 I love teaching. I'm very proud of a very long and, in many ways, successful career, helping students grow to love mathematics and help my colleagues become more thoughtful, intentional practitioners that love what they do. But I'm not gonna lie, it's still a struggle for me. The biggest obstacle that makes my job harder is my own self. One of the things that Brene Brown talks about are shame gremlins, which are mindsets and scripts that are pervasive, learned, and ingrained over time. They cause us to feel shame, suppress feelings, judge, and isolate instead of keeping our best qualities in the light for our students. Today I want to shine the light on some of these. Never good enough. And it's okay to make mistakes, and that's what this one is about, actually. So when we have perfectionism and we move with perfectionism, nothing is ever good enough. This could have been better, this should have been better in my lesson. When we flip this and turn this on our kids, we start to say the same thing to them. Nothing you do will ever be good enough for me. Nothing you say will ever be quite perfect. And, in fact, don't even try, because it's never gonna be good enough. And when we believe this in ourselves, our kids can internalize this. The reality is we already know we're already good enough. We are imperfect beings in an imperfect world walking together, and that's exactly the way it should be. How do we shame this? We just remind ourselves every day. I have to say, mantras to myself. I'm already awesome the way I am. The people around me have something to share with me, whether it's perfect or not. And we're all in this together. Gremlin number two, finding self-worth from the outside. This comes in a lot of different ways. If I win that award, I'm gonna be good enough. If I get that promotion, or if I get this department head position, I'll be good enough to my colleagues. When we do this to our kids, and we expect the same thing, this is where we're like, if you get a high enough grade, I'm gonna talk to you more. If I, and we internalize this with our kids. And so we know, however, that we're already inherently valuable. No one can do exactly what we do in the way we do it at this time and no one ever will. It's the same with ourselves and it's the same with the people that we're around. And so for me to understand this, I have to sit in my own feet. I have to see where my feet are. I have to stand in my own truth. I have to feel what feels good instead of worry about, oh, someone doesn't like that, I have to fix it. I don't get to do that if I stand in my own truth and realize that I'm already valuable. Number three, work before all. This is the idea that my identity is as a teacher and that nothing comes before work. You know what, that doctor's appointment, I've got things to do, I'm gonna cancel it. Reimbursements, no, I've got papers to grade, okay? When we flip this on our students and colleagues, we tell them that, you know what, nothing matters except the math you do in front of me. In fact, you're just a math student to me. When we believe that in ourselves as a teacher, we end up putting that on our students as well. We all know that we are much more than our jobs. We deserve to go to the dentist. We deserve to get eight hours of sleep a night. We deserve to have relationships and love. Unfortunately, sometimes we get opposite scripts happening to us. To tame this, I have to plan things that are not about my job as important parts of my day. And guess what? That means that some papers don't get graded as quickly as they should. That means that some tests are not as comprehensive as others think they should be. And that's okay, okay? Number four, I can do this by myself. I should do this by myself. I must do this by myself. If I show weakness or if I ask for help, people will know I'm not as good. And this is something that is super common, okay? When we turn this on our kids, think about what that means when we tell them helping is okay. It's a lie if we believe this in ourselves, okay? We end up believing, or our kids end up believing that asking for help is showing you're weaker, okay? We all know that this is not true and research tells us this. We are stronger together. When we ask for help, we learn from others. We also benefit the people we ask because it allows them to revisit exactly their own beliefs and their own thoughts, okay? It also helps us value each other and the differences we have with each other. And so that is super important to me. When anytime someone ever asks me for something, I appreciate that and I say thank you. Thank you for asking me for that because it made me rethink my own thoughts. So my practices come down to mantras that always remind me of these four things. I hope that they help you realize it's an inside job first in terms of being the kind of teacher we want to be and leader for our colleagues. And thank you very much for your time. Thanks.