Latest / The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell / #10 - Talks With a Mentor: Teaching in a Township in South Africa During Apartheid, Empowering the Youth of Today, the Myth of Sisyphus, and Building a Meaningful Life With Lisa Otsuka

Transcript

#10 - Talks With a Mentor: Teaching in a Township in South Africa During Apartheid, Empowering the Youth of Today, the Myth of Sisyphus, and Building a Meaningful Life With Lisa Otsuka · The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: What's up y'all?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Seeking Authenticity.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Flint Mitchell, and I get absolutely psyched by having conversations with authentic people that I admire about the things they value.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Their stories and perspectives don't just make me smile, laugh, and think.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: They inspire me to wake up earlier, listen better, focus, and work harder, and help make me a better version of myself.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's my hope that sharing these conversations through this podcast might do the same thing for you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: In this episode, I talked with Lisa Otsuka, my AP Literature teacher from high school.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Lisa is one of the most dedicated teachers I've ever had the privilege of being taught by.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: She was constantly creating interactive ways of learning and building an environment that made students comfortable to hang out and ask questions.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: After graduating college, I went back to some of my favorite professors and teachers to say thank you for their influence on me.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: When I talked with Lisa, in return, he got a copy of Man's Search for Meeting by Victor Front, my now favorite book, as one tool for helping me guide myself after university.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it did, and I'm really thankful for that.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Likewise, when I called her to talk about this podcast, she was in the process of writing notes to her students because she felt sorry that they weren't able to graduate like other years had because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and wanted to try and give them some sort of closure to their high school experience that they didn't get.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: So if there's anyone to listen to as far as compassion and empathy is concerned, I think Lisa is one of the best.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Here, we talk about her time teaching at a township in South Africa during apartheid, and about the unclean passion to help underserved communities.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about the power of building a strong community and of creating an environment that lets the youth grow up with the strength and ability to think and question freely.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love her take on teaching and life in general.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: It gets me excited to see what the students who are influenced by her do later in life.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: My tires got slashed my first two weeks there.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: People came through and slashed all the tires in the parking lot.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Parents would get in fights in the parking lot.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of school last year, I always asked students on the first day to just write a little bit about themselves, and then I take notes on my seating chart.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I must have written anxiety, depression at least 10 times per class.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's done all the right things.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's pushed, you know, I guess kind of the conditioning is like defer gratification, push the relationships, like do something amazing.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And in the process, he's totally isolated.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: The way he defines the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Every lesson in social psychology teaches us that groups, you know, they they bind, but they also blind.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: But we stand on the shoulders of people who connected to us, who invested in us, like the people I was telling you in South Africa.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And those people may rest in unvisited tombs.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: We may never know their names, but their legacy lives on in us.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for doing this with me, Lisa.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate you spending some time talking with me.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to be here.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I have had, I've been really fortunate to have a lot of wonderful teachers and mentors over the course of my life.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but there have only been uh a small selection of them that have helped me kind of change a bit of my perspective as well as as mentoring or teaching me.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason that you stick out in that sense for me is that it's so obvious to your students in the present and in reflection that you take an extremely involved involved approach to teaching.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like you really care about your students, and it's it's wonderful to see, but also wonderful to experience.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd like to get into that, but first I was kind of wondering how you chose teaching as a career at the beginning.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, it's just an honor to be here with you today, and it's so lovely when you know students you've had in the past kind of contact you and come back.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for that.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, no, I'm I'm I've been teaching for about 30 years, and that was not my intended path.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I went to UC San Diego.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I went to the Math and Science College as an engineering major.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, um, I spent a couple years learning Fortran, super useful as an English teacher.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um really glad I took a couple years of physics and OCM and Fortran.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um but um it was in my second year of college that there was a program available um to teach math and science in South Africa during the summer.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh, and the really unique thing about the program was we were gonna be in a township in Soweto, and this was during apartheid, um, and we were all gonna be split up and living with different families, but working in a middle school.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I didn't really know what the program was, but I thought it sounded great.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I signed up, and there were only six of us, um, but none of us lived together, and nobody else worked at the school that I was at either.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I really had kind of a full immersion experience.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had only experienced, I grew up in Manhattan Beach in LA, and then I went to school in La Jolla.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my view of the world.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then I found myself in um Soweto during apartheid.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it was um, I was literally the only white person I saw day in and day out.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I was living with a family that had no running water and didn't speak much English.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think they took me on because they got um, they were paid uh to have to host me.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um it was it was quite an experience.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So in the course of you know going to the school every day and teaching, feeling profoundly uncomfortable, but also just amazed by the world uh that had opened up to me, um, I realized in those months that I actually loved teaching.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved it so much that I didn't go back with the other students.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: I stayed for um another um half year teaching in that school.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow and I really considered not coming back to the US.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: I loved it that much.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: So did you love so much about it?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I love teaching.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love being with students, I love the interactions, it just all of it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I realized this is what I really want to do.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did go back in the middle of the next year, uh, went back to UC San Diego and I went to my counselor and said, How can I become a teacher?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And my counselor said, Um, well, yeah, you Fortran is not going to help you.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so shoot.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I changed everything.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I happened to have a lot of credit, uh, a lot of classes in Spanish literature because Ravel College required you to be fluent in another language, and I love Spanish.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I I tested fluent at the beginning of college, but then I wanted to still keep up with Spanish.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I had all these units in Spanish literature that were just gonna be for fun, and I decided to make that my major.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I figured that if I did that, I could I I ended up double majoring in chemistry again, totally superfluous, but I had all these units.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, and then she's like, then you're gonna have to enroll in a program.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and so that's what I did.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so the last two years I I really concentrated on that.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and actually what I did the following summer was I worked in an inner city environment in Pasadena.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of stayed close to home.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was wondering if I'm not in South Africa, if I stay close to home, you know, will I love it as much?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and I did.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that was basically how I got into teaching.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got a credential um that no longer exists called um a bilingual California credential.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I did all of my coursework in Spanish, and I thought I would be teaching Spanish.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um so after that I applied for jobs in San Diego.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I thought perfect place to be.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but my boyfriend at the time, we decided we were gonna get married so young.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't even like 23, but um, but he's an engineer.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I got to know him was through our classes.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so it made more sense to move to the Bay Area.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the director of my teaching program had a relationship with the superintendent of Ravenswood in East Palo Alto at the time.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and that was the year after East Palo Alto had the highest murder per capita in the country.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it was, you know, a big decision like, do I want to work in um this kind of environment?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I kind of had a passion for that after being in Soweto and after being in the inner city in Pasadena, and and that was the beginning.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and I thought maybe I'll just do it for a couple years, and now here I am 30 years later, um, still going strong.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a son who will be starting his teaching career as well next year.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: I uh there's a lot to unpack there because there's that's an awesome story.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um were there any it sounds like it was kind of the entire experience about being in South Africa and teaching there, but were there any specific moments that stood out from that experience that you kind of look back on fondly now?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the experience wasn't comfortable, and there were great moments like my host family taking me to church, and I had never experienced a church like that before.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so there were there were definitely those moments, but what do you mean like that?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was the church.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was just um it was a celebration, there was joy, and this was again in the middle of apartheid where there were there were stay aways.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember so the combies, these these vans would come through and you know to take people to work, and then fights would break out if people got on the combies because it was like a strike, people were striking and and protesting, yeah.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh apartheid.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So politically it was a charge time.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really speak, I wasn't able to communicate much with that family, the family that I was with, and yet there was a level of communication that went on, um, you know, just in how loving they were to me and how much they exposed me to the culture there.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that was the celebration of of their worship.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it was just all around the most profoundly uncomfortable but like life-changing experience.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I just realized too, I want to work with children and I want to work one on, you know, I want to be in close contact.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm I'm highly relational, I want that kind of environment.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the political parts of it were fascinating to me.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I knew a bit about the history of um kind of the Afrikaaners and um what had happened in South Africa, but um but I really didn't know much.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, the the whole concept of like social justice became enmeshed in my desire to teach.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And makes sense.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I just felt like okay, I'm I'm this this path that I'm on is is really not the path I want.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was really I'm just thinking back, so thankful for that experience.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's wild too.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: How long were you there before you decided to stay for another six months?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, everybody else came back, um, two and a half months, and and I stayed another four months.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so wild.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Have you been back?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have not.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the things I've I've wanted to do.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I believe it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's so cool.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: I love that the uh the kind of feeling or the memory that stands out from that experience was the the joy, like the celebration that they had, right?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's fantastic.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: So was this aspect of social justice or kind of empowerment to try to create a change?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is that kind of what drew you to uh the possibility of teaching in East Palo Alto?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and I was coming in armed with a bilingual credential, so I was fully fluent in Spanish in an area that was going to be primarily Spanish speaking, it all kind of seemed to um come together.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Although I will say when I started teaching there, wow, I had no clue.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I just I I had studied very formal Castilian Spanish, not super useful for the kind of communication with parents and stuff that I needed.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had my tires got slashed my my first two weeks there.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: No way.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um people came through and slashed all the tires in the parking lot.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Parents would get in fights in the parking lot.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I just I I had a little girl, uh pretty young girl who uh whose brother died.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this was in the within the first month um he was shot.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I just again coming from such a privileged background, it was it was a whole different world.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and nobody in my family understood it or my husband's family.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my husband's family grew up here in Los Altos Hills.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that their son was marrying this woman and then going to work in certain conditions and I mean it just it was inconceivable to them.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I learned I I've still I'm still staying in touch with a lot of the students I had um when I worked because I I ended up staying there for 11 years.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely um learned a lot and still keep in touch with quite a few of the families.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: Did your priorities change then from the beginning of that experience to when you when you left 10 years later?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like as maybe in the perspective of how you taught students?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it I think it laid the foundation for a lot of my teaching philosophy right now, which is what we're struggling with during COVID.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I have a really strong belief that you know teaching at its core um is is fundamentally relational.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think also your own growth is so caught up in that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can't teach, I can't teach what I'm not already learning.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So in a sense, it's very symbiotic.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and similar.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: What do you mean by I can't teach if I'm not already learning?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning I I I tend to teach what I'm currently learning.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you know, I it teaching is so malleable.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I thought you're going in and imparting knowledge and then kind of making these relationships.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what I didn't understand, but I learned working there was, you know, it's a it's it's like that reciprocal determinism where I, you know, you want to have this impact, but you're similarly changed by the relationships that you develop.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you yeah, you really can't teach what you're not learning yourself.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So to really be relevant um means that you're kind of always in a vulnerable position to some extent.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're always a learner too.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and of course, working there, I learned a lot about just you know, the fact that academic needs are are are there, but the mental, the emotional, the physical needs are equally important.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think now, especially especially transitioning from that population to Portola Valley, Ladera, Atherton, Memma Park, um, which was a huge transition, um, I see that there's almost we've we've almost ignored a lot of the social, emotional, mental health of our young people, and it's really to their detriment.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so it it it kind of laid the foundation for you don't just meet the needs of students academically, but you you they're watching you all the time.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I it was when I started having food at lunch.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when I I think I was mentioning to you, I love to make like once a week for my students, I make sourdough bread and they can bring their friends.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just bring loaves of it.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and at lunch people come, but every other day of the week there's rice, there are panini makers, you know.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that in Ravenswood.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that you create that community um through meeting all needs.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So food is a huge part of that.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you want people hanging out in your classroom, and if you want a sense of community, you know, br get food.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's and have have the kids like you know, now a lot of my students will provide those big 50-pound bags of rice.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when that bag is gone, somebody else brings a bag.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's always kind of food, and um, there are often drinks in the room because that's just a big part of the community that ends up developing in your classroom.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like it's uh an aspect of creating a comfortable environment.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's yes.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: I like that your perspective shifted from it actually, it doesn't really sound like it shifted necessarily because you said at the beginning you really what you enjoyed was that kind of relational aspect of it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that inherently means kind of appreciating your the holistic, you know, the whole personality of your student, not just teaching them.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: How have you seen the education system shift in trying to or have they tried to to a shift in in in how do you you say it help with more of the mental or psychological aspects of students?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think we reached something of a tipping point, especially in Silicon Valley.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I definitely have seen a shift there.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: It it changes all the time.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um in fact, that's always one of my fears with getting older and teaching is like I always wonder, you know, you it's like what you're doing, you need to listen to kind of stay relevant and um be responsive to the needs of this particular group of students, this particular student, this generation.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I have seen big shifts.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Part of it is I myself made a huge shift when I moved to Menlo Atherton.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm supporting students from East Palo Alto, but they're they're the students who are taking AP Lit.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So they're the students who are willing to take, you know, a super rigorous English class.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm doing it in a different way.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and that feels different sometimes, and I and I sometimes question that.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I would say, especially within the last five years, I mean, we had the we had the cluster suicides in Palo Alto.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: We had that enormous cheating scandal.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: And what was the cheating scandal?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that was last year.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was Oh, you mean the college admissions?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: The college admissions scandal and then the SATs.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: But more importantly, I think that was that there's something about um the increased stress and the level of expectation and really the kind of growing emotional fragility of students.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone has been looking at this, like what's the confluence of all these factors and the rise of social media and all of these things, you know, kind of what's happening to our kids.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at the beginning of school last year, I always asked students on the first day to just write a little bit about themselves.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I must have, and then I take notes on my seating charts or whatever, and I must have written anxiety, depression at least 10 times per class.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: When a student wants to tell me something that I should know about them, you know, and sometimes it's really silly like I don't eat cheese.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and then sometimes it's my mother passed away last year.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it can be all over the place.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that I was reading anxiety, depression, anxiety, depression.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, these are things, these are they were giving you that.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: They were saying they're telling me that.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they want me to know about them.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they're just giving me three, four, five bullet points, but that's one of them.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so I have been very concerned, you know, of course, about that.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: My my philosophy has always been, you know, to do as many kind of interactive, engaging experiences that students cannot live by essays and quizzes alone, although you you've got to do a lot of writing if you want to become a good writer.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I have I like to have the engagement opportunities.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then yeah, you're looking at the realities of this kind of high pressure in this area, um, the helicopter parenting.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the the things that have kind of like what is it about this time that is making our students so emotionally fragile and vulnerable?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think about that a lot.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I believe in having a curriculum that is engaging, challenging, and rigorous, but I also believe in total and complete gentleness that you know all the the work that's been done on growth mindset, I just could not agree more with that work.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, there I just you know, again, when I look at the depression, when I look at the anxiety, and and it's almost like in our nation right now, this kind of dearth of intellectual discourse and rhetoric.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've almost had this polarization where as students get more stressed, schools up the ante.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we're almost escalating, like we become more exclusive, more rigorous.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: We offer more APs, and then the stress level, it's more expensive.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I I there was an admissions officer at Stanford who said um a couple years ago that students coming into Stanford are are just more and more accomplished, like their resumes don't look possible for an 18-year-old, but they're less and less self-aware and definitely more prone to mental health conditions.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I see too.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like a couple years ago, I had a student who was applying to college and I'm reading his essays for him, and he created an app for Anderson Cooper.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was in Forbes.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I'm like, oh my God.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And but then I'm walking around at lunch and I'm like, wow, he always eats alone.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and and I actually asked him, I said, Do you have any friends?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: You seem like you're often eating alone.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, No, I don't really have any friends.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that's kind of what what I'm seeing more.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, he's done all the right things.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's pushed, you know, I guess kind of the conditioning is like defer gratification, push the relationships, like do something amazing.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in the process, he's totally isolated.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it goes to exactly what you were commenting on, which is and this is really fascinating, actually, because it seems kind of hypocritical of the system itself, which is we're talking so much nowadays about the mental health of young people.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to get your take on on um how you've seen that progress in your own students over the past couple of decades.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: But it's we're talking so much nowadays about the mental health of uh of our youth, and at the same time, they're being forced away from things that I think are so beneficial for your mental health, like creating environments where people can spend more time with their friends outside of class.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Not exactly I think sports are a great example, but at the same time, sports are a competition.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm saying places where kids can just have fun and enjoy life.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Play.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I wholeheartedly empathize with the situation because I grew up in this area.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I I had a wonderful childhood and everything, but it's definitely noticeable how pushed it is to have every moment meaningful as far as your college res your college application, right?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: We need to play, we need to be bored sometimes.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could not agree with you more.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, consequently, my curriculum has changed and evolved with that.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the first half of the year in my class, I focus on ontological lightness.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we read has to do with tying our sense of self to anything extrinsic.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're when you measure your self-worth based on your GPA, any sort of reductive measure, your SAT score.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and for them, it seems so obvious, you are not your grade.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to say, I hear from kids in college all the time.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I told my roommate about ontological lightness, like, you know, I mean, that for them is like it's utterly subversive.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not my grade.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think I'm starting off with the most obvious of messages.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so everything we read has to do with, you know, what constitutes our worth in the first half of the school year.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the second half of the school year, I use Camus, I use Camus' absurd hero as my model for consciousness.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea that he uh Camus made an argument about Sisyphus, as Sisyphus as rolling the rock up the hill is the absurd hero.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so in his essay, he begins with the idea of suicide, actually.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, you know, most people don't commit suicide, but they commit philosophical or moral suicide, meaning they default to the conditioning of their society, which clearly in this area is, you know, your worth is determined by you know statistics and how outstanding you are, and you know, how well you play one obscure instrument so that you can get into this one obscure college or whatever.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that you know, we're so used to that.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the the absurd hero um doesn't default to that conditioning.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: The absurd hero has an impossible task um to roll this rock up the hill and embrace perhaps the reality of labor, the futility of labor, because there was no word now, that was the worst punishment the gods could conceive is labor that does not result in progress.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Sisyphus, which is kind of like our society right now, like really how we solve some of these problems.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: But so Sisyphus continually rolls the rock of the hill, and of course, when he gets the rock to the top of the hill, he knows it's gonna fall back down again.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: But Camus makes this fascinating argument that it is when Sisyphus is midway up the hill that he and he has the lucidity, but the Camus says the lucidity that was to constitute his torture crowns his victory.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because when he is lucid and conscious and chooses to embrace his fate, his rock anyway, then at that moment he's greater than his fate and stronger than his rock.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the moment that that and that is, you know, again, this is where Camus struggled with, you know, any sort of dogma, and it wasn't even religion per se.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was just unthinking, kind of unthinkingly going along.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And even now we see a lot of like the mob mentality.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but every lesson in social psychology teaches us that groups, you know, they they bind, but they also blind.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: So my whole second semester is devoted to be the absurd hero of your own life, stay conscious, continue questioning, look at the conditioning around you, and be intentional about what you pay attention to and how you construct meaning from your experiences, because that's what a real education, and David Foster Wallace said this brilliantly.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what a real education is about.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: This could like when I when I was lecturing with students during COVID, it was like, okay, great, this is where the rubber meets the road.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because if your education doesn't help you live better, have wisdom, deal with this time, you know, again, choose what you're paying attention to right now and choose how you're constructing meaning from this experience, then what's the point of an education?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly not about an accumulation of facts.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I feel like my curriculum has had to evolve as as um the psychology of the students has evolved.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when I see kind of these this stress and anxiety, I feel like I have a responsibility to respond to that through literature.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think that is I because I was before this interview, I was thinking, I was really curious as to how you chose what to teach, because it's you know, AP literature could be it's a very broad uh possible uh syllabus.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's fascinating.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: I I think it's a really involved approach, like I was saying before beforehand.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: It makes me think of a um, I'm a big fan of Emerson, and there's one passage, I think it's Emerson, it might be Thoreau, but it was he gets up in the morning and he's looking out of his window, and he sees a big group of guys pushing this massive boulder across the road, and he sits down and he goes, Man, I'm I'm not doing anything right now.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm kind of jealous of these men laboring and and putting in their hard work and getting their sweat equity.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then he he goes about his day, and at the end of the day, he goes for a walk and he realizes that they just push the rock to like the other guy, other side of the guy's property who was paying them.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like it was on one side of his property and then so it's like this he's looking and he goes, All right, what did they do?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they just pushed a rock into a different place on his yard.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right, but it was the labor made him jealous until he he took a step back and realized what was the accomplishment.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that because I feel like a lot of authors, I mean, Emerson is so brilliant too.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's you it's almost embracing the absurdity of the task.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we look around and we see a lot of the absurd around us right now.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: But but Emerson also speaks to that, you know.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: We we read this here, we read Emerson's essay on self-reliance.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um love it, like this idea that envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the way he defines the great man is is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's you know, think for yourself.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you are not, if you're passive, if you sleepwalk, um you will default to the conditioning that's around you.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: One of my favorite quotes of his, which is uh, I believe, welcome evermore to the gods is the self-helping man.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, insist on yourself, never imitate.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: So many great, but but yeah, it's it's what it's what students need to hear right now.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, and that's what makes this so powerful, I think, is that I mean it's wonderful to talk about these authors in theory and uh listen to them, but to put it in to help the youth feel those topics and practice them is so hard in this environment.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's no doubt about that.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: What would you say is what are the priorities for may or maybe what should the priorities be for a school as they try to um or a high school as they send them off?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like as they're graduating, what are you hoping that they have?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a really good question.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes I think that pendulum swings, and right now I think we're so worried about equity, which we should be.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're so worried about mental health that I see the pendulum swinging to the side of don't have high expectations, which worries me because I think we have a responsibility to our young people to do better than that.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And which is why I'm a big believer in keeping expectations high and giving kids the skills to constantly be improving.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I worry about easy things like automated grading programs, for example.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching requires so much work, I don't even know what to say.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: But like kids to develop their own thought process and to become better writers, they need tons of individualized feedback.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: There is no shortcut.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the thing I most want my students to understand is like I'm 30 years in and I'm all in.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: And at any point when I'm not all in, I shouldn't be doing this job anymore.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm not gonna rest on my laurels, I'm not gonna take the easier route.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's probably one of my biggest, it's it goes back to for every you know, action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go back to the laws of thermodynamics and you know, this idea that you get out what you put in and you're gonna fail, you're gonna start over a million times in life, and there is no path.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I love all of the literature that we read, second semester in particular.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, the it's really might be the path off the beaten path where you find yourself and to stay open to that.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I really want like my son and my students.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: What I really want people to know is is is be that person, be that person who like stays open and trains in staying aware and and constantly looking at your own unexamined thoughts and prejudices and biases.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, have the courage to live in that kind of wholehearted way.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid to be wrong, um, you know, to not get so set in your way of thinking.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a it's not an easy way to live because it's a very vulnerable place.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to like I've made tremendous mistakes over the years and just spectacular fails.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, but but but be all in, like you know, just could because what you put in in life is what you're gonna get back out.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, you'll you'll you'll have those people who kind of go through your class and and they will give you the bare minimum.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and there's there's only so much you can do with that, but um as much as possible, that is that is my belief that you know you've got to like be willing to live in that place of openness with the whole heart.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and then in this time of judgment and polarization, um, you know, I think another thing I really want students to know is like, yeah, it isn't your job.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're in this call-out culture, and I've thought a lot about that, but ultimately you are at the end of the day, you're responsible for your own level of consciousness and how you've chosen to spend these last 24 hours.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: You and I were talking a little bit about time earlier, and how we spend our time is is hugely significant.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: And play, I'm I'm a huge proponent of that, but I'm responsible for my own level of consciousness, and it isn't, you know, there's a great scriptural kind of reference to this.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why are you telling someone else to take the speck out of his own eye when you have a log in your eye?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: So so right now it can feel a bit on social media like everyone's yelling at each other.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, again, I don't know anybody who's gonna change positions based on you know humiliation or shaming.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you're responsible for your own level of consciousness.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Take that, look at your own heart.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: What are you putting out into the world?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, what I want students to be able to leave my class and high school with is the ability to think critically about the world and themselves.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I I really think at the end of the day, I don't, even with my own son, I didn't care, you know, if he was gonna go on to the school or not go on.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted him, you know, to have a meaningful life, to definitely make the use of the talents that he has.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I really think that at the end of the day, there are only two things that make a life worth living, and that is, you know, in some way um connecting to other people and contributing to something beyond yourself in whatever humble form that could take.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we know that loneliness kills, we know that we need each other and we're social animals.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you know, it's it's really for me, it's about connection and contribution.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, are you connecting to the people around you and and caring about the people around you?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then are you contributing to something beyond yourself?
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't have to be this spectacular, you know, newsworthy.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, the my favorite, my favorite novel is still George Elliott's Middle March.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I really resonate with the protagonist because she sets out, I feel like this was me.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted to change the world, and her way of doing that is by marrying a preacher.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: And she starts realizing that her one very, and I feel like that's how it is right now.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's this very like definitive definition of what it means to live a good life.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's no banality of kind of everyday goodness or heroism.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: So she sets out to change the world, and and to me, the book ends with one of the most beautiful passages in literature where the narrator she settles into a quiet life.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she goes through a lot of trials and tribulations.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long book, but but at the end, the narrator says, um, you know, that the effect of her being on those around her is incalculably diffusive.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you or me as they might have been, is half owing to those, to the number who live faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: Could you explain the second half of that?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: I understood the the beginning, to it seems like it's a it's a call to action every day.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's saying, do what you can today.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: Don't yes, don't wake up today and say I have to change the entire world.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: The growing good of the world, partly dependent on unhistoric acts.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the second part that things are not so ill with you or me is half owing to the number who lived faithfully hidden life.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we stand on the shoulders of people who connected to us, who invested in us, like the people I was telling you in South Africa.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And those people may rest in unvisited tombs.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: We may never know their names, right?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: But their their legacy lives on in us.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot to be said for the humble.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know how kids have to write those college essays.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have, if you haven't developed an app for Anderson Cooper, like or cured cancer, what have you contributed?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, no, it's it's this it's this idea that whatever you produce in the world, and yes, it it it has to be, you have to, I think it has to be understood that what you're producing is also a part of who you are.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like the energy you give off is a production of you.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: So every day you wake up and you go out, and whether you build something or not, your existence is producing some sort of energy and putting it off and giving it to the people around you.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe that's I guess my understanding of that second part of that quote, which is your legacy is just kind of the energy you give off, and and and the yes, uh the result of how other people change because of what you gave them, whether it was an app or or just you know, a conversation, like that is your legacy, is the impact others have because of you.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's from living an authentic life.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you want to have real power, spiritual power, live.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: In some sort of alignment with your soul, with who you actually are.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Finding I that's what I want for the students.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: I want them to find something.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like again, if I had been so, you know, driven and insistent on being an engineer, I would have missed a greater calling in my life, which was teaching.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not even, it's just teaching has been my way of living that life and staying connected.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it could have probably been a million things.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, no, I that's what I want for them.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: No, and it it I'm glad you tied that back because I was wanted to do the same thing, which is it sounds like your syllabus or the way you've set up your class is exactly that.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's for the first semester is a preparation of being able to extract yourself from kind of the judgments or status symbols of whether it's GPA or income or anything.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: So you kind of create a sense of self.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, maybe not a sense of self, but right then after that it's about being able to express that self.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that's maybe where the meaning comes from is is getting away from the things that are judging you or that you feel are judging you, and then being able to express yourself as yourself and connect with others as then individual.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a hard task at 18 years old.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's you always think about that, like it's a hard task at 50.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you're always um going through.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I I changed my literature.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know your year if we read Invisible Man, but in Ralph Ellison's book, the the narrator, you know, it reminds me of Thomas Edison.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't um, you know, develop whatever the light bulb.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: I basically found 10,000 ways that didn't work.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it reminds me of Invisible Man because end of the novel, he still never has a name.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he has learned, he has shed kind of the false, pernicious layers of who he is not.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you can kind of argue that the more we navigate through society, the more we kind of accumulate these false layers of who we think we should be, or you know, who we need to be in this situation, or all of those Faustian bargains we make when we feel like somehow to fit in with you, I have to deny myself, or to belong to you, I can't belong to myself anymore.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get to a certain point in your life where you're just not willing to make those kind of Faustian bargains anymore.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm okay not belonging to you or fitting in with you because it's not a it's not a trade I'm I'm willing to make at this point.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so it the narrator goes through this this kind of he ends very conflicted because he still doesn't really know who he is, but he has a better idea of who he's not.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that to be a really lovely um example of kind of living at 18, you're very immersed and encased by all the shoulds and the layers of like what you're supposed to be.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think people lose their moral compass so unbelievably.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you had families in that scandal who were not only gaming the system, well, first of all, they were already on the privileged side of that system.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're gaming the system and they want it to be tax deductible too.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like it was just like layer upon layer of wrong.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's awesome.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and you're like, how does somebody drift so far?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you get so far, like lose your moral compass?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I yeah, I just think that, you know, again, it takes an extreme amount of like kind of training and consciousness to even see the stuff you buy into that you don't even know you're buying into it all the time.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and honestly, I think now with all the racial, you know, obviously these things have always been here.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our nation, you know, as as Tanahassi coates so brilliantly states in the case for reparations, you know, basically our land was founded on, you know, at the at the founding of our land.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like we land was stolen from one group of people and another group of people were enslaved.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, gee, there are inequities.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, yeah, you know, and we've never really grappled with that kind of moral error.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: So these things are here, but when things are forced into our consciousness, this is an interesting time now because you know what are we going to do with that?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, are we going to see it?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because always there's that idea that consciousness about ourselves, but also kind of a national level of consciousness.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Consciousness always comes with discomfort and pain, but ultimately it's the only way to truly be free.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and Ralph Ellison says it beautifully in Invisible Man, where at the end he's having this dream where he's being castrated by all the men who from powerful structures in society who have emasculated him throughout his life.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: But he recognizes he he embraces the pain in this dream, and he he realizes he he says, I'll free myself.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when I discover who I am, I'll be free.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not not when you tell me who I am, but when I discover who I am.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, it it sounds, I I really appreciate all that commentary.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um it sounds, I mean, it all kind of relates to this idea of self-expression, um, which like you it sounds like what's really valuable to you is helping your students be able to express themselves and be okay with that.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 50:18
  unknown: Right.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that's right, that's huge.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't it doesn't seem like maybe the and you know the pushback on that always is maybe the insecurity or this the lack of confidence of expressing yourself and the worry of what will happen when you do that.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's tough, but I think it's so cool that you have that goal.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's it's a product of your career so far.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's wonderful.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see yourself continue continuing that in teaching, or have you thought of any other avenues potentially to try and help in that manner?
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like you, um, I write and it's so funny with teaching.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what my relationship is, where I'm always like, I'm on a year-to-year basis.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm 30 years in.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: So um I don't know why I always give myself that out.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I just always want to feel like I'm choosing to stay.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I I don't know.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I know that I'm where I'm supposed to be right now.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because like we were talking about, I feel like I'm living in some sort of alignment.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on in me is expressed through what I do.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're aligned with your values.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: I am aligned with my values.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: My life is kind of, I forget which author said this.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: He kind of describes some people don't like the term soul, but as kind of like the mothership.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you're this, your kind of ego or your the person you are in society is like kind of a small ship next to the mothership.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're aligned with the mothership, you know, it it's it's easy going.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're you you know, you've got the protection um and and you're drafting off the mothership.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I I like that, I kind of like that analogy because I feel like um don't work against your life, you know, on some level.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, if if I get a strong sense, I I always want to think that I would have the courage um to make changes.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, certainly my populations could not be more different.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and I did go through a lot of angst with that because I thought, you know, again, you have this idea of this is what a meaningful life looks like.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then I find myself in a totally new place when I thought I would be, you know, in um East Palo Alto my entire teaching career, and I felt judged for making changes.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um I believe always it comes with pretty much anything.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: But then again, when you get to that point where you're like, you're okay with it, you also kind of become okay with the judgment because you realize you judging me doesn't change anything.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm aware of my intentions and you know, um, I'm not looking for your approval.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: No, 100%.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's such a great blue.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's a yeah, it's and this is actually something that I um how to how to phrase this.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's um I was in that kind of you know college setting, they there are these terms alpha and beta males, right?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so the beta males probably the one that doesn't get the girl, and you know, less confident, anxiety, insecure, whatever.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right alpha is you know, the leader of the pack.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that the the there it's a it's a skewed understanding of what an actual leader is, and the most, the most, the strongest ability of a person to lead, or or like the the the people who give off that really strong energy are the one the ones who attract others, male or female, is are the ones who have that confidence to say this is who I am, right, and this is what I'm gonna do.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna I'll be I'm my ears are my ears are open.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you can change my mind, right, but this is who I am, and I'm not a well that's the difference between kind of internal power and external power because one of the questions we always come up with in the literature is like, can you have power externally, like be the leader of this pack or be the CFO of this company and still remain true to self?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're drawn to people who have fidelity to self, who have integrity, who have internal power.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right, it's a totally different depiction of power and strength than a lot of times what we see around us.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I don't want to take too much of your time.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of have one last question on this conversation, which has been so fantastic.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um I loved it.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: So many wonderful comments.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've loved the story of Camus and Sisyphus and Oh, I'm so glad.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: Some other uh, you know, you're some comments you made, like I'm 30 years in and I'm all in.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like that comment to your students, you know, this is what I'm doing right now.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and I'm I'm in, right?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's if there's no hesitation, and when I'm out, I'll I'll let you know.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and sometimes I feel guilty because you know, when you were my student, sometimes I think, oh, you know, I've learned so much, I'm a different teacher now, and I was a different teacher 10 years ago and 20 years ago, but but then I think I was the teacher that I needed to be 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you evolve and your student population changes, and to some extent there just has to be acceptance for that.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wish I had known things but 30 years ago that I know now, but sure you you can't you have to kind of live yourself into new ways of thinking and new ways of teaching, and and it it kind of go comes part in parcel with the whole experience of being a teacher.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: So get out what you put in, right?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what's right, put it all out, you get a lot back.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um exactly.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so on this discussion, I mean, I it might be a hard one because we covered so many great topics, but what's one lesson that you think people could take away from this discussion?
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: One thing that you would want that would pertain to what we were talking about.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: I guess one of the things that really is heavy on my heart right now is the lack of listening.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why I love what you're doing.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um so much of um I think it's the poet Mary Oliver who recently passed.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: She did she defined prayer as paying attention.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love that.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: I tell when when students are writing an essay, I say the same thing.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is um, you're not writing to kill the experience of literature, you're you're writing to pay attention and deepen your appreciation.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when I see people not listening to each other, when I see what's going on in the world right now and online, it makes me so sad because, and this is why with COVID too, I I really um I know that the internet's wonderful, it's democratized knowledge, it's made conversations like this available.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're in person and you're having a discussion, either as a class or with one individual, you know, this kind of just impromptu conversation, we always have the opportunity to learn something from somebody.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows something that we don't know.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I have seen more and more these kind of polarized conversations.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had a teacher who said to me last year, if I see somebody wearing a mega hat, I know 98% of what I need to know about that person.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something, this is what I so fundamentally believe in, is we we need to be in contact with each other.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be exposed to ideas that are drastically different than our own.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think even being in South Africa at that particular time in history, it was so huge for me because I had grown up in two beach communities that were largely white, largely wealthy.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to be exposed to things that were drastically different.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we have the opportunity to do that.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have the opportunity to pay attention when we read, we have the pay the opportunity to pay attention in our jobs, when we talk to people.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll just end with this.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: I had a student this year, the after the first week of school, she came up to me and said, I can't be in this class.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: I need to switch periods, but I want you to be my teacher.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't be in this class.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Why?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, this other boy is in the class, and he and we don't agree politically.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, and they're 16 years old.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Okay, well, we're gonna be reading literature.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, um, I said, Okay, um, I said, You guys have had conversations, and she's like, No, but I heard he made comments in this history class last year, and I just don't think I can be in class with him.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I said, So interesting because you're coming in with all this prejudice about him, you don't even know him, you've never had a conversation with him.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: And she already was like, I could never be in class with this person.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: And through the course, and I said, So what if you do disagree?
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: What if something comes up and you disagree?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he'll express his opinion, you'll express your opinion, and in this classroom, you will both be given the respectful place, you know, to express that opinion, and there will be an environment of tolerance where we will listen to each other.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one of my primary jobs that I now see because I am noticing, yes, because we are in a, you know, I noticed that I almost have to teach conversation now.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, whereas before it was a given, now I have to explain, we're having a conversation.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I have to say what that means is when somebody else is talking, try not to think about what you're going to say.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: Try to listen to what that person is saying.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and try to understand with the intent of understanding, not with the intent to respond or to judge or to make a quick comment back.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that is kind of where I'm seeing the new almost kind of mission field of the classroom.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, again, whether shows like yours, whether it's literature, we always have the opportunity to keep our ears open, our eyes open, to pay attention and to listen.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: And again, as Mary Oliver said, this is you know, this is what she said about life: like pay attention, be amazed, be astonished.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, life is amazing.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: Every day is amazing if we pay attention to it.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you so much.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's been so nice.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_02: I want to thank Lisa for that wonderful discussion.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like I mentioned in the introduction of this episode, is that after graduating college, Lisa gave me a copy of Man's Search for Meaning, a book that I think everyone should read.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's one I know I'll reread many times over the course of my life too.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: Frankel's message is about finding hope and meaning by creating purpose.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it's evident to me that Lisa has found part of her purpose through emboldening the youth that walk through her classroom doors.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: I love her message that there are two main elements to a meaningful life.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: First, honestly connecting with others, and second, contributing to something larger than yourself.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: She wants to provide her students with this knowledge and with a community that gives them both the security and tools to ask about what is really going on in life and why.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: To build honest relationships, to question before assuming.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: Not only does it make me question what kind of assumptions I have personally made of others that might have prevented me from connecting with them, but also how I can create an environment where others feel empowered to ask their questions to me.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe it makes you wonder the same thing.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: If you liked this episode of Seeking Authenticity, that's freaking awesome.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_02: All I want to ask of you, the listener, in return for the time and effort I put into making it, is that you take a deep breath.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean really breathe.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_02: Breathe so that it stretches out your shoulders and your back and your chest and pushes out your stomach.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_02: No more of these shallow, bullshit breaths.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: They're barely keeping you alive, my friend.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_02: And after you exhale, go out and soak up today.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because in the end, your actions and the way they interact with the world and the people around you right now are all you have in this life.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_02: So be authentic with them.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_02: Peace.