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A New Tutor Interviews ME on My Own Podcast | Alondra Padilla · The Academic Coaching Podcast

0:00
Alondra: In my own personal experience, I am a first-generation student, so my parents did not go to college, and I'm also a child of immigrants.
0:09
Alondra: So both of those experiences played a role in creating a lot of shame and a lot of imposter syndrome in the classroom for me.
0:18
Alondra: And so I was just really curious to see how you've been able to support students in getting rid of that shame.
0:28
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Okay.
0:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ugh.
0:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I don't know if I have totally helped them get rid of the shame, but certainly working with the shame.
0:36
Alondra: Yes.
0:37
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I don't think shame ever completely gets rid of itself.
0:39
Alondra: No, I don't think so.
0:45
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Welcome to the Academic Coaching Podcast, brought to you by the Anti-Boring Learning Lab.
0:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I am your host, Gretchen Wegner, and this is the show where we dig into the craft of coaching students, the study skills, the executive function strategies, and the occasional business tip for those of you in private practice.
1:05
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Today's episode is a little different.
1:08
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): My guest, Alondra Padilla, and I had never met before we hit record, which is kind of gutsy on both of our parts.
1:16
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): She came with questions about how I found my way into education, but pretty quickly, I started asking her questions, too.
1:24
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We're two educators from very different generations and very different backgrounds.
1:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm a white, middle-aged educator who's been doing this work for decades, and Alondra is a younger, first-generation college graduate and child of immigrants who's just beginning her career in education.
1:41
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It was so fun to connect, and we found ourselves talking about topics like shame, mistakes, identity, imposter syndrome, and the ways that our own experiences have shaped how we think about students and learning and the systems that they need to learn in.
2:00
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): One quick audio note: Alondra was recording from a study room at her local library, so her audio is a little echoey at times, and thanks for going with the flow.
2:10
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I think you'll find this conversation worth it.
2:14
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Here we go a- Allandra and I have never met before, so this is kind of our first moment meeting.
2:21
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Hi, Allandra.
2:22
Alondra: Hi, Gretchen.
2:23
Alondra: Nice to...
2:24
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): right first?
2:26
Alondra: Yeah, so my name is Alondra.
2:27
Alondra: It's a Spanish pronunciation.
2:30
Alondra: But thank you for asking
2:32
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah, actually this weekend I was camping with a group of, um, parents and children, and one of the children's name is Rosa, and I pronounced it Rosa, and her sister at one point said,"Why are you pronouncing it so well?" So
2:50
Alondra: Yeah.
2:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): yeah,
2:51
Alondra: think I'm also flexible.
2:53
Alondra: I've heard Alondra too.
2:54
Alondra: I think growing up in...
2:56
Alondra: So I grew up in LA, and we have Alondra Boulevard, and so I would always have friends being like,"Oh, I passed by your street." But so I've heard Alondra, Alondra.
3:06
Alondra: It's flexible for me
3:08
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's flexible, but it's also nice to have your name pronounced the way it feels nice in your ears, right, Alondra?
3:14
Alondra: Exactly.
3:16
Alondra: Thank you
3:18
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So you reached out to me because you had some questions about how I got into the work that I do, and I said,"Well, I'm happy to answer them." But could we do it on recording because I think the podcast listeners probably have the same questions?
3:37
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And you were so brave to say yes.
3:40
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I so appreciate that.
3:42
Alondra: Thank you
3:42
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): yeah, so I'm curious what, what would be helpful for us to, for you to learn about me?
3:49
Alondra: Well, I think I'm just curious about your journey as a whole.
3:54
Alondra: Um, thinking about, I guess in chronologically, I was wondering what got you into education?
4:02
Alondra: W- Was there a moment that affirmed for you that you wanted to be an educator?
4:08
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm.
4:10
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's such a good question, and so I will answer, and I, I'm gonna start when I was seven years old actually.
4:18
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But before I answer, just so that the listeners can get to know you, why are you curious about my journey?
4:25
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): What is it about your journey that makes you curious about mine?
4:29
Alondra: I guess so I heard of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab they're my current tutoring company that I work for called Atelier Tutors,
4:38
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, yeah
4:38
Alondra: and they're really wonderful.
4:40
Alondra: I got to talk with Silvana about executive functioning skills.
4:44
Alondra: I love her.
4:45
Alondra: She's like...
4:46
Alondra: I think of her a little bit as, like, tutor matchmaker in a way because she's really intentional and really thoughtful about who she pairs students with.
4:57
Alondra: But she recommended that I join your webinar, and when I heard you talking about executive functioning skills in the classroom, I looked more into your mission regarding how everyone should have access to academic coaching, and that really resonated with me.
5:15
Alondra: Um, I grew up in pub- in the public education system, L- in LAUSD, and through that, my journey thinking about education through a critical lens as, as a system started pretty young.
5:30
Alondra: Um, I was part of, it was called at the time Coalition for Educational Justice, and since then has transitioned into Students Deserve, which is all about making...
5:47
Alondra: It centers Black students' experiences in LAUSD and how the schools reinforce school-to-prison pipelines, and it especially affects Black and Brown students, which are the demographics that LAUSD primarily serves.
6:06
Alondra: So that's a little bit about my story.
6:09
Alondra: I've...
6:10
Alondra: I'm really passionate about education, and I'm really passionate especially about individualized learning, so I was really excited to hear you talking about not just how to help students with their executive functioning skills, but also the conversation we had at the end around shame and how shame manifests for students with disabilities and students who may be going undiagnosed
6:40
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
6:40
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah, and, and I think you also noted because of your own experience as a first-generation college student that sometimes it's neurodivergence that can manifest shame, but sometimes it can be just a huge difference, uh, between what the system, the experiences the system expects you to have and the experiences that you had, and then you internalize those differences rather than recognize that something is wrong with the system.
7:08
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Did I summarize well your experience?
7:11
Alondra: Yes.
7:11
Alondra: Um, so in my own personal experience, I am a first-generation student, so my parents did not go to college, and I'm also a child of immigrants.
7:22
Alondra: So both of those experiences played a role in creating a lot of shame and a lot of imposter syndrome in the classroom for me.
7:31
Alondra: And so I was just really curious to see how you've been able to support students in getting rid of that shame.
7:44
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Okay.
7:45
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ugh.
7:46
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I don't know if I have totally helped them get rid of the shame, but certainly working with the shame.
7:52
Alondra: Yes.
7:53
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I don't think shame.
7:53
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): ever completely gets rid of itself
7:55
Alondra: No, I don't think so.
7:58
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Okay.
7:59
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, what a wonderful map for our conversation we have then.
8:02
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I really want you to get your needs met, to have your questions about me answered, so we'll start there, and then we'll find our way back, I think, to this question around equity and what students deserve, and the things I do and don't know about how to support students with shame All right.
8:22
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So, my journey as an educator started in so many ways.
8:30
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I mean, it started when I went to school for the first time, maybe actually when I was five.
8:34
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I was so excited to start school and fill my backpack with all the school supplies.
8:39
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): then when I was seven or eight, maybe I was eight, I lived in Houston, Texas, in the Third Ward, which, which anybody who knows Houston, Texas, is a very poor neighborhood in Houston.
8:54
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I was the oldest student walking a group of younger students to the school bus and taking care of them to make sure they safely got on the bus.
9:05
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I said I was eight.
9:06
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh gosh, I'm getting everything wrong.
9:07
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's too much responsibility for an eight-year-old.
9:10
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I think I was 10.
9:11
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I was in fifth grade.
9:12
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Here we go.
9:16
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I would make curriculum to, for what we were gonna learn on the walk from the block where I lived and where all the stu- the kids lived to the, the three blocks later when we arrived at the school bus.
9:32
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I would actually figure out what do I, what am I gonna teach the students?
9:38
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): How am I gonna teach it while we're walking?
9:40
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I would have a little lesson plan.
9:46
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I know that's not what you were intending probably, because you probably wanna know more about as an adult, how did I make my way into education, but let me just give you a chance to respond.
9:56
Alondra: No, I think that those moments when you're young, and I think especially for me, I definitely had responsibilities start for me as a young- at a young age.
10:06
Alondra: Um, I lost my dad when I was 12, and I had to do a lot of caretaking for my little brother, being in a single-parent household, and that's a lot of kids' experiences, and those responsibilities can really shape how you move forward.
10:24
Alondra: So I am glad to hear you share how those young moments can impact your career journey, and also recognizing that even at a young age, you were already forming lesson plans
10:42
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I was obsessed with how do you teach things.
10:44
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And also, so just, just as a funny example, the boys, the younger boys liked to kick down the anthills on the trip, and anybody who knows Houston, Texas knows we have red ants, and especially poor neighborhoods have lots of red ant hills in the front yards.
11:00
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And they would kick them, and then there would be all these red ants all over the place.
11:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I was like,"They shouldn't hurt the ants that way." And I tried to create a curriculum to help them understand why they shouldn't hurt the ants.
11:12
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Do you think it worked, by the way, my curriculum?
11:17
Alondra: I think to some degree, I think it might have been helpful.
11:20
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You're very sweet.
11:22
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It so did not work.
11:23
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): They did not care at all.
11:27
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so I learned, I actually gave up and I, I went for smaller lessons and smaller lessons, and actually eventually I just decided as long as I got them there safe, that was the m- important thing, and I gave it up.
11:38
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But I do remember trying to figure out, how do I get the word to them about all of this?
11:45
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And that's kind of what we do as a coach these days, is how do I make the lesson smaller and smaller and smaller until the student's actually on the tiniest next step that they're willing to take, and how do we do that?
11:58
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And that's kind of, in a nutshell, what executive function coaching is
12:04
Alondra: Yeah.
12:05
Alondra: Even hearing you talking about that, I started thinking about chunking, like when you're chunking materials, and so you're trying to break down the concept as small as possible to try and teach the topic
12:16
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes.
12:17
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes, and I figured that out when I was 10.
12:21
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But my adult learning journey actually, gosh, it's so hard to know where a beginning is.
12:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's so hard to know'cause then in college, I started, somehow I had the courage to start a puppetry program where we purchased four puppets known as Kids on the Block, and they are puppets with disabilities.
12:46
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And they had scripts that went along with them, and I trained people how to be puppeteers, and then we toured classrooms, and we did puppet shows with these puppets, uh, in first, second, and third grade classrooms.
13:00
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I don't, I...
13:02
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's so funny.
13:03
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Like do you remember back to being in college, which I think was more recent for you than it is for me?
13:08
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Are you still there, by the way?
13:09
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Or are you
13:10
Alondra: I recently graduated.
13:12
Alondra: So right now...
13:14
Alondra: Thank you
13:15
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Is there anything that you did in college that even though it was recent, you look back on and you're like,"That was so brave"?
13:23
Alondra: I think that one of the most impactful moments for me in college was being part of an arts education sequence that for me...
13:35
Alondra: So through the sequence, it was through the Visual and Performing Arts Education Department, and it was taught...
13:41
Alondra: My professor's name was Joanza Lowe, and she was an amazing teacher, an amazing professor.
13:47
Alondra: She had been an educator, a K through 12 arts educator, um, for a very long time, and she taught us the ways that art can be used to teach science, math, English, whatever subject it may be.
14:07
Alondra: And For me, I had to develop a lesson plan and then around whatever form of art I wanted to.
14:19
Alondra: I chose to teach fifth graders how to write an ode to themselves, uh, reflecting on themselves and then just praising themselves in the end.
14:32
Alondra: But that was very scary and simultaneously so exciting, and having Joanne Zullo, my professor, support me through it was really impactful because she was just...
14:46
Alondra: She really taught me to believe and internalize that mistakes are natural, and I think for me, mistakes often felt like they weren't permitted.
15:02
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
15:03
Alondra: Um, and I think that has, that maybe has to do with some of that, like, first-generation anxiety of not knowing if what you're doing is right because you're constantly having to figure out how to identify, figure out what the first step is.
15:27
Alondra: And so there's always a level of uncertainty, um-
15:31
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): you what the first step is, so you have to kinda get...
15:34
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You have to watch, you have to guess, and then you're also dealing with the difference of both race being a Brown person, uh, in this culture, as well as the difference of just being somebody who grew up in a different language system.
15:50
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I imagine all of that makes it feel like there's actually no room for mistake, because everything will get taken away so quickly from you if you make one.
16:02
Alondra: Mm-hmm.
16:03
Alondra: Yeah, thank you for breaking that down so eloquently and holding that.
16:08
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Does it feel accurate?
16:10
Alondra: it does feel accurate for me
16:12
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And that's so much to be holding all at once, and so I'm now curious, what did your professor do help you feel, someone who's holding mistakes like,"Oh my God, I can't make one," make you feel, like, relax the hold on it?
16:30
Alondra: She used art and she consistently...
16:35
Alondra: It was a constant theme in her lessons of if you make a mistake, work with it
16:43
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
16:44
Alondra: move forward rather than getting fixating on it, like fixated on it or throwing it away.
16:52
Alondra: You still have something valuable, and you can work with it and move forward.
16:56
Alondra: And that was just such a powerful lesson to internalize for me
17:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And it sounds like her repetition of it, it sounded like maybe in every class or maybe even several times during the class,
17:10
Alondra: Mhm
17:11
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): you in a new way uh, this is yet another example of how mistakes actually help us rather than hurt us
17:19
Alondra: Yeah, it was several times in different ways, which reminds me of something you were saying in the webinar about how we need to tailor our...
17:30
Alondra: We shouldn't tailor our lessons to one specific learning style, even if that's, like, the strongest for the student, that we need to learn in various ways.
17:40
Alondra: Could you tell me more about that maybe?
17:43
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
17:44
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So our module number two of the Anti-Boring Toolkit, we have-- it's, it's called Learning Styles Are Dead.
17:52
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's sort of a tongue-in-cheek name.
17:54
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): They're not dead, they're just a concept.
17:57
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): a lot of people believe that it is true learning in the way you're most comfortable is the best way to learn, and that is not true.
18:09
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I, for example, do love to move.
18:11
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm, I'm a verbal processor.
18:13
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I do need to speak before I know what I've understood about something.
18:17
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I do need to do all of that.
18:19
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But is that simply my learning preference, or is it, um, an actual the way I must always learn?
18:30
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I'm afraid a lot of students, when they learn about learning styles, it's so nice to learn more about yourself, right?
18:37
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And then it's like,"Oh, this is who I am," and then they think that they should only learn in that one way, and that's actually stealing something from your brain.
18:46
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And speaking of mistakes, we make more mistakes when we have to struggle a little, when we're learning in a way that's maybe not so easy for us.
18:56
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But it's the making a mistake, noticing it's a mistake, and coming back to build on it and make something even better.
19:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's where the true learning happens
19:08
Alondra: Exactly.
19:09
Alondra: I think that's also how I've been able to begin to identify even my learning preferences and my learning styles, because paying attention to those mistakes gives you feedback
19:27
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes.
19:28
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes.
19:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes.
19:30
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh my gosh, I have so many questions I wanna ask you based on that, but I also wanted to make sure your need to learn more about my journey has been met.
19:39
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I've told you about my early days, but what, what next do you wanna know?
19:44
Alondra: I'm also wondering about your educational journey, like what you studied, what Yeah, I guess mainly what you studied and how, if it's been applicable directly or if it's something, if you majored in something different than what you now are doing
20:08
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Hmm.
20:10
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Such a good question.
20:11
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh my goodness.
20:12
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And the answer is no, it was not directly applicable.
20:17
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But also the way I did my learning journey is very applicable.
20:23
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So it was the process, not the content.
20:26
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): when I got to college, I just chose a liberal arts college.
20:30
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I wasn't paying attention to how much debt I'd be in afterwards.
20:33
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I just chose what seemed interesting to me, started taking classes that seemed most interesting to me, which happened to be the theater classes.
20:41
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Not just theater, but intercultural theater.
20:43
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I took modern Japanese drama Nigerian drama.
20:48
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We met playwrights from all over the world because of one of my professors.
20:52
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That was his interest.
20:54
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I just loved learning about different cultures and how their, uh, their essence was expressed on the stage in a variety of different ways depending on who the playwright was.
21:09
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So by the time it came to declare a major, didn't have one.
21:15
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I had taken a lot of theater classes, but a lot of anthropology classes too'cause I was interested in culture.
21:21
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I decided I was going to declare my own major, and I think I was one of the last years.
21:28
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I went to Macalester College in St.
21:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Paul, Minnesota.
21:30
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm not sure if they allow people to create their own majors anymore, but at the time I was one of the last in that program, and I called it Intercultural Performance Studies
21:41
Alondra: Whoa.
21:44
Alondra: So what, what did that major mean?
21:48
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ja
21:48
Alondra: You since, so you created the major?
21:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I did.
21:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I just looked at the classes that I'd done, and I was like,"How do I, how can I pull all these together?" And I was like, the thing I, I was also interested at the time, this was the late'90s, and so I was interested in post-colonial studies, and I was interested in specifically how It's so funny to say all of this now'cause it, right, it sounds like it has nothing to do with what I'm teaching.
22:16
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, but I was interested in countries that had been colonized by mostly the British and how the British brought their style of theater with them.
22:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): then when those countries got their freedom from the British, how did they combine the style of theater that they had learned from the English with their own cultural, historical, ancestral way of expressing themselves, and what happened when the two came together.
22:49
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so that's what I ended up studying.
22:53
Alondra: How do you think...
22:54
Alondra: I, I think it sounds pretty applicable.
22:57
Alondra: I- one term that is sticking with me is performance.
23:03
Alondra: A lot of the time, being in schools can feel like y- you're putting on a performance to make sure that everybody knows you're doing a good job, or for your peers, for your teachers.
23:17
Alondra: And looking at it through a cultural and post-colonial lens seems like it would be pretty applicable information, given the importance of a culturally responsive pedagogy.
23:31
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ja
23:31
Alondra: Um, I'm wondering how you've found it applicable.
23:36
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, I love everything that you just said, and in my most recent years, I would say in the last decade, I've been very interested in, uh, thinking about colonization the way that schools are set up to colonize the student's brain and body.
23:56
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I actually did a performance.
23:58
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I actually created a performance that never got performed because the pandemic hit, but it was all about...
24:03
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, it was called Why I Hate Chairs, and I literally hate chairs'cause I have a unconventional body that doesn't fit most chairs.
24:13
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I have very short legs, and it's just uncomfortable, and I have back pain.
24:17
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But my performance was all about how, um, here we are making students fold themselves into a chair that makes you sit in straight angles and, um, and forces you to think in certain kinds of ways, and what would it be like if we break out of those boxes that schooling requires.
24:43
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, so lately, exactly what you said is what is interesting to me and also the way neurodivergent students specifically, but then also, since I'm talking to a first-generation college student here, folks coming from other countries and cultures even Black and Brown folks who are being schooled in most- in mostly white environments do feel like we- all have to mask or perform and be a certain way or work harder to figure out how to...
25:16
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): This is what code switching is, right?
25:18
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): How to, like, to perform so I can get the grades, but how do I stay me in the process?
25:24
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so I think what you noticed is actually really brilliant.
25:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I think all those threads are there, the reason why I think it's relevant is now I help students figure out what do you wanna learn.
25:39
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Not just what the school wants you to learn, but what do you wanna learn, and how do you balance the two?
25:44
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I did that.
25:46
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I had the courage somehow to do that when I was younger.
25:49
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Not that I'm helping students create their own majors right now, though I'm thrilled when they want to research that and do that.
25:56
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But, um, yeah, how do we...
25:59
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): how do you find your own pathway through schooling in a way that doesn't compromise your very essence?
26:07
Alondra: That sounds so amazing, and it's a conversation I have been having...
26:11
Alondra: Well, it reminds me of conversations I've been having with some friends about career paths, and how oftentimes career paths can feel uniform when in reality...
26:26
Alondra: Career paths and options, I should say, can feel uniform, and there's more options oftentimes than students are led to believe, um, for I think about how it was always like,"Oh, be a doctor, be a lawyer, be a nurse," or There wasn't really room for considering your own passions and what you wanted to learn.
27:03
Alondra: Um, it was pick a career path, pick an option, and here is how to get there
27:13
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, and especially when economic needs are on the line, right?
27:18
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And you're living hand to mouth or your family is and you want to support them, you wanna go for the kind of work that at least you think you've heard is the most financially lucrative and the o- like, people are always gonna be sick.
27:32
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You might as well become a nurse, right?
27:34
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I can understand that, but I think, I think you're so right that there are other ways to make a living that are so much more creative that can work with who you are rather than force you into something that you're n-
27:48
Alondra: Exactly.
27:49
Alondra: And so I think it's really awesome, and I really admire hearing that your intention is to support that balance of what do you want to learn and what do you, what does the school expect you to learn?
28:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Hmm.
28:06
Alondra: Yeah
28:07
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): How did you navigate that for yourself when you were in college?
28:11
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And how have you navigated that right now?
28:13
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): If you've just finished college, that means you're right in the midst of that decision-making about career for yourself
28:20
Alondra: Yeah, I think I got lucky.
28:22
Alondra: I've always been a book- a bit of a bookworm.
28:25
Alondra: Um, I'm in a library right now.
28:29
Alondra: Um
28:30
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah, so for those of you who are listening to the podcast, it's actually beautiful that Alondra has behind her all these bookshelves with, uh, books, and it's making me feel nostalgic actually for being in a library myself.
28:43
Alondra: Yes, I love being able to pick a book off a shelf, and then especially when I was in college, I wrote an undergraduate thesis.
28:56
Alondra: I majored in English, and being in...
29:00
Alondra: They would call it being in the stacks.
29:02
Alondra: That was one of my favorite things to do, is just go in person into the library with the intention of finding one book and then walking away with, like, 10,
29:10
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
29:11
Alondra: they're organized thematically and alphabetically.
29:15
Alondra: So I was lucky that I was a bit of a bookworm, because It, it just was one of the primary ways to learn in schools is through books.
29:31
Alondra: So I was able to balance my passion for books and literature through English with the expectation of becoming a good writer and a good reader
29:49
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ah.
29:50
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so what are you looking at now in terms of career?
29:53
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I mean, we hear that you're a tutor.
29:56
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): is that, do you feel like you want to go more deeply into education and support students?
30:03
Alondra: I think that's why your-- when I was looking into the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, the vision resonated with me a lot because I am interested in seeing how to provide more individualized
30:17
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
30:18
Alondra: support in public schools.
30:22
Alondra: So I'm interested in pursuing a master's of education, but longer term, I would love to be a professor of English
30:30
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh, that's wonderful.
30:34
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so, and are you tutoring in English right now?
30:38
Alondra: Yes.
30:39
Alondra: I'm tutoring AP Lang.
30:41
Alondra: I also tutor K to five students with ELA, and I will be volunteering with LA Public Libraries through their adult literacy program.
30:53
Alondra: And I also tutor Spanish for younger students
31:01
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's amazing.
31:02
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So you've got your hands in all these different ways, and you have, you, you get to see in lots of different contexts individualized learning and individualized struggles that
31:14
Alondra: Exactly.
31:15
Alondra: Um- I'm wondering how you transitioned.
31:23
Alondra: So I know you mentioned that you were a teacher in the webinar.
31:28
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): uhum
31:29
Alondra: did you transition from being a teacher to
31:33
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): to
31:33
Alondra: founding the Anti-Boring Learning Lab?
31:36
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Gosh, it's all so accidental for me, which is why I really admire people who are coming into the lab, and they're not being accidental about it.
31:45
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): They're being intentional.
31:46
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But for me, so with this weird major.
31:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I decided that I wanted to actually become a teacher, and so then I had to go back to school'cause what was I gonna teach?
31:58
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm not gonna teach modern Indian drama in the high school level.
32:03
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I had to go back.
32:05
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I decided to get, um, a, a master's in education with a focus on history teaching.
32:12
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I took all the classes I needed to take, and I got my master's.
32:19
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I got my teaching license.
32:20
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I got my first job a very cushy job, so easy, here in California at a private school, where my largest class, I taught, uh, sixth and seventh graders.
32:32
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): My largest class was, I think, 16 students, and I
32:37
Alondra: Wow!
32:38
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): had three classes.
32:39
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I mean, it was such an easy, easy teaching job compared to teachers who are in the public schools.
32:45
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And even then, I struggled so much.
32:49
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I, I now wonder if I have ADHD This is explosive creative person.
32:57
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): The curriculum I, I pulled together, I think was really engaging and interesting for students.
33:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I, I still remember, this might sound kinda deep, but I still, I still remember the unit on genocide that I did with my seventh graders, where we sat in a circle and we did a ritual, and we lit candles.
33:18
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I mean, I think it was really powerful for students to, um, not just learn about bad things happening in the world, but have an opportunity to, have some feelings about it and to share those feelings.
33:34
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And anyway, I did things like that, but I was terrible at grading.
33:39
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): At, and like having to put a letter
33:41
Alondra: Mm-hmm.
33:42
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): or a number to students' learning, and I needed a lot of mentoring.
33:47
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I get the mentoring that I needed, and ultimately, actually, I was not quite fired,'cause it was a private school, but they just didn't renew my contract at the end of the year.
33:58
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, and so I was kinda desperate, and I was like,"Well, what do people, teachers...
34:02
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I guess teachers tutor, right?
34:03
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's what teachers do." So I got on Craigslist and looked for a bunch of tutoring jobs, and I found something called academic coaching, and I had no idea what it was.
34:13
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, but I applied, and I got an interview, and then I got hired, it turns out it's the perfect work for me because I got to spend time one-on-one with students, them feel their feelings about their current schooling context, and helping them partner with them and their families to find the right ways to try and take care of themselves in a system that wasn't quite built for their brains and their bodies.
34:43
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I had 20 clients the first year, and I even hired other coaches underneath me, and I...
34:49
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): 'Cause for this company that I worked for, I also had to supervise coaches.
34:53
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I had to notice how am I coaching and then other people around that in partnership with my boss.
35:03
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): it was, was amazing.
35:06
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Worked for me.
35:06
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I worked for them for three years and then slowly realized that I wanted to have my own clients, and I traveled all over the Bay Area, driving to different homes, uh, at just$75 a session.
35:19
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I didn't even know to charge for my drive time, so I wasn't, uh, you know, the Bay Area is big.
35:25
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): lots of traffic.
35:27
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I wasn't taking good care of myself financially, but I was loving the work with students.
35:33
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And then eventually I realized I needed to make more money, and so at the time it was Skype, not Zoom.
35:39
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I thought,"Okay, well, I'm just gonna either expect people to come to my living room, this living room, and work with me in person or Skype in or do a combination of both." So I did that for a little bit, and then it st- I still wasn't making enough money to support the expensive California prices, so I registered in a marketing training program, and I stayed in it for three years.
36:05
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And it's in that program that I discovered, oh, I wanna call my work The Anti-Boring Approach.
36:11
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And oh, are asking me actually to, like,"I love this anti-boring thing.
36:18
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Can you train me?" Adults were asking me.
36:19
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so I just randomly was like,"Okay, I'll try to train them." that was back in-- Twenty fifteen was the first training.
36:29
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): since then, it's just, it's just grown.
36:33
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): At one point in twenty eighteen, I couldn't, I just couldn't be both somebody who trained educators and see students.
36:41
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So through the pandemic, I started seeing fewer students and started focusing mostly on the learning lab because I thought this is the way I can reach more people, uh,'cause then it's not just 20 students a semester.
36:54
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Instead it's hundreds of educators who are seeing thousands of students.
37:00
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): so it's just, it's grown.
37:03
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And here we are.
37:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): In this moment, I'm actually about to do a speaking gig tonight at a local high school, and I'm about-- I'm actually kind of excited.
37:10
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm about to tell them that I'm going to open, uh, a few slots for seeing students again.
37:15
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So after not having met with students for the last few years, I'm gonna start doing it again.
37:21
Alondra: How does that feel transitioning back into seeing students again?
37:26
Alondra: Are you having any anxieties or things you're excited for?
37:30
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes, I'm having anxiety.
37:33
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Which is funny to say because I know people listening or watching if you're on YouTube are thinking like,"Oh, like Gretchen's got this big business and it looks so official, and she must always feel confident and whatever." But talk about imposter syndrome.
37:48
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes, I'm a wonderful trainer of adults now.
37:52
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): because I'm such a good trainer, I have a story that the people coming through my program after they've learned from me are better coaches than I am.
38:02
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Talk about imposter syndrome,'cause they come in with all their skills and all their special abilities, and then they layer on my amazing toolkit, and then I'm like,"Oh, they are so good.
38:11
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Will I be as good as them when I'm working with students?" I'm honest, I fully know that the answer is yes
38:23
Alondra: Hmm.
38:25
Alondra: I think I think the answer is yes, in that everyone has their own...
38:37
Alondra: Like everyone has their own learning style and preference, everyone has their own teaching style and preference.
38:44
Alondra: So something that I've also worked on learning and internalizing is that teaching, my teaching style is not comparable.
39:01
Alondra: It doesn't negate the anxieties or the shame, especially with imposter syndrome in the background like we've been discussing.
39:09
Alondra: But definitely we all know you're gonna do an amazing job, so
39:17
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, and you know, there
39:18
Alondra: yeah
39:19
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): voice that agrees with you too, because I, I know deeply, it's about the tools that an educator brings, and yes, it's about the skills that we bring, but also it's about that ephemeral connection between the educator and the student.
39:34
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): if that connection is there, it's the, it's the perfect coaching.
39:38
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's, it's what the student needs at that time, especially if I know how to listen to the nature of the connection and lean in and nurture it.
39:47
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): do know that I know how to do that.
39:50
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So, but I, I...
39:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's just fascinating, isn't it, for someone at my point in the career to have the same or a similar imposter syndrome as might come up for you from time to time.
40:01
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I mean, do you have it in your tutoring?
40:03
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Do you have imposter syndrome?
40:05
Alondra: Oh, 100%.
40:06
Alondra: I'll, um, try to prep- I'll hyper fixate on prep work because I think if I can just prep, prep, prep, it'll be okay.
40:15
Alondra: But...
40:16
Alondra: And oftentimes more, most often than not, like 99% of the time, it's okay.
40:23
Alondra: Um, and oftentimes I'll find myself overprepared,
40:28
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes
40:31
Alondra: that anxiety stays there because...
40:35
Alondra: And it's just a show of care
40:37
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
40:38
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I love your little song that you just made up.
40:41
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): If I can just prep, prep, prep, then it'll be okay.
40:45
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): 'Cause I know a lot of people in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab feel that way.
40:50
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): They, they used to be teachers.
40:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Many people coming in, I mean, you're at a very different place in, in your career coming in.
40:55
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm so excited that you're coming in to, to be with us at the beginning of your career.
40:59
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): 'Cause many people are coming in as they're transitioning from teaching into semi-retirement, and they're looking for something to do that will get them through the next 10 years, where they can still be with students but also have fewer students as they get And those people, gosh, the anxiety in the room, where people feel like,"Oh, my God, I, I wanna do well by the student, and also people are paying me." So, like, capitalism comes in.
41:26
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): "People are paying me, so I have to do extra good because they're paying me." And sometimes I think that it's not that prep is bad necessarily, I would hope for you and others that you get to the point where either you don't have to prep as much or you can just throw it out the window and just connect with the student and trust that you will know, uh, what needs to be said or shared as you go.
41:56
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And it- it's one thing that I mean when I talk about a toolkit approach versus a curriculum approach.
42:02
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): you have a toolkit, and if you know how to use those tools well, then you can pull out the right tool at the right time, and you don't necessarily need to plan so hard in advance.
42:12
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It takes preparation to learn to use your tools well, so you know how to find the right tool at the right time
42:21
Alondra: And that's what I've been working on.
42:22
Alondra: I think I've-- I'm at the point right now where I've started to trust myself.
42:29
Alondra: I do trust myself.
42:30
Alondra: I think that when I go into a session, I know that based off of previous feedback and those connections with students where they tell me that I've helped them, um, I'm just building that toolkit right now of English materials.
42:49
Alondra: So that's what my prep work is looking like in these, these days
42:53
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And does that look like actually like making worksheets or making handouts for students that you then file away in a way that you can grab it quickly?
43:02
Alondra: Exactly.
43:03
Alondra: It's something that I want to be able to reach into, but also adjust.
43:08
Alondra: Um, going back to student interests, I often try to work with their interests, so I would want to ideally have...
43:17
Alondra: Like, I'll have a worksheet laid out, but I can change the sentences or the paragraph to fit what they're interested in learning about
43:27
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
43:28
Alondra: because it makes all the difference.
43:29
Alondra: It just, it's not boring for It's anti-boring.
43:32
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right.
43:33
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's anti-boring when you are, when, when you, the student, are connected to what you're learning.
43:38
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And then it's anti-boring for the educator to have a student who is engaged and motivated and present with you rather than tuning out
43:47
Alondra: Yeah, exactly
43:49
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, I'm looking at the time, and so we're sort of in wrap-up mode, but is there anything you either wanted to ask or share about yourself that we haven't talked about yet?
44:00
Alondra: I think I'm really happy with how that conversation went.
44:05
Alondra: I'm wondering a bit about your plans moving forward with Anti-Boring Learning Lab, if you have any.
44:14
Alondra: I know that the podcast is relatively new.
44:17
Alondra: Is there any other projects that you foresee in the future?
44:22
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh, so many projects.
44:26
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I am still getting it to the point where, r- like, right now, the honest, honest answer, we're about honesty here at the Academic Coaching Podcast, is that the training portion of it is not yet financially self-sustaining.
44:43
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I know that might be interesting for people to hear because they're like,"Wow, but the website is gorgeous," and I mean, we do have upwards of 140 people in the lab.
44:54
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But I have purposefully kept the prices very low.
44:58
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, so because 349 for one quarter is, uh, people can s- can get the whole course done in that amount of time for just that amount of money, and other people in other businesses would actually be charging$1,500 or more for it.
45:14
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So, but I have decided, because of my values around equity, that for now at least, I'm just not raising the prices.
45:22
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I want it to be available for anyone who wants to learn it.
45:26
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): People are shocked when they come in and see how much they get for the 349 number, and many people stay longer, or many people come in and just commit the year, and that's good, too.
45:37
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): but I still need, I need about double the number of people to be able to afford to both pay myself and also pay the team members, um, that I have to have to help hold it together.
45:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So the short-term plans are continuing to figure out, uh, what marketing streams I need to do to, to find more amazing educators like yourself to come in and learn.
46:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): um, when I have to do less marketing work, then there are all kinds of additional courses I wanna create.
46:12
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We desperately need a rewrite of the, uh, the student course, and in fact, since you're coming in to join us, um, and also because you're both younger and you have such this, this wonderful politicized perspective around, um, I'm trying to find the words that you said earlier.
46:34
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): How would you finish that sentence, your perspective about schooling?
46:39
Alondra: Uh, a politicized perspective around the education system and our roles in it
46:46
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): There you go.
46:47
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
46:48
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Beautiful, and since you have that perspective, I will actually welcome feedback as you go through the course about ways that you think I'm upholding that and ways you think...
46:58
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): 'Cause this was 10 years ago that I made the course, so I, my values have progressed since then, and I know the toolkit needs to be brought more, even more into the current So, um, anyway, please don't hesitate if you notice places that you're like,"Ooh, I wouldn't word it that way," or,"I think to speak to more students like me, it would be good to add X, Y, and Z." Please feel free to give me that feedback and, um, that, that are, that's going to be the next n- big, big project is doing a redo of all the curriculum.
47:35
Alondra: Well, thank you for welcoming me into the space and also welcoming that feedback.
47:41
Alondra: I think it's really important to be open, honest, and flexible about how we're teaching, learning from the mistakes, like we were saying.
47:52
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That, well done, my dear, bringing it full circle, learning from the mistakes.
47:57
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I only have the perspective that I have as a
48:00
Alondra: Yes sir
48:00
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): middle-aged woman, I do try and be open and flexible, but I only have what I see and what I've taken time to learn, and I know there are perspectives that I don't have, and, uh, we, we need those this world at this time.
48:17
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So this goes out to everybody who's listening.
48:21
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): If you're coming into the lab, or if you're not coming into the lab'cause you feel like you're not represented by the lab, and you have concerns about that, please don't hesitate to reach out to me and let me know.
48:34
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I'll just say my email is gretchen@antiboringlearninglab.com, and I would love hear from folks whatever you're noticing about that.
48:44
Alondra: Well, thank you, Gretchen
48:46
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
48:47
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): you.
48:48
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): This has been so sweet.
48:49
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It, it's really interesting.
48:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): A part of me at the beginning, I was like,"Why have I asked this person who just sent me an email, who I haven't even talked to, to have this conversation?
49:01
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Are you crazy, Gretchen?" um, it was...
49:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm really delighted by, um, how, how deep you, you think about yourself, your internal process, and also your process with students, and then also the, the systemic processes that are out there.
49:20
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I'm just, I'm thrilled I'm gonna get to learn more from you in the next few months
49:25
Alondra: I'm excited to get to learn from you too.
49:27
Alondra: I am really honored that you invited me on after just sending you an email.
49:34
Alondra: I was like,"Am I crazy to accept?" I asked my friend.
49:37
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We both wondered if we were crazy
49:39
Alondra: exactly, so we were in a similar spot.
49:42
Alondra: But I'm really grateful that I came on, and I'm really grateful to you for being, for holding this conversation.
49:49
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
49:50
Alondra: Yeah
49:51
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I realize we didn't fully come back to the shame piece, but I think we peppered it throughout the conversation, and it feels nice to end without going into that.
50:03
Alondra: I think so too
50:04
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So thank you, and I will just say to everybody else out there, it, it feels a little weird to, to go from that into saying we are a new podcast.
50:12
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It really helps for you to like and subscribe to us, and Apple Podcast reviews, and all the rest, but please do show your love if you're enjoying conversations like this.
50:23
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And we will see you in the next episode.
50:26
Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Bye, everyone.
50:28
Alondra: Bye