00:00:12.000This is my activist teacher 505 shirt.
00:00:14.800I'm going to explain it and my merch is going to lead into the conversation that we're going to have today.
00:00:23.200First of all, being a teacher is one of the best jobs on the planet.
00:00:28.960hands down. Can I complain about my job? Absolutely. I can. Can I talk about how it's
00:00:36.160great and how it's powerful and all of those things? Absolutely. But this sweatshirt that
00:00:42.280I'm wearing right now, and you can go check it out on unlearn16.ca. I'm sorry. That was a horrible,
00:00:47.620horrible plug, but nonetheless, check it out. The reason why I'm wearing this is because
00:00:51.880sometimes on TikTok, I get a couple of one-twos. I take some shots about being a teacher.
00:01:00.320And a lot of people, a lot of teachers that follow me, who follow me, have been experiencing
00:01:06.040a lot of burnout, a lot of teacher burnout lately. And it's in Canada, it's in the United States,
00:01:12.860and I'm assuming it's throughout the world. And they've asked me to do an episode on how I handle
00:01:18.880it. How, if I'm going through it, if I've ever gone through it, how I handle it. And I think
00:01:25.480it's incredibly important for us to talk about both for teachers, for students, because if
00:01:32.180teachers are going through it, so are the kids and for administrators. Now I can't speak to an
00:01:36.960administrative side because I don't do a lot of that, but I would expect it would be very similar
00:01:42.140there too. So I'm wearing the sweatshirt says activist teacher 505. I'm going to tell you a
00:01:47.200little story and then I'll get into everything. So I did quite a few TikToks and you guys probably
00:01:53.540are listening to me now because you've seen me on TikTok and you like my melodic droning voice.
00:01:59.380It helps you fall asleep at night. One person sort of came at me for being an activist teacher
00:02:06.060as though it was a negative. I responded with, of course, I'm an activist teacher.
00:02:11.940that there's no other reason to be a teacher if you weren't an activist in fact I would argue that
00:02:20.020if you're not an activist you shouldn't be a teacher that activist teachers should go hand
00:02:25.620in hand now they were directing it to me because I was talking about giving kids space to decide
00:02:33.120upon their own gender identity and have freedom for that they were giving this sort of in a
00:02:40.240negative connotation because I was saying we shouldn't ban books and we should allow kids
00:02:44.320to read them and come to their own conclusions. They were giving this to me because I stand for
00:02:49.980having a lot of different theoretical and critical theories in my classroom every single day
00:02:55.780so that the kids and I can make informed, educated decisions. And some people don't like that.
00:03:06.380Some people love to respond with things like, oh, come on, just teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic.
00:03:15.680And every time I think about that, I think, what a waste of education.
00:03:20.780And that's not education at all, actually.
00:03:23.680That's some simple, basic skill sets to get you by in this world.
00:03:30.040But it's not doing what education should do.
00:03:33.080And I've always said that education isn't supposed to be an answer to the question. It's supposed to spark the idea that you consistently keep asking more questions and another and another and another big part of my unlearn sort of mantra.
00:03:50.040I don't even know if I'd use that word, but whatever, we'll go with it, is this notion
00:03:55.060that we learn things all the time. And some of them are put there without our consent and without
00:04:00.840our knowledge. They're subliminal. They're subconscious when we're young. And some of0.96
00:04:05.060them are put there by teachers, teachers that are wrong, teachers that are ill-informed.
00:04:11.560And it's our job every single day to pick apart that learning and pick apart what's been shoved
00:04:19.200into our heads and try to see, what do I have to unlearn? What do I have to adjust? What do I have
00:04:23.980to grow onto? Because again, one of my favorite ideas, again, stemming from Socrates, I mean,
00:04:31.100the guy was pretty smart, although he didn't write anything down, was the notion that the more that
00:04:36.380you learn, the more that you know, you know nothing at all. I probably messed that quote up a little
00:04:42.200bit, but you get my point. The notion that the smarter we think we get, or the more things we
00:04:47.720know. And if you do get wise, you understand that there's still, you've seen the peak of the
00:04:54.960mountain, but there's still a world you don't know. And that's kind of how I live. That's kind
00:05:01.420of how I teach. And all of that, guys, can get overwhelming. Because we're not just responsible,
00:05:13.120Teachers aren't just responsible for reading, writing, and arithmetic, because heaven help us, if we were, there'd be no burnout. It would be an easy job. It would be assembly line simplistic. But that's not our job.
00:05:29.420so maybe we should address first what the job of a teacher is now whether it should be the job of
00:05:34.460the teacher i don't know i would like tons more funding to allow for you know a million and one
00:05:40.060professionals to be in there with the kids but i'll tell you what falls onto my shoulders
00:05:45.900and then i'll tell you about when i felt burnout and the way that i've dealt with it so
00:05:51.340first and foremost i think sure my job is to teach material i have a curriculum
00:05:58.700I have a set of principles that I need to go through.
00:06:39.520So, they've already gone through elementary school that might not have taught that, depending on where they've come from.
00:06:45.520Or it might have been taught out of them, which is more likely so.
00:06:49.340the notion that all that critical thinking, all those really cool questions when you're in grade
00:06:54.600three and you're like, you know, why is the sun yellow? Or how does a battery work? Or can you
00:07:02.380explain the telephone? All those questions that I can't answer. And these deep seated questions
00:07:09.080that kids have drives their creative energy, right? It drives it, it drives it and drives it.
00:07:14.700And what education has tended to do, and it's getting better, don't get me wrong, but it's tended to try to constrain that, you know, it's try to limit that it's try to sit, you know, little so and so down so that they can sit there for a certain amount of time and take in information and learn that rope, but all that creativity, all that just base, I want to know, sometimes get schooled right out of the kids.
00:07:39.360and then I get them in grade seven and I demand it back. And so a lot of the times they look at
00:07:45.260me like, what the hell are you asking me for? You know, I constantly are asking them, what do you
00:07:52.760think? And guys, they look at me as though I've asked them to solve, you know, the Middle East
00:08:01.480crisis and they can't even point to the Middle East yet. And they're just so confused. And then
00:08:07.240I can see them wanting to give an answer. It's on the tip of their tongue. And then their head
00:08:11.460starts working and it starts second guessing and going, what if I'm wrong? What if this isn't right?
00:08:15.720What if I'm way off? What if the other kids laugh out of me? What if Joanna gets mad at me? What if
00:08:19.680I say something? And then they suck, then they shut down. So my secondary function is to break1.00
00:08:27.700through that wall, to tell them they are brilliant, to tell them they are creative,
00:08:34.200to tell them they have so much to offer and to try to break that down, that's been shut there.
00:08:41.840And sometimes it's been put there for, you know, by a bunch of people in a bunch of different
00:08:46.400scenarios. And so I need to break that down for them or try anyways. So I rely, especially with
00:08:54.840the little ones, we've created different courses at Metro while I've created different courses
00:08:58.900that are all about talking, that are all about analyzing, that are all about opinion making
00:09:04.120and researching and reading and listening and arguing. And I take the vocabulary tests
00:09:13.160and the heavy mark fixation right out of the equation. And I tell them I'm doing it. I say,
00:09:20.040guys, listen, I want you to work hard. I want you to give me your opinion. I want them to be
00:09:23.800your own words. That's what I'm grading. And they look at me like, no, you're lying. You're lying.
00:09:28.500You're, you're, you're going to test me on the vocabulary words in a list and then ask me about
00:09:35.580a date. I'm like, guys, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. We will have to do that
00:09:41.520because you have to get good at that. But first, before that, I need you to believe that you are
00:09:48.140brilliant, that you have amazing ideas. And guys, for parents at home, for teachers, for anybody,
00:09:55.560They are brilliant. We treat grade seven and eights like morons, for lack of a better word,0.99
00:10:03.540right? A lot of homes, they have no responsibility. Guys, 13 and 14-year-olds could have worked a0.99
00:10:09.620whole farm back in the day. You think they're not smart enough today? They are. We just treat them
00:10:15.160as though they can't. I treat my grade seven and eights the same way I treat my grade 12s,
00:10:21.200with high expectation, a high level of responsibility. And I'm constantly trying
00:10:27.120to tell them how they are a great person, but they have to take responsibility for that greatness.
00:10:33.700So when I hear things like, my mom didn't print, no, back that sentence up. And they'll look at
00:10:39.600me like, what do you mean back the sentence up? I go, you're not five. Your mom's job has nothing
00:10:45.380to do with my class. So try it again. Well, my assignment's not printed. Okay. Why is your1.00
00:10:52.360assignment not printed? Well, my mom said, nope, back it up. And they'll look at me again. I'll be
00:10:58.660like, not on your mom. Well, my dad didn't get the, no. Oh, back it up. Not on your dad. This is on you.
00:11:08.980And I take them through every single step in which they could have made an adult decision
00:11:14.160to rectify it, including coming in early to MetroPrep and printing it there. All of those
00:11:22.640steps. So every single day I make them, I push them to be responsible. And as they get a bit
00:11:31.760older and I can see them get their chest puffed up a bit when they got it, when they got it,
00:11:36.200when they roll into class and the assignment's done, bam, cover pages there, boom, they're on
00:11:41.100time. They got their other stuff ready to go for history class. And you can see them stand a little
00:11:46.720taller, shoulders back with a little more pride. And then I know I got them. And then I know I got
00:11:53.140them for the next things I'm going to ask them to do. And here come the next things.
00:11:58.180And the next things as a teacher, and here's where it gets really hard,
00:12:01.580is that we have to teach them that they don't know things and that's okay, but their job is to get to
00:12:10.540know things, as many things as they can. So here comes in the heavy, heavy reading, research,
00:12:18.100analyzing, criticizing, tell me what you think, tell me what you learned, tell me what so-and-so
00:12:23.660said, what did this analysis say? Pull it all together, synthesize it, and then come up with
00:12:28.620your own framework. I had a master, well, he was a professor at York University, he sat me down,
00:12:35.980he goes listen you're a smart kid he goes but i'm going to tell you something that every professor's
00:12:41.580thinking and isn't going to tell you but i'm going to tell you because i think you can take it i said
00:12:45.660okay hit me the professor said your opinion doesn't matter yet and i was offended what do you
00:12:55.980mean my my opinion you know who told me my opinion matters my mom told me my opinion matters and i
00:13:02.220i've been to the money story school who said i was brilliant and smart and capable and intelligent
00:13:08.700i go off the guy laughs at me he's like listen you don't get to have an opinion yet you get to have
00:13:17.020you get to be intelligent creative and all of those things but you don't get to have an opinion
00:13:20.540yet here's why because you haven't read enough to know if it's original because you're drawing
00:13:27.500upon stuff that you don't even know you're drawing upon you read something over here
00:13:31.340something in a textbook or you've read a synthesis of information let's say on wikipedia but you don't
00:13:36.540know where the heck it came from you don't know who did it you don't know what context in which
00:13:40.540they drove it from derived it from i can't even speak it's been a long day and it's only monday
00:13:47.500so you don't know yet you need to know more you need to read more you need to immerse yourself
00:13:53.180more you need to be able to list theories a through z and be able to say what i didn't like
00:13:59.500about each what i liked about each synthesize it create your own you don't know enough yet
00:14:07.660and in high school i tell my kids that i build them up not so i can break them down that sounds
00:14:13.260very militaristic but so that i can say you are intelligent creative capable but now you gotta
00:14:22.780absorbed now your job is to learn everything you possibly can not to get pie you don't you don't
00:14:32.940skip the the you know book on shakespeare and read the cole's notes for those listening cole's notes
00:14:39.340used to be maybe you guys might know spark notes but at the end of the day this generation just
00:14:43.820knows wikipedia but you don't need the cheat sheet if you take the cheat sheet you haven't done your
00:14:49.500job your job is to make the cheat sheet because you understand it and if you're not going to take
00:14:56.940the time to understand it you're not getting an education because you're going to go off to
00:15:01.660university and you're going to have two roads the easy road and the smart one and the easy road
00:15:06.300might get you an 80 but the intelligent road is going to build you as a person as a theorist as
00:15:14.620an academic and it's going to build you into something you can take on anything in this world
00:15:22.940so as a teacher these are my jobs guys this is what i think about every single day
00:15:29.340oh by the way that's 50 of my day you want to know what the other 50 is
00:15:33.820i feel like i should give you time to respond and i know you can actually respond to me
00:15:37.740in this format the other 50 of my job is handling teenagers mental health
00:15:49.260the everyday the mundane to the truly horrific things that kids go through am i qualified to do
00:16:00.380that absolutely not absolutely not am i qualified to listen to kids talk about addiction in their
00:16:08.620home or in themselves am i qualified to hear them talk about abuse neglect am i qualified to hear
00:16:19.020them talk about you know sexual abuse or rape no i'm not and in a lot of those instances i obviously
00:16:28.620end up connecting with other resources. It's not just me. But pay no mistake, teachers are the
00:16:36.560front line of that. I sometimes think that teachers should go through the four years,
00:16:42.720and instead of a teacher's college, which by the way is a guttural waste of time,
00:16:47.140I should have taken a two-year child psychology program. Absolutely, 100%. Two years fixated on
00:16:56.260teen and adolescent psychology depending on what age bracket you're going to teach
00:16:59.460because that's a huge huge huge chunk of my job now you get better at it because you learn right
00:17:07.740you learn how to talk to parents you learn how to talk to kids you learn how to mitigate and and
00:17:13.380deal with harassment at your school and ish and and bullying and all of those i hate using bullying
00:17:18.120because it just minimizes it but you have to learn all of that and then you have to go back
00:17:23.080to teaching about the French Revolution. In my opinion, and I haven't even mentioned
00:17:30.400dealing with parents and politicians who think they can do your job better.
00:17:37.160Now, if you pile all this on a person, and most teachers take it with such responsibility
00:17:46.280and such a heavy heart, of course, you are going to get burned out. And COVID has been unreal.
00:17:56.980Just unreal on so many different levels. But I'm not just speaking about COVID. I'm speaking about
00:18:02.840in general. I'll tell you about a time I was getting there. So our school was going through
00:18:08.400some transformations. Some teachers had left. Another school was being started. Going to work
00:18:14.220was awful. And I just thought at that moment, I'm just going to pull back. Now, a lot of teachers
00:18:19.540here know that we get a lot back from our students, but we get a lot back when we put more in.
00:18:27.980For example, the play I'm about to be in. My God, guys, like I never would have thought in a million
00:18:33.180years I would have been in a major play, nor had the second most lines in the play. But when you
00:18:40.140put that time and that effort into your school and your students and your faculty, it comes back,
00:18:48.060right? It's an energy. You give it and you get it. The same goes when you coach, when you have clubs,
00:18:55.600when you do anything external to the classroom that is able to fill that energy, right? Because
00:19:04.820a classroom it's really you but everything else about the school has a flow to it when i coach
00:19:10.740you get to know the kids differently when i'm in the play they get to see me struggle and oh my god
00:19:16.820do i struggle but they get to see me struggle and then have to work through it with them
00:19:22.900it's so much power but it gives you such an energy boost and during covid we couldn't have any of it
00:19:28.820we barely have it now right all those extra things were cancelled by the way all those extra things
00:19:34.900that teachers do without getting paid for it that's a side note i'll have a whole other podcast
00:19:40.020about that but that's how we get our energy so during covid it was ripped away it was ripped
00:19:47.620away and then at the exact same time you were hearing in the media months months after people
00:19:57.620had said teachers don't deserve summers off teachers don't deserve this pay teachers don't0.62
00:20:02.180deserve benefits why are teachers striking i'm we're cutting funding to education it's ridiculous
00:20:07.300they're so whiny they're so this they're so that to everybody saying oh my god teachers are the
00:20:15.380fundamental linchpin they're the the building block of all society and during covet if they're
00:20:21.540not open we're we're no good kids are at home their mental health is awful because they're not
00:20:28.420in school guys take that in and nobody's really took this in taking this in took oh god some
00:20:38.020grammar issues already nobody's thought about that in a significant way or nobody's articulated it
00:20:43.060because we it's been such a high stress situation but everybody went from just teach
00:20:51.300and stop whining to oh my god you're the most important thing in the world
00:20:55.460and we can't close schools because as soon as we close schools our kids start to fall apart
00:21:00.820ask yourself why a start asking people what goes on in the home because that's problem number one
00:21:08.180but b and more you know more consistently ask yourself what else happens in school that my kid
00:21:18.500desperately needs and as soon as you acknowledge that you have to acknowledge how much more money
00:21:25.540we should put into education you have to acknowledge the weight that a teacher carries
00:21:30.660who's trying to deliver that kind of foundational energy, you know, and, and some people realize it
00:21:40.360and some people don't. So when I was going through that hard time and it wasn't even during COVID,
00:21:45.340I pulled back. I'm like, I'm not coaching, forget it. It's too hard. I'm not, I'm not doing extra
00:21:50.980things. I'm not going to staff events. I'm just going to, I'm going to do my contract and then
00:21:55.660but i'm gonna go home and i i was depressed and i was tired and i was drained and i might not have
00:22:06.380really considered quitting at the time but if something else would have presented itself i
00:22:11.820might have i might have and then one day um one of my best friends said to me
00:22:19.260you you are only going to get in what you you're only going to get out what you put in
00:22:23.900and sometimes the hardest thing we ever do is put in when we have nothing left to put
00:22:33.820and that's the time when we need to do it the most right and then I started applying that to
00:22:39.860a lot of other things it's the time where I can't do another lap it's the time where I you know I
00:22:44.920can't dig another volleyball I can't take another run down the the try line I can't write another
00:22:50.000essay. I can't sit in another parent. And at that moment, we all get to make a decision.
00:22:57.580We all get to make a decision if we withdraw or if we cash in and go all in. That's a horrible
00:23:05.360analogy, but you get my point. And we have to make a choice. Now, sometimes you have to cash
00:23:13.900out. Sometimes things are done and that's okay. You can move on to other careers because sometimes
00:23:19.720teaching is only for a particular kind of soul and sometimes that shifts however
00:23:26.460if you're finding yourself at that crux if you're finding yourself on that precipice
00:23:32.800sometimes you also have to find something else that can inspire you to give more they say the
00:23:42.260definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result
00:23:46.780right? So if you were always a coach, okay, go do an art class with the kids.
00:23:53.640If you were always a director of a play, okay, start a chess club.
00:24:01.260You know, if you loved watching movies with the kids and we can't do it, okay,
00:24:07.340start a food club. If the kids are down, bring in guest speakers.
00:24:16.780if the kids are looking for something new find it and bring it into your environment or go
00:24:25.500take the kids and say today we're going to go we're going to go out into the city we're going
00:24:30.360to go out into the community and find something and i'm going to go you one step further if
00:24:36.060you're feeling that way admit it some teachers have a very thick veil between them in the class
00:24:45.820I don't. I don't because I don't think kids buy it if you do. And then they're kind of
00:24:54.260mistrusting. I'm not saying put your whole life out there. I'm just saying don't have such a thick
00:24:58.540veil. But if I'm feeling up against it and I'm feeling tired and I'm feeling like I've run too
00:25:05.600hard. Put the pencils down in geography class, in physics, in French. Put the pencils down.
00:25:17.240Tell the kids to put their stuff away and sit down and talk to them. And I'm not saying talk
00:25:24.480to them like a therapist. I'm not saying talk to them like you have some sort of expertise.
00:25:28.300I'm not saying that at all. Talk to them like you're a person who's going through something hard.
00:25:35.600who's who's feeling hard to give right now maybe they're feeling the same way maybe a kid one kid
00:25:43.920in your class is able to give you that different perspective that different spark because i'll tell
00:25:48.640you right now the number one reason i'm a teacher is because i learn every single day every single
00:25:53.720day and so maybe by putting that on the table you you light a flame to something you didn't even
00:26:01.760know needed lighting. You didn't even know it was there to be lit. And you can open up brand new
00:26:08.820doors. And that's what it's about. It's about tapping into new resources, finding new books,
00:26:17.800finding new pieces of art to be inspired by. That's what it's about. So when you're at your
00:26:26.080breaking point put the curriculum down look i think the curriculum is important and i think
00:26:33.200kids need to learn but i only i don't think it needs to be this relative you know regimented
00:26:41.040militaristic structure i really don't i think sometimes you're in science class and you say
00:26:49.200you know what what do you guys think you guys think aliens exist
00:26:56.080Sometimes you're in history class, or physics, because it works in both classes, and you say, you know what?
00:27:01.720You guys ever heard of the JFK assassination?
00:27:06.040Or something huge is happening in the world.
00:29:45.620Now, I have to address what's going on in the United States because it's a special kind of crazy.
00:29:50.720All these books are getting banned. All these laws are being passed about whether or not people can say gay in the classroom or talk to kids about gender identity or say anything that conflicts with their religious beliefs.
00:30:05.120All of it's utter garbage. Utter garbage. And the notion that teachers have to teach through this is truly horrific.1.00
00:30:12.980But here's what I'm going to say to those teachers.
00:33:07.700People want, and I know it's really hard to believe right now, guys, because of all the idiocy you're surrounded by.0.98
00:33:14.960People are in dire need and desperate desire for authentic, amazing people to lead.0.99
00:33:24.920And in the absence of amazing people that are, you know, that are intelligent, they will take idiots that seem authentic because they want that.0.97
00:33:38.940So you have these pseudo leaders manipulating rather than leading with honesty and authenticity and intelligence because they know they're looking.0.98