 150 of them so they could all pick which one they wanted and and I

00:21:02.100 said as long as you keep every week whoever does the best they'll get a badge and then if you do

00:21:07.340 if you better your scores you'll get badges so it was all about getting these badges they were

00:21:11.160 beside themselves they're like can we do some more wall sits I'm like you psychopaths one kid

00:21:17.560 we had to stop him at 150 sit-ups I'm like I don't know where this energy is coming from but I'm

00:21:22.980 pretty sure you've broken something so we're gonna have to pause you this is it you hit the cap right

00:21:28.240 I try to introduce harder exercises because they were so bent on competing with each other, sure, but really then bettering themselves.

00:21:38.080 And again, I look to the grade seven and eights, and I'm thankful that I got stuck with them.

00:21:43.500 And I tell them that all the time because they have a different way of looking at life, right?

00:21:48.040 They've left pretense, hasn't really infiltrated them yet.

00:21:51.100 It kind of happens at the end of grade eight, but it hasn't really, they don't, they just, they want to have a good time.

00:21:56.920 They want to compete.

00:21:58.220 They want to try their hardest.

00:21:59.520 They want to sweat.

00:22:00.600 They want to get better than they were yesterday.

00:22:02.500 And they want to know that I know they're getting better.

00:22:06.520 And again, it was very refreshing for me as a teacher, especially when I was dealing in my grade 12s.

00:22:12.220 My grade 12s were dealing with a lot of mental health stuff, I felt like, a lot of internalized stuff.

00:22:19.200 They were very quiet.

00:22:20.460 um and i and i looked at them and i thought i need they have a big isp okay so they're fine

00:22:28.340 in discussions and stuff like that or they still weren't as engaged as i would like them to be but

00:22:32.580 i'm really trying and and their big project was coming around and usually their big project

00:22:36.860 something very independent and i looked at my two classes this year and i went we can't do that

00:22:41.360 we can't do something else that's independent right because if i do more things that are

00:22:46.520 independent, where they sit, they're quiet, they sit in front of their computer. I mean,

00:22:50.460 their heads are going to explode or something's going to drip out of their ears. So I thought,

00:22:55.460 what do I do with these kids that is different? Now, it's around this time. I'm going to circle

00:23:02.080 back, March, that Ryan comes to me and says, Joanna, we have a problem. And I said, what?

00:23:08.780 Well, a couple of the kids, due to a couple of different reasons. One of them had to

00:23:12.260 actually moved, his family moved, so he couldn't be in the play anymore. So we had to find a

00:23:16.180 replacement and then the girl that was playing tracy in the movies in the play sweat there was 0.81

00:23:22.440 actually one two two different people that were involved in this and both couldn't continue

00:23:30.440 um predominantly for like they they couldn't focus their mental health wasn't there like

00:23:35.940 everything was so overwhelming right and they just there's just another thing they couldn't do

00:23:40.240 and he's like it's we're gonna have to cancel like there's no way and the kids are really upset about

00:23:46.000 it and they just want it can we just do another play and and he's like no we can't just start

00:23:50.040 another play it's way too much that we need to so the kids that were in it were already super

00:23:54.900 and there've been a couple of changes that we've had to make to that play and ryan looks at me he

00:24:01.300 goes listen i'm gonna ask you because i think you could do this um but if you don't it's okay but

00:24:09.680 we can't do the play so i'm like oh jesus okay fine he's like i need you to play tracy

00:24:15.920 Now, remember what I said at the beginning of the year, guys.

00:24:17.940 I said, I am going to be in, all in.

00:24:20.800 I'm going to do things to scare me.

00:24:22.260 And just so everybody's aware, nothing on this earth, maybe singing, because I'm bad.

00:24:30.120 If I was good, I'd sing all the time.

00:24:31.840 Nothing on this earth scares me more than acting.

00:24:36.720 It terrifies me to my core.

00:24:38.980 As soon as he asked me, I started to sweat, quite literally.

00:24:42.280 i said i was going to say yes so without even thinking i said yep i'm in now he's like look

00:24:51.920 read the play take the play home go read it take a minute decide i said ryan i'm in i'm not going

00:24:56.320 to let these kids down i'm in now two things number one i thought ryan may have given me a

00:25:05.240 heads up on the kind of play it was but he said i would really love it because it's very political

00:25:10.660 number two um tracy might be the most second most lines of the play so i wasn't jumping into

00:25:21.020 like one or two scenes or or you know just this tertiary character guys haven't helped me i was

00:25:29.360 in all of it all the time with monologues and big speed so i took this play home and i read it but

00:25:38.600 I didn't really read it because I didn't want to read the whole play. I just came back. I said,

00:25:43.060 Ryan, I'm in. He's like, amazing. Tell the kids we'll start. But he's like, because I can't

00:25:49.580 count on anybody else to catch up. They've been doing this since November. This is March. I need

00:25:53.740 to catch up, learn everything. We're going to perform in June. Last week of May, first of June.

00:25:58.760 Fine. I'm in. So guys, I do a couple of scenes practice. I'm like, okay, this is terrifying,

00:26:05.820 but okay i take it home and i highlight i get my own version of the play my own copy

00:26:11.900 i take my blue highlighter and i highlight all of my scenes and my lines i go through act one scene

00:26:19.500 one highlight wow that's a lot oh sorry not scene one scene two wow that's a lot scene three wow

00:26:28.700 see guys it would have been quicker for me to highlight everybody else's lines

00:26:37.660 and i bring that book back on monday show riot i go the whole play's highlighted ryan

00:26:45.020 and he's like you're gonna be great don't worry you're gonna be great i'm like

00:26:49.740 how am i supposed to do this and be a teacher he's like you just have to trust me you are tracy

00:26:56.940 You're going to be great. It's just memorizing. I go, I don't think you, I don't know when's the

00:27:02.720 last time I've memorized this much stuff. So that's in my head now, right? Now I have a pretty

00:27:08.600 good ability to compartmentalize and to kind of like put things back away unless I, until I really

00:27:14.280 have to deal with it. So in the beginning, I wasn't too stressed. I just go to play. I'd like

00:27:18.440 say the lines, I'd read them out of the book. I wasn't really concerned about memorizing anything.

00:27:24.020 that's going to come later and that's going to come in a wave of panic um but at the same time

00:27:30.620 i'm trying to get my classes engaged right and so i'm doing this incredibly creative thing

00:27:36.500 a thing that i'm terrified of and i'm like i need something to get these kids in i need i need them

00:27:43.360 in in the class i need them in their head i need that in their bodies i need them to stop being so

00:27:49.700 isolated. And at this point, all the mask mandates kind of go away and everything changes, right?

00:27:57.180 Everything changes. And I say, guys, here's what we're going to do. So I teach a society and a

00:28:02.140 world history. And I say for society class and go check out my TikTok, you can see the actual

00:28:07.940 final product. But for my society class, I say this, we are going to recreate the Norman Rockwell,

00:28:14.820 the very famous norman rockwell painting of ruby bridges walking into that school the very first 0.57

00:28:21.300 school that was desegregated you know pillared by two state marshals on either side of her

00:28:28.340 walking her federal marshals walking her in there right and i and i have the painting and i and i

00:28:34.900 have this way of doing it in which i sort of take the painting and i um you know uh sort of change

00:28:42.340 it a little bit on my computer and then i per i create a stencil and i project it and i kind of

00:28:47.780 draw out all of the images and i say to the kids here's what we're going to do we are going to

00:28:52.900 recreate this using multimedia that represent that civil rights struggle civil rights of today

00:29:01.540 and civil rights of all stripes whether they be african-american whether they be indigenous

00:29:07.220 whether they be women whether they be about the lgbtq community whether they be about disability

00:29:12.420 rights whatever rights you can can pull in right you want to talk about autism research great

00:29:21.460 pull that in that little puzzle piece i want physical examples so kids i said this is your

00:29:27.780 job for society go find this stuff bring it in and we're going to do it as a class we're going to paint

00:29:32.340 the background then we're going to fill in these items so kids started going away and bringing

00:29:36.660 stuff back they brought stuff back like um the handmaid's tale which is crazy um and and we use

00:29:44.360 pieces and cutouts of that book in order to talk about roe v wade in order to talk about women's

00:29:51.100 rights and reproductive freedoms and kids brought in pride symbols like little pride flags and they

00:29:57.340 brought in newspaper clippings about pride and they brought in every child they created an every

00:30:02.540 Child Matters banner out of orange for the Marshall to wear on his arm in place of the

00:30:08.100 Marshall thing he normally wore. And they found clips out of Brown versus Board of Ed decision

00:30:15.500 desegregating everybody. And then they cut that out and printed it and stuck it on the books that

00:30:21.140 Ruby Bridges was carrying. And then they found cotton pieces, like just cotton batten that they

00:30:27.740 that they created to use for ruby bridges hair and then they spray painted it and they used flowers

00:30:34.620 to fill the legs of two of the marshals real flowers then we podged them all on filling it

00:30:40.540 from the bottom up talking about growth and rebirth and rising above and everything that

00:30:46.700 comes after all of the pain and suffering and all of those things they the kids were amazing

00:30:53.420 now here's the funny part they were very they brought it all in and then they kind of stood

00:30:57.100 there and went i don't want to glue anything i don't want to i don't want to do anything permanent

00:31:04.620 and and this is an interesting part i had to really force them into it i said what are you

00:31:10.060 worried about we're worried it's going to look bad okay but if we're just going to stand around

00:31:15.180 here and do not do anything it's going to just be nothing so risk it looking bad so they tried

00:31:22.940 stuff some of the stuff didn't work i said i don't think that's working they're like yeah it looks

00:31:26.780 bad i said great rip it off they're like what rip it off well it will take away the paint we'll

00:31:32.380 repaint and what this did outside of like and then we got to talk about all these social justice

00:31:38.860 issues which is exactly what my class and that project was talking about sort of beside that

00:31:43.180 what it also did is it allowed kids to not be good at something none of them were art kids

00:31:49.100 they didn't need to be good at something but they needed to do it anyways and if it didn't work

00:31:55.020 they took it off they ripped it off and we did it again and we did it again right and we fixed it

00:32:02.700 and then some of the things that were mistakes they're like but i like that mistake right one of

00:32:08.460 the kids had this amazing idea he brought in a light bulb because a light bulb was this idea of

00:32:13.020 an i you know an idea and i said well i don't think we can attach a light bulb he goes but

00:32:17.420 what if we crush it what if we crush it because it was about crushing people's ideas i'm like

00:32:22.540 oh my god and so we painted this now I did this part well they painted it they painted this light

00:32:29.540 bulb and then I took the light bulb outside and I crushed it and it just shattered into a billion

00:32:33.840 little tiny red pieces because we painted it red and then what we did is we threw I don't know if

00:32:39.820 you guys know the painting but right over Ruby Bridges head there's a tomato that somebody

00:32:43.640 throws at her it hits the wall and slides down instead of throwing a tomato there we threw a

00:32:49.200 red painted cloth hit the thing and it kind of slid down but then to accentuate that we took the

00:32:56.960 crushed glass and we and and we sprinkled it on we podged it all on so it's this red paint and then

00:33:04.640 sprinkled down is glass glass representing the crushed ideas the crushed um belief system the

00:33:12.820 crushed. And I'm like blown away by these kids, right? And so I help them do that because I don't

00:33:19.520 want anybody getting cut. So as these kids are into this, I say to my history kids, I say,

00:33:25.740 you're going to do this too, because a lot of the kids were overlapped. I said, your job is this.

00:33:30.600 This is an art piece. This is an art piece that needs explanation. So you're going to take three

00:33:36.200 pieces of material. You're going to talk about if it's the flowers, you're going to talk about the

00:33:40.460 cotton. You're going to talk about three different pieces that were brought, and you're going to give

00:33:44.840 a one-page description that we will then frame and hang beside the piece of art in the school

00:33:52.360 hallway when it's all said and done. So it describes why you used it. Why did you use the

00:33:57.920 glass? What does it mean? Why did you use the cotton? How does that connect to slavery and

00:34:03.400 issues of history? Why do you use the Every Child Matters? What does that connect to in history?

00:34:08.340 so your their job was to tie the art to meaning into history

00:34:14.060 and they all had to be a part of that and they a lot of them it was incredibly uncomfortable

00:34:21.440 and they didn't necessarily love it but they didn't necessarily love it because it made them

00:34:27.040 not it put them on edge right because we're such a class we're such a situation of do everything

00:34:32.760 you're supposed to do and do it all to this kind of time and i kind of chuck that all for this and

00:34:38.220 I've done it before, but in much different circumstances. This was really to shake them

00:34:42.500 out of what they've been forced into for the last two years. So go check out my TikTok. It's on my

00:34:50.720 Twitter as well. You can go check it out. Unlearn 16 Tweet. I put it up there and I show the whole

00:34:58.320 image. It's just, it's perfect. It's beautiful. And what I'm most impressed with is that kids

00:35:05.360 did something they weren't great at. They, they, they risked sucking. And if they suck, 0.99

00:35:10.940 they figured out how to fix it. And they stepped outside that creative energy. They tried their 0.99

00:35:15.940 best to step outside, like just memorize and put something down to really understand what that

00:35:21.280 symbolism could mean for somebody and how art means things for people and how it pushes us

00:35:27.020 to new levels at all times. And so they did all of that. And then all the while I'm doing this,

00:35:32.060 guys. I am practicing and rehearsing sweat. Getting closer and closer to the play date,

00:35:38.300 guys. I am having levels of anxiety and nightmares and sleepless nights and I can't eat and I'm

00:35:47.500 beside myself because I'm getting closer and closer to this date and I'm pretending as though

00:35:52.260 it's all okay, but I don't have anything on lock. Nothing. And I'm thinking I'm going to stand up

00:35:58.040 here we sold out four shows what 300 people came and saw this show and on day one I'm like this is

00:36:06.680 how I die I'm gonna die of a heart attack uh trying to do this play and and as we're going

00:36:13.620 through this and I'm scared you know what the kids do Ryan by the way he was amazing I never

00:36:18.440 would have done it if not for Ryan he pulled me aside every day told me how amazing I was and what

00:36:22.700 great things I did and then he would also be like you can try this work on this do this right but

00:36:27.520 the kids were really what got me through. Want to know why? Because the kids were scared. But they

00:36:34.600 saw that I was nervous and they just helped me every day. Every day they pushed me a little bit

00:36:40.140 more. They said, Joe, you're going to be great. This is great. That was a great take. Look at how

00:36:44.860 good this scene went. And I had these 16, 17 year old kids propping me up, which I needed, heaven

00:36:52.320 help me, but propping me up. And I realized that's what school is. That's what education is.

00:36:59.220 Figuring out who needs what, how to prop each other up, how to take away something,

00:37:03.960 how to do things that scare us, how to be supported while we do it. And teachers need

00:37:09.160 to experience that. We as teachers tend to do things we're good at again and again and again

00:37:13.460 and again and again. I've taught American history 20 times. I know it. I don't need it. I know it.

00:37:19.420 But this play, this was a time for me to be young and scared again.

00:37:24.840 And as adults, we don't spend enough time being young and scared.

00:37:30.220 Right?

00:37:30.860 Because we find out what we're good at and then we just hunker down.

00:37:34.580 We don't do things that terrify us.

00:37:37.780 And the play went through and it wasn't bad.

00:37:41.180 Guys, I wasn't bad.

00:37:42.840 I think I did a pretty good job.

00:37:44.580 I think I could have memorized better, but I'm really good at ad-libbing.

00:37:49.420 thank heavens. Um, but I am so proud that we did it and it was amazing. Like the play itself was

00:37:56.600 amazing. The whole production was amazing. We got such amazing feedback, all of these families and

00:38:01.460 we have new kids coming to the school just because they saw the play and they can't believe we did

00:38:05.460 that, especially after COVID and all of this kind of stuff. And all I can think is I did it.

00:38:13.400 I knew I was scared to do it I knew I might suck and I sucked for a long time of that 0.92

00:38:19.620 even if at the end I was okay but I still did it and as adults the best lesson I learned this year 0.89

00:38:31.760 is that as adults we need to do things we're scared of we need to do things we suck at because

00:38:37.200 that's how you can connect to your kids when your kids are stressed about a test

00:38:42.140 We need to put ourselves back in that place where it was new for us.

00:38:46.960 Where writing an essay was new for us.

00:38:49.160 We're learning about the Constitution or about the War of 1812 was new for us or, you know, what a theory means.

00:38:57.340 When those things were new and scary and they put us on edge and we just try to muddle through the best we could.

00:39:03.100 So as adults, we have to do things that scare the heck out of us that we suck at.

00:39:08.320 And I'm telling you right now, that's the way we connect to everybody.

00:39:11.280 that's the way adults connect to kids teachers to students people can connect

00:39:17.460 all right so we can understand what that fear feels like

00:39:22.400 and most importantly we do it anyways we push through that fear we push through that insecurity

00:39:32.900 we push through that whatever and sometimes it might suck and we need to be okay with that

00:39:39.240 happening because that's what makes us human. That's what changes us. That's what makes it

00:39:43.480 better. And I'm telling you right now, that's what education is. It shouldn't be find the thing

00:39:49.900 you're great at and only do that. Do that. Then find the things you're not great at that still

00:39:56.660 may bring you joy or fill your heart or fill your soul. Don't throw those away because you're not

00:40:01.920 good at them. Figure out how to be better. Figure out about the pieces you can take and incorporate

00:40:07.820 in your life so that you're a more holistic person that understands more, that learns more,

00:40:14.920 that connects more with all people. That was my year in review, guys. So I'd like to thank my

00:40:21.480 grade seven and eights because heaven helped me. They pushed me and pushed me and pushed me until

00:40:26.220 I understood more, until I did things I didn't want to do, but understood the joy I could get

00:40:30.900 from those. And thank you to my grade 12s for forcing me to change the class up because they

00:40:36.840 needed and thank you to Ryan Seeley and the whole cast of sweat for helping me do something I was

00:40:42.820 terrified of and I sucked at because it was the best lesson I have had in 20 years. Thanks for

00:40:49.900 listening guys. I will see you next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat station. Have a good night guys.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - June 28, 2022

The One Where Art Teaches Me To Overcome Fear

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