 I really bring breathing and yoga practices into my teaching as well. Before a big day, students have time to rest, review, or to release. And it's just five minutes where it's quiet. This is huge. Engagement is more important than compliance. Engagement matters more than compliance. That's the teacher's job. Meet them where they're at, and then to give them everything I can so they have more options and opportunities in life. The students were so grateful for how I restructured things to give less emphasis to grades and more emphasis to feedback and growth and reflection. The grade list classroom is not about transactions, but transformation. And secondly, the grade list classroom means that I have a learning lab, not a grading game. And then they make it $25,000 reward. So anyhow, they called my name. Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. We are now going to be talking about mindful, grading, and much more. We have Gina Benz joining us on the show. Hi, Miss Benz. Hi, Alan. You can call me Gina now. Miss Benz used to be my AP English teacher in high school. And I'm so happy that we're getting this chance to sit down together and talk. Thank you for coming on the show. I think it's going to get deep, which I hope it did when you were my student way back in what you graduated in 2010. So probably 2008, 2009. Yeah, 10 years ago. Yeah, I was high school. That's nice. Yep. And for those that don't know Gina's background, she won a Milken Educator Award in October 2015 and has been teaching at Roosevelt High School in Sioux Falls for 20 years, including AP English Language and Composition, Sheltered English 2, Teacher Pathway, and used to be the AP Department Chair. She increased the AP English sections at Roosevelt High School from one to five and from 25 to 120 students. And you can find her links in the bio below GinaBenz.org as well as LeavingChurch.org and her Twitter profile. I'm so excited to be talking about all these topics together. Let's jump into things with one of our favorite questions to ask our guests. What are your thoughts on the direction of our world? When I think about what's happening in the world, I always live by the greatest commandment that Jesus gave us. I follow the Jesus tradition and I'm very purposeful about saying it's the Jesus tradition because a lot has gone wrong with Christianity, a lot has gone wrong with the Christian Church in America. But I still like what Jesus said in the Gospels. The greatest commandment of all is to love God, to love others as we love, as ourselves. There's three implications there. Most people just think about loving God and loving others, but we also have to take care of ourselves, yeah. So every decision I make when it comes to things, big picture, this world falls under love God, love others, and take care of myself a little bit too. So if we're talking immigration, which is dear to my heart because I have EL students, English learner students, love God, love others, that's going to determine how I look at things. I think there's a powerful movement in our world toward this worldview that follows the greatest commandments. I also think there's an opposite group that's moving away from it. And I'm on the side of love. It might sound wishy-washy or weak, but the power of love I've seen in my life, in my classroom. So I go with it. Yeah, the power of love and also love God, love yourself and love others, I love that, yeah. And I'm very quick to say God by any name. Exactly. Me too. That people will call God. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And there's so many good ways to say that God is like the divine or it's like creation or it's like source or spirit. There's so many ways, all that is, there's so many ways to describe that. And so, yeah, it's however one is communing with that. That's their own beautiful adventure of consciousness and communion and yes, yes. Okay, so how about this journey into teaching? So who were you growing up and how did you get interested in this? I never wanted to be a teacher. I distinctly remember sitting in my high school American literature class, looking around the room and thinking, I could never do this. I could never teach these crazy kids. So I went to college to be a marriage and family therapist. But to do that, you have to go to grad school. So being the very practical person I am, I said, well, English teachers are needed about everywhere. So I'll get the English teaching degree as a fallback, second option. It didn't take long until the program that I fell in love with the idea of teaching. At the time, I loved reading and writing. And then also the idea of working as students. Well, that has totally flipped flopped since I love who I teach. I love what I teach and I love where I teach and who I teach is always number one. And then, yeah, tell us more about when you're first, you know, getting started. What did you end up, where did you end up going to start teaching and what is that process even like? Well, my process is really boring and not very interesting. I have a lot of colleagues that I network with, especially through a group called Teachers Going Great Less. They worked in several different buildings over the past 15 years or whatever. I've worked in one building. So when I was graduating from college, I got a call from a few schools. But the two I was considering were Roosevelt High School, where we met. And then Lennox High School, which is my alma mater. So do I go back to my small town hometown, which was really appealing. Had a wonderful principal I would have loved to work for. Or do I try something in the city I was living in? I was pulled to Roosevelt. It was intriguing. It felt like a great adventure to me. And I have never regretted teaching at Roosevelt since 2000. I've taught about every English class there is. I've settled into some English classes I love dearly. But again, mostly it's the students I love. And then how did you then first get settled into Roosevelt and into this idea of teaching, into these classroom sizes of what was it at that time, only maybe 25 kids in a class? And how did you get to figure out what exactly you were going to teach? Were there curriculum requirements? All these types of stuff. You teach what they tell you you're going to teach, I started out with, oh, quite the mix. I had freshman English. I had junior English. And I had, I think I also had modern lit in there. So I had three preps, which is unusual for a bigger city. Now, if I'd been gone to my hometown of Lenox, I'd have maybe five different preps we call them. Preparations. Preparation for a class I had to prepare for. I then had to prepare for three classes. I also was asked to be an assistant coach for the Orland Terp team. I knew nothing about Orland Terp, but I wanted the job. I wanted them happy with me. So I said I was willing to learn. So at the beginning, you just do whatever so you can make the money, right? Have a job, have some benefits. But we get paid in two ways. I learned very quickly. We get paid with money, which is certainly important and necessary, but we also get paid with happiness. And I tell you what, I get paid with happiness so richly in my job. Now, you asked about the journey. So three years in, the department chair said, would you be willing to teach AP English language? It's the AP class for juniors. I said, no, no way. That sounds like too much right now. And I was young and my husband and I were thinking maybe we'd be starting a family and I was just trying to protect my time and my energies. Couple weeks later, he came back and said, nobody else wants to teach it. I need you to teach AP English language, which I've now taught since 2003. It's become a baby of mine. But I wasn't, I was wise enough to do this. I said, I will teach it if you give me a room with a window. He said, done. That sounds so minor, but that was an important moment for me where I stood up for myself, but also to have a window in a classroom is so important to have that natural light to get the serotonin going, right? And so my desk is right by the window so I can feel the sun on me. So we can have natural light, not fluorescent light. There's a lot of times I turn off the lights in my classroom and we just have the window light. Those minor things in a classroom can make such a big difference, but conversely, before that, I was in a room that was windowless. And there's a lot of teachers and students in that situation and I guess it's what economics calls for, budgets call for, but it makes me sad. Yeah, especially when we now are seeing more and more of the literature be clear that this idea of nature therapy actually decreases cortisol, increases creativity. So to have rooms that are, have nature just present to be able to turn off the lights and just use natural light, to have people see where they come from, the planet instead of these just windowless rooms to try and be creative with fluorescent lights and whatnot, it definitely feels more like a cage in that sense. And it doesn't feel as productive or creative or harmonious with where we come from. And so I'm happy that you brought that to our attention and that was one of the things that you were like, I room with the window and then I'll be your AP English teacher. And now to go with what you said, I have plants in my window to bring in nature to obviously on a small scale, clean the air because breathing is so important. And I don't think I did this when you were my student, but I really bring breathing and yoga practices into my teaching as well. It's important to me. Before a big day, students have time to rest, to review or to release. And it's just five minutes where it's quiet. And some students are quickly finishing something. That's fine, they gotta get it out of their brains so that something different can come in their brains. Some of them just need to close their eyes, whatever it is. I don't care, but... That's beautiful. Honoring what they need. Five minutes of either just eyes closed, reflecting inward, quickly finishing something, whatever they need to do. Checking a cell phone. Cause if they have that time then, they don't need to check it later, right? Well, they might need to. That's a thing for teenagers, right? The cell phones. I don't ban cell phones from my room, no. It's my job to help students realize the appropriate way to have cell phones in their lives. And also I feel like if my teaching is engaging enough, cell phones won't be as much of an issue. Yeah, that's right. And the more engaging the teachers are with the methodologies that we're gonna talk about too that the less likely students will get distracted and the minds will wander. So how did then the first couple of years, cause you gave us these little techniques that you've really started to incorporate more and we'll get into more of them. But the first couple of years you were picking up these different preps that you were doing so you were learning more about how to teach English and you picked up AP English. So then what was it like then piecing together these different preps? What is it like to be a teacher in that sense of taking this material that you have to communicate and have the students be able to show that they learn the material and you have a state and a national testing that you have to, that students have to just state. Well, I guess the AP exam is national, it's global. It's global, advanced placement's global now. Yes, yeah, yeah. So how do you piece it all together? I sit back, now I've developed and grown over the years. So I'll tell you where I am now. Oh, where did I start? At the very beginning I followed what my own high school teachers did. I used them as my inspiration. Not long into me starting, so maybe around 2002, no child left behind time, the district got very enthusiastic about creating a common curriculum and guaranteeing that all teachers were teaching to that curriculum by then implementing district-wide semester tests, standardized test. So curriculum influenced what I teach, but now where am I at this point? At this point, it's a mix of doing what I can be passionate about and I think my students can be passionate about as well. So no disrespect to Shakespeare but I'm not good at teaching Shakespeare. I don't have any desire to teach Shakespeare. Some people, some of my colleagues are amazing at it. God bless them. So if I can avoid it, I'm not going to teach Shakespeare but I'll teach something that can still teach the same skills about reading and writing, listening and speaking. That's the beauty of English is what we need our students to learn is not Romeo and Juliet. It's literary analysis. It's the use of figurative language. It's irony, symbolism and you can do that with any literature. So now I try to choose literature that I think will ignite passion for me and for them and I think of myself like a physician who has patients and I look at their symptoms and then I need to make a diagnosis and issue or write a prescription. And so no year is ever the same because the students are always different and what's happening in the world is different. So this year in my AP class and my EL class because I try to do the same thing with AP and EL, we are gonna be writing, reading Blind Spot which talks about explicit biases and implicit biases because we need to know more about that. That's huge in this world right now. I love the book, I think they will too. Did I answer that question? Totally did, yeah. So I love the way that you view it as this analogy to doctors and patients and symptoms and prescriptions and so when there's different learning styles then there's different ways of you meeting the students at where they're at and helping them gain the literary skills that they need and the level of the teaching that you're passing along. Yes, I once had a sophomore teacher say to me, what do I need to make sure the students can do before they come to you? And I said, just do the best you can with them and I will meet them where they're at. That's the teacher's job. Meet them where they're at and then to give them everything I can so they have more options and opportunities in life. That's the vision. Yeah, give them more options and opportunities in life, more degrees of freedom to pursue what their gifts are. So then how do you pick out of all the different literature that exists, how do you then pick the books that you think are going to inspire the kids the most, where you're at and where they're at and so every year you've had different books that you've been playing with and that's to tell us about that process. Well, of course, budgets influence this a little bit so we have to work within budgets. I like to have a mix of classical American literature because I think students should be well-rounded to some extent and be aware of these things in our culture and our history. So I've always taught the great Gatsby and I think it's incredibly pertinent because of when we're talking about class structure, it's just huge. Class structure is so important now still. I give my students a choice between the Scarlet Letter and the Grapes of Wrath and I love teaching both of those books but I like to give my students choice as much as possible because they'll take more ownership of their learning. Grapes of Wrath, oh gosh, so much about capitalism and what that means for our nation, great discussions come out of that and then the Scarlet Letter, extremism is a good conversation that comes from that and my favorite lesson from the Scarlet Letter is that we might mess things up or we might do things that aren't acceptable but we can take those things and then do better for other people. So if there's something I regret in my life, I need to share that with others to help them avoid it or share that so that others who have the same regret know that they're not alone. So those, you know, Scarlet Letter was written in 1850 but it is still so pertinent and how many Scarlet Letters do we put on people still today? Right, trans kids right now, big time. Yeah, so the classic stuff is important but I also do more modern stuff. I love Malcolm Gladwell, love Malcolm Gladwell's work so we read outliers, we're doing Blind Spot, A Raisin in the Sun, that's a good one about white privilege and how property and discrimination and racism connect. Ooh, that's such a wide array of thought-provoking books, yeah. I want a wide array and you know what? I hope you noticed that I'm trying to represent, I'm trying to have a lot of different authors, right? I don't want, here's the cliche, dead white guys, okay? There's some of them, because they wrote some good stuff. John Steinbeck, one of my favorites ever but Lorraine Hansberry died way too young and she had so much to say. Malcolm Gladwell, oh gosh, I hope he keeps writing for a long time. Yeah, so then how do you then do something like take the students that are at their different levels and they have what you're presenting to them with this curriculum of literature that you think is gonna unlock their abilities to see the world in new ways and become better readers for the literary analysis, all these types of things? And then how do you make sure that those lessons get communicated through the literature, through their experiences reading it, the methodologies that you have? Yeah, lots of reflection. My favorite way to start classes by having students write for eight minutes about what we just read or what they most recently read in the book we're reading together, sharing together. You know, some choice is good for students but it's also good to share a book in community and hear one another's perspectives on that book. So for them to start by just reflecting and writing and then to move to a small group to talk about what they wrote and share what they wrote then they get to kind of test their ideas on someone else in a safer environment. So my classroom set up, same as it was when you were my student, in little pods of four. So groups of four, three sometimes, get together and share what they reflected on. And then we move to the whole group and each group shares something from their small group discussion. And this is my discussion-based classroom and a method I call one, two, three. So we start at the one, the individual reflection, two small group, three whole group. And what are the times? So eight minutes for the one and then how long do they do for the two? Well, I'll just give you estimates because it needs to be organic. Right, if they are engaged, because this is huge, in teaching, engagement is more important than compliance. Engagement matters more than compliance. So if they're engaged, I'm gonna let it keep, they're gonna keep talking, right? So I have to be constantly present with my students and listening as I walk around and let them talk. I can't run to my desk and grade some papers quickly because number one, I hate grading papers. But number two, I wanna be 100% present with my students when they are in my room with me. So I'm not gonna check an email quick. I'm gonna be with them. So, but roughly an estimate. Eight to 10 minutes. Each. Well, eight minutes for the reflection, eight to 10 minutes for the small group, and then the large group discussion could go the rest of the year. 20 minutes, yeah. We had a lot of times. Okay. Okay, and then how do then you make sure that if the student is barely able to complete their own reflection or they're not really engaging with the group too much or in the big discussion section at the end, how does a teacher ensure that the student is able to persevere through the literacy? This is a term we call differentiation. So I have to be in tune with where the students are at as best I can. So maybe I'm reading the paragraphs they've been writing. Maybe I'm just listening to the small group discussions. But when a student seems to be struggling with analyzing, interpreting the text, then I need to make a personal connection with that student. One of my mantras in my classroom is to connect and reflect. I wanna connect with every student and we need to do constant reflection, constant connection with each other really, student to student, teacher to student. Connect and reflect. So I guess I can't tell you what the one method is cause it's different for every student. I figure out where we're struggling and write a prescription to fix that. Yeah, so for some students, maybe I give them a resource that'll help them better understand things. Maybe I give them some tips to reading critically. Maybe I have them come in after school and we have a one-on-one conversation. Okay, yeah, so it's totally dynamically adjusting per where the student is at. Okay, so that's been a good amount of methodology. I think we did a pretty decent job on you explaining at the beginning there's also that period of meditation, reflection, yogic. Where does that also have to do with the compassionate and anxiety classroom work that you do, yeah. Yeah, it was, now I'm feeling like I need to go into it like a yoga pose. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. So I'm gonna, oh, do this. I do this a lot cause we sit too much, don't we? Yeah, I'm excited this year to tell my students and I don't know why this dawned on me in my 20th year that they can get out of their desk anytime they want and sit on the floor in a different way. That's great. Stretch your body. Yeah, and if they're doing it for the purpose of being more focused and they are more focused by all means. Yeah. Yeah, and I found that when I give students that dignity and respect that I trust them and give them that freedom, they return. They respond as they should. I think teachers sometimes fear they'll doze off or be distracted when we take them out of the desk. I'll tell you something else that is very important to me when it comes to student dignity. Students do not need to ask me to use the restroom. It's huge. Yeah. It's huge in my opinion. Something as simple as that, yeah. Now, don't be gone for 25 minutes. Respect it. Yeah. Yeah, and don't three people go at the same time. Although sometimes that's okay because someone just got a text that grant but died, something like that. But this, I guess it depends on the age level, right? I'm not gonna judge other grade levels, but I teach mostly 11th graders and 12th graders and they know when to use the bathroom. And when they're in college, they're not gonna ask a professor if they can use the bathroom. Yeah. So I always prefer to teach this, let the students figure out how to do these things appropriately rather than having so many rules and policies. Yeah. Anyhow, I just think it's a huge human dignity. This is like mindful teaching. This is really, it's like mindful grading which we'll talk about, but this is a lot of, this is mindful teaching. Why do you say it's mindful teaching? Because you have a meta perspective on being behind your students' eyes. Like that you gave this example, like you're giving all of these examples like they could be getting a message that their family member has passed. Which seriously happened to me two years ago. Yeah. Yeah, that happens. So does a student wanting to stand up and stretch their body a little bit, they may have been injured in a sport recently or whatever that they're later in their life, they're not gonna be asking their employers or their college professors, can I go to the bathroom? So what you're doing is you're trusting them and respecting them and giving them independence. It's funny, I'm literally listing the trick pedagogy of Esther Wachiski who we had on the show. Collaboration and kindness are the last ones. Trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness. And what you're doing is you're, like you said, it actually ends up yielding results too because then they go, I'm not in a strict little tiny set of limited movement and opportunity, but I can be my own sovereign individual in this class room and then I'm going to respond by being a good student to keep those privileges. That's kind of. It's a trust and a respect that we build between each other, right? I don't demand their respect. I just care about them and love them and that yields the right results. We started talking about, how did you bring this up? Yoga? We were doing the anxiety in class. Anxiety in class. And compassion stuff. Is that kind of where those things have, like the more that you open up their degrees of sovereignty then, yeah. Well, anxiety and depression are a big deal in our high schools now. Really, most of our behavioral issues are probably stemmed from mental illness of some sort. Some very serious, right, bipolar, but all of it's serious. Yeah, all of it is serious. So why this has increased is not, I don't know. Other people can speculate about that, but it has. Maybe it's always been that way, but now we have words for it. I don't know, but anxiety is a big deal for my students. I had a student last year who knew she had the freedom to get up and go to the bathroom when her anxiety was at a high and she probably went to the bathroom every single class period at one point. So, yeah. She can go to the bathroom, breathe a little bit, come back and be ready to learn. And it's also, this is a big deal too, when not every single student is extreme on the extraversion psychometric. And so, when you're cramming 30 of them into a classroom, one after the other, literally there's no time for the independent reflection. And so, if a student is having like, yo, I need to be my own bubble. It's like, I can at least go to the bathroom and there's nobody else in the halls at least limited amount of people in the halls to connect to what I'm feeling. Yeah, you wanna know about my dream school? Yeah, okay, let's hear it. Yeah, let's jump to the dream school. I'll make it quick. I wanna hear this. Of course I wanna hear your dream school. My dream school has a room that's dark, silent, except for maybe water sound, nature sound, something soft, comfortable, comfortable furniture in it. And students and teachers can go there when they just need a moment of silence. And so there might be a few in the room, but no talking whatsoever. Just, you know, it's kinda like how hospitals have chapels a lot, right? Same concept, just where people can go and be. And I think that I realize this because the school I'm at, where you graduated from is at 2,500 students and we really should be at 2,000 or below. We are overcrowded and teachers don't have their classroom for their planning time. They go to a common area. So teachers never have a time to be alone, okay? But students really don't, even more so. And I just, I wish we had a place. No, this would also be beneficial for our Muslim students when they, if they wanna pray. Yeah, cause right now they end up going in a counselor's office or it's awkward. Yeah. And people say there's not prayer in school. This is massive. I'm glad you're bringing up this idea of what would be an ideal dream school. What could catalyze the students to find their unique gifts and express themselves at their best in the school. When we had Brian and Teresa on the show from the Sioux Falls School District, we went deep into what would be an ideal school design. It's the Jefferson High School. It's coming up in, I don't know, 2022 or something. I think it will open in 21. Yeah. And so the, when schools, these designs are being, you know, contemplated, like what, well, lots of natural light, lots of trees, lots of space, lots of dark rooms, these types of things that enable students to feel like they're connecting to nature while they're at school. No classroom should be windowless, should they? Unless it's like, you're developing photos. The old school photos, it doesn't really make sense to have a dark classroom for anything. So, and you can also take the choice of just closing all the blinds and making it dark when you want, versus, yeah, yeah, et cetera. So there's all of these different ideas for designing more optimal schools. And so I'm glad that you brought that to attention. What is, yeah, go ahead, please, yes. A beautiful thing happened this past school year. Homecoming, we had our dress-up days. And one day was a career you wanna be in the future. So I dressed up as a yoga teacher. And I don't know if I ever wanna be a yoga teacher, actually, because I like just being a student sometimes. A lot of times when it comes to yoga. But I thought, oh, maybe. Maybe when I'm retired, I'll give free yoga classes, something. Anyhow, my students then realized, man, she really does love yoga. So they started to ask, can we do some yoga with you? I love it. Of course, yeah, yeah. Now, there's still people who feel like yoga's a religion. It's not, especially not in America. Yoga means union in Sanskrit, union with the divine. Okay. Yeah. Okay, yes, you're right. Well, but the point is that it's everyone's own unique divine journey with that process. And it's not something that's dogmatic. And it's also not Western, like you're in yoga pants, stretching in the studio type thing. Yes, yes, yeah. You're right. So, yogic practices are pretty big deal in schools. It's only growing, right? But to what extent? And I don't think poses are the important thing, but it's the mindfulness. It's quieting the mind and recognizing the breath, gaining control of the breath again. And our breath is such a beautiful thing, Alan, because our bodies will do it for us automatically, but we also have the power to control it. And so, It's with us all the time and it acts as a focusing mechanism. Yes. You train your focus and then that focus will carry into every single aspect of our lives. Families, our friends, our work, all types of things. So, my first step is to teach my kids how to breathe. When I say breathe in, try to do five seconds and five seconds out. Now try six. That's great. And so, the breathing and maybe some simple stretching or poses. Totally. We do. Well, anyhow, I had this one AP class who just ate it up, loved it, didn't feel awkward at all. And most all of them would join in and would randomly say, can we do yoga today? Can we please do yoga? They would beg for it. And if I felt like there was time, we would do it. And I gotta say for any principals watching, it was totally legitimate because AP students need to know how to relax to perform on a test, okay? But it's just good for life, right? We know that. So, yeah, we'll take 10 minutes to do something. Well, it got to be so much. I said, every Friday, we're only gonna do Fridays now. Friday will be Yoga Friday. They started planning their outfit so they could do Yoga Friday. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. One girl said, she was in the hospital. She was out of school for maybe a week, I think, because of some things going on. When she came back, she said, I used what you taught me in the hospital because I was really scared. Oh, that's beautiful, yeah. That sold it. Yeah. So, you know, no kid is forced to. Some kids chose to just stay in their desk. Yeah. That's okay. Yeah. As long as they're quiet and respectful. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But to provide it as an option, is so critical. And to have that be something that younger people are starting to embody so that when they're faced with an adversity, it's not this immediate urge to react, but this ability to slow down, breathe, analyze the scenario, stay calm. Like that's super applicable again to family, friends, coworkers, all. All of school. And all of school. It's just such a, so legitimate. I could defend it to the end of the earth. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And I think what may be a counter to this would be is like, oh, well, these minutes are so precious. We should be, you know, jamming more information into their minds in that time. But, you know, in an interesting way to, it's really hard to do like a randomized control trial on something like this. But a general idea would be that by investing the 10 minutes into something like mindfulness, would catalyze a tremendously more productive next 40 minutes than would to just. Exactly. Yeah, dive through it. Exactly. Yep. My students told me that, that they came to class stressed AP kids will tell you how stressed they are, but all kids are stressed. We all have stress, right? To some extent. Oh gosh. Should I start talking about the stress of my EL students? Yeah, please actually tell us about EL. I think that's one of the topics that we should talk about. Yeah. This is another empathy. This builds a lot of empathy. You're like, you're coming into another place in the world and you want to learn the language of that place in the world that you're coming to and getting behind their eyes and being like, well, how can we most deeply respect and teach towards that process and respect culture to what we can learn from them and some other thing. Yeah. The stress, the anxiety students come to school with it can be grades, yeah. It can be grandpa and grandma's health, right? It could also be ICE as in immigration and raids. It could be the fear that dad won't be home. It could be memories of the trip from El Salvador to the United States because here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, I have students who were 14, 15, 16 years old when they left Central America by themselves and came to America. It's documented in Sonia Nazario's book, Enrique's Journey. That woman, God bless her, the work she's done. Those are my students. Those are the stories they tell me. So there's things we need to honor and give kids a chance to deal with and learn how to manage, right? I think someone once told me the best leaders are able to manage their emotions. So I need to give them the tools to regulate and manage so that they can be their best selves and then back to the vision, have more options and opportunities in life. So, yeah, you know, I will do whatever I can whether it's yoga, breathing, just some quiet time, reflection time, so that you are exactly right so that their minds are more ready to really absorb what we're gonna learn. Yep. And there's, I mean, the amount of different things that you've been doing as well. So it's not just the AP English Language Composition, it's the sheltered English, the teacher pathway and the AP department chair. What would be some of the key points from those that you could share with us? Sure. The AP program, I left it on purpose. It was my decision to leave the department chair role because I wanted to be in the classroom more. I teach AP and I believe in AP because it can give kids more options and opportunities. You know, I have students who go into college as sophomores and because of that, they can get a double major, they can go into grad school earlier, those kind of things. They get college, a lot of credits at a lower rate. There are downsides to AP as well. That exam is rigorous and it costs a lot of money, $95 or so, so that's tough. But I left AP mostly because I wanted to be a student more. I left the AP department chair. That's when I started teaching my EL students who have taught me more than I have ever taught them. Who come from Asia. And I really would like to be more specific because that would be, maybe I will. Okay, so last year I had a student from Nepal. A few students from Ethiopia. Students from Sudan. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. Wow. Yeah, so that's where our students are coming from. And I just, I'm thankful that I get to teach them and that they teach me so much. But we haven't talked much about teacher pathway. Yeah, tell us a quick bit about the relationship between the student that's coming here to learn English language and then you and you're learning from them and what they have to teach and how that dynamic works. I'm learning that school has been set up according to white culture. The rules and the policies fit into white culture. So there are different ways of doing things. And those different ways aren't necessarily wrong ways. I'm just doing whatever I can to honor my students' cultures and to learn from my students and to help them to bring their culture into the classroom. I read a book a couple years ago called Push Out. I think the subtitle is the criminalization of black girls in our schools. And you know, that's the best thing we can do is just listen and read and learn. I'll never forget that book talked about how some of our black girls get in trouble for wearing some sort of wrap or hat to school, right? But if you knew what it takes to get all those braids in when the girls want braids, my girls who get braids, that takes, that's a two day project or an all day Saturday project, eight hours, right? So they don't wanna come to school half braided. So they're either gonna come with a hat on and then get in trouble and get detention or whatever or just not come to school at all. And that's just one example of things where we're not recognizing the culture and then we end up punishing kids. It's really unfair. Can you believe there's schools who don't allow dreadlocks? Why? What the heck? I don't get it. I don't get it. What would be the argument? Is there something related to? My school is probably, you know, a school might be wanting to create a professional atmosphere but still I don't know, oh, that doesn't fit well. What do you think would be the argument? I don't know. You know, there was the wrestler. Did you hear about the wrestler who was forced to cut his dreadlocks off so he could wrestle? Oh, this thing. Wow, wow. No, I'm sure there's something I don't know. Right? Maybe with breast and maybe there's a danger issue. I believe that's what it is so that you can't be pulled by your hair. Regardless to make the school's most conducive for people's fullest expression, unique expression, I think it's critical. Okay, and then let's do teacher pathways too. Okay, this is not my brain child but I am all on board. So Dr. Donald Easton Brooks who was the Dean of Education at University of South Dakota, USD. He's now at the University of Nevada at Reno. Had this idea and his heart is to try to inspire more diversity in our teaching workforce, which I love that idea. Like almost all teachers are just like me, middle-aged white women who grew up in a middle-class lifestyle. I'm doing the best I can to empathize and learn about my kids but it's not the same as somebody who grew up like my students, right? Students need to see role models who look like them. See it be it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there you go. So, and this doesn't mean that it ruins hiring practices and that kind of thing. We just wanna give people of color a chance to interview, right? Or inspire them to get the degree. So anyhow, Dr. Easton Brooks came to the Sioux Falls School District and said, I'd like to try to inspire students to become teachers one day. So a future teachers type of club or class. And he had seen a model of it out on the West Coast but we didn't try to mimic or follow another model. We created it on our own for the needs of this place. So the Sioux Falls School District was on board. Every high school, our four public high schools has a teacher pathway teacher and offers two teacher pathway classes. And the purpose is to inspire the next generation of teachers to give them a jumpstart on teaching because they can get up to three college credits by taking that class while in high school. And part of my job is to let students know that teaching is an awesome career, right? I think from media, perhaps, they get the idea that if you become a teacher you're gonna live in poverty. And students have told me that. We have a club called Black Student Union at Roosevelt. And I go to a lot of different clubs at Roosevelt and just talk about, hey, think about taking teacher pathway. Well, I went to that club. I said, have any of you ever thought of being a teacher? Not one. Not one, there were probably 20 kids in the room. Not even thought about it. Did you ever think about being a teacher? Did it even cross your mind for a minute? Yes. Yeah, exactly. So I said, why not? And they said, we want money. We don't wanna be poor all our lives. And I said, let me tell you what my reality is. I'm not gonna be the richest person in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I'm not gonna be uber-wealthy, but I have a very nice middle-class lifestyle. I have security. I have a great retirement plan, great benefits. It's a good, good life. And so I'm trying to educate kids that make it an option. Maybe it's your second option or third option, but let's explore it. Hey, let's explore what it is to be a teacher while you're in high school. So when you get to college, you're not wasting time there. Most of my students, my teacher pathway students, I had about 45 last year, got more on fire for being a teacher. But there were a few who said, whoa, this is not what I thought it was. This is not for me. I don't like standing up in front of groups of people. Yeah, yeah. Mom. Yeah. Maybe counseling would be good for you or some other totally. Yeah. Whoa, so even just dipping fingers into the waters of teaching at younger ages, just so that they can get the feeling for it and just making it an option, putting it on the tool belt of possibilities. Love it. I love how you said that. We're just giving them other options and helping them make some decisions. Yes. Okay. And then back when I was a student with you, were there was only, how many AP classes were there? Like in the whole school building? Knowing these are AP English classes. Oh gosh. When you were a student, there were probably three, I probably taught three or four. Three or four. Yeah. Okay, so then it slowly went up to five and then 120 students now taking AP English. So it's kind of like you were a spark for so many young people to want to study literature more deeply or like to care more about English or to care more about just your methodologies that we've been talking about throughout. I also want to say that, you talked about this a little bit but this idea of culturally responsive teaching. You didn't mention this a couple of times about these students coming from around the world and meeting students at where they're at. You were doing, you've been doing things so well that just about four years ago, you got the Milken Educator Award in 2015. I watched the video of you getting it. I haven't watched it. You haven't watched it? It's hard to watch yourself on video but you probably have to do it all the time now, don't you? Yeah, I love it, I love it. You were great actually when you were receiving the award I was also feeling living vicariously through you and through your experience. It was really beautiful because you had invested so much of your time in essence into other students and doing things really well that it was super well deserved. It's great that you got that. So then what was that experience and that was Milken Educator Awards are given yearly to... About 40 teachers in the nation. It is not anything I applied for. I didn't know I'd been nominated so it's a complete surprise and you can see that in my reaction. So yeah, they tell us we're having an assembly to talk about dual credit in South Dakota and we walk in and you see all these dignitaries, if you will, sitting in the front of the gym and you're thinking, what is up here? And there's TV cameras and you know something's not what they told us it would be. And the Secretary of Education stands up and starts talking about dual credit and then says, but that's not really why I'm here. And they start describing this teacher who's gonna win an award. And they say that the award isn't just an award but it's money. And then they have some kids holding up numbers and it looks like it's a $250 reward. And everyone's like, ooh, cool. And then nope, another zero, it's 2,500. And everyone's like, whoa. And then they make it $25,000 reward. And wow, that's pretty cool. So anyhow they called my name, the person sitting next to me said, I think it's you and I said, I think it's you. And I had a few other ideas in mind too. I had like a list of five teachers. I thought it probably would be, but it was me. I didn't know what to say. They wanted me to talk. And I hope I said something well because I haven't watched it, but what did? You think the kids, you did. Oh gosh. You did. They're why I do what I do. I love what I do. But here's the deal. You know, very quickly, what are you gonna do with that $25,000? Well, after taxes, it pretty much paid for a new furnace and my kids' braces. And then the money is gone. The money is so transient. It's so temporary. It's not what the award is. It gets the attention so we can show that teaching's an awesome profession to our community. But the honor of being a Milken educator is the networking. And the opportunities Milken provides me with. So they're helping me do a webinar next month about gradeless classrooms. No, about Teacher Pathway. I've got two passions. I've got two passions. So I'm doing the Teacher Pathway one next month. And they help me put my writing out there. And the woman who gave me my award, Dr. Jane Foley. Best soul ever. She's called me. So check up on some things. But she's there for me. She's there for me if I need her. And so Milken activates educators to be the best they can be. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They see something in the person and think we would like to empower you. It was life changing. Yeah. Yeah, I was feeling goosebumps and just beautiful spirit when I was watching your accepting of the award. And so okay, so then that happened and they're continuing to activate more and more teachers every year and showcase that. I love that. You're doing a webinar with them in September on Teacher Pathways, okay. And then let's talk on the mindful grading with grade lists. So what is that? Okay, I'll give you my backstory. I love my job. And so it was December of 2016, 2017. Let me think here, 2017. I was sitting in my usual room where I grade papers or do lesson plans. And my family was in the living room. A little bit away and I could hear them laughing and enjoying time together. And I took a breath and thought I should be bonding with my family. I shouldn't be working constantly. And that, I took that to heart. Luckily, I love podcasts. Do you listen to podcasts? Love podcasts. Love podcasts, yes. So I don't even listen to music anymore hardly. So anyhow. Yeah, just get that download of knowledge. Exactly. You know, some podcasts are like music to my ears. Rob Bell, the Robcast, I could just listen to it like music. Anyhow, I was listening to Cult of Pedagogy with Jennifer Gonzalez. She was interviewing Star Saks Dean who does not give grade. She's a high school English teacher in New York or was. She's moved on to more leadership. But anyhow, more leadership. I don't know if I wanna say it that way but she's still in education leading in different ways. Anyhow, she talked about her grade this classroom. She still had to give a grade on a transcript, a semester grade, but no grades otherwise. I thought, that's how I can get more time. No grades, right? It didn't take me more than a couple months because I went right in. I thought I'm gonna do this next semester. Okay, I knew I couldn't do it fully, right? Like that would take some work with my district to say I'm not giving any more grades. But you know, I can wade in these waters. I'm not gonna dive in but I can wade in these waters. I'm gonna do it right now. Well, it didn't take me long to realize that it didn't necessarily decrease my workload. But the work was so much more fulfilling and meaningful to the students. And the students were so grateful for how I restructured things to give less emphasis to grades and more emphasis to feedback and growth and reflection. And that's an important thing to me. That's not just the teacher giving students feedback but the students are giving the teacher feedback. So I would have moments where we'd start class and I'd say, how is this working for you all? Or I'd have a more specific question and they would give me the feedback I needed to make sure I'm giving them what they need. So how's it work? It looks different in every classroom. So here's how it looks in my classroom. Students will have maybe up to 10 grades for the whole semester in the grade book. To compare, I used to probably have closer to, you know, at one point in my career, probably 50 grades in a semester. I would slowly whittle that down over the years because you should never grade practice. But I used to use grading as my classroom management tool. Relationships should be the classroom management tool. Relationships should help you with behaviors, not worksheets, practice exercises from a textbook. That's not a classroom management tool. That's manipulation. That's unethical in my opinion. So as I started not grading practice, more and more and more my grading did go down. But now it's just, you know, standards-based you could say where what you see in the grade book are not specific events that happened or assignments that happened. But a skill that needs to be learned. Argumentative writing needs to be learned. And the score that gets put there can change as we keep practicing throughout the semester. That's a key when you are trying to grade less. So they're getting immediate feedback from you in a dialogue about how they're doing and what they can keep working on. They're teaching you as well and okay. Then their grade is also improving as they continue leveling up and getting better at that specific. And then that grade is what they go with at the end of the semester. You're right. Because that is not fair that the grade should be an average of where they were along in where they were in the journey. The grade should be where they, what the destination is. The grade should show the destination, not the journey. Right? Interesting. Yeah. Which everyone always says, it's all about the journey. Not about the decision. Yeah, I suppose. But not when it comes to. For a final score in a class. It should be where they ended up. Not all the struggle along the way. Averaging scores throughout the whole semester. No. Yeah, versus what they actually are at the very end. What they've taken away. Yeah. Yeah. You can see it. You could have a student who gets to that A level at the end, but really struggled early on and ends up with a B. That's just not right. That's not right. Interesting. So then, okay. So this has been implemented by you, I think almost two years then. Three semesters worth. Yeah. So then, what has it been like then sharing this with other teachers and their feedback? Yeah. So the first thing I have to always say is that the movement in education is great this classroom. That's the name of it. In project-based learning as well. That's a, yes, very good actually. That's a huge one, yeah. So. I've been recently saying that there shouldn't, it's kind of crazy that like, what would be better education than project-based learning around things like the sustainable development goals? Like really that's kind of what education should be is teaching around the most important, the most important goals in society striving to solve or to accomplish. If your listeners want a good book to read on project-based learning, it would be What Schools Could Be by Ted Dintersmith. Actually, have you read it? Are you familiar? Oh, it's so good. Anyhow, let's see. So. Greatless classrooms. A lot of times they just, they end up being grade less. Not great less, but grade less. Because of having to fall into the policies and regulations of a school district that they might hold. But what does it mean? It means we're not grading practice. We are not grading behaviors. Late work. You know, okay, here. Are we gonna, we're okay with penalizing a student's grade because something was late, but we don't penalize a grade if a student swears at me in class. Yeah. Okay. So, behavioral stuff like late work or bringing in Kleenex for the classroom, bringing in food for the food drive should not be reflected in the grade. Then it creates a dishonest grade. The grade should reflect the skill level. Now, what if a student comes in with, you were always really bright, right? You were already at a high skill level. Can you just take a final test or write a final essay and be done? No, you gotta produce enough evidence. There has to be evidence. So, greatless doesn't mean students aren't doing anything, but no way. My students are doing more than ever because they have to produce the evidence to justify whatever the final grade is on the transcript. Yeah. So, what else, but greatless classrooms, four things. Have to emphasize growth, emphasize feedback. So, that's why my job didn't get easier because feedback moves from being a letter or a number, which really means nothing, to being actual words. Words, yeah, yeah. Yeah. When you're sitting in your grading space in your home and you hear your family, you're, yes, you can hopefully go and attend to them more, but you still have to have a personalized for every single student feedback and growth closed loop system where you're ready to go in the next day with certain ideas for how to, yeah. Yeah. So, it's still, which, I'm so excited about the future of education. These closed loop feedback systems are critical for growth when you're getting an immediate dialogue about how to improve rather than having to wait until a teacher circles or X's off things and gives you a numbered score at the end. Yeah. Yeah, the thing about whatever grades you do end up putting in the grading system, in gradeless philosophy, they're really never frozen until the very end. We can always change those scores to show growth that's been happening. And if we are in a system of grading that doesn't allow for hope, why would students challenge themselves? Yeah, yeah. That's what my AP students told me. Oh, I'm already at this level. I don't know if I can make it to the last part and do well versus I know that I'm always in this journey towards the end and I know that I can still put in good work and still, yeah. And here's the other thing, AP students said, when I wasn't grading very much, they were more willing to take on challenges and risks with their learning. Because they're smart. Well, everybody's smart in different ways, but they're smart to know that, well, I better play it safe to hold my 4.0 GPA. Yeah, I better play it safe versus taking a risk, which can then lead you to more beautiful ways of growth, yeah. Exactly, exactly. So to sum it up quickly in two different ways, the grade list classroom is not about transactions, but transformation. And secondly, the grade list classroom means that I have a learning lab, not a grading game. Yeah, that's great, a learning lab instead of a grading game. Yeah. Yeah, I like that a lot. Yeah, and that's why I stopped being the AP department chair because I wanted to be back in the lab. A transformation learning lab. Oh gosh, I love it. You know, I want to do experiments, I want to test hypotheses. You know, I'm an English teacher, but we do that in English too, right? We experiment with our writing. Hey, let me try some parallelism here. Oh yeah, that's great. Now shorten it up. Yeah. It's cool. And if you really like science, you can write more about science. If you really like history, you can write more about history. It's great that you can kind of, yeah, in writing, it's so applicable to everything that we do. Breeding is so applicable to everything that we do as humans. And so to build up a larger vocabulary set, a greater ability to be able to read faster, parse for key points, all these types of things, type faster, whatnot, it's just all gonna help you become better and better in the fields that you pursue, whatever that ends up being. And what I love about the English classroom and literature is it delves into the human condition. And there are not always easy black and white answers. We have to go into the gray area. We have to. And we have- The nuance. The nuance. The nuance. And we have to listen to both sides. And so for reading and for writing, I tell my kids, if you couldn't write something for both sides of whatever issue it is, you haven't studied it enough. You haven't thought about enough. I should be able to say, okay, the topic is immigration. Okay, draw, draw, draw what? Like a note card. One of the note cards says you're for it or for reform. One of you- Yeah, coin flip, yeah. Yeah, what kind, what are your feelings on? Coin flip, there you go. And you could do- That's what it used to be in the debate. There you go, yeah. And you could do either essay. That's where I wanna get them because we need to have civil discourse and we can't have that if we're not listening to all sides. We gotta listen. Yeah, yeah. Having an understanding of how we take a given issue like healthcare or what have you and then if you try and not only crunch how eight billion people view healthcare from their unique perspectives, then you learn what rich and poor think or what a certain religion thinks or what a certain age thinks of a person or a certain place of birth in the world. So it gives you a greater propensity to get behind people's eyes and understand how they see a certain thing. And also we're plagued by cognitive ease where we just want a binary answer. Like we wanna be enlightened in five minutes but we took 10 years to learn language. And so it's like there's gonna be things that you have to invest deeper amounts of time into to understand the complexity of and then you can better reduce. English definitely does that. And I'm happy that you care so much about having them see both sides of that conversation. I don't think I got to finish what Greyless classrooms have to be, I think. I said growth, I said feedback. Yes. Okay, so then there also have to be relevant authentic assessments as in let's give them authentic experiences. Things that feel meaningful. Okay, not worksheets. Well, I guess I shouldn't say never. Maybe there's a good one out there but yeah, relevant meaningful work. And then lastly, kids need some autonomy. Some agency, they need to be able to make some of their own decisions. Have a voice, right? That's what, and you kind of alluded to this. The beauty of teaching English is they can write about so many different things, right? I'm not gonna assign an essay that just makes, so that all my students turn in the same topic. Oh gosh. I already hate grading. Yeah, I do love giving feedback. I do love the conversation, but I hate putting a number or a letter on it. That scores, that's interesting. So you kind of fall in love with the dialogue of the students' growth and the feedback of their growth versus the scoring or numbering or a lettering on a test. Yeah, I like that too. And that's also what education has been like since the dawn of time is the transmission of wisdom from people that were older and wiser. And then it would be like, okay, now demonstrate what it is. And it's like, okay, great, you were able to? All right, here's the next activity. You weren't? Okay, let's go and immediate feedback for growth to help you here. Oh, maybe this isn't the right activity. Maybe we should do a different format of learning. Maybe you are interested in a different subject or field or whatever. Maybe it was never like, okay, here's an 86, because yeah. And what does an 86 mean, right? And one teacher gives a 95, one teacher gives a 75 or whatever. Yeah, based on that stuff. Yeah, okay, so what about your relationship with the divine? You recently used the word contemplative, which I really liked. I use that in my latest blog post. I love that when I started teaching and when I had kids, I was an English teacher because I love reading and writing and I love students, of course. But I never read or wrote. I read my students' papers. I wrote comments and gave them feedback, but I never read or wrote like how I wanted to. And as my own kids have gotten older, I'm coming back to that. I'm on my 10th book this summer in October. So about 10 months ago, I started a blog called leavingchurch.org, which is something I had to put out there. But my regret is that I can't really share it with my students, right? Because I don't want to create any barriers between my students and me due to faith and religion aspects. But anyhow, the question was, the divine contemplative. So I couldn't do the normal American church anymore. And that might just be my personality, right? It might be really great for some people. It's really great for my sister. Like she loves it and I'm glad for that, right? But I couldn't do the marketing, the hierarchy, the budgets, anyhow. So my husband was in the same place. And to put it all out there, in the church we'd attended for two decades, things didn't go as we had hoped when we had a child in the congregation transition, female to male. Yeah, just a name and gender, right? Not talking about surgery for a 12 year old, or wasn't 12 actually, but a child. And my husband, I said, now we can't do this. We thought, do we stay and try to provide other perspective? We ended up going a different route. So we left the typical American church and now we meet with a few other families once a week. And we talk about the divine. We talk about the Jesus tradition. We're all in the Jesus tradition. We'll read from a book and discuss that. So it's a lot like book club, right? Some people call it home church. I think people get the wrong image with that because we're not singing hymns and nobody's preaching a sermon. It's more like book club, yeah. So, or we'll do a piece of scripture that we're gonna talk about. And we make sure to integrate the kids. So the kids are in there with us and talking with us. And it's intergenerational, which is really, really cool. So in making that shift in my life, it has, leaving church has brought me closer to the divine, to God, yeah. Because I'm totally responsible for myself now, right? Like, I can't depend on the pastor. I can't depend on the Bible study. Like, I need to make it happen. And also leaving church means my Sunday mornings are open because we get together on Wednesday nights or Saturday nights as our group. And so, and I should tell you the group, you know, it's not just a bunch of rebels who are looking to, you know, fight the system. There's two former pastors in our group. Two former pastors. So anyhow, we just love studying scripture, thinking about God. We don't always agree on things, you know? But that's okay. Because most important thing is that we love God, love each other, that kind of thing. And I've grown closer to God because I have my Sunday, well, many reasons, but I love my Sunday mornings. Just sit on the deck and be quiet. Or, because we're in South Dakota and when it's 20 below, sit in my front room with a big window and let the sun shine on me. Just be quiet and open up. And this is where the contemplative part comes in that you asked about. Just open up that space for whatever, right? Yeah, just find some peace. Have faith, find that faith because, you know, you gotta admit the whole idea of the divine, God, it's really hard to prove, right? And so yeah, so I love the doubts that we talk about in our group. The questions we talk about because that only makes the idea of faith real. Yeah, we don't just throw around the word faith. It's real. Yeah, so. This is great, this more, in a sense, rather than falling into a dogmatic or just a system that indoctrinates without the process of self-discovery or self-reflection or self-contemplation and connection individually with the divine, but rather it's almost like it's being preached to us a specific way or it's being dogmatized in ways that's not as conducive to this actual adventure of consciousness and spiritually communing with that. So I like that, I like what that, this essence of what we're talking about is kind of further being passed along. It seems as though that that is, that's this kind of like new, these new feelings that people are having around the world now, is that this is kind of where the transition is moving to. I tell you what, as I've gone into this, now we're gonna be starting the third year of our group. And this is not a very unique thing. There are, and I'll use the term home church, but there are home churches all over. And my tribe is big. I'm finding on Twitter in books, Rachel held Evans, who else, Sarah Bessie, Rob Bell, Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr, these people are articulating in books and in podcasts what I felt in my heart for so long and giving me words to what seems so true to me. But I again have to say that's not to say that the church experience is bad for everybody, right? Or wrong for people, especially for my kids. My kids go to normal churches for Wednesday night youth group. It's a good foundation builder for them. It's been good, it's what they want. And that's cool, that's cool. But then they also experience what we do at our home church. So they're getting both. Yeah, and I have dear friends who connect with God so well in the church. Yeah, totally, yeah, so, you know, whatever. Take your own path to commune at the divine, however it is, yeah. Right, yeah, yeah. Just don't kill anyone along the. Please, oh please, yeah. Or like, we'll just even hurt people along the way, yeah. Oh my gosh, the way that churches have hurt people. Yeah, which usually gets swept under the rug. Yeah, and probably all faiths have done it, you know, but it breaks my heart. Yeah, let's wrap with a couple of thoughts. One is, what is your thinking around if we come as spirit to meet the body for these adventures in consciousness? I'm gonna say two things there, so make sure I say the two things. Was it Meister Eckhart or Eckhart Tull? I don't know who said it, but we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience. I feel that. I can't explain it, but that resonates. Me too, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I feel that right now, because I think God's all about community. Yeah, what happened, 10 years ago, I took your class, got really inspired by you, became a better student, and now 10 years later we have a show and we're interviewing you. This is so cool. Yeah. Oh, it's just the blessing that teachers get to see what all their students end up doing. Love Facebook's for that reason. This doesn't seem like just a human thing. This seems like a way deeper spiritual synchronicity that's happening. Yeah, it feels sacred for sure. And so yeah, I think God is all about community. You said union with the divine for yoga. Yeah, exactly. And I think, instead of using, no, I don't know how I wanna say this exactly, but where it goes wrong is when there's separation. Yeah. Some people. They're all experiencing the illusion of separation. That's why some spiritual leaders say that the Earth is such a cool place that so many spirits want to come and potentially be human at is because it's one of the cruelest places to experience the illusion of separation from source or the divine unity, the oneness. Oh, wow, wow, wow. Yeah, so instead of saying the word sin, I'm not saying the word sin is a word which I'm used. But I like to think of it as separation because a lot of things we do that people characterize as sin, what they did is they separated us from community in some way, right? Okay, so the other thing I wanted to say, I remember going to college and I went to a small liberal arts Christian college. Had to take my Bible classes and Christian thought class presented this idea to me that the Bible has a lot of metaphor in it. Yeah. Yeah, it's so hard. It's not maybe all entirely 100% fact this happened in history, right? It might, some of it's a piece of literature, poetry. Totally. Poetry, story, myth and legend, right? All to teach us. Totally. Important, important things. Important things, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So as that notion has taken root in me, this idea has also taken root. And that's that, and it's a metaphor. It's a metaphor. I feel like God is, would be like the ocean, okay? Just infinite water. Yeah. Yeah. And I am a vessel. And in that vessel is a mixture of water and oil, okay? The things where I am in separation from God and humanity would be the oil. The things where I am in connection and union with God and humanity, that's the water in me. And I want that vessel to be all water. I would love for that. Yeah. It's a hard thing to do. It's hard to clear the channel to be fully conducive with water. Okay. And then ultimately. The oil's access are lessons. The oil are big lessons for us. Sometimes tests of faith, sometimes we're dealt a card that has trauma or a trigger and our treasures are on the other side but we have to integrate really smoothly. Interesting. That's the oil. So my vessel can have varying amounts of water and oil. It's not all constant, right? Yes. And when my life is done, the vessel is poured out into the ocean. I like that. Yeah. And I am totally in the presence of the divine of God. And another one is that then the amount of like self-work that we've done to sort of clear out some of the oil or integrate and make as much water as we can, then we're contributing to this collective human experience with more water as it gets poured out versus if you just, if you're just a massive pile of oil at the very end, you never found out who you are, what your gifts are, or maybe unknowingly sociopathic to society. Pour oil back in and you'll butterfly effect it out of negativity. I love that. And you know, this conversation, I love having these conversations. This feels really sacred to me. Me too. Yeah. But I gotta tell you, I have a little bit of fear when I have these conversations and it's on camera, right? Because this is not what I was, this is not the language that was used in my growing up years, right? The ways I think about God now and love God and just rest in God now sound hippie trippy to people, some people in my past, right? And I don't... This is great. You're adding more to your worldview. You're making it more robust, well-rounded. Hi, that's, yeah. And so I just, I could be wrong on things, but right now this just, this really works really, really well. You're on your own path and you took some good stuff from who you were growing up and what you were learning and you learned some new things later on in your life and you've been adding them to your own experience with the divine and it shouldn't be that you will... Any time that we try and put everyone's communion with the divine through the same round circle, circular hole or square hole, then that's when, that's what some of the whole thing with these religious texts from around the world as epic as so many of them are. If there's no flexibility with people's communion with what's sacred to them, then for certain people, they want to commune in a way that aligns with their style of life and the way that they behave. Anyway, it's, yeah. So, yeah. So I just wanna freely admit that. I don't know at all. Likewise. And, you know, in a few years, I might have different ideas about things. We all do. I will evolve. Yeah. I will evolve. I sure hope I evolve. And so, I'm just doing the best I can right now in trying to love God and love others and take care of myself. Self. I love it. What a great way to wrap on that. Okay. Full circle ending. Full circle ending. Did I teach you about that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yes. That was such a critical part of writing. It would be so funny when you'd start writing and you'd have this beautiful plot. Like, you'd have this beautiful formation of a story that you're telling and then you'd basically figure out how to, in a sense, make the reader that was initially reading from the very beginning go, aha, I see how cool they just wrapped it all together. And that's like this. Tighten it up like a nice bow. Yes. Yeah. And like, you can do that through your writing, through the video, through the way you articulate things. People will see how you basically plant seeds and then later at the very end, they're like, whoa, look at all the fruits that that had, because you were frequently watering it throughout. Yeah. I love that you used the planting seeds metaphor, Alan. It's a big one for me. Yeah, me too. Because, you know, I don't want to get into political arguments with people. I don't want to get into religious arguments. I don't want to debate with anybody, really. But, you know, I just, I'll plant some seeds and they might grow, they might not. And that's just where I leave it. I've released that stress of trying to try, trying to convince people of anything. Likewise. And I'll just plant some seeds. Likewise, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Super on that same page. So what are your thoughts about the, this experience of creation that we're all a part of? What would you say is the meaning or the purpose of it? Community. And I think it's why I teach English so that we can, we read, so we can be better for ourselves and for society. We write, so we can be better for ourselves and society. You see that in my leavingchurch.org blog. I'm writing also for me to make sense of the spiritual transformation happening in my life. And I'm hoping that I connect with a few people who feel the same way I feel. So our ultimate purpose, if I understand your question right, is to be better for ourselves and other people. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. What do you think? We'll stand on the shoulders of giants. And so it just seems like a lot of the good thoughts around it have been about maximizing consciousness or maximizing creativity or maximizing experiencing the divine, right? Having the divine fully realize itself through us, propagating more creations ourselves. So once we understand the source code of where we live, we can then start more of it ourselves. Do you think we're in a simulation? I don't really know what you mean by that. Will you explain that? So once you would understand something like the source code of the reality that we reside in, could we then start our own creation and then embed consciousness within that creation, have it grow in complexity and then have itself realize itself, that process. It's a very cyclical, so it deepens just one experience of creation. I do. I think if I understand it correctly, I'd like to explore that more with you sometime. I got that. I also want to explain it better, yeah. It's important. What do you think? For me to explain it better. I've been enjoying this Ouroboros theory of source recently, where it's like you linearly evolve from source to atoms and stars and planets and single cell, multi cell organisms to humans to the massive civilization that we have. And then we become so smart, we realize the source code and then we're able to basically wrap and start again, which goes from simplicity, from source to single cell. And then that process just keeps happening and so linear time is rejected, linear causalities rejected. And it's just all happening. And then that's our, and so then when people kind of maybe like experience like anxiety around things, that in itself can seem like it's a symptom of not spiritually communing with that theory of source. Cause if you were communing really well with that, with source you probably wouldn't be experiencing that amount of anxiety about the past or the future or even the present, but just being and being with this flow of the universe, the Tao, this flow. Some of what you said resonates with me. Like I get the whole, the word flow is so perfect for my contemplative path or whatever. But there was something you said that did not resonate with me. I don't remember what it was anymore. And that's okay. This is great. And this is the way we have, yeah, just conversation about these things and open-mindedness and love for one another. Yeah, that's just, there's a great point. Like, I don't know if I agree with all of that, but I still loved it. I still love it. Love you. I still love it. Love you too. It's good. Yeah, it's exactly. What a way to teach young people how to have conversations with each other. What do you think's the most beautiful thing in the world? Yeah, my kids. It's so cliche, right? To say my children. It is amazing. And it's one of the reasons that I have my faith because humans were created inside of me. Yeah, exactly. Like, that's amazing. Amazing. And so... What a piece of art the body is to do that, yeah. It just, yeah, my kids are beautiful, but if I move beyond the cliche, what is beautiful? Sitting in silence, in community with God, divine, whatever. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Silence. With, just for me, it feels like a bunch of light from different people all in that community being shot up through the crown and up and that then that matrix of communion all happening at the same time is, yeah. You can feel it when you're amongst other people that are really communing deeply and you can feel it, feels radiative, yeah. I have friends like that where I can feel it. I love it. I'm so lucky to have the tribe I have. Yeah. Yeah, I am. That's great. Yeah, that's another one is having people around you that can also bring that light to your life and that, yeah. This has been so awesome. I can't believe that 10 years ago that being a student in your class and then only now really realizing how important the teachers were in our lives, our parents were in sacrificing what they did to make our lives happen and all the people before us that have built the world that we have. I mean, in connecting deeper with source and our gifts, like it's interesting seeing, you know, seeing what happens in just a decade of time with even with adults later on in their life, they transform so much as well because also you were in so many ways so much more different than what you were today, you know? Yeah, and I love connecting with former students and showing them that I think I'm getting better with time. I love getting older, Alan. Likewise. You know, like people say, oh yeah, it's my 29th birthday again. Okay, fine, you know, it's cute and funny, but no, I am 41 years old. I've turned 42 next month and I love it because it's experience. It's increased understanding and there's only more to come. There's only more to come. I'm excited for all the next years. And meanwhile, like Silicon Valley and tech sectors trying to take your library that you've stored in your mind and they're trying to keep it forever so that way there's never gonna be a moment when we don't know what happened with your life or so that way maybe in the future, it'll be cool to be able to preserve these libraries of consciousness and see how they connect. Maybe something should just be forgotten. And that's another thing, that's another thing I know. Do you have anything that should be forgotten? No. No, because you learned from everything. I learned from everything. I have no regrets. You're right. I love that stuff. I would love to open source it and just let other people learn from it and let myself go back and learn the lessons again as needed, you know, that type of stuff. Did you learn from the pranks you did in high school or do you just still laugh at them? I do, I laugh, but it's still, it's funny looking back at it and realizing what growth is. And for me, growing up from that like also as recently as well is like I just don't care so much about drug use. It used to be so much more proclivity towards alcohol or cannabis or psychedelics or whatever. And in the last couple of years it's just been like screw all of that stuff. It doesn't mean as much to me as my divine relationship every single day when I wake up and when I go to bed and what gifts that I want to bring to the world and share with other people. And that has nothing to do with those substances. And so anyway, it's been like a growth of like not really caring so much and then caring more about things that were like transient or things like that, like immediate gratification experiences, that type of stuff. And so I'm still working on it. It's still a whole process of like self work because my gosh, like sugar is addictive and there's so many other things. Corn's addictive, so many things are addictive now. The way that we just sit behind those seeds is addictive. So how do we un-addict ourselves from those processes? And yeah, some of the algorithms are really deep in us and so it's a constant work in progress. We have to be very intentional. Otherwise we go on autopilot. Teachers can go on autopilot, right? We can just do what we always experienced with students which wasn't always bad with some dentures, or we can be intentional and mindful about what we do in the classroom. And as people too, go on autopilot and hop on Facebook or whatever because I'm stressed or sick and deal with it. Seems like the core idea of mindful teaching can be applied with so many methodologies to students and you've shared a ton of them with us. It's been an awesome conversation. Oh man, I would like to, you know, we'll talk more sometime, right? But the conversation isn't done. Absolutely, yeah. We're both going and growing and coming back. Thank you. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Let us know what you're thinking. Also check out the links in the bio below to GinaBenz.org as well as leaving church.org in her Twitter profile. Have more conversations with your friends, families, coworkers, people online about mindful teaching, mindful grading, all the other topics that we talked about today. And also support the artists, the entrepreneurs, the leaders in your communities that you believe in. Support them and help them grow. Support simulation, our links are below as well. You find us on Patreon, PayPal, cryptocurrency, or you can design cool merch and get paid. All those links are below. And also go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. We love you very much. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon. Namaste. Namaste.