Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast, the space where education meets resilience.
I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode, we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students, leaders,
and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within 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 within our schools.
Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.
Hey, thanks for tuning in, everyone. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Dr. Michael Dieter,
an assistant professor of education at Trinity Christian College and a former high school social studies teacher in Chicago.
Michael is an advocate for trauma-informed practices and equips educators with the tools to help combat burnout.
Today, he'll help us unpack how educators can prioritize self-care while fostering compassionate and trauma-informed classrooms.
So, Michael, let's go ahead and dive in and welcome to the conversation.
Well, thank you for having me and welcoming me. I'm excited to be here.
So, Michael, I wanted to begin by asking you to share with us a little bit about your research in terms of what you've done and what you've explored so far.
One of the things that I was able to take away is just this idea that really from even before the founding of the United States as we know it,
there was a pretty intense concern among adults that the next generation was going to ruin everything.
You had Puritan individuals who were writing in journals not long after coming over to the New World,
that they were concerned the next generation was going to muck it up and God was going to smite them.
And you can't blame them, conflict with Indigenous peoples who didn't want to lose land, malaria.
There were plenty of issues abound.
But it was interesting that one of the reasons we got the first schools set up in pre-colonial Massachusetts Bay
was a belief that parents weren't doing a good enough job educating their children.
And so some of this tension over sacrifice one student to save the many, can parents really be trusted to educate their students?
We really got a lot of those discussions even before the 1700s, which blew my mind that that was the case.
I never would have thought being a student of zero tolerance and living through that era,
I never would have thought that you could trace its origins to the 1700s.
No. And here I am when I was a student, I thought, oh, by 2020, 2025, no, I'm thinking like 2040,
it's going to dismantle itself and become all better again.
So it sounds like you can't destroy a 300 year old system that easily.
No, it is much more difficult and weaved in and ingrained to people's mindsets and thinking than you or I might care to hope.
So one podcast at a time, we could work on that, right?
Yeah. Have we gotten any closer to acknowledging the pitfalls in that mentality?
Yeah, I think we have.
And I think some of our discussion today is a reflection of that, I think,
wrapped up in a lot of belief around zero tolerance and the need to put students out to pasture and eliminate two or three to save the learning of others,
is really rooted in a belief and quote "bad kids".
And then I think from a trauma informed perspective, you and I are more of the opinion that there aren't bad kids who don't want to learn.
There are kids who have experiences that impact schooling, their perception of it, how they're treated by adults, etc.
And I think we're going in that direction. How long it takes us to get there is really up to us as not just teachers, but as a society.
Agreed. And my hope is that the more viewers that listen to our conversation today will feel more able and willing to lean into these types of conversations on their own.
Can you share with us a little bit more about your journey from teaching in Chicago to becoming an advocate for trauma informed practices?
And I'm also interested if you can share with us a pivotal moment within your teaching that made you realize the importance of addressing both student and teacher well-being.
Really interesting. I think this is a great place to start.
If you had told me 17 years ago when I began my teaching career that this would be a topic that I was passionate about and teaching future teachers about,
I probably would have laughed and shrugged my shoulders, not because it's not an important topic, but because trauma isn't something that came up in my undergraduate preparation or something that I was really familiar with when I began my career.
Certainly, I knew that students had mental health issues and had different lived experiences.
And I like to think that in the beginning of my career, I was sensitive to mental health issues, particularly after some of my own lived experiences and those of family members.
But being sensitive or mindful of trauma really wasn't something that was on my radar when I began my career.
And it's something that I really grew into organically.
I really, from the start of my career, knew that teaching was a team sport, that it was a collaborative effort.
And early in my career, I found the value of collaborating with school counselors.
And I would be a regular office visitor of my school's counselors, they divided by alphabet.
And when I noticed that something was going on with a student or something just seemed kind of off, whether in their affect, their word, their work quality, it certainly wasn't disciplinary or behavioral.
I knew pretty regularly that that was someone that I could collaborate with.
I think we've gone so far as a society to sanitize emotions and emotional reactions that for many people, talking about them, having a public space to talk about them, even just the question of being asked, how do you feel?
I think for a lot of people, whether our age or younger, I think it's just a new experience, because so long we didn't really talk about feelings or we were told you shouldn't have feelings.
Or it doesn't matter how you feel, you need to put this first or that first.
So I think that leads sometimes to excited utterances, to folks really hearing the stories and experiences of others and not knowing how to kind of address and work through that.
I think that's some of our conversation and topic today is teachers.
You're going to hear stories that are difficult, that are emotionally draining, but that also might stir up on a strong emotional response from you and how to really go about that and handle that.
When you do like it's always been my dream to teach a class on education pedagogy, because it always makes me feel compelled to bring in stories like The Freedom Riders or Dangerous Minds or Dead Poet.
Like, have you seen those films and how do they play reality?
Do you think?
Yeah, you know, films like Dead Poets and Freedom Riders, I can remember watching those growing up.
Even a film like Coach Carter, where there's the coach who's a teacher in a different way.
I think that they're important.
I think they embody the best of our profession.
I worry sometimes that emerging teachers feel that they have to be that person on day one.
Yeah, and they put a lot of pressure on themselves on day one of like, this is who I have to be.
I'm already the teacher rather than growing into that person, which I think is important.
We subscribe to that superhero narrative during pre-training and that there's no room for development once we're actually in the classroom.
Which I think is important.
We want people thinking about the teachers that they aspire to be.
Yes.
We want them doing that.
We have to think about, do you want to be that exact Hollywood person or do you want to embody their spirit?
For instance, none of us are going to be Mr. Feeny from "Boy Meets World".
Could we embody some of the care and the conscious mentorship and not giving up on students and seeing their assets and seeing the best?
Absolutely.
I like to think I do and I know plenty of educators that do.
But were we ever going to teach the same students for 12 straight years?
And somehow miraculously have the literature we teach tie into their lives like that afternoon?
Yeah, that was never going to happen.
I would love to see the scope and sequence of the curriculum and the basic that he had to meet.
So I think it always becomes like that careful guidance of, do we want to be that person because we idolize them and think that's who I have to be?
Or do we want to take some of their virtues with us?
What are some strategies that you can advise in allowing educators to maintain regulation?
I have a former high school student who's now a high school teacher who previously worked at a group home for young men and young women.
He was the director of post-secondary options and operations, and I couldn't be more proud of the good work he did.
And I used to bring him in before he moved to the high school to come and talk to my students about behavior and building relationships with young people.
And he said it best, so I'm going to quote him.
"It's about being curious, not furious" about student behaviors.
And he gave a great presentation just talking about the different postures between encountering a behavior and the furious response to it,
which is that sort of knee jerk, taking a personal reaction versus the curious response that wonders,
well, what are some of the antecedents that caused this behavior that might cause me to reframe my thinking and my engagement with that?
And one of the things I try to do initially from our intro to ed class is really help my pre-service teachers to reflect on and develop habits
around what they do before responding to a student, whether that's hearing a difficult element from a student's life,
whether that's the student who just used five swear words in a row with maybe six of them being directed at you,
a student who might have just destroyed something.
And I try to impart on my teachers the need for them to pause before that, to not say the first thing that comes to their mind.
And of course, in emergencies, it is important to do those things.
But many times those interactions where we're encountering students aren't emergencies.
And I think there's an initial reaction, and I know I did this at the beginning of my career, whereas teachers, we often take it personal.
And we feel like that student swore at me because they hate me and I'm the worst teacher in the world,
or that student didn't do all of their work because my work was bad and I'm a bad teacher, I'm not Mr.
Feeney and I need to start over.
And I try to help my students think through different potential causes of behavior and understand things that influence behavior and really see the importance of
if you want to maintain that relationship and relationships are the building blocks of healthy classrooms and healthy educational experiences,
then you should react in a way that doesn't put that relationship at risk.
And I think the beginning of that is well before that interaction with the student who might not have a calm brain in that moment.
I think it really begins with home and the drive to school in the morning.
Yeah, and I think that two things that I have found to be pedagogies of awareness or strategies of awareness, if you will,
is instead of saying to a student, "what's wrong with you,?" saying, "how can I help you?" goes along with it.
And also, there have been instances where I have pulled highly dysregulated students to the side and have just said to them, "I'm listening".
Yeah, I really like that question. "How can I help?"
I think that that just sets a different trajectory for the conversation.
And oftentimes the student can be let their guard down a little and be less defensive, which is going to lead to a more productive conversation and outcome.
Definitely, because students are going to be more than willing to hopefully cooperate when they know that they have a teacher who's for them, not against them.
Right. I sort of set up a dichotomy for my students of it's not the chicken or the egg, but which one matters more to you?
The love of the subject, whether it's history, P.E., science, math, chemistry, or wanting to teach and mentor and grow young people.
If it's the subject that's number one, you're probably more likely to take it personally and be frustrated when a student has their head down while you're teaching about what you love or they don't do well in the test that you spent hours meticulously making.
Right. I think back to my own career, I knew I wanted to mentor and guide young people when I became a teacher.
But I think in my first couple of years, I thought and cared more about the subject because I think I was convinced that I was supposed to write that like I'm the teacher and this is the student and I'm the subject matter expert and I have to stay up on it.
But if your posture is that I'm student first and coming alongside these young people and mentoring them and guiding them and I'm using my discipline as a way to do that and grow their skills for learning in life to be successful and accomplished.
Then I'm going to accept that behavior differently and I'm going to view it differently.
I don't think kids are bad. I think all kids want to learn, but there are kids who've had experiences that make schooling more difficult.
And I think if there are priority, even over the discipline, I think that that changes how we encounter and engage them.
There is definitely that difference between appreciating the subject and appreciating the student.
And especially when emotions come into play through the classroom, where is that line drawn to ensure that the teacher is happy and the student is still valued?
That's a really good question. And I should also tell you that sometimes, not just in my own professional role here, but when I talk to young people who want to become teachers, whether it's children, friends, family, things like that, a lot of them are pro subject, right?
Like, I want to become a history teacher because I like history. I like talking about history. I can get paid to talk about history, right?
That's a calculus that sometimes individuals come to and sometimes people phase out of that as well, right?
Like, once you're doing the job and you're building the relationships with young people, I think that as teachers, we have to think about our overall purpose, right?
The why kind of hints at that. If our purpose is to shepherd young people along this journey of life, as we were shepherded by many people, whether that's family, friends, coaches, play directors, band directors, classroom teachers, we should expect that those things are going to come up along the way.
I think the challenging part is in making space for those things to come up organically, but not intentionally seeking them out.
And I think that there's a balancing act there, right? Like, you can reasonably expect that in a lot of literature from the Great Depression era, there's going to be a lot of pain.
There's going to be a lot of things that individuals could relate to, particularly, I think, back to the Great Recession and some of the hyperinflation that we've experienced.
But again, it goes back to the why. Are we doing this because it's good for students to see that there are fictional and nonfiction real, lived characters who've experienced this that they can glean from, that they can help use to process their own lived experience?
Yes. Should that be our only focus and we should only ever do that on a daily basis with them? Probably not.
And I think there's a balancing act that teachers have to find within their own school community, within the curriculum and the expectations of their own school.
Michael, what are some different tips and strategies that you talk about with your students in pre-service learning?
And when they're taking your class, what is something that you hope to inspire every single pre-service teacher to know?
And also, what are some ways that you also use your classroom to make the profession more realistic to what can be sometimes, as a victim myself, very unmatched social expectations of teaching?
Yeah, one of the things that I do in a lot of my classes is have students talk with one another and have students present and share.
I can remember and I believe I was prepared as much as one can be to be a teacher in my undergraduate program.
But I remember it being very stale and very linear and a lot of sitting and listening and being talked at.
And teaching is a social profession.
You're going to listen to individuals, you're going to talk with individuals and you're going to do it in large chunks of time.
So I try to make all of my classes really discussion based, having presentations and really looking at classroom scenarios.
How might you handle this situation?
How would you not handle this situation?
And talking through sort of the pros and cons of each decision, I tell my students that I'm intentionally trying to socialize them to think like a teacher.
We as teachers think differently than our friends in nursing and accounting and the culinary arts world.
And I try to use scenarios and discussion to help them start to think that way.
I never really tell them what I would do or wouldn't do in these scenarios, but I want them to really think through some of the pros and cons of their decisions.
For instance, everyone quickly says, well, if this happened to this student, I would just talk to them after class.
Then I ask them, OK, the next class is your plan period.
Are you going to do that every single day and never have a break from your job?
So just getting them to kind of think through those things and live into the reality of teaching is important.
We read an article, I think it's from Edutopia, about how teachers make 1500 decisions a day and sharing with them that when a hand goes up, you decide to call on them.
You decide if they can or can't go to the bathroom.
So making them comfortable thinking through decisions, I think, is important.
I also really try to talk with my students about the need to protect yourself as a teacher.
And I think that TikTok has not done us a favor in this regard.
TikTok, Facebook Reels, whatever it is, there are some great looking classrooms that I see.
I'm really nervous that sometimes people are spending exorbitant amount of their own money or hours making those classrooms,
hours that might be better spent on self-care with family, with friends, with different things like that.
And I try very hard to help my students see that you don't have to do that to be an effective teacher.
In fact, sometimes research suggests that there can be too many distractions in a classroom and that they don't have to meet this kind of social media influencer teacher in order to have strong relationships with young people and help them meet their personal and academic goals.
Yeah. And tell us a little bit more about the like, I know a lot of us, when we start our first day of teaching, we have this fantasy that we're going to be loved.
Everything's going to go great. And most of our problems, no matter how big, can be pretty easily resolved.
For your own students that have those mentalities, how do you help them adjust that tangibly while they're still in pre-service learning?
One of the things I use in my pedagogy is storytelling.
And I try to tell more stories of difficult moments I've had or times I've fallen short than the year I won Teacher of the Year and different things like that.
They don't need to hear accomplishments I've had.
They need to hear moments where a teacher didn't have a great experience and how they overcame that and kept going for the next period, the next unit, the next year.
I really try to help my students understand that teaching is a journey.
I like to plot out on the board day one and day 180, depending on how many days your state goes to school.
I mean, just showing them that it won't be 180 days per year of perfection.
And if we're working with human beings, I have friends and family that I love very much, but we don't we're not 10 out of 10 every day.
And sometimes we frustrate each other. And it doesn't mean that that's going to last forever.
And so I try to help them see that when you're in the human services like we are, that not every day can be perfect, will be perfect, and we shouldn't expect the perfection.
And if we expect the perfection on a daily basis, we're probably going to be disappointed.
And that you could have a perfect lesson, quote "perfect", that still has disruptions and things like that in it.
It doesn't mean that students didn't learn and they didn't grow because there were a couple students talking while you were or something like that.
So really helping them see that this is a journey. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
And being at peace with that, I don't think I was until probably year two or three, maybe even year four of my career that I came to that conclusion.
So trying to help them see that earlier rather than later.
Yeah. And I'm still thinking of the one student you're teaching in the back of your college classroom because I think I was that student too.
I said, "oh, well, Professor Dieter had those experiences, but I don't think I will. I think I can still do very good starting on day one".
What would you say to that student?
Yeah, I think we have to question what is very good on day one.
Certainly, there's Harry Wong and others who've published a litany of books about what the first day of school should look like, what the first week should look like, the first unit.
I think it's a fair question to ask. What does that look like?
And I actually encourage because there's a reality here while we're talking about this, that these new teachers are also going to be evaluated.
So good in our discussion might be different than, quote, "good", according to the school to be rehired for year two.
The question I always tell pre-service teachers to ask when they're meeting with administrators or doing a mock interview is always how do they judge a successful first year of teaching?
What do the people who are going to be evaluating you so you can keep your job and keep growing and keep mentoring young people, what do they consider to be good?
And I really think in the beginning of a teacher's career, I really think it comes down to relationships and how you could build healthy,
long lasting relationships with your students.
In the first year, learning how to build those healthy, effective relationships with students, I think is really important.
I think it's also something that we can control even a little more than, say, the pacing of the curriculum that might take time to adjust to.
Yeah. So for our pre-service and first year teachers who may be listening, and veteran as well,
what would you say is one of the most important things that teachers can do to really try and build those relationships, especially in year one, to help them be renewed for year two?
I think one of the most important things is, I think, being sincere.
And it's difficult if you tell a student you care about them, but your actions don't match the deeds.
And certainly sometimes caring about a student means if you didn't turn in work, I'm sorry, you receive a zero or something like that.
But if you tell a student you care about them and you call them out publicly or shame them or do something like that, that makes an incongruence.
And something that I've appreciated both as a high school teacher and as a college professor,
a lot of times students' view of you is influenced by their peers, not even by you.
I've had students come to me for assistance in my classes and they've said,
"I reached out to you because my peer in the class said that you really helped them and I was nervous too, but now I'm not."
And let's work on this together.
And so it always matters how you treat the students, because ultimately they're going to help be that glue that helps you reach out to other students without you knowing.
I think the intentionality is also important.
One of my favorite things I like to do with my college students, if any of them listen to this, though they're probably sick of my voice by now, they could totally relate to this.
I love to see what's in people's Duncan and Starbucks orders, or their Panera order when they come.
That's just kind of always my go-to of, "hey, like, what do you got from Duncan today?"
And I can use that as a conversation piece or, oh, you have a hoodie on from softball.
"Do you play or do you know someone who does?"
So I think there has to be intentionality to getting to know students beyond maybe the first day kind of survey that's given.
But then there has to be the back end sincerity of allowing that relationship to rise and not doing things like shaming students and putting them on blast that could stop that from happening.
Absolutely. And I think one of the best pieces of advice that I received in my first day of teaching, actually, was that our students are our walking resumes and their parents and families as well.
We're also well affiliated with the cities in a way that can help progress your career and your reputation with the school in itself.
Right.
Michael, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and passion with us for trauma informed education.
Your insights have been invaluable, not only for educators, but really for anyone who believes in creating compassionate spaces for learning and growth.
And to our listeners, don't forget to check out the show notes for resources and ways to connect with Michael's work.
And until next time, remember that your stories are ones that matter.
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.
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Remember, together we can transform our scars into stars in education, one conversation at a time.