Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast,
The Space where Education Meets Resilience.
I'm Joey Weisler, and in each episode, we dive deep into the personal stories of
educators, students, leaders, and front-line advocates
who are navigating the complexities of modern education.
Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned
professional looking for inspiration, we'll explore how to foster meaningful
change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities in our schools.
Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom and get started.
All right, well hello everyone. Welcome to the
inaugural solo episode of Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast.
I'm Joey Weisler, your host, and I am thrilled to have you here.
Whether you are an educator, a student, or someone
passionate about the topic of education, this podcast is going to be for you.
In this podcast, we're going to be exploring stories of resilience,
trauma-informed education, and the human side of teaching and learning.
This is going to be a space where educators, students, and mental health
professionals will all come together to share stories of survival,
transformation, and even hope as we explore trauma-informed education
and ways to help foster resilience within classrooms everywhere.
So a little bit about me as your host to begin with.
I am a scholar, I am a teacher, and I am someone who has spent years in education
both as a classroom educator and a postgraduate researcher.
I've had firsthand experiences with the pressures and emotional tolls of
education, especially in post trauma, which have inspired me from the very
beginning to start this podcast. I'd like to go ahead and share three very
personal examples that have deeply shaped my journey in this podcast.
The first example that I would like to illustrate is that I am a native to the
city of Parkland, Florida, with my alma mater being Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School. On February 14th, 2018, Marjory Stoneman
Douglas, or MSD as we call it, experienced a mass shooting that killed
17 people and wounded 17 others. I spent that
tragic Valentine's Day right next door to MSD at the adjourning feeder
middle school where several victims of that shooting had attended years prior
and it was my true honor to get to know some of these individuals as their
day-to-day substitute teacher as early as spring 2016.
Together my community faced both ongoing and uncharted trauma as we all
attempted to navigate through what was an anguishing sense of a new normal in
the aftermath of that event. I was actually one of the first subs to go
back to MSD in March 2018 after receiving the grief counseling in order to do so
and I chose to go back very quickly in order to
what I coined as transforming my post-traumatic stress into post-traumatic
strength and I felt that being visible for the students really helped me do that
because at the time presence was something that all of us needed to have
in order to move forward. The second point that's important for me to share
with you is that as an adolescent at Stoneman Douglas
I deliberately chose to be a separatist and outcast myself for my peers.
In my senior year I was actually very fortunate to be friend to classmate who
really helps me see beyond that. This person allowed me to acknowledge my
choice to be a separatist and told me that I had the willpower to carry out
the two goals that I had really cared to achieve even at that time as a high
school student which was to become an educator
and a writer. I had worked tirelessly to show post-traumatic strength throughout
the schools in the Parkland community until my friends passing
by suicide just a few short months after the tragedy.
This friend was a person who has and continues to hold great meaning to my
life and when you lose someone who has touched you so deeply
you begin to cycle through as we say in literature
the five W's and a how and thinking about those
who, what, where, when, why and how questions. Specifically
thinking about where or the science that I missed. What could I have possibly
done to extend this person's life and of course just a singular question
why. I found my W statements or the where, what, and why to be very
guilting on me and harming my ability to find any sort of resilience and the
aftermath of my friends passing. Instead I could only carry forth once I
began looking at the how. That is, how can I operate and educate in a
manner that will allow this person's memory to remain blessed
and sacred for others. Being that this person had always believed in me so much
in life and remarkably advocated for my dream to become a teacher and a
writer. How can I use this gut-wrenching loss, I
thought, to ensure my future students feel happy, healthy, and safe.
And what are the signs for me to now look for in doing so?
Immediately after my friends passing I received training in
ASIST which translates to applied suicide prevention skills.
And ASIST is a training that enables someone
to notice when someone else is in the crisis and become a
how or a P-A-L for that person in order to provide a pathway or assisting
life, P-A-L. And being trained in assist is like being trained in CPR
but for suicidal ideation where we keep a subject sustained until
he or she can be professionally revived of life,
very literally. And as someone trained in assist we are taught to be there and
keep our subjects safe for now until the next
trained medical professional can properly help them.
So after my friends passing I trained in ASIST
and held a vow to reach as many students as I possibly could
or as I said at the time never allow myself to have
blood on my hands from a student. I made this promise while still subbing
throughout MSD and now also transitioning that fall semester
after the tragedy to an interim position at the feeder middle school
feeling as if every single day I went to work that I was standing on the ashes
and dust of my city trying to go back to the roots and
live out what I expected to be my dream job.
In her 1999 article, "Narratives of Pain", Professor Lisa Tyler says that healing
is not the primary responsibility of a classroom teacher
but if an institution of learning has real-life students on its hands
then its hands are already dirty. And the purpose of this podcast is to
acknowledge the controversies and the dangers of allowing emotions to play
a part in the classroom. And my goal during these episodes is to offer
solutions through the use of helping you form a mindset in order to suggest
safer measures that can be both reliable and effective
to working alongside students.
The third thing that's important for me to tell you is how those two events
together reshaped and even sustained the concept of what I
thought my classroom should look like when I began teaching but before I
even officially started my first year of teaching and having my own classroom.
Inspired by my late grandmother as a New York City School principal
as well as an upbringing of phenomenal Parkland instructors as early as
kindergarten my childhood inspiration was rooted in no
other place in the classroom. Now before moving forward I do want to
give a very sincere shout out to each of my former Parkland
teachers for it was their presence and the way that they've
led their classrooms that has left a very enduring impression on me even
long after I've graduated and though I don't express it as much as I
should I am so incredibly thankful to each of
them and I reflect on their influence during challenging times and this is
also very applicable to each of my undergraduate instructors at Florida
Atlantic University as well and of course even in postgraduate studies at
St. John's University in Queens, New York a big thank you to each of you
who have helped this vision come to life and have sustained it for so long.
So this podcast is going to advocate for a trauma-informed curriculum that
works to teach the hearts over the brain. So I was an English professor I always
tell students that on my first day of class that they are not taking what we
would call an English class or even the language arts class
but rather my courses tends to blend in combination with what those look like
and by that I mean that I choose to be an instructor for the art of language
and for me that's attempting to study the power of language
in a way that helps us heal ourselves, heal others, and make ourselves stronger
individuals and in my classes we work each day
towards our class theme of our moments matter.
So what what I was not prepared for was the additional PTSD that I would
acquire in my opening years alone as a
"caregiver" for my students including those immediately after the
Parkland Tragedy and even others who are visibly
showing signs of the same signs that I felt I'd missed in my late friends.
Before the end of my first year teaching I came to find that I
had neglected my own wellness as a result of investing so much into the
well-being of my students and as a result of both additional
and unchecked PTSD I ended up burning out
after my first year teaching and this was a realization that had
entirely shattered the fantasy that I had held on to since I was a child.
So my research focus as a doctoral candidate
emphasizes that we need more stories of mental health that can reach
mass audiences and like our teachers that work to teach to the hearts of our
students these stories should reach the hearts of our
audiences and maybe you found this podcast because you too
have felt the solutions by the education system or you're struggling with the
emotional toll of teaching and that's why you're here and this is a
space where we can acknowledge those struggles and really try to work through
them. Your presence here on this podcast as
a listener is going to be the first step in showing the necessity of having
conversations that break the stigma around mental health, trauma, and burnout
in education while creating spaces for healing, growth, and meaningful
change in our classrooms and communities.
In one of my favorite novels, The Help, by Catherine Stockett,
narrator Abilenne says telling our stories is what makes us free.
So in each episode I'll be having deep conversations with teachers,
trauma experts, and even students who have navigated the hardships of the
classroom. You'll be hearing stories of survival,
courage, and practical strategies to help you avoid burnout.
Rather you're a new teacher trying to find your footing,
a veteran teacher who's burned out by the system, or someone just curious
in the intersection of trauma and education, even if you're a student or
leader or a mental health counselor, this is going to be the podcast
that will give you the tools and the stories and the hope
for exactly what you've been looking for. I plan for these episodes to be about
half an hour and I'll be mixing it up between solo episodes where I dive
into personal stories and also having interviews with
guests from all areas of education and mental health as well.
So I also wanted to mention real quick how if you were to go into
literature, literature also tends to take a great big focus
on the broken dream and we see this quite evidently
through John Steinbeck's Of MIce and Men, Edgar Allen Poe's
Short, El Dorado, and Dr. Seuss's book, I've Had Trouble and Finding My Way to
Solla Sollew. And when you look at this holistically,
it becomes very little wonder as to how society is coming to
terms with destigmatizing exhaustion. It's become my belief
that we live in a society where we value exhaustion
but don't quite know how to care for the exhausted
and this leads to a series of consequences including
the broken dream. So with urgent attention to exploring this phenomenon in
education, this podcast is also going to discuss the emotional
and mental toll of burnout on both educators and students.
By highlighting stories of resilience, trauma-informed approaches,
and practical solutions for reform, the classroom narratives healing and
education podcast is going to aim here to foster conversations that help
reshape the future of education making it a space where teachers and students
can thrive without losing themselves in the process.
When I was in my undergraduate years of college, still honey-mooting with what I
anticipated to be this approaching perfect start to my forever after career,
I would have never expected that my city would experience
mass violence while also losing my very close friends to suicide
so close together with two events completely out of my control
yet significantly shifting my image as an educator.
Since you're here I'd love for you to subscribe, leave a review,
and share this podcast with anyone you think that might benefit from it.
I'm also always open to hearing from my listeners so please don't ever hesitate
to reach out with your thoughts or your questions or comments in general.
This podcast strives to provide its listeners with what I consider to be a
break glass if needed toolkit when dealing with trauma in the classroom.
I've learned from my own story and this podcast pays homage to making your
story better. Hey thank you so much for listening
and stay tuned as we transform our scars into stars
here in education. Take care, thank you very much.
Thank you for joining us on the classroom narratives healing and education
podcast. If today's episode inspired you or made
you think differently I'd love to hear from you.
Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts
and stay connected with us on the at classroom narratives podcast over
Instagram and Facebook. Remember together we can transform our scars
into stars in education. One conversation at a time.