Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where The Tide is Out...That's Not What This Book Is About

00:00:00.000 class is in session hey everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 class is in session today i'm in

00:00:09.200 the drama room at metro now for those who are just tapping into this and it's before july 1st 19 19

00:00:18.960 what is wrong with me if it's before july 1st 2025 i was born in 1975 and about term 50 maybe

00:00:25.520 I'm having some sort of memory glitch perimenopause nonetheless if it is before July 1st I have yet

00:00:31.760 to release my very first book that's not what this book is about in each chapter correlates

00:00:38.400 to a particular podcast that you're watching right now in order to do a little more a bit

00:00:44.240 more of a deep dive and discussion based on that chapter and what I talked about it how

00:00:50.000 it turned me into a teacher now it's funny as you're watching this right now you might

00:00:54.720 already have the book in your hand and you've used the qr code in the chapter and it's brought

00:00:58.800 you right to me so welcome welcome you're gonna hear stuff in the background of this but i'm gonna

00:01:04.640 film it regardless um at metro we're currently renovating and building a science lab a genetics

00:01:12.480 lab and the guys are taking stuff out sort of behind me but nonetheless that's what goes on

00:01:17.760 on her to school, guys. Constantly moving, constantly going. All right. So this podcast

00:01:23.880 and this chapter in my book, again, that's not what this book is about. You can go get it on

00:01:28.120 learn16.com, talks about overcoming fear. So the beginning of the chapter, and you guys can read

00:01:35.840 it, it's about what I learned how to surf in Costa Rica. And I was told that the tide goes out

00:01:43.060 at a certain time of day. And I thought I could get one more surfing. I could go out one more

00:01:49.140 time, one more wave. And I would come back in. Shelly, who I was surfing with, was on the

00:01:53.980 beach napping. And I go out. And as I went out, the tide was going out.

00:02:00.920 I don't know if you've ever experienced the tide actually going out when you're on something where

00:02:07.420 you have to actually physically paddle to go a certain direction, right? And at that point,

00:02:13.800 the ocean went flat, no waves of any kind. So I was out however far, yelling to Shelly on the

00:02:22.500 beach in Costa Rica, which she couldn't hear. All the while, there was no waves and the tide was

00:02:31.060 going out. So I realized I was getting pulled further and further out. And as I was getting

00:02:36.620 pulled further and further out, I started to really worry that I was going to end up in Ireland.

00:02:41.100 So I started to paddle. And as I was paddling, I was keeping an eye on the shoreline and keeping

00:02:49.620 an eye on the shoreline to see where I was. Was I getting closer? Because it was really hard to tell

00:02:53.500 depth, right? And I am paddling. My first year of teaching, by the way, so I was, how old was I? 27.

00:03:00.920 first year of teaching my first vacation and I'm paddling the hardest I can and I'm I'm just keeping

00:03:08.420 um up with like I'm just not moving so I'm not going further out but I'm not going into shore

00:03:15.700 either and I'm starting to sweat you guys ever sweat while you're in the ocean you know how hard

00:03:21.720 you have to be working to sweat in the ocean I'm panicking panicking panicking I get off my board

00:03:28.080 I start to just swim. It's a, it's a situation. And then I see the tiny, right when I'm about to

00:03:33.380 give up, right when I'm like, I've had it. Ireland will be nice this time of year. Take me away.

00:03:38.800 What are we going to do? Tiny wave kicked up, pushed me into shore. And after I killed Shelly,

00:03:46.900 I had that moment and I, and I don't think I realized it in that moment, but this notion that

00:03:53.880 a lot of the times life, you do scary things. You take risks. You do things that bring you joy.

00:04:01.760 And there is such joy with surfing, but there's also fear. When you're four or five feet up on

00:04:08.140 a wave, there's a level of exhilaration that is only, you only get that exhilaration. You only

00:04:16.080 get that feeling of freedom if it's kind of coupled with at any given moment, this wave

00:04:21.780 could crush me or draw me out to Ireland. Why is that? Because I think we're not really living

00:04:30.720 in a real authentic way, unless we're doing things that scare us. Now, I'm not interested

00:04:36.220 in doing things that actually can harm anybody. You understand that the Ireland thing, you know,

00:04:41.220 as much as I like a good four leaf clover, I didn't, that wasn't my thing. And I'm not a huge

00:04:46.960 physical risk taker. However, I think there's a lot of things in our world that we don't do

00:04:53.780 because we're afraid of the outcome. We're afraid of failing. More importantly, we're afraid of

00:04:58.620 looking stupid. We're afraid of feeling so horribly insecure that we don't even want to 0.99

00:05:03.840 give it a go. And I think that those limitations that we have placed on ourselves and sometimes

00:05:09.280 very internally and subconsciously, right? Limit who we get to be, where we get to go and the

00:05:17.280 things we get to experience. So in that moment, I don't think I recognized that. I don't, well,

00:05:27.180 I didn't. I didn't recognize sort of its metaphorical impact. All I recognized was the

00:05:33.420 fact that I almost got pulled out and thank goodness I wasn't and I love surfing, but that's

00:05:37.740 it, right? As a 27-year-old brain, a very limited scope. Flash forward in my educational life as a

00:05:45.440 teacher, I say all the time, or I used to say, monotony is the spice of life. Now, the reason

00:05:53.220 why I say that is because there's a control factor you get, the perception of a control factor you

00:06:02.280 get by doing things monotonously every single day. I eat breakfast, McDonald's every day.

00:06:08.480 I come to school. I sit down. I put on a show for about 20 minutes. I do history 10. I do

00:06:14.440 politics. I do volleyball. There's a schedule and a monotony. I come home. I watch a little show.

00:06:22.180 I take the dog out. And all of those things, what they're doing for me anyway,

00:06:27.040 is they're giving me the illusion and the comfort of predictability.

00:06:34.260 Now, if anybody's lived past any sort of age where you see very clearly,

00:06:41.000 whether you try to eat McDonald's every morning at the same time,

00:06:45.100 life is absolutely unpredictable, uncontrollable.

00:06:50.080 The only constant in life is change.

00:06:52.400 I hate that.

00:06:53.300 So we spend the better part, and I've spent the better part of my life,

00:06:55.860 trying to mitigate for that? How do I mitigate for change? How do I slow it down? How do I avoid it?

00:07:01.920 How do I deter it? When in actuality, the change isn't the problem. Change is actually usually

00:07:09.960 quite beautiful. Transition sucks. And it's the unknown that is the problem for me. The unknown 0.98

00:07:20.160 of what that next phase is going to look like. But once you're in that next phase, you're like,

00:07:25.860 oh, why was I so afraid of it? But then you want to stay put in that phase. Transition is hard.

00:07:33.280 And I think we try to avoid that. And we live in a world now where you can't. I think that's

00:07:40.260 one of the biggest realities about our world and our educational models and our work models as of

00:07:48.040 today. Everything is in constant flux, in constant change, right? I think you've seen change throughout

00:07:55.120 the years, but it kind of comes in. There's the innovation or the invention and then slight

00:08:00.180 innovations along the way. But the internet, which is really only 25 years old, which isn't a long

00:08:08.920 time, the internet, social media, AI, these things have very quick, massive changes to who we are

00:08:19.900 and what we do. And so I think when people talk about social anxiety and they're like,

00:08:25.260 I'd ever had social anxiety when I was a kid. No, because when we were kids,

00:08:29.500 you had one phone, you had five channels that you had to get up and change. You had certain

00:08:35.360 news affiliations that you had to listen to, or you picked up the newspaper at the end of the day.

00:08:39.880 You played with your friends until the sun went down. Your parents had the same job for 30 years,

00:08:44.260 got a gold watch and called it a day with a great pension. We don't live there anymore.

00:08:48.140 now we know about what's going on in countries and communities 15,000 kilometers away from us

00:08:57.220 that seems far but you understand what I'm saying now we have unlimited choice of what we watch

00:09:03.860 now we don't just have news affiliates we have everybody reporting from their backyard to their

00:09:10.300 front yard, to the war zone, to wherever it is they are. Now, people change careers every five

00:09:18.640 to 10 years. And whether it's their choice or not, it just changes. Do you want to talk about

00:09:25.640 social anxiety? That's where it's coming from. There is very little consistency. The underfooting

00:09:33.920 for which we derive a lot of our calm or try to derive calm has been shook. And now we're

00:09:42.400 constantly just waiting for the next tremor. So all of that is to say, fear is a good thing.

00:09:52.920 Facing that fear, engaging with that fear, talking about it out loud, that's the better thing.

00:10:00.080 embracing transition, being okay with not knowing, but doing it anyway. I say to my

00:10:09.620 students all the time, and I know it's an old saying, but courage isn't doing whatever. Courage

00:10:18.060 isn't just doing scary stuff. I mean, it is. But it's about facing, if you're afraid of something,

00:10:24.000 courage is like doing it anyways. Okay, that's scary. I don't want to do it, but I'm going to

00:10:28.060 do it anyways. I'm not going to mitigate it. I'm not going to try to subvert it. I'm not going to

00:10:31.500 go around it. I'm going to do it anyway. That's courage. And I think more often than not,

00:10:38.240 most of us try to avoid. So what does this have to do with teaching? Well, I'll tell you,

00:10:44.760 because as adults and as an adult that was raised, you know, in the seventies and eighties,

00:10:49.340 I have to be pushed as an educator. I can very comfortably sit in monotony, same job,

00:10:58.660 same courses, slight changes to curriculum, same year plan. I know what to expect as a person,

00:11:05.880 as a human, if I don't seek out those kinds of risks and then say yes to them,

00:11:13.700 then I'm not growing. Then you're not living fully. And the opportunities that you didn't

00:11:18.300 even know you wanted are right around the corner that you just need to say, okay. So flash forward

00:11:24.100 after COVID. Okay. So COVID, everything gets locked down. I think COVID was this very strong

00:11:30.840 shift too, where it really said, listen, at any given moment, mother nature can also sit you on 0.99

00:11:36.220 your butt. So pay attention. So after that lockdown, we come into school the following year. 0.99

00:11:42.200 Okay. And Ryan's doing a school play. Now you got to know, and I know this is odd considering

00:11:48.340 where I am now, but understand this was a big shift for me. So right after COVID, I start doing

00:11:53.140 TikTok and some videos, but very minimally, it's nothing huge. It's gaining a little momentum and

00:11:58.940 I'm feeling more and more comfortable lip syncing on streets with fake guitars. And we come back to

00:12:04.820 school and we want to do another school play. Now I've been working with Ryan for 22 years,

00:12:09.280 20 years at this point. Every year he's asked me to be in the play. Every year I told him to get

00:12:13.160 away from me. It's terrifying to me. Acting's terrifying to me prior to now. Halloween was

00:12:19.780 even terrifying to me. There was something, I was always confident standing in my own self

00:12:24.300 on stage or in the front of people and talking. That didn't scare me. But pretending to be

00:12:30.280 something else, having a level of an artistic something to it, I didn't know how to do that.

00:12:37.740 And so I just avoided it for 20 years. Now we get to this. The school is doing Sweat by Lynn

00:12:44.420 Nottage. If you want to look up a great play, please, for the love of God, go read it. It's

00:12:47.940 incredible. It talks about a community in Philadelphia. It talks about the opioid crisis.

00:12:55.560 It talks about losing work and what happens to those communities, what happens to those people.

00:13:00.500 It talks about race. It talks about sex. It talks about all of those things.

00:13:04.440 Anyways, a fantastic play.

00:13:06.680 So as he's preparing for this play, he asked me, I say, no, go away.

00:13:10.020 And then at some point in that year, because kids were having a really hard time coming

00:13:13.880 back from COVID.

00:13:14.940 So some kids, any kind of stress, it was just too much.

00:13:18.720 And we had a student who was going to play the role that, you know, this very important

00:13:24.340 role.

00:13:24.720 I didn't realize how significant because it was like you had the main character and then

00:13:29.520 you had this role that was like right beneath it.

00:13:32.580 if beneath it at all. And, and she was just overwhelmed. She couldn't do it. So Ryan comes

00:13:39.400 to me in March, the play's going to be in June. They'd been practicing since November.

00:13:43.600 Ryan comes to me in March after, right before March break and says, Joe, the student had to

00:13:48.620 drop out. I need you to play this character. If you don't play this character, we're going to

00:13:54.420 have to cancel the play. And I was in a very specific mindset where I was deciding to say

00:14:04.880 yes to things that presented themselves to me, no matter how scared I was. So instinctually,

00:14:09.900 I said, yes. He's like, what? I'm like, I'm in. He goes, well, why don't you look through the play

00:14:15.320 and decide? I'm like, I'm in. I'm going to look through the play, but I'm in. I'm in. Let's do

00:14:21.040 it. And then I went home and I started highlighting all of my lines and realized half the damn book 0.99

00:14:26.060 were my lines. And I'm like, oh my God. And then I realized I needed to memorize these lines, which 0.97

00:14:31.860 I'm not very good at other people's words, other people's cadence, other people's anything. And by

00:14:37.260 the way, I've never acted a day in my life. So that wasn't even talking about what it was going

00:14:42.040 to feel like to be on that stage and actually perform and actually get in character. I had no

00:14:50.620 comprehension of it. So I said, okay, I would say for, I have never done something, including

00:15:00.440 almost getting taken out to Ireland. I have never done something so scary and so terrifying.

00:15:07.920 And it built consistently every single day for months until that play was over.

00:15:14.520 I doing the lines one thing sitting in a room running lines all right knowing that I had to

00:15:22.760 be off book at a certain time that messed with my head and then when we started to block and

00:15:26.940 blocking's when you do lines on the stage and you know where you're supposed to move and how

00:15:31.600 it's supposed to flow and all of those kinds of cues it was in that moment I knew I effed up like

00:15:38.440 I'm like oh no and then I realized I wasn't acting when I was up there I was just being me

00:15:44.280 right? I didn't know how to act. I'm like, Joanna would be fine for this character.

00:15:49.480 And Ryan's like, you got to be less Joanna. You got to stop moving around. Stop moving your hands

00:15:55.220 so much as I am. You got to ground yourself. You got to understand when you raise your voice,

00:16:00.700 when you keep it down, you got to understand where the audience is. You got to understand

00:16:06.640 that it's let the lines do it. Don't try to affect the lines, let the lines affect you and all of

00:16:12.420 this stuff. And guys, I'm sitting there like he's speaking Greek. And I'm just like, I don't know

00:16:18.520 what he's talking about. But he was so, Ryan was so good at pushing me when I, because I really do

00:16:23.780 need to kick in the butt, pushing me, building me up, pushing me, building me up all the way 0.98

00:16:29.420 through this. And then what was beautiful about this play was that I had students that were in 0.99

00:16:34.200 the play with me who had done plays with Ryan before, who had a calmness about them, who would

00:16:40.580 sit with me or who would act with me and say, okay, Joe, why don't we just try it this way?

00:16:45.320 Or maybe do this, or that was really, really good. Okay, let's run it again. I had kids that would

00:16:51.540 like say, I'm not comfortable with it. Can we run it again? Like they're saying that, but the only

00:16:55.380 reason they're saying that is they know I'm not comfortable with it. And they're just carrying

00:16:58.600 that. So I had my students teaching me, helping me, supporting me. We did the show for five nights.

00:17:05.100 It was incredible, amazing, best thing I've ever done. All five nights, I thought I was going to

00:17:08.620 die. Pass out, throw up. I didn't know what was going to come first. I even had a student that

00:17:15.280 had a big scene with, and he was really, this kid was on memorizing lines. Like he would memorize

00:17:20.620 my lines, his lines, every line. So we have this, this dialogue back and forth, sort of in front of

00:17:26.440 the scrim, very, just each of us just lit. And every time I did the scene, I wouldn't have my

00:17:33.760 lines perfect, right? I'd kind of adjust it. I change it. We'd go off the set and his name is

00:17:39.780 Phil. And he'd get me off the set and he goes, uh, Joanna, you dropped four lines. And I'm like,

00:17:43.720 I know. So he's like, those are my cues. You gotta, you gotta hit those lines. I said, Phil,

00:17:48.900 here's the deal. I'm doing my best. I promise you. But if I drop a line and you think there's

00:17:53.500 a pause, just pick it up. You gotta help me. Okay. Cause I don't have it perfect like you do.

00:17:58.060 And he's like, okay, I got you. I got you. He goes, so if you pause for too long, he goes,

00:18:02.940 I'm just going to pick it up and I'm going to run with it. I said, thank you so much. And

00:18:05.760 I got a bit better as my nerves got a little less. And every time we go off stage, he goes,

00:18:10.400 oh, you only dropped two lines there. That part right there, that wasn't right. You moved over

00:18:14.780 here. It was incredible. Absolutely incredible. And the fact that I learned from those kids,

00:18:22.940 the fact that I have never been more scared in my entire life. And I felt that at age 45 or

00:18:32.860 however old I was. The fact that I felt that then and really felt it as an adult

00:18:41.220 is incredibly important as a teacher. And here's why. We forget what it's like to do things for

00:18:50.300 the first time. We forget what it's like to be shoved out of our comfort zones because we shove

00:18:56.200 kids out of their comfort zones all the time because it's all new for them, right? We're

00:18:59.640 always like, well, you got to do physics. You got to do this. You got to go on this trip. You got

00:19:02.960 to, you're not social. Cool. You're going to do this. Whereas adults, you get to insulate yourself

00:19:06.720 and limit those new experiences. They don't make you feel good. They make me scared. They don't

00:19:10.960 make me feel good. I'm not doing them. And as an adult, unless you put yourself in a position to

00:19:16.840 be pushed into that fray as an educator, you're not going to be able to connect. You're not going

00:19:25.460 to get it. Number one, you're not going to learn. And if you're not learning as an educator,

00:19:29.940 you're becoming worse. It's kind of like inflation. You know what I mean? Like you're

00:19:33.840 staying here when you should be grading up. Number one, you're not going to be able to

00:19:38.680 explain things. You're not going to be able to do things as well if you do them the way you've

00:19:42.200 always done them. And number two, if you don't know what fear feels like and how you put yourself

00:19:48.360 in a position to overcome that fear, how in the hell can you ask and encourage and empower

00:19:54.840 empower students to do the same thing. I don't think you can. And I think up until that play,

00:20:00.640 I'd been doing not enough as a teacher, a disservice to my students, because I didn't know

00:20:08.540 that I wasn't facing those kinds of fears. And since I wasn't facing those kinds of fears,

00:20:13.880 when I was demanding of them, it was asking too much with no context. It was asking too much

00:20:19.400 without me giving them ways to empower themselves.

00:20:22.740 It was asking too much.

00:20:26.100 And I truly believe this is the heart of education.

00:20:31.680 This is it.

00:20:33.640 And a lot of people will say a lot of different things.

00:20:36.180 But when I think about all the different things,

00:20:38.400 the heart of education,

00:20:40.280 the heart of anything we do in this world, by the way, guys,

00:20:42.660 the heart of education is

00:20:43.820 how do I how do I encourage and empower kids to do scary things that they're not good at

00:20:55.520 they're good at them they're not scared of it everything about school should be in about young

00:21:03.960 years empowering kids to do things that scare them that are out of their comfort zone that

00:21:11.820 aren't in their wheelhouse, whether they're successful or not, and celebrate it.

00:21:21.600 You're scared to do karate?

00:21:22.900 Cool.

00:21:23.120 Guess what we're doing next week.

00:21:24.980 You're scared to take a physics class?

00:21:26.680 Amazing.

00:21:27.320 Let's get into it.

00:21:28.800 You're scared to be in the play?

00:21:30.800 I'm going to give you a small roll.

00:21:32.220 We're going to see how it goes.

00:21:33.280 so i just think that there's all of these different things that

00:21:40.900 teachers don't necessarily see and i didn't for a very long time until i was shoved

00:21:48.020 into it uh and i and i think this is the heart of education

00:21:54.900 now because the kids that are good the kids that school comes easy the kids that aren't scared

00:22:03.040 Guess what? As a teacher, how much do you really have to influence them, encourage them? How much

00:22:11.300 do you really have to build them? You don't. You just get the hell out of their way. But it's the

00:22:17.740 other 80% of students that aren't good at something, that maybe have a different learning ability,

00:22:24.580 that are maybe battling something, that have social anxiety, that, you know, have

00:22:31.020 issues within certain subject areas and they just try to avoid it or they don't ever go

00:22:36.740 close to it. Those are the kids. That's where education is. It really isn't teaching when

00:22:43.020 the war of 1812 ended, 1814, just, you know, it, and by the way, Americans, we burned down

00:22:49.960 the White House. It really isn't teaching that. It should be. Put them in a position

00:22:58.200 that doesn't feel good, that is scary, that they've never done before, that they don't maybe

00:23:05.180 even want to do and say, don't worry, I got you. We're going to do this together.

00:23:10.640 And if you don't do well, here's the second half. Because not all stories are going to be like,

00:23:16.160 fine when I did sweat people said and it seemed to go very well and people liked what I had to do

00:23:22.500 it could have gone the other way that doesn't negate what I did and what I overcame you can

00:23:28.460 take a physics class and be horrible at it and get a 62 but you that was a hard 62 that's a success

00:23:35.880 throw the parade throw the fanfare and we are so built in our world about only giving accolades

00:23:44.560 to certain marks, certain achievements, certain whatever, as they pertain to sort of a comparative

00:23:50.380 analysis, rather than being like, holy crap, you got a 72 in English. And for the last three years,

00:23:57.720 you've been battling and trying to mitigate and deal with a significant form of dyslexia.

00:24:05.160 How does that not get a parade? Doing things we're not good at. But then here's the key.

00:24:14.560 and this is the hard part, I think. When you don't get met with success, most of us,

00:24:20.640 myself included, would want to give up right away. The first test I get, you know, 42,

00:24:26.280 I don't want to do it anymore. If I would have come out that first night of sweat and like,

00:24:30.800 people are like, oh, it's a good job, Joanna. I mean, I would have been, I would have done the

00:24:34.980 rest of the show, but I would have not been heartbroken. And so what do we do? How do you

00:24:42.340 overcome that? Well, a couple of things. Number one, if you build a school community where

00:24:50.180 everybody, everybody, because everybody has something they're not good at, is kind of pushed

00:24:57.040 into that fray and is forced to, you might not be good at it, but cool. We're going to do it

00:25:02.300 anyways. We're going to make sure we're just going to hope and we're going to push and we're

00:25:05.940 going to empower for you to get better at it. And then the kid that gets the 98 math without

00:25:12.200 even blinking, becomes the kid who can't draw a picture and the art student who draws incredible

00:25:18.960 portraits but can't get a 50 in math, guess what? They're on more of an equal playing field now.

00:25:27.320 What we do in our society is we elevate the math and we marginalize the art because we think this

00:25:33.800 skill is more important than that skill. That's a failure. That's a failure of our system. And in

00:25:38.600 all fairness, the only reason anyone's ever done that is to save money. Cutting the arts is a

00:25:43.380 failure of our system. Growing STEM, success, but doing it to the exclusion, marginalization,

00:25:52.700 and negation of the arts, ridiculously stupid. And again, it is just done for money. 1.00

00:26:02.340 And under this auspice that, well, you only need these courses to go get that job and go make that

00:26:07.860 much money. Forget being a whole person. Forget being a happy person. Forget being a person

00:26:14.960 that doesn't just exist in its singularity to do a job, to get a paycheck, to get money,

00:26:21.580 to buy a house, to have a full scope. To understand that music is important for everybody's brain,

00:26:31.020 so is math. I don't want kids dropping math any more than I want them dropping music.

00:26:35.140 I don't want kids being on their phones 24-7, and I don't just want kids only in the gym.

00:26:45.760 It's about breadth, and it's about expanding your mind, not narrowing your focus.

00:26:53.500 And now more than ever, with the advent and the internet and AI, shadow, cloud, whatever

00:27:03.880 you want to call it, not only is it happening, whether you want it to or not, it is necessary.

00:27:11.200 If you don't figure out how to become multifaceted and purposeful and capable of pivoting as change

00:27:21.800 happens, because guess what? You don't just have one skillset in your back pocket. You haven't

00:27:26.900 only done the things that you've always been successful at. You know how to struggle. You

00:27:31.420 know how to overcome. You know how to get better. You know how to set your mindset so things aren't

00:27:36.280 terrifying because you know what? I've done scary crap before. I struggle and guess what? I'm fine. 0.93

00:27:43.000 I'm fine and I'm better for it. Isn't that the lesson? Now here's the problem. My mentality,

00:27:53.860 my philosophy is going to cost money. It's going to cost money. It's going to cost time.

00:27:57.980 and it's going to put parents and kids in positions that they don't want to be in.

00:28:02.960 They're going to say things like, but Joanna, I'm really good at math. So if I take history

00:28:06.720 and I'm not good at it, it's going to take away from me just doing math. Okay. Stop just doing

00:28:12.760 math. Well, then I'm not going to get 98 in math. We need a shift. And I understand it needs to come

00:28:18.840 from the universities, but I think it's happening. You're seeing more and more universities. You're

00:28:22.680 seeing law programs getting rid of standardized testing. Why are they doing that? Because they

00:28:29.460 understand that the mark isn't the indicator of a great doctor or a great lawyer or a great whatever.

00:28:36.900 That the grade doesn't dictate how they do in this world. But funnily enough, a lot of people

00:28:43.940 have weaponized that reality and said school doesn't matter. No, you got it wrong. You're

00:28:49.120 going the wrong way. Of course it matters. Of course education matters. You're just trying

00:28:54.980 to negate it because of money. Because if you were about empowering people, you would

00:29:01.340 say the problem with education is the narrow focus. So what do we need to do? We need to

00:29:06.600 broaden the scope. We need to understand that a holistic person coming to a job that has

00:29:11.220 many abilities, that can multitask, that know what struggle feels like, knows how to overcome

00:29:15.540 struggle knows what failure feels like and they're good, they'll still push on. That's the

00:29:19.860 person I want to hire. That's the person in life that is going to do better, that is going to be

00:29:24.840 resilient. If I'm going to hire somebody, those are the people I'm going to want. So why is the

00:29:30.780 education system not preparing for that? Because we can do that. It's just going to take a little

00:29:37.660 bit longer. And then it's going to take more time to understand the person rather than the

00:29:43.860 transcript average of your best six courses, because I don't think that's what makes the

00:29:51.200 best anybody. I'll, I'll, I'll even go as far as to say the people that everything comes

00:29:58.360 easy to, I think actually are less productive in society. Ooh, I'm going to get some hate

00:30:09.640 about that. I really do. 99 in math, 99 in math, 99 in math. You don't know what struggle feels

00:30:17.220 like. I don't think you do great things. I've said it. I don't think you do. You need to know

00:30:26.620 what struggle feels like. Because if you don't know what struggle feels like, when you come up

00:30:32.520 against it, you won't know how to pivot. You won't be able to dig down deep. You won't know what that

00:30:37.860 feels like, you will feel like that's failure and it's the end game. You won't be able to push

00:30:44.660 through. And anything great that's ever happened in this world, any huge things that people have

00:30:49.680 done, you have to be willing to go past failure. Horrible failure, devastating failure, life

00:30:57.040 crippling, altering failure. So let's embrace failing. Let's embrace having to do something

00:31:08.240 again. Let's embrace trying to change how we're doing it. And let's stop pretending as though

00:31:15.500 there's only five courses that matter or three disciplines or certain job tracks that matter.

00:31:23.380 and the education has to directly tie to that.

00:31:26.240 Let's stop all of that.

00:31:27.560 And let's go back to this idea of a Renaissance person.

00:31:30.660 That person is going to be more powerful, more capable,

00:31:36.580 and will change the world quicker than anybody else.

00:31:43.660 And to think, I learned that entire thing

00:31:47.220 while getting swept away to Ireland.

00:31:49.220 well thank you so much for hanging out guys go check out my book that's not what this book is

00:31:57.280 about unlearn16.com and i will see you next day same bat time same bat channel dismissed

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - June 28, 2025

The One Where The Tide is Out...That's Not What This Book Is About

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