Inspired Together Teachers

You are here: Home / Archives for Personal Development

Trauma Informed Practices: Recap Ep. 125

by Leave a Comment

Season 8 Episode 125

Trauma Informed Practices Recap

Check out this episode to hear our key takeaways from our two episodes on Trauma Informed Practices with our guest, Lee Johnson. 

 

Show Notes: 

Episode summary: 

Trauma Informed Practices-there is so much to learn and so much to absorb. In fact, we dedicated the last two episodes to the topic. Our guest speaker, Lee Johnson, gave us both a lot to think about and process.

Today, we’re going to share some of our key takeaways as well as the connections we made while listening to Lee’s expertise and advice.

Whether you’ve listed to the last two episodes or are just joining in now, we can’t wait to dive deeper into the topic of trauma informed practices with you.

In this episode:

This is not a word-for-word transcript. Here we share key topics and highlights. For the best experience with more examples, we recommend listening to the episode.

Introduction to the Topic of Trauma Informed Practices:  

What is trauma- what is included in that definition?  It is a larger experience that we would think. Let’s start by getting clear about what Trauma Informed Practices are.

Definition from SAMHSA  (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration):

“Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”

 The 3 E’s of Trauma Informed Practices: 

Events:

Events and circumstances may include the actual or extreme threat of physical or psychological harm,  for example, natural disasters, violence or severe neglect or other life threatening experience that gets in the way of healthy development.

Experience: 

The individual’s experience of these events helps to determine whether it is a traumatic event. A particular event may be experienced as traumatic for one individual and not experienced as trauma for another individual.

Effects:

These may occur immediately or may have a delayed onset. Effects can be short term or long term. People may not even recognize the original trauma as the cause of events. They can include inability to cope with vary from normal stresses to a change in a persons neurobiological make up.

One of the statistics Lee shared is that 1 in 4 students have experienced the effects of trauma.

If those children grow up with trauma, it follows that one in four teachers may also  have experienced trauma.

Six Key Principles of a Trauma Informed Approach: 

These connect to what we can all do to mitigate some of the trauma we experience or see in students. In a trauma informed approach we would focus on creating or building the following:

  1. Safety
  2. Trustworthiness and Transparency
  3. Peer Support
  4. Collaboration and Mutuality
  5. Empowerment, Voice, and Choice
  6. Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues

Lee shared what he called a BIG Mac analogy. When you go to McDonalds, and order a Big Mac, you know what you are going to get. They don’t change the bread to rye bread, or put in chicken instead of beef or add spicy mayo.  Similarly in schools, you can’t pick and choose which parts of trauma informed practice you want to apply and when. You need to have consistency and everyone’s expectations need to be the same.

Trauma informed practice is not an initiative, it is a school culture. Everyone needs to be on the same page. You can tell what a school culture is, whether or not it is a safe place for students. Schools are paying much more attention to social and emotional learning. It isn’t just a fifteen minute lesson, it is involving everyone and students and teachers and staff are all working on it. Everyone needs to be all in, it is every day and all day.

How do you treat people? How do you allow people to treat each other?  Think of this as a tier one practice. Then you aren’t missing people in the process.

What People Misunderstand Most About Trauma Informed Practices: 

One misconception is that we should identify students who experience trauma and then give them programs.

Instead, we should approach everyone with the do no harm skills. We don’t start with a discipline program. Students with trauma do not always have discipline issues. Some have withdrawal or other behaviors. In a trauma informed approach, we shouldn’t start with a discipline mindset.

Discipline is often punitive. The instinct is go punish the person first, to make them accountable. If the first result is to punish, the trauma will only increase. People can be accountable without punishment. For example they can lead that what they did was wrong and make amends. That focus on learning and accountability rather than punishment, which may be isolated and not result in change.

“Misconceptions live in the gaps of knowledge.”

Trauma informed practices are new, but the information is there. We encourage you to look at the resources in the show notes. There doesn’t have to be a gap in knowledge.

The same is true of professional development. One short PD session is not enough. This is an ongoing process, we are understanding it together as a community.  It will take time, and it also takes effort.

There is a false idea that in trauma informed practices students have no consequences. There is a lot of fear based strategy and punishment that retraumatize students. Trauma informed practices don’t push kids away, the pull them in. Punishment pushes them away. When students feel safe in their environment, they may not move to negative behavior patterns.

This also connects to your values and your mission statement. Do schools have a mission to retraumatize students?  Of course not. But do your practices connect with your values?  Schools have values and mission statements. They want to be supportive. Examine whether your actions align with your values. This causes teachers to feel stress.

This discussion of values also connects to many of our other podcast episodes.  Many of our guests have brought up the discussion of values and how it is import for your work to align with your values.

Student regulation vs dysregulation.

Understanding what students need to be in order to be self-regulated is helpful in reducing dysregulation. We liked Lee’s discussion of how one school he worked at was learning about the self-regulation needs of every student by using short interviews. Knowing students can allow you to best help them. Everyone needs skills around self-regulation.  This aligns with commonly held school values of helping students to be self-sufficient, good citizens, and productive members of the community.

We aren’t looking to excuse behavior or lower academic standards. We are looking to understand where they are and then help them build the skills they need.

We end this discussion with a quote that we love.

Quote: 

“Be good humans and do awesome stuff.”

Lee Johnson

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Lee at leejohnson.net

SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach: (Driving work that is often used as the framework in research) https://library.samhsa.gov/product/samhsas-concept-trauma-and-guidance-trauma-informed-approach/sma14-4884
Creating Cultures of Trauma-Informed Care (CCTIC):
A Self-Assessment and Planning Protocol (Fallot & Harris 5 Values of Trauma-Informed Care) https://children.wi.gov/Documents/CCTICSelf-AssessmentandPlanningProtocol0709.pdf
Self-Assessing Educator Social-Emotional Competencies (Mentioned at the end…Great for creating personal learning plans) https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/2022-12/GTL-Educator-Self-Assessment-Refreshed-2014-508.pdf
National Child Traumatic Stress Network Educator Toolkit: (Dated but the facts of impact and what we can do have not changed) https://www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/resources//child_trauma_toolkit_educators.pdf
The Heart of Learning and Teaching (Great resource all around and often cited as influencing work in research…Chapter 2 is Self-Care and activity) HeartofLearningandTeachingManualRewriteMay2016.indd
Stress, Trauma, and the Brain | Insights for Educators (Dr. Bruce Perry series of short videos. [“It’s not what you know but how you are.”]) https://iowa.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/stress-trauma-and-the-brain-insights-for-educators/

Not Mentioned on the podcast but recommended:

 Dr. Nadine Harris- How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime (Excellent “seminal” explanation that helped raise awareness of ACEs and trauma) https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_trauma_affects_health_across_a_lifetime?language=en
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction-Trauma Sensitive Schools Online Professional Development (These have evolved over the years, but very helpful to me early on. Wisconsin deserves HUGE props) https://dpi.wi.gov/sspw/mental-health/trauma/modules

Recommended Books

Venet, A. S. (2023). Equity-centered trauma-informed education (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Brummer, J., & Thorsborne, M. (2024). Becoming a trauma-informed restorative educator: Practical skills to change culture and behavior. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Brunzell, T., & Norrish, J. (2021). Creating trauma-informed, strengths-based classrooms: Teacher strategies for nurturing students’ healing, growth, and learning. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Forbes, H. T. (2020). Classroom180: A framework for creating, sustaining, and assessing the trauma-informed classroom. Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC.
Forbes, H. T. (2012). Help for Billy: A beyond consequences approach to helping challenging children in the classroom. Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC.

Related Episodes/Blog Posts:

Trauma Informed Practices with Lee Johnson Part 1

Trauma Informed Practices with Lee Johnson Part 2

Connect with the Inspired Together Teachers Community:

Website: https:www.inspiredtogetherteachers.com

Instagram: Inspired-Together-Teachers

Facebook: Inspired Together Teachers

Inspired Together Teachers Network  Facebook Group

Linked In:  Inspired Together Learning

More About Inspired Together Teachers:

Are you a teacher struggling to balance your best work with your best life?

If you are dedicated and caring but often overwhelmed and exhausted, join us at Inspired Together Teachers. We’ll give you inspiration, strategies and tips that help you navigate life’s challenges as a stronger, more confident, and more joy filled person, both in and out of the classroom.

Inspired Together Teachers will give you practical tools to experience more of what matters most in your life.

Co-hosts Paula Schmidt and Michele Vosberg are award winning educators with the experience and skills to help teachers thrive in life and work. They’ve taught at all levels, worked with thousands of teachers, and conducted workshops around the world. They are also the authors of the #1 best-selling book The Inspired Teachers Journal: A Weekly Guide to Becoming Your Best Self.

Paula and Michele would love to have you to join them on their quest to live inspired lives.

Time Shift Takeaways Ep. 122

by Leave a Comment

Season 8 Episode 122Time shift takeaways episode 122

Check out this episode to learn some of our favorite time shift tips from our guest episode with coach Teresa McCloy! 

Show notes:

Episode Summary:

How can we align our use of time with our real selves in order to not only make the best use of our time, but do it in a way that allows us more fulfillment and happiness? Last week we had a chance to sit down with business and lifestyle coach Teresa McCloy, who shared how our use of time connects with our real work, real life, and real self.  There was a lot to talk about and a lot to digest, and today we’re sharing our insights and takeaways from our discussion. We’re going to share 4 powerful words that can affect everything in your life. You don’t want to miss this!

In this episode:

This is not a word for word transcript. For the best experience, we recommend that you listen to the episode.

Recap/ Introduction

Last week we sat down for a discussion with business and life coach Teresa McCloy. Teresa isn’t an educator, at least not in the traditional sense, so perhaps you are thinking that this is an odd choice.

We’ve talked about our experiences with personal development and how corporations pay to send people to events and workshops for personal development. They understand that in helping people to be their best, they are also increasing the value that they bring to the workplace.

As we’ve sat in these rooms, or attended masterminds or workshops, we’ve often been the only educators in the room. We’ve often thought, why isn’t anyone bringing this to teachers? The skills that are often shared in these “business” personal developments are useful in both your personal life and in your work lives.

In schools, you get professional development, usually related to a new curriculum or some kind of district educational initiative. There isn’t a lot of focus on you and the rest of your life, or skills to help you in both school and home.

We thought it was valuable to take a look at some of the strategies people in businesses are using and bring those to educators.

We do that regularly, bringing you topics that help to enrich you in ALL parts of your life. We’re choosing to focus on your personal development not your professional development.

  3 Time Shifts We Takeaway From Our Guest, Teresa McCloy

Time Shift: Real Work, Real Life, Real Self  

This aligns almost perfectly with our tag: Work Life, Home Life, Best Life. We know that all areas of our lives are important and that our work life is just one part of our bigger picture. It’s what we call “The Inspired Life”.

Teresa shared how our real work, real life, and real self look when they are aligned and unaligned. She used the image of an inverted triangle.

In the first image below, the real work, real life, and real self are out of alignment. That is what it looks like when we are spending all of our time and energy, the largest part of our ” triangle”,  on our work. We are putting our real self last, and it is a very precarious and unbalanced position. The triangle is overly balanced on work. This is often where the chaos lives, the dysregulation, the feeling of being out of control. Your life is unstable.

In the second image, on the right, the real self is the largest part of the triangle and work is at the top. Beginning with our real selves, we can find a better balance. Starting with our real selves, we can better align with our real life and our real work. This is much more stable.

Focusing on your self first allows the rest to be in better balanced. You will feel more grounded. Then you can focus on the rest of your life and everything else will come easier. It impacts your life and your family.

Time Shift: Time Blocking

Present Block–  This block is about being present for yourself first! It is being present to your health and soul. A present block might look like going for a walk, cooking a nice meal, meditation, playing with the dog, anything that you enjoy and that keeps you in the present. A present block feeds your soul. This is the one that is often the first to go when you are busy, but the one you need the most. We need to pre-plan for this type of activity. Put it in your planner or on-line calendar.

People Block– With a people block, you are purposefully planning time for the special people in your life ahead of time, rather than leaving it to chance. For some people, like Paula, this is a priority and they prioritize spending time with people. For others, such as Michele, who are generally happy being alone, they may need to spend more time and intentionally plan time to spend with people. Again, you preplan this and put it on your calendar!

Project Block– This is time you plan for projects. You don’t have to complete the whole project at once, it can be part of a bigger project. You look at your calendar, and carve out a couple of hours a week to work on your project. Project blocks are great for those house type projects that you know you need to do but never get around to doing. It also works for school projects such as writing curriculum. It is less about how many hours you put in on the project, but that you prescheduled time to work on the project. That is how your “to-do projects actually get done.

Prep Block – These are the routine things, such as your emails, phone calls, or errands. Think of your prep time at school. You can plan for what you will do in each of your prep times. Without planning, time might get away from you and you don’t get anything done. This is a good category for grouping like items together. For example, you can make a list of all the emails or phone calls you need to make and then polish them off at the same time.  Or you can plan do all the errands on Saturday morning rather than one here and there.

Time Shift: The Four Powerful Words that Can Change Everything 

The four most powerful words: “ I get to choose.” 

Teresa says, “If I let life happen TO me, it will.”

We talk about living with intention, and that involves making choices. If you don’t make choices about your time or what you want to do in your life, someone else will. Others are happy to take control of your time! You get to choose what you put into your life or how you will spend your time. If you don’t choose what you want to do in your life, there will be busy work that will fill the spaces.

When we realize that we get to choose, we recognize that we can control more of our lives than we may at first think we can. We make choices that will create our lives- both small choices and big ones.

We can’t control everything, but we can choose where we can. We can choose to be happy or sad. We can choose busy or we can choose calm.

You can choose to “Live From Rest or Rush”.  You get to choose.

Pre-decide as much as you can and as far in advance as you can. That is where goal setting comes in. You get to choose and make plans and set the schedule. You can do the projects and you can choose to spend time with people. If you pre-plan, you are more likely to follow through and get things done. You will likely then spend more time on things that you choose to do. It leads to greater fulfillment.

You feel better when you decide to pre-decide and schedule. When you make a commitment to yourself you will be much more likely to follow through and stick to a plan. It is a simple but powerful strategy.

Conclusion:

As we wrap up today, we hope that you have taken away some value from our episode with Teresa.  Remember her words, “ I get to choose”.  If I do nothing and let life happen to me it will. Who do you want to control your life?  Choose wisely.

Quote:

“I get to choose.”

Teresa McCloy

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Find Teresa: https://www.therealifeprocess.com

Podcast: The Drive, Optimizing Life for Maximum Fulfillment with Bill Perkins

Related Episodes/Blog Posts:

Inspired Together Teachers Podcast Episode 16 Real Self Care 

Inspired Together Teachers podcast Episode 115 Mindfulness is Magic with Molly Schreiber

Set Priorities to Take Back Your Life

Do What Makes You Feel Alive

Connect with the Inspired Together Teachers Community:

Website: https:www.inspiredtogetherteachers.com

Instagram: Inspired-Together-Teachers

Facebook: Inspired Together Teachers

Inspired Together Teachers Network  Facebook Group

Linked In:  Inspired Together Learning

More About Inspired Together Teachers:

Are you a teacher struggling to balance your best work with your best life?

If you are dedicated and caring but often overwhelmed and exhausted, join us at Inspired Together Teachers. We’ll give you inspiration, strategies and tips that help you navigate life’s challenges as a stronger, more confident, and more joy filled person, both in and out of the classroom.

Inspired Together Teachers will give you practical tools to experience more of what matters most in your life.

Co-hosts Paula Schmidt and Michele Vosberg are award winning educators with the experience and skills to help teachers thrive in life and work. They’ve taught at all levels, worked with thousands of teachers, and conducted workshops around the world. They are also the authors of the #1 best-selling book The Inspired Teachers Journal: A Weekly Guide to Becoming Your Best Self.

Paula and Michele would love to have you to join them on their quest to live inspired lives.

This post may use affiliate links. If you purchase an item through our link, we will receive a small portion of the profit with no extra cost to you. This helps us to pay for the costs of bringing this free podcast to our community.

Time Shifts for Busy Teachers with Teresa McCloy Ep. 121

by Leave a Comment

Season 8 Episode 121

Time shifts for busy teachers with Teresa McCloy

If you’re doing all the things—but still feel like you’re running out of time, check out this episode as we sit down with Teresa McCloy to talk about time shifts you can make to  reclaim your schedule (and your peace).

Show Notes 

Episode Summary

If there’s one thing every teacher wishes they had more of—it’s time. You’re juggling lesson plans, grading piles that never shrink, back-to-back meetings, and the endless demands of the school day. Then you head home… and the second shift begins—family, errands, maybe even a needy pet or two. Sound familiar?

If you feel like your life is a constant sprint from sunup to sundown, you’re not alone. But what if there was a better way? What if you could take back some control over your time—without dropping any of the balls you’re juggling?

Today’s guest, Teresa McCloy, has helped countless people do just that. She’s bringing time-saving strategies and time shifts that could change the way you approach your day. So if you’ve ever said, ‘There’s just not enough time,” this episode is for you.

In this episode

This is not a word-for-word transcript. Here, we highlight our topics of discussion. For the best experience, we recommend listening to the episode.

Introduction to our guest, Teresa McCloy

Hello, we’re very happy to welcome Teresa McCloy to the show today. Teresa is a business and life coach and CEO of The Realife Process. Teresa lives on a farm in Central Illinois, where in addition to running her business, she is an author, speaker, wife, mom, and grandmother.

Teresa’s motto is live from rest, not rush, which sounds like something we can all benefit from.

Teresa has been in a Mastermind group with Michele for many years. Both Paula and Michele belong to Mastermind groups, where they meet regularly to share strategies about our work and our lives. We highly recommend being a part of a group of likeminded individuals that can help you live with intention.

Living Like Your Hair’s on Fire

On her web page, Teresa writes, “ I had tried it all–every book, every software, and every calendar/planner—to help me be more “productive.”  She tells us how she was addicted to productivity and self-help. After years of living life with her hair on fire, she had to make a change.

She was in a place of thinking that if she just learned that one perfect thing, her life would be different.  She didn’t find that. There is no magic formula. What is required is to do some deeper work to discover what really matters to you. Then there are frameworks and processes that we can follow, but it has to begin with aligning to our inner real self.

You need to understand that if you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else. We want to do all of the things.

Teachers are givers they want to do everything for everyone. It causes a lot of stress.

The Realife Process and Aligning Time with Values with a Time Shift

Teresa is known for The Realife Process- real work, real life, real self.

This is very aligned with our work at Inspired Together Teachers, where we use the motto, work life, home life, best life.

She discussed her inverted triangle model. When we are out of alignment, we are like a tipping triangle. Our real self is perched at the bottom, in a very unstable balance. If we flip the triangle over so that the triangle is stable, we start with our real selves, then focus on our real lives and then our real work. The key is aligning with our real selves rather than building our identity and life around the work first. When the triangle is flipped upside, that is were burn-out happens.

We need to do some hard work with self-reflection. Do we know what we want and what we need? We might need a shift in our thinking.

The question is not what do you want to do, the focus should be on who do you want to be. That is a mindset shift.

The hard part of this is that nobody can do the hard work of aligning with values for us. We need to do the work. If you are burned-out, you need to make it a priority to work on yourself, and take a deeper look at what you need.

This is not just giving yourself permission to take care of yourself; it is a necessity. You can not help others when you are exhausted. The self-care piece makes you able to take care of someone else.

Education today is in need of a lot of help. No one is coming to save education. We have come to believe that the only way we are going to save education is with the teachers, the people who are doing the work. In order for the teachers to be able to do that, they need to be healthy, strong, and grounded, doing work that matters in ways that are sustainable.

Time Blocking

One of the things that Teresa teaches is planning with time blocks. These time blocks include the following types of blocks.

Present Block: a daily block of time for self-care and or soul-care. This is where you rest, and renew. It could also be time for personal growth. It could be meditation, spirituality, a walk, whatever it means for you. This could be anything that brings life giving rhythms to your day. This is scheduled into your weekly calendar. For busy young teachers who have young children, it might be 30 minutes a few times a week. For others it might be daily. What’s important is to fit it into your life in whatever way is appropriate for the stage of life you are in.

People Block: This is a block that you schedule into your calendar where you can spend quality time with the people who are important to you. We get to steward time, and most of us would always chose to spend time with the people we love most.  That might a be a spouse, a friend, or anyone who is special to you. Yet, the time for that doesn’t always happen. We can pre-decide to schedule this time. This is approximately 60-90 minutes and could be scheduled 3-5 times a week.

Project Block: This is time scheduled to do projects, whether work projects or home projects. It can be any kind of project, like cleaning out the garage. We don’t always find time to do these projects. The project block is focused time to work on your plans. You can schedule 30 minutes to work on your garage, or whatever so that it actually happens. Schedule 2-4 project blocks a week.

Prep Block: This 30-60 minutes block of time is set aside to do errands, make phone calls, or everyday tasks. For your prep blocks, try to group like items together such as making all your errands in on trip, or planning all the phone calls in one block. Pre-deciding how you want to spend your time will help you make sure the things that matter most to you get done.

Blocks can help you control how you use your time. If you let life happen to you, it will. You can also choose how to spend your time. When you choose, you control your time rather than letting outside things control your life.

Paula discusses a podcast she listened to with Bill Perkins, who talks about not saving your special things for later. You can’t get your time back, so spend it now with people and things that matter. We’ve linked to the podcast below.

Most of us get more things right that wrong, we may just need a little realignment.

Conclusion:

If people would walk away with one main idea from today, what would you want that idea to be?

Teresa says two things. The more that you can pre-decide, the better. She sits down on Fridays and looks at her calendar and asks, “what do I need to pre-decide for the next week or two?”.  This allows her to find more margin in her day while also planning the things that are most important to her.

Remember you get choose whether you live from rest or rush. Rest comes from inside of you, from a place of peace and your intentional decisions. Rush is what is coming at you from the outside. You get to choose. 

Learn more about Teresa or her work: 

Find Teresa: https://www.therealifeprocess.com 

Book: Do What Matters: Live from Rest Not Rush available on Amazon or wherever you like to get your books.

Quote:

Live from rest, not rush.

Teresa McCoy

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Find Teresa: https://www.therealifeprocess.com

Podcast: The Drive, Optimizing Life for Maximum Fulfillment with Bill Perkins

Related Episodes/Blog Posts:

Inspired Together Teachers podcast Episode 16 Real Self Care 

Inspired Together Teachers podcast Episode 115 Mindfulness is Magic with Molly Schreiber

Connect with the Inspired Together Teachers Community:

Website: https:www.inspiredtogetherteachers.com

Instagram: Inspired-Together-Teachers

Facebook: Inspired Together Teachers

Inspired Together Teachers Network  Facebook Group

Linked In:  Inspired Together Learning

More About Inspired Together Teachers:

Are you a teacher struggling to balance your best work with your best life?

If you are dedicated and caring but often overwhelmed and exhausted, join us at Inspired Together Teachers. We’ll give you inspiration, strategies and tips that help you navigate life’s challenges as a stronger, more confident, and more joy filled person, both in and out of the classroom.

Inspired Together Teachers will give you practical tools to experience more of what matters most in your life.

Co-hosts Paula Schmidt and Michele Vosberg are award winning educators with the experience and skills to help teachers thrive in life and work. They’ve taught at all levels, worked with thousands of teachers, and conducted workshops around the world. They are also the authors of the #1 best-selling book The Inspired Teachers Journal: A Weekly Guide to Becoming Your Best Self.

Paula and Michele would love to have you to join them on their quest to live inspired lives.

The Purpose of Education with Nick Marmolejo Ep. 117

by 1 Comment

Season 8 Episode 117Episode 117 Nick Marmolejo

Check out this episode as we talk about the purpose of education and how there is a missing link that could make all the difference for both teacher and student fulfillment. 

Show Notes:

Episode Summary:

Do you want to feel more motivated, more engaged in life and more excited about your job and your life? Do you want your students to feel more motivated, engaged and excited about not only school but their lives? We all want success, for ourselves and for our students.

According to today’s guest, Nick Marmolejo, there is a missing link that could make all the difference.

Nick Marmolejo, an award-winning educator who works with superintendents and workforce development directors to speak on mental health, career readiness, and school turnaround.

He also the author of a soon to be released children’s book, Where’s My Compass. He’s got a lot to say about what might be missing in schools today.

Stay tuned and listen in as we talk about the purpose of education.

In this episode:

This is not a word -for – word transcript. Here we highlight some of the key topics of discussion. We recommend listening to the full podcast episode for the best experience.

Introduction:

Today’s guest is Nick Marm0lejo, an award-winning educator who works with superintendents and workforce development directors to speak on mental health, career readiness, and school turnaround. He also the author of a soon to be released children’s book, Where’s My Compass.

Michele: I met Nick on Linked in, and quickly realized that we share a philosophy of education that goes beyond content, curriculum, and assessments. Nick challenges the status quo of our K-12 education system and its impact on the workforce. I see him as someone who thinks differently, and also someone who understands big ideas and how they intersect for the betterment of the entire person.

Welcome to the podcast Nick!

 Opening question:

Nick, tell us about yourself and your journey to where you are today.

  • Nick shared his journey from mentoring high school seniors to joining Teach for America and becoming an educator.
  • He taught in Texas and Washington, eventually moving into leadership roles before transitioning to speaking engagements.
  • Nick emphasized his purpose of helping others succeed by connecting them with resources and knowledge.

Discussion topics:

We teased in the introduction to the missing link, and that missing link is purpose. Your TED talk is entitled Are Schools Destroying Purpose?

Can you talk about what you mean when you use the world purpose?

  • Nick discussed the concept of purpose, distinguishing it from passion and emphasizing its role in fulfilling work.
  • Purpose is defined as using one’s best skills to serve others, which is more sustainable than passion alone. It is not a job, it is what you find fulfilling.
  • Nick’s TED Talk questions whether schools are destroying purpose by focusing too much on productivity rather than purpose-driven education.

What drew you to making the conclusion that schools might be destroying purpose?

  • Many people, not just educators, are feeling unfulfilled in their work.
  • Nick described how he asked many educators, including superintendents to describe the purpose of school. This highlighted the difficulty in defining the purpose of school, noting varied responses from people. It seems that no one really agrees on the purpose of school.
  • Schools often focus is on productivity rather than purpose-driven education and helping students find meaning.

Challenges in Education

  • Nick, Michele and Paula discussed the conflicting priorities in education, such as content delivery versus preparing students for life and work. If you chase two rabbits, you can’t catch either one. Teachers want to be purposeful and do the work they know matters, but they are torn with many conflicting priorities.
  • Nick proposed simplifying educational priorities to focus on purpose, then priority, and then productivity, inspired by the book The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. 
  • Most schools are so focused on the productivity side that purpose gets lost. This leads to compliance and doing things you don’t understand for unknown reasons.

Solutions for Purpose-Driven Education 

  • Nick suggested asking students and teachers about the problems they want to solve as a way to focus on purpose.
  • He advocated for involving families in the educational process in a way that helps them feel involved and empowered.
  •  Of course we need to address systemic issues like funding and policy constraints.
  • Nick emphasized the importance of creating environments where lifelong learning is prioritized and supported. This is important for both students and teachers.

Vision for Education 

  • Nick envisioned a less stressful educational environment where students and teachers are motivated and engaged.
  • He hopes for a resurgence of veteran teachers to mentor younger educators and contribute to a positive school culture.
  • The ultimate goal is to create schools that foster lifelong learning and personal development for both students and teachers.

If you walked into a school you have never been in, how long would it take you to know whether or not it was a good school?

  • Paula said 2 minutes, Nick said 10 and Michele said 15-20.
  • We discussed how you know if a school is good and it came down to how students are treated, the expectations for students and the “feel.” What feeling do you get?
  • What is the goal for these kids. Is the goal for them to feel wanted, to feel needed, to feel like they are part of a greater purpose?
  • You can recognize that there is truly a greater purpose. They are learning something to contribute to the world versus it is just a compliance -you sit still while I open your heads, dump knowledge in.
  • In quality schools, purpose is very evident as in a focus on life-long learning. Life-long learning is the axiom.

Mr. Feeney and Temple Grandin, and Teachers who Make a Difference: 

  • Nick gave examples of powerful teachers who modeled learning and helped students find purpose.  These include one of his teachers, Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World, and Temple Grandin.
  • Teachers are role models. Students are looking for guidance.
  • Helping students is a part of most teachers’ purpose. They want to guide students.
  • With the exit of so many teachers, especially veteran teachers retiring or choosing other roles,  we’ve lost some of that mentoring of students. Nick wants all of these teachers who are committed to the profession, to feel supported in doing the mentoring of students work that they do so well and is so meaningful. Teachers want to fulfill this role, but they need more time for this.
  • School has become all about delivering the test, passing the test, raising the scores, and everybody forgets about the stuff that is really important. We need to remember that teachers can do much more that teach content.

Key Takeaways 

  • Nick emphasized that the purpose of school is to create lifelong learners and to support teachers in maintaining their passion for education.
  • Nick has said that your mission is to create the largest collective of purpose-driven educators in the world so we can bridge the gaps between school and work. We would take that one step further- it isn’t just work it is LIFE. This aligns with the goals on Inspired Together Teachers.
  • If we had purpose infused in schools, it would be less stressful for everyone. Students would be more likely to show up. Teachers would be morefulfilled, and those who have left might even  return to the classroom.

Conclusion:

Nick: I would say that the purpose of school is quite simply to create lifelong learners. And our biggest priority is really to get out of the way of kids from learning, where to stay out of their way, essentially, and not to mess things up too much.

And for educators, it’s kind of the same, right? Teachers have walked into the classroom, some have  committed to it for a lifetime. And our job is to not extinguish that flame for them.

And so I would just remind families, parents, teachers, superintendents, our whole point is to create lifelong learners in a place where we all want to show up. 

Find Nick: 

Listen to Nicjk’s TEDxTalk on Your Tube here. 

You can also find Nick on Linked In.

 Recap:Available Tools

The episode has so much more discussion of big issues in education. We hope you will listen in and let us know your ideas!

Quote:

The key to purposeful education is asking and answering this question:

What’s the problem that you would like to help others solve?

Nick Marmolejo

Resources mentioned in this episode:

TEDx Talk:  Are Schools Destroying Purpose?

Related Episodes/Blog Posts:

Create Your Best Life with Purpose and Joy

Mindfullness is Magic with Molly Schreiber

Connect with the Inspired Together Teachers Community:

Website: https:www.inspiredtogetherteachers.com

Instagram: Inspired-Together-Teachers

Facebook: Inspired Together Teachers

Inspired Together Teachers Network  Facebook Group

Linked In:  Inspired Together Learning

More About Inspired Together Teachers:

Are you a teacher struggling to balance your best work with your best life?

If you are dedicated and caring but often overwhelmed and exhausted, join us at Inspired Together Teachers. We’ll give you inspiration, strategies and tips that help you navigate life’s challenges as a stronger, more confident, and more joy filled person, both in and out of the classroom.

Inspired Together Teachers will give you practical tools to experience more of what matters most in your life.

Co-hosts Paula Schmidt and Michele Vosberg are award winning educators with the experience and skills to help teachers thrive in life and work. They’ve taught at all levels, worked with thousands of teachers, and conducted workshops around the world. They are also the authors of the #1 best-selling book The Inspired Teachers Journal: A Weekly Guide to Becoming Your Best Self.

Paula and Michele would love to have you to join them on their quest to live inspired lives.

 

Seeking Solutions in Uncertain Times

by Leave a Comment

We are 100% certain that you are facing challenges this school year.

Four years ago, we wrote a post called “Don’t Freak. Solution Seek” What we loved about this post, besides that it explains an important lesson we learned from a young teacher, is that it gave easy steps we all can take to switch our mindsets from “freaking” to “solution seeking.”  Read the original post here

When the “Don’t Freak. Solution Seek.” post was written, we could never have imagined that it would be timely to revisit this lesson when our personal and professional lives have been drastically altered by a pandemic.

Students, teachers, parents and administrators are faced with daily challenges that could easily cause us to say, “I might freak out if…” or “I am really freaking out about…” We have realized that things we took for granted just a few years ago are no longer givens.

We live with uncertainty in our classrooms and in our homes in a way we never have before.

When you find yourself thinking that you are freaking out, or could potentially freak out, use the “freaking” as a trigger to shift your mindset to one of “solution seeking.” By participating in the action of solution seeking, you no longer have the time or energy to freak, as you are focused on the solution and how to attain it.

These easy steps will help you to shift your mindset from one of worry and anxiety to one of attaining solutions.

  1. Every time you feel yourself saying, thinking, or feeling that you are “freaking out,” recognize this as a trigger for a mindset change.
  2. Stop, take a deep breath, and re-evaluate the situation.
  3. Say to yourself, “Don’t freak. Solution seek.”
  4. Start considering possible solutions to your dilemma. To determine what solutions you can seek, consider the following:
    • What aspects of the situation do you have control of?
    • What aspects of the situation do you not have control of?
    • What steps can you take immediately that will lead you to a desired response?
  1. Take one actionable step to start working toward a solution.
  2. Continue to work toward the solution until it has been reached.

In short, “Don’t freak. Solution seek.”  These may be the words you chose to live by this year at work and at home.  You may want to teach this phrase to your students as well or make it a classroom motto.

It is not easy to navigate the education system during uncertain times. There have been, and will continue to be, many opportunities each day to freak out. You can be the model for those around you as to the positive outcomes that occur when you choose to solution seek instead of freak.

Wishing you less uncertainty with each passing day,

Paula and Michele

Unless otherwise noted, all written content and photos are created for the Inspired Together Teachers web site. Please feel free to share on social media, but we ask that you link back to this site or give credit to origins and authorship. Copyright 2025 Inspired Together Learning, LLC

Connect with us on Social Media!

Occasionally, posts on this site will contain affiliate links. We only write about or recommend products we truly like or use and would personally recommend to you. If you purchase a product through our link, we may receive a small percentage of the purchase amount. There is no additional cost to you. This allows us to pay for the costs of hosting this blog.

Additionally, we do collect a small amount of personal data so that we may create the best experience possible for our visitors. To learn more about how we collect this data please review our Privacy Policy.

Verified by ExactMetrics