Educators are more stressed than ever these days, but there are ways to make things better—from federal funding, to local actions, to individual practices. On this episode, Todd Scholl from the Center for Educator Wellness and Learning discusses the toll stress can take on educators, and discuss strategies for managing it, taking action for the greater good, and maintaining a healthy work/life balance.
Mentioned in this episode:
Todd (00:02):
Educators need to constantly remind themselves to come back to where they are right now. What's happening in front of me right now? Is now the time to worry about that thing in the future, to regret that thing in the past, or is now the time to focus on what's in front of me? What we find is, the more you can be present moment focused and let go of this time travel, the less stress you're likely to feel. You just create the conditions where peace and joy can emerge. Then we can model this for young people and then they can be healthier as well.
Natieka (00:32):
Hello and welcome to School Me, the National Education Association's podcast dedicated to helping educators thrive at every stage of their careers. I'm your host, Natieka Samuels. It's no secret that educators are more stressed than ever these days. Whether you call it stress, burnout, or just plain exhaustion, it's rapidly changing the education landscape as educators retire early or quit their jobs due to the pressures they've endured. But there are ways to make things better, from federal funding, to local actions, to individual practices. So today, we're joined by Todd Scholl from the Center for Educator Wellness and Learning to discuss the toll stress can take on educators, strategies for managing it, taking action for the greater good, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Thank you so much for joining us today, Todd.
Todd (01:16):
My pleasure.
Natieka (01:17):
So let's get a bit of your origin story. What was your path to becoming an educator?
Todd (01:22):
Both of my parents were educators. My grandfather was as well. Of course, growing up I did not want to become an educator. I was determined that I was going to go and do broadcast journalism, so I went to the University of South Carolina and graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism. It wasn't long after being in that field that I realized the pull of my genes, and I don't mean my Levi's, it was strong towards education. So, I went back and got certified to teach at Coastal Carolina University. Started my teaching career in 1995. Spent the first two years teaching special ed, particularly students with learning disabilities. A new middle school/high school opened up in the area and the principal of that school remembered an interview I did with him about my background in broadcast journalism and asked me if I would come to that school and develop a broadcast journalism program for both the middle and high school.
(02:16):
So I did that in 1997, and I stayed at Carolina Forest until January of 2011, when I was invited to go work at the Center for Educator Recruitment Retention and Advancement. It's a nonprofit state agency here in South Carolina that works to improve the teacher pipeline for public schools. I was on that senior staff for about a decade and then retired. Then, was invited by the South Carolina Education Association to be a teaching fellow, one of the NEA teaching fellows. This is July of '21. Did that for a year and loved it. During that year, we developed our Center for Educator Wellness and Learning, and now I serve as the lead learner of that center.
Natieka (02:56):
The whole topic that we want to hit on is educator stress today. This is going to sound like a very silly question, but I think we have to start here. Why are educators so stressed these days?
Todd (03:08):
I think there's a whole host of reasons. If I were to really dig into what is the underlying cause, and I think about cancer, what causes cancer? Well, there can be genetic mutations, but a lot of times it's environmental, it's people are smoking, or not eating what they're supposed to be doing, or drinking too much, things like that, or other environmental factors. Some of that they can't do anything about. When I think about what is at the root of educator stress, I go to the toxic system that was built around accountability. This goes back to the '80s after A Nation at Risk was released to the public and created this sort of outcry that our public schools were failing and that we were falling behind our international peers. This accountability movement was created around that and testing sort of became the god of how we were going to measure school success.
(04:02):
That has only gotten worse. I think we've seen a devolution of that system, where it's really become this test and punish culture. It is the tail that wags the dog at this point, that the school leaders are very much myopically focused on their test scores, and understandably so because that's how they're being told they're going to be measured in terms of their success. This filters down to the classroom teacher, and then it also filters down to our students because there's all of this pressure that's now placed on this particular metric, this standardized test. So much pressure that the system has become increasingly dehumanized. We are sacrificing human happiness and wellness at the altar of the testing god. So that to me is where this all emanates from. Until we address that issue, I think educator stress is going to continue to be a problem.
(04:56):
So, that's where I believe the core issue is. Because what springs up around that core issue is forcing human beings into situations that are not aligned with their social, emotional, psychological or physical wellbeing. All those things are secondary to the needs of the test. I think we're seeing our schools sort of track the general culture and that more and more is expected of educators and students with the same amount of time. And, that we're driving curriculum that used to be at the college level to the high school level, and high school to middle, and middle to elementary, and maybe second or third grade down to the kindergarten or first grade level. We keep pushing that down and setting new arbitrary goals for young people and then holding the educators accountable for meeting those arbitrary goals. We are speeding up, speeding up, speeding up, and we are essentially robbing young people of their childhood and we're robbing educators of their autonomy to do what they see is right for their students.
(05:56):
I think that that creates an inner conflict with educators. They're not being compensated what they should be for that work, which requires them to often get second and third jobs, so that's a stress. Then, they're also increasingly having planning time stripped away from them and then more paperwork and more logistical operations put on their plate with the same amount of time. This creates a feeling of being overwhelmed because they just can't keep up with the increased amount of paperwork and policies and procedures that they have to follow.
(06:27):
So, I think all that comes together as a perfect storm and we see educators really getting burned out and wanting to leave the profession, and young people not even wanting to enter the profession because they see the kind of environment that educators are in right now.
Natieka (06:42):
As an educator, you have firsthand experience with all of these things that you're talking about. Can you talk a little bit about your personal experience with stress as it is related to your career in education?
Todd (06:54):
In 2001 was when the stress for me came to a head. I became a father for the first time. At that time I was teaching full-time. I was coaching girls tennis in the fall, boys tennis in the spring. I was announcing all the home football games and home basketball games. I was sponsoring clubs and very much invested in the school. Then also had fatherhood put on top of that. That fatherhood required getting up in the middle of the night and driving my daughter down to her grandmother's house for care during the day. It required on the weekends taking care of a baby. So for me, it started to get overwhelming. I know a lot of educators can relate to this. It's just the sense that you're on this treadmill and there's no off button, there's no off ramp. You're just getting up early every day trying to make your way through the day, do the best you can, and you've got all of these balls that you're juggling and they all feel like they're made of glass. If there were some that were made of plastic, we could sit those down, but it felt like I'm juggling 12 balls and they're all glass and I can't drop any of them.
(07:55):
That chronically feeling overwhelmed led to me being anxious and having anticipatory anxiety over what was going to happen in the next day. How was I going to get all of this done? That chronic anxiety, I think depleted serotonin and led to me being depressed and really feeling burned out and just at my wits end. So I did the traditional route and went and sought therapy, and that was definitely helpful and I highly recommend. But what really helped me turn the corner the most was the introduction of a mindfulness practice. That mindfulness practice helped me see how I was generating some of my own stress by the expectations I was placing on myself, a lot of the self-judgment, self-criticism. That mindfulness practice is what helped me undo a lot of that stress. Then also boundary resetting, starting to say no and letting go of certain things. Saying, "Well, I'm not going to coach in the fall and then I'm going to stop announcing some of these games." It was a combination of therapy, mindfulness, and starting to say no and carve out more time for me to take care of myself that helped me get through that phase of my life.
Natieka (09:01):
So during that time, were you considering leaving teaching? Or had you never thought about doing anything else?
Todd (09:10):
No, I was absolutely at a point where I thought I might have to leave teaching because it was so stressful just to get up in the morning and go and face the day that it was at a point where I didn't know whether I could continue even though I wanted to. I loved teaching, but it felt like it was just so overwhelming. Certain days, getting up at 5:30 or 6:00 every morning and then staying after school oftentimes till 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 with the coaching, it was something that I felt like I almost didn't have a choice in giving up. But I persevered through it. And I know a lot of educators right now feel like that's what they're doing. They're just trying to persevere through very, very difficult environments.
(09:48):
And it's much more stressful now because we've got increased issues in terms of school safety now, worrying about school shootings and school violence. And then also this sort of toxic culture that's built up around accusing educators of indoctrinating students and then censoring the materials they're using and feeling like they're under fire, that they're going to be in trouble for using certain types of books or certain types of materials. There's all of this very negative rhetoric around educators that they didn't have to deal with 10, 15 years ago. So, teaching is just hard in general. It's a very demanding profession. But now you've got a culture building up around it that doesn't even respect the people who are doing that hard work, and I think that's such a defeating feeling and the morale of teachers I know is really suffering as a result.
Natieka (10:36):
Now you are working with the Center for Educator Wellness and Learning, so I want to talk about the path that led you there and talking about the work that CEWL does.
Todd (10:47):
Yeah. I shared my story with you about the stress that I faced as an educator. Then, when I went to work for that center, the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement in South Carolina, we call that CERRA, C-E-R-R-A, when I went to work for them, after about a year or two, I was able to develop this professional learning session on mindfulness as a means of addressing educator stress. I wound up presenting that probably 200 times across the state and developed a retreat model with an educator named Jelena Popovic, who works for Mindful Schools now and for WholeSchool Mindfulness. We developed this retreat model and started to do retreats. It was only part of my job at CERRA. My primary job there was to manage the website, the social media, that kind of thing.
(11:35):
It's always been a dream of mine, as a full-time thing, address what I saw as this need for us to provide wellness resources for educators. It's not just mindfulness, it's also information on nutrition, and exercise, and yoga, things like that. Anything that helps a teacher's wellness, that is something I've always wanted to provide those resources to educators. So, when the NEA gave me this opportunity as a teaching fellow, what we wound up with was the Center for Educator Wellness and Learning. What's been great is I've had so much support from my affiliate staff, from Todd Jake, the executive director, from our communications folks, from our [inaudible 00:12:15] directors. Really everybody on staff has been really supportive of the work. What it has allowed us to do is to establish connections to help our affiliate become more visible, relevant, and to build trust and rapport with public school educators, administrators who invite us in to do professional learning.
(12:34):
We decided rather than saying, "Okay, only members are going to have access to this," what we decided to do is to reverse that and say, "Listen, we're going to give this gift of professional learning with an emphasis on wellness to our public schools. And while we're there, yes, we're going to mention the SCEA and what we do in our advocacy work." What I found was when you talk about wellness, when you talk to an educator about self-care, or mindfulness, or yoga, or anything like that, and you don't couple it with an acknowledgement that their external environment is difficult, if you only say, "Hey, just take better care of yourself and breathe," but you're not advocating for more planning time, you're not advocating for better pay so they don't have to have a second job so they have time to breathe, it becomes almost like you're placating them or you're dismissing their very real concerns about the conditions that they find themselves in.
(13:25):
So, we, at the Center for Educator Wellness and Learning, have coupled the wellness piece with a very strong advocacy effort. People will find on our website, yes, there'll be sessions on mindfulness, but there will also be sessions on pushing back against false narratives. There'll be sessions on advocating for LGBTQ educators and students. We have one coming up on protecting trans youth. So, we very... are invested in improving the culture for educators, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. We can do both at the same time. We can encourage and provide wellness resources and also simultaneously advocate for our educators for their working conditions to improve.
Natieka (14:05):
Now, I know that CEWL only works in South Carolina, but you have resources that are available to anyone on your website. The retreats seem sort of like the star of the program. But I did want to get into a little bit more of the practical advice. What are some techniques that you would recommend people start off with? Let's just start off with promoting a healthy work-life balance.
Todd (14:30):
The first thing that I would recommend is to sit down and make a list of everything that you do, everything that requires your time and attention. And then start to look at, what are some of the things that I can start to let go of? If I'm feeling overwhelmed, if I'm feeling like I'm constantly stressed out, what are some things that I can let go of? And what are some things that are just not negotiable I can't let go of? So start there. Start with carving out the parts and letting go of the parts of your life that are adding to your plate that aren't really necessary. And not feeling guilty at all or being gaslighted into feeling guilty or saying no to certain things. That's what we've got to do, is reclaim some of our time.
(15:09):
The next thing I would say to you is do an examination of your overall health, almost like a triage thing. Like, where are we? How long has it been, for example, since you've had a mammogram? Or do you need one? Are you at an age where you need a colonoscopy? Those are some things, your physical health. What are your physical health needs? What do you need to be looking at? What are some things you've been putting on the back burner in terms of your physical health? What are you eating? What are you drinking? What is your exercise routine? Are you walking? Are you moving? And then, getting with your doctor to look at your physical health. If you are dealing with psychological issues, if you're dealing with anxiety, depression, OCD, anything like that, making an appointment with a therapist and getting the help that you need there.
(15:50):
When it comes to mindfulness, the reason why I think mindfulness is such a critical component to your overall wellness is because the human condition is our brains evolve to really pay close attention to the past and the future. Educators in particular are trained to be reflective on their practice and to plan ahead for the future. The problem with being in that kind of mind state where you're time traveling all the time, where you're perseverating on your past and future, is that we have a tendency to stick to thoughts that are stressful. We think about the things that went wrong with our day and we perseverate on that. And we think about all the things that could go wrong tomorrow and we perseverate on that. A certain amount of that is probably useful, but I think a lot of us go beyond what is useful and really kind of torment ourselves.
(16:40):
But to be able to let go of that, we can say we want to let go of that perseverating and sort of ruminating that we do, but it actually requires training because we're hardwired to do that. We're hardwired to time travel in our minds. So, we have to intentionally sit down and do a training to rewire our brains to be able to pay attention to sort of rein that back in and pay attention to the present moment, which is what mindfulness is, is paying attention to what's happening now and letting go of judgment about it. Including self-judgment, including judgments that I think a lot of educators have, that "I'm not good enough," or, "I'm not as good as this teacher," or, "My principal's not really happy with my work," or, "I'm not as effective as I should be." We're just constantly judging and critiquing ourselves.
(17:27):
The capacity to let go of both time travel and judgment requires a training. It's not something that you can just will away. A simple practice is to sit down with your breath. When you have time to sit down, close your eyes, focus on the sensation of your breath as it comes in, as it goes out, and continue to try to stay focused. When you notice that your mind wants to wander to the past or the future to judgment thoughts, you just notice that and then come back to the breath. That's a simple mindful breathing technique. There's nothing special or magical about it. It's using the breath as an anchor to the present moment and retraining the brain to keep coming back from past future judgment to just the now and no judgment, which is just focusing on the sensation of breath. What that's doing is building the neural architecture that is required so that when you're not practicing, you have the capacity to pull back. When you notice that you're ruminating and you notice you're generating a lot of your own stress by worrying about the future, or regretting, or holding onto anger or resentment. You can pull back from that and come back to the present moment where you know can find space for more peace and joy to emerge.
Natieka (18:33):
Thanks for listening to School Me. A quick thank you to all of the NEA members listening. If you're not an NEA member yet, visit nea.org/whyjoin to learn more about member benefits.
(18:44):
As we've talked about before, there's a lot of time restrictions on the educator lifestyle. So someone might be like, "I don't have an extra five to 10 minutes," or, "I don't feel like I have an extra five, 10 minutes to just sit and breathe." So how do you think that educators who are starting off can begin this practice even in times where they might be at work or in the middle of something else so that they can sort of multitask their way towards a better mindset?
Todd (19:16):
First of all, I completely understand why educators feel that way. Like, "I'd love to be able to do that, Todd, but I can't find the time." Totally understand that. I think most of us, if we're honest, can probably find five minutes in the day to practice something that's really a priority to us. I think we could probably find it. It's establishing that as a habit. That's why I said you got to start with saying no to certain things. What can you cut out to make time for the things that you need to do to take care of yourself, to get to the doctor, to get to the dentist, to go have a massage, or to just rest, take a nap? What are the things we can say no to? That's why I start with saying set the boundaries, start saying no to things, and don't feel guilty about it.
(19:55):
In our culture, we see rest almost like as an enemy. We teach bell to bell, you've got to be going all day, get up and go, and come on, got to strive. It's that grind culture that we glorify. Rest is an essential part of being a human. We should glorify naps and rest and just simply being without a purpose to what we're doing. We'll just allow ourselves to sit on a park bench and do nothing.
(20:20):
There are other ways, sort of like micro practices that you can build into your day that are reminders to come back to the present moment. One thing you can do is you can go to a dollar store or whatever's near you, try to find these little colored dots. They could be lime green, pink and yellow, or any kind of stickers. Put one on your phone, put one on your laptop, put one on your refrigerator, in your bathroom mirror, and let that serve as a reminder for you to just take two or three deep breaths and come back to the present moment. To let go of what you're ruminating about and come back to where you are in the present moment and just follow your breath for three breaths.
(20:58):
What you'll find is if you can anchor yourself throughout the day with these little micro practices that really just take three or four breaths, you'll find that you're just going to kind of keep recalibrating throughout the day. And hopefully the gaps between the times when you're completely lost in thought and the times when you're awakened and actually present for what is. I mean, you can notice that, right? You'll notice when you kind of wake up from this thought world that you're in, to like, "Okay, now I'm focused on what's actually in front of me." That awakening, that transitioning from thinking in analytical mind to presence. If you can just habituate constantly doing that.
(21:38):
Because the whole point of mindfulness practice is not just the 20 or 30 minutes or five minutes that you do it. The whole point is to take that then and apply it. There's this opportunity for you to practice in everything you do. So you're doing the dishes, you noticed your mind is wandering, come back to just doing the dishes. Are you taking a shower? Do you notice your mind's wandering to what you have to do today? Can you come back and just feel the heat of the water? Can you feel the shower? Can you just be present for the shower? When you're driving, are you thinking about where you're going and what's going to happen when you get there? Or can you be present for the driving? Every moment of your day is an opportunity to practice mindfulness, to let go of time travel and come back to the present moment and focus on what's in front of you and let go of any judgment about it. You always have time to practice it.
(22:23):
Educators need to constantly remind themselves to come back to where they are right now. What's happening in front of me right now? Is now the time to worry about that thing in the future, to regret that thing in the past, or is now the time to focus on what's in front of me.? What we find is the more you can be present moment focused and let go of this time travel, the less stress you're likely to feel. You just create the conditions where peace and joy can emerge. Then we can model this for young people and then they can be healthier as well.
Natieka (22:55):
What would be your reaction to someone saying something like, "Yeah, I would love to breathe and get the gift of peace and joy, but if I just don't think about things hard enough, maybe I'll let something fall through the cracks. If I'm not ruminating on this thing that's happening in a week, maybe I'll forget that it's happening or maybe I won't be mentally prepared"? That idea that thinking is great and you need to do a lot of it to succeed, I think that... I don't know if I'm the only person who thinks like that, but how do you react to someone who just can't let go of the idea that spending a lot of time thinking about things is actually helpful to them?
Todd (23:33):
I would just have them investigate that more deeply. Sit down and really ask yourself, is that thinking useful? Is that thinking beneficial to you? Because I'm not in any place to judge how somebody operates their internal dialogue. I just know that for me and for a lot of humans that I interact with, the inner dialogue winds up sticking to... There's this thing called negativity bias in psychology, and Dr. Rick Hanson talks a lot about this. We have this bias towards, when we do think, towards thinking about problems, problems we've had or problems that we might have. There is a certain amount of that problem solving that is useful. The question is, you have to examine as you navigate your day, how much of that problem solving and devotion of your time to thinking about that problem is useful? And how much of it is to your detriment? How much of it is weighing you down and causing you to feel overwhelmed, stressed, sad, anxious, worried, fearful, angry?
(24:30):
What I would say is that if you try to practice mindfulness, you're going to see how difficult it is to pay attention to your breath because of the tyranny of your thoughts. We are all habituated towards thinking because thinking in an evolutionary perspective is very, very helpful. If I think about my problems that I've had and I think about how to prevent them, that is beneficial towards survival. The question is, is it beneficial towards happiness and peace? I would argue that, as a whole, it is not. I would argue that, as a whole, that most humans think too much and spend too much time inside their minds perseverating on problems past and future, and that this creates a lot of negative emotional states. And that allowing yourself the freedom to let go of that or to be intentional about when you think. Having more choice instead of allowing this autopilot of thought to just run. It's almost like a program that's constantly running. Instead of it running in the background or running constantly, you intentionally saying, "I'm going to pause that for now and I'm going to just focus on what's in front of me and enjoying my life as it unfolds." Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about this, so I'm paraphrasing. We don't want to get to the end of our lives and realize that 90% of our time we spent thinking and we missed the life that was right in front of us.
Natieka (25:51):
Yeah. Like, you making the plans, not having the plans make you.
Todd (25:55):
Yeah.
Natieka (25:55):
Back to what can happen within the school. What do you think that administrators, and even colleagues, what else do you think that people can do to help each other within school buildings?
Todd (26:10):
The first thing that I would recommend is that folks join their union. So join your NEA or your state affiliate, your local, and get involved in that. Because that getting together and having a collective voice to build power, that's what's going to help us change our external working conditions. We need to be able to fight together at the local, state, and national level to change policy to make the lives of educators better.
(26:35):
On an individual level, I think it's really about modeling what I said about boundary setting and saying no for our colleagues. And particularly for school leaders to understand that sometimes the people on their staff need to say no to things and giving them the grace and freedom to do that. To remove the stuff that is taking up their time that isn't truly essential to the mission. All schools need to examine at the district level, at the school level, and inside the classroom, what are some procedures and policies and things that we can start to let go of? What's essential? How can we work more efficiently? And then, how can we give people the time and grace to take care of themselves?
(27:23):
This differs from state to state and states where there's strong unions and people can go on strike and collectively bargain. We're not seeing as much exploitation as you see in a Right-to-Work state like here in South Carolina, where we go into schools and see educators who don't have a break all day. We've got to figure out how to come together to change that. But we also need school leaders to step up and really cut out the stuff that's not [inaudible 00:27:50]. If it can be said in an email, we don't need to have a meeting for it. If you're having a PLC, can teachers have more autonomy and control over it? Does everybody have to go to the same PLC? Does everybody have to do the same thing when it comes to professional learning? Can you trust that teachers know what they need and will go get it and give them the resources to go get it? Those kind of things can go a long way.
(28:10):
And then, the school that I'm working with, can you provide a location on site for wellness? Can you provide a location on site for teachers who are nursing? Can you provide a space so that they feel comfortable and safe in the school doing that? Little things like that re-humanize a dehumanized culture, is what I would say we need to do. We've got to acknowledge our educators and students are human beings going into these buildings. Let's honor that first and foremost and make sure that we're meeting their needs, that they feel loved, that they feel like they belong, that they feel like what they're going through is heard and honored. And let's take care of people, and then we'll worry about the data and the tests and that kind of thing.
Natieka (29:00):
I hear you're working on a documentary. Can you talk to me a little bit about what you're working on?
Todd (29:05):
Everything that we've been talking about in terms of school cultures becoming increasingly toxic. I needed to find an example of schools where they were doing it the way I envision it. Because at the SCEA, we talk about we're fighting for educators and their students to create the kind of schools that they deserve. That's one of the things we talk about a lot. We're advocating and fighting for the schools you deserve. That is an important thing to say, but it also can be really ambiguous. Like, "What do you mean? What do we deserve? What do educators and what do students deserve? What does that look like?"
(29:38):
I happen to know about these two schools in a very small rural town called Floyd, Virginia. It's in southwest Virginia, about an hour south of Roanoke. When I started doing mindfulness research, I went up to visit one of the schools, it's called Blue Mountain School, and was absolutely amazed. I don't use that word lightly. I was amazed by what I saw at that school in terms of how they honor the humanity of everybody in the building.
(30:05):
So, When I developed the Center for Educator Wellness and Learning, I knew I wanted to go back to Blue Mountain. And then they also developed a high school there called Springhouse Community School. I wanted to visit both schools and capture what was happening there because [inaudible 00:30:20] one stoplight town in rural Virginia, if it can happen there, I think it's something that we can bring anywhere. I went and I captured interviews and footage of what happens at schools where personhood is honored, where the people and their humanity is placed as a priority. And where testing and all that stuff is not, where data and testing aren't the gods that run the schools.
(30:48):
So what does a system look like that isn't toxified from the accountability test and punish culture? What does that look like? It was absolutely incredible to see educators who were excited about going to school, students who were actually disappointed when it's a summer break or a winter break, and are excited about when that break ends because they get to come back to school. Students who are living authentically, who are given time to play, given time to have fun, given time to get outside in nature, given time to talk about their feelings, given time to practice mindfulness. When I was there, I saw high school students sent off into the forest to sit alone for a period of time and just reflect. That does not happen in most schools. At the elementary school, I saw kids go to outdoor classrooms where they were given a choice of activities to do and they all were engaged, they all seemed happy.
(31:51):
And to juxtapose that, not long after that, I went and visited our traditional schools and just saw so many educators break down and crying in front of me and upset. My hope is that this documentary, people can see what could be. It's to juxtapose what educators and students are dealing with now in a toxified culture, toxified school system. To see this is what is possible when we put humans first, when we honor people's humanity first, this is what can happen. This is what it can look like. We don't have to keep doing things the way we've been doing. We can reach for something that is much more aligned with our wellness. I mean that in every sense of the word, our physical wellness, our psychological wellness, our emotional wellness. We've got to make that a priority. If people need a reason to do this, just look at what we're seeing in our culture. The division, the violence, the mental health issues. We see young people increasingly dealing with anxiety and depression, suicide rates going up. I mean, there's just a whole host of issues that are getting worse. It's because the culture at large, and then the school systems reflecting that culture, is not what human beings need.
(33:10):
So, this documentary is about showing what it looks like when schools meet those human needs and actually put that first, and then the learning actually takes place. What's maybe not intuitive for a lot of people, but if you put that first, then you recruit better teachers, you retain great teachers, and the students eventually get where they need to be because everybody in the building is healthier and happier. So then, you are setting the teaching and learning conditions up for success.
(33:41):
We do it backwards. We demand success, but we're not willing to create the conditions for that to happen. Then we create this competitive game where we give out blue ribbons to schools and prizes, and so forth, and it's all tied to standardized test scores ultimately. We think those are the metrics that we should use for success. The problem is, when you use those metrics for success, then that's what gets focused on and all the human needs get set aside because that's not how the game is scored. The game isn't scored by how many young people come out of our school systems happy, well-adjusted, able to collaborate, able to problem solve, mentally and physically well. That's not a metric. But what the metrics are, standardized test scores, SAT scores, GPA. Those are the things. Young people know this. My three kids, all of them are successful and I'm thankful for them being in public schools. But they all saw that the reason to succeed in school was because there is a financial or material sort of promise, "If I go jump through these hoops and I do what I'm being told I need to do to get an A in this class, then that just gives me these keys to move on to the next stage of where I want to be in terms of material success."
(34:56):
It was very rarely where my kids say, "What I learned in school today is what I would've chosen and what I was interested in." The agenda is set for the educator, and then the educator sets the agenda for the student, and then we rob kids of their childhood and give them no choice or voice in what they learn. Then we wonder why so many of them wind up dropping out or seem disillusioned with the whole process and seem to hate school. In this documentary, you'll see when young people are given choice and voice, how beautiful that can look and how if we just trusted that process, the learning process, instead of squashing out curiosity, you would see so many young people flourish. And you would see educators reignite their passion for one of the most noble professions that exist, and that's educating the next generation of young people.
Natieka (35:43):
Well, we love community schools here, so I'm really excited to see the documentary once it's all done. What is your hope for the future? What is keeping you going? What are you working toward right now that you'd really just love to see for everybody?
Todd (36:00):
I would like to see us move towards a world where humans flourish. I mean that in every sense of flourishing. I want to see human beings happy, healthy, and at peace collectively and individually. I want to reduce the suffering that human beings experience so that there's more joy and peace in the world. Our system of education is going to have to be radically transformed for that to happen because right now the system of education, not the educators themselves, but the system of education is creating suffering and is stripping people of joy and peace. So, my goal is to, through helping educators learn to advocate for their external working conditions, but simultaneously taking care of their wellness. When we do those two things together, hopefully we can, piece by piece, move towards a more humane system of educating young people, remove the toxicity that we're experiencing, and that will ultimately create those conditions where more humans experience more joy and peace.
Natieka (37:14):
Just want to check really quick, if there's anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn't talk about? I feel like we covered a lot.
Todd (37:23):
If people have questions, I would love to collaborate. Anybody who is trying to do work like this who sees the work that we're doing and wonders how it's done or why it's done, you can go to our website, it's cewl.us. That's C-E-W-L.us. I'd encourage people to visit the website. And then you can email me at Toddscholl@gmail.com. There's a contact form on the website, but it's Toddsholl@gmail.com. I've already spoken with many folks from other affiliates about how we do what we do, what our processes are. I'll be at the leadership summit presenting on the center and how we do what we do. And more than happy to share resources and ideas and how we do things because the idea here is just to keep spreading good ideas and information and helping people effectively do that.
Natieka (38:12):
Right. Well, thank you so much, Todd, for talking to me today. I think I found this very therapeutic and I hope that anybody, whether you're an educator or a podcast host, you can find something to work from here.
Todd (38:25):
Thank you so much. I really am honored and appreciate you inviting me to be a guest.
Natieka (38:29):
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