[00:00:00] Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast. The space for 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.
Joey: ,
welcome back to the Classroom Narratives Healing in Education podcast, where today's guest brings an electrifying mix of artistry lived resilience, and youth advocacy to the conversation. Emma G is an award-winning musician, author, and youth empowerment coach whose work is rooted in deep personal experience with trauma.
Born with hydrocephalus, a rare neurological condition. [00:01:00] Emma has undergone 10 brain surgeries, each one deepening her connection to music as both an anchor and a form of healing through songwriting and performance. She's turned those struggles into stories of survival, resilience, and bold self-expression.
Her unique music style fuses, soulful ballads, gritty rock and unapologetic pop. But beyond the stage, Emma's mission is grounded in the classroom of real life. That's helping teenagers channel their emotions, their stories, and inner conflicts through songwriting. Her youth empowerment through songwriting program.
Blends her background as a teacher, a lecturer, and a youth coordinator with a transformational power of creative voice. She believes that music doesn't just help teens speak. It helps them feel, reflect, and heal in ways that traditional systems can often overlook . Her work helps young people untangle, overwhelm, clarify their truths, and express even their hardest emotions in ways that are non-confrontational, but are also [00:02:00] authentic and powerfully on their own. So today she's here to join us to speak about music, mental health, and what it really means to help students write their way back into themselves.
Welcome to the show. 
Emma: So good to be here, Joey. Thank you for having me. , 
Joey: before we even dive into our content, you were just mentioning to me that you have your book coming out in a few days. So tell us a little bit about your background and some awesome projects that you're currently working on.
Emma: Okay, so my background,, is very. Wide, shall we say., I was born singing. , My mother used to say that I used to kick her so hard in utero that she was convinced I was gonna be a drummer. But evidently I was too passive aggressive for such a thing. So, I turned to singing and songwriting when I was super young.
Wrote my first song on my fifth birthday like pen to paper, wrote my first song. And , from there I just carried on By the time I was 15,, I'd written maybe 750 songs. , I was [00:03:00] incredibly, , they say prolific, I say emotional, you know, , so it's. It's always been one of those things for me that,, has helped me first understand myself better, second, express myself clearly., And, in more recent years, , after I established a hard rock band and I was co-writing with,, Chris Young, who was the guitarist at the time, , he helped me realize that I didn't just have to stay stuck in the muck of my past through my songwriting. I could also literally write my way forward.
And that's when I started using music as a kind of a modality for my own self-coaching, if you will , when it came to,, moving. Through my struggles and amongst all of that journey, I've also, studied to be a mechanic for three and a half years.
I worked in a radio for , some time. I worked as a labor activist., I worked at a shoe store. I was a makeup and health . sales [00:04:00] person, consultant. I was also a travel agent, but in amongst all that, I started my own business as a vocal coach when I was 17 and gauge my teaching qualifications in New Zealand, where I'm from and through that. I didn't realize it at the time, although I at the back of my head witnessed it , . I noticed how a lot of the time when I was coaching people, my private clients and even the choir that I conducted, a lot of my time is spent talking about the emotions behind the songs that my students would be. Singing,. Or Why they chose to sing the songs that they were singing.
And that evolved and carried on. And I started teaching at the university. I was a YMCA, a youth empowerment coordinator,, and had a lot of these conversations , but it wasn't until 2019. That the pen really dropped for me and I realized, okay, so with all the vocal coaching, with all the music education that I've been teaching, with all [00:05:00] the empowerment work that I've been doing with young people,, it made sense to finally create this marriage between the three, which is youth empowerment through songwriting and helping young people to first.
, Allow themselves permission, the creative blanket if you will, of music to give themselves permission to understand themselves better and put words to their feelings, words to their experiences, and then start to work through them. Learn how to express them selves to the outer world and ultimately.
Recognize that our past isn't what makes us, it's part of who we are or who we've learned to be, but that we can quite literally rewrite the formula to our future through the lyrics that we choose to write, the lyrics we choose to sing. So even now when I'm teaching vocal clients, I'm very conscious about the kind of content my students sing.
'cause I never want , my clients to leave my space [00:06:00] still feeling like the same person they were when they came in. 
Joey: They can literally rewrite the stars if they need to. Literally, 
Emma: you said it, 
Joey: so you work quite a bit with all different kinds of teens in terms of songwriting to process anxiety, trauma, and help them come to terms with their identity and mm-hmm.
Emma and I were talking in the pre-talk or the pre-chat here that. That's something that we both tend to do in our classes where we use music as an anchor to get discussion going. 
Emma: Mm-hmm. And 
Joey: one example that I mentioned to Emma that on my first day of a course, well it's new in terms of the catalog, it's now official in the St.
John's University catalog. I'm so excited. Yay. Called Writing Through Trauma Transformation and the story within us in that class, the students are faced with a prompt and the prompt that they have to respond to over the course of 16 weeks through five different multimodal portions.
Is to think about a topic and focus [00:07:00] on it through a systemic lens and respond to it, find a solution and make it better, and act on that. And on the first day of that course, on day one, we listened to Defying Gravity from Wicked to honor how we change our systems and think about how we can use our voice as part of it.
To bookend with the theme of Wicked. I call that my wicked class on the last day of the class. I always wear green and we listen to for good, to think about how language has shaped us for good. So music acts as an anchor all semester long through moments like that to set the theme of the day. For their final submissions, and really throughout the whole semester, students are always invited to use music as part of their work.
Even though the course is titled Composition two or First Year Writing, I'm not requiring them to submit me an actual paper. Yes, at some point there needs to be something I can look at to meet the standards of grammar, et cetera. But if they're writing music and expressing themselves through song in another multimodal lens.[00:08:00] 
That's more than acceptable. So what would you say that classrooms tend to be overlooking in terms of how we approach the use of music in class? That's a really lovely question. , I think, I'm gonna preface this by. Recognizing I did not grow up in the American education system. Right. , I now am often guest teaching, , here in the American,, education system within the Montgomery County and PG County areas within Maryland.
Emma: only kind of going from the feedback I get from., The teenagers that I work with, right. , But it seems to be the same as what I witness a lot , back when I was a kid., That we spend a lot of time
focusing on one teaching modality, one.
Idea of how our kids should be taught as [00:09:00] opposed to a delivering information in a multitude of ways for auditorily or, , visually, , kinesthetically,. Through reading,, as examples, but I think furthermore, when we have young people who, and I feel like everybody kind of has.
Woken up to this idea that we're all on a spectrum when it comes to learning and when it comes to how our brains work, when we're working with a wide diaspora, of brains and minds, and ways of thinking. I think it's really important that we teach the student not the curriculum. And so often when you give a young person permission to be creative.
And have autonomy over that creativity and autonomy over how they wish to learn, how they wish to present, how they wish to , absorb knowledge. I think that can be a really [00:10:00] powerful approach for our young people, because suddenly you have people making vlogs, on X, Y, and Z topics. Suddenly you have people writing rap songs about X, Y, and Z topics , which I think can be really, really fun.
., when I was teaching university, having the students present their research in a rap song or in a pop song,. Was fantastic., Being able to just think outside the box and,, deliver information in a way that's non-conformist.
, And the third point I wanna make is when I talk about teaching the client, not the curriculum, I'm not saying ignore the curriculum. I'm saying you have to recognize that. Each student that you are teaching has a history. That could be a family history, that could be,, an economic history that [00:11:00] can be lived, experience, history, that can be , adverse childhood experiences.
There are so many things that our young people are experiencing and carrying with them in their genealogy. There was research,, recently that suggested that, , the trauma, a mother experiences while pregnant passes onto a child in utero. So , when I'm talking about a child's history,, I'm talking about all of it.
And so you have to , mix how we present things and teach things and learn things, with our young people. Otherwise, you're just gonna be talking to a brick wall. I had a student a few years ago when I was teaching in a middle school here in the, DC area, who the main teacher.
, He spent a lot of time yelling at this kid because he just wasn't getting it or he wasn't behaving himself or he wasn't, whatever. I pulled this kid aside and I was asking him like, what's going on beneath the surface? And this kid known me for two days. So it's not like we had a deep connection whatsoever.[00:12:00] 
But, just giving him the opportunity to share himself. I learned that, his father was shot,. A few years earlier, his brother had just gone to jail and his mother had cancer and was, on her last months, years, whatever it is, but was,, on the struggle bus.
How do you teach a kid without knowing that? So, give the kid permission to be creative, have some fun. Learning. Should be fun.
 I used to teach at a university back in New Zealand and ,, one of the things that kind of shocked me and have, come to make sense now because of how society is built,, I was disturbed about how.
Our education system is still so set up using, this 18th century mindset because we still want to, in some ways create factory workers, create this division of equity without empowering them to think for themselves and to think critically and to , be different and [00:13:00] embrace their differences, and shine unapologetically.
Being a bit of a disruptor, I guess you what you might say. , Like I'm all about,, breaking that sort of, that mindset. And, so when I was teaching at this university , I would use music as the modality to help them not just do. The research and inspire, the study or whatever, but also to even deliver. Their content. Their content content. Right. So I mean, you had, you have not lived until you have,, heard somebody rap about the relationship between jazz and hiphop music. It's so fun.
Joey: I love that you mentioned the non-conformist style of learning. 
because the system really sets itself up in the way to standardize learning.. 
Joey: I mean, I remember when I also taught middle school, I walked in and I'm handed a pacing guide.
I'm like, what do they need me for? What do they need me to teach them? You know, page 42 with the monkey's, Paul, on Thursday, right? Anybody can do that in my mind, like anybody can can do that. And [00:14:00] when teachers feel depleted, I can't even imagine how depleted a student must feel. They're all asked, do the exact same assignment, the exact same way for the exact same outcome.
And I think when you allow students to find a voice through flexibility, it really brings a livelihood to the entire system of learning. Because, and let me make myself very clear, I am not against standards. I absolutely believe that a course Oh, for sure should have standards. , What I do think crosses a line is when you standardized the way we teach those standards.
Mm-hmm. Because I think when you. Force students into standardization that is no longer learning, that is compliance. Mm-hmm. And compliance diminishes critical thinking, which is the paradox to what we think we're doing. And until we realize that. Education itself is gonna be very stuck. And [00:15:00] one of, the things that I noticed when we were , also in the same middle school classroom is that, especially now post COVID, there is a mental health crisis that is coming about.
And again, through this idea of compliance, we're told to ignore it. There are so many times in my first year of teaching that I was told if a student. Wrote me a response where mental health factors were involved, just ignore it because we as a school, quote unquote, were not ready to hear what that child had to say.
So it was easier to shut it off versus to indulge or engage with it or entertain it. So from your experience and working with. Schools and mental health challenges. How have you seen that mental health issues have shown up in classrooms in ways that they may not have been ready for? And how has music, especially yourself as a music educator, how has music found its way into helping those students come to where they wanted to be?
Emma: It's interesting because , I'm currently undergoing . My [00:16:00] official coaching certification through Krav MAGA Worldwide. My husband and I love, love it. Yeah. My husband, , runs a Kraft Maar school here in Bethesda. And, , he's the external, uh, external foes. I, I deal with the internal enemies., But , when we were going through the beginning, , two months of the coaching, a lot of it was talking about, . Basically the differences between coaching and therapy and so on and so forth. And I realized in New Zealand when I got my teaching qualification, we had to do counseling papers.
Like that was part of the certification. Because mental health is absolutely part of a young person's learning journey. When you teach somebody, there are five facets of self that ideally you want to satisfy, right? The emotional, the mental, the social, the spiritual, and the physical. If you can't teach, or at least recognize [00:17:00] when one of those parts is out of sync.
The likelihood of you being able to reach and teach that young person is going to be a little bit more difficult. So when it comes to music education automatically you Are satisfying the spiritual element of a human being., You've satisfied the emotional, you've absolutely satisfied the social, because music brings people together.
The physical, we all know that music affects us on a physical level when it comes to how it, helps to mitigate cortisol levels. When it comes to the frequency will affect , our mind, mindset, mood, whatever. . So the only other really aspect, of,, music education that I think people don't understand necessarily is the intellectual.
, but that's when you recognize, well, actually music feeds into every single part of life. You know, the way that we learn the alphabet is through song, [00:18:00] the body parts is through song. ,, There's all these great benefits to music as it pertains to teaching the individual. . 
Joey: So let's say in one example that a student for their assignment submits lyrics that are really emotional and hit way too close to home with what they're trying to communicate across when music comes alive in the classroom.
How does somebody like you support the emotional breakthroughs without turning them, like you said, into emotional overloads or trauma inducing moments for them? How can they be trauma informing versus trauma inducing through the use of music to help them? 
Emma: So, as a songwriting coach, kind encourage my students you need to dig deeper. And the reason being is because, and this is a Krav Maga mindset, and my husbands often quoting this, you can't beat an enemy that you refuse to acknowledge your face.
If someone attacks you on the street and you're blind, [00:19:00] your likelihood of fighting them off is gonna be far less than if you open your eyes, right? It's the same thing with that emotional, too close to home emotion or,, struggle. You can't possibly beat or overcome an overwhelming emotion.
A traumatic experience if you refuse to give it a voice. 
Joey: Right. It's like we, we have to feel the emotion in order for and acknowledge it, in order for it to actually come across, onto the paper and be expressed. Without feeling something, it's just gonna stay there, it won't go away. 
Emma: Exactly. , The other cool thing about it is when you put a name to the feeling or to the experience, it kind of.
Takes the power away. A little bit of that experience. 
Joey: Agreed. 
Emma: And that's how we can start that process of, okay, cool, now we know what we're dealing with. Now let's figure out the way forward. [00:20:00] I'm not saying ignore the muck, ignore the yucky space. Absolutely. That's important to feel the feelings , and allow those feelings to be truly experienced because I think, any research paper on stress management will show you this.
The more we suppress, the more we explode. So. It is important to,, put the feelings out on paper. But one of the approaches that I found really helpful for all of my clients is then, a simple cognitive reframe tactic, which is, okay, cool.
Now we have a name to the emotion or experience. Now, let's imagine that that emotion is a person.
Hi, Mr. Anxiety or Hello Mrs. Depression. This is what I wanna say to you. 
Joey: Mm-hmm. 
Emma: And then you write the song around that kind of mindset and that way you kind of distance yourself a [00:21:00] little bit, recognize that you are not your feelings, you are experiencing feelings, but you are not actually that feeling.
And you can start to build , a bridge towards where you are now to where you're going or where you want to go. 
Joey: Yeah, so really humanizing emotions, and I'm on that same path as well, where I was taught that emotions are like bottles, where if you just bottle it up and you shake it like a soda can, it's just gonna quietly explode inside of you.
But if you let it out, even if it does explode, embrace the messiness. Embrace those emotions and see what they're trying to tell you. Because once you let those emotions communicate to you, like you said, Emma, you've now reclaimed the power over what you. Can do next. 
Emma: Yeah. With 
Joey: resiliency.
Music's a great way to claim the voice with that. 
Emma: Exactly. Exactly. And the awesome thing as well is that now you've got this catalog of songs to showcase your growth over the over many years, And with that catalog of growth, [00:22:00] you can then apply those same lessons to any other.
Overwhelm with stress or adverse experience you wouldn't do, , in your future. It's quite fun. Absolutely. 
Joey: So let's say that we have a K 12 teacher tuning in today, kindergarten through 12th grade teacher who's teaching English history, science or math,, a common core subject, and they're thinking about ways to, again.
Work around the compliance and allow students to contribute their voices meaningfully and flexibly into the conversations that are going on in class.
What would you say could be like an emotional toolkit that these types of teachers can use to reshape how their classrooms look, maybe from counseling to peer leadership, and what would that toolkit look like and how does music fit into that toolkit? 
Emma: So.
I you can use, music in any, frame or fashion. The toolkit that I always use when it comes to , [00:23:00] the way I approach teaching, centers around, there's, 10 bullet points that I have of values and, and approaches that I use in the, within the classroom.
But my top three, and this is all under like, the framework of aga, which is indigenous Maori teaching. the top three that I use is one, we have to maintain that the classroom or the educational space that we are in is safe. safe of judgment, safe of laughter, safe of abuse, whatever it is, but it is safe, and I'm gonna push it a little further when we talk about the no judgment, that means no judgment from me to the student, and no judgment from the student to the student.
Yep. , The second thing that I always talk about is, , I want every client that I work with to not view me as a teacher. [00:24:00] I know that's a little controversial, but the reason I say that is because if any client of mine comes to me with this idea that there is a power difference between our roles. The likelihood of them showing up authentically with me is going to be, very slim because, you know.
I mean, how many teachers did you show up for authentically when you were in school, right? Mm-hmm. So it's, it's really important that I'm there as their coach, their mentor, , still a position of authority to a point, but not to the same point of there's a , power difference at play.
, So that's the second thing. And the third thing is to make sure that they recognize, I always show up for them 110%. What that means is they also need to show up 110%, and it's particularly important for our younger, clients or students who are trying to find [00:25:00] their footing between being a child and an adult and recognizing that.
That mutual exchange and energy is real. And so if they don't show up with respect , and, , self restraint, , the repercussions of that are not necessarily gonna be in their favor. However, if they show up at 110%. I promise that I will always drop 110% as well.
, So those are the first three that , I often tell , my clients and how I use music to emphasize all of that as well. I'm in love with this genre of music called Whole Tones, W-H-O-L-E tones, and so I'll often play that in the background when it comes to ., Activities, , but , the music we listen to can absolutely play a part in how engaged our young people can be., And I think that can be really positive. , When you use it correctly. Knowing what your students are listening to is really important as well. Yes. [00:26:00] This is a fourth one, I'll throw this in for free.
Another, , really important, , aspect of Aquwa is recognizing that. Again, because I'm not there as their teacher, I'm there as their coach and mentor. , I'm going to deliver a whole bunch of information to whoever I'm working with. But guess what, Joey? They're gonna teach me some things too,?
Oh yeah. And that's so cool. 'cause that, that again, gives them some autonomy around their learning process,, which I think is really important. And , and it gives them a sense of like, oh, I, I'm not completely worthless. , My brain matters. 
Joey: Absolutely. I think music has the ability to set the tone of a classroom at any time.
A thousand percent. I have. A lot of teachers now in post COVID, they're like, oh, I'm talking into the void. The silence of my classroom is deafening, and I get that too quite a bit. But I think in the same respect, yeah, music can set that foundation just as equally depending on when and how it's played at certain points in the class, like if I [00:27:00] post a writing prompt on the board, I would immediately turn on an instrumental, or rather, it's like.
Sounds of the beach in the summertime, or it's like these spooky instrumental sounds for Halloween. If that music goes on, they know, Ooh, it's not time to talk. It's time to write. Yeah. And that's like their quiet journaling time. So it, it sets a pace in the rhythm at any point is what I found as well. I love that.
I love that. What would you say could be a takeaway from our conversation today that audiences can walk away with? 
Emma: Ooh, a good takeaway. If I was summarize this conversation, , I would encourage everybody to
be a disruptor, break the boundaries a little bit, and, recognize that our students want to learn, develop, and grow into their best baddest selves. We just need to give them the tools to do so.
And I use the word tools intentionally because I, I am always telling people, [00:28:00] I'm always telling my clients, I'm here to offer tools for you to use at your discretion. There's never a one size fits all when it comes to our learning development and our applied learning. It's, um, yeah. Totally. 
Joey: Thank 
Emma: you for 
Joey: that.
And what would you say based upon our conversation today, are some of the the most fundamental tools that listeners could walk away with and implement immediately? 
Emma: Fundamental tools. Again, it goes back to aquwa, you know, always maintain safe space within your teaching environment or learning environment or coaching environment.
recognize that it's an exchange of information. You are there to teach them, they're there to teach you. And that's an exciting and beautiful concept, , and opportunity. And uh, you know, obviously making sure that there is a no judgment. Between you and, and your clients or students.
, , every mistake is an opportunity to learn and grow. , And that also , emphasizes the point that you shouldn't be judging yourself as an educator or as a [00:29:00] coach. , And the students should definitely not be judging themselves either. 
Joey: We, we move through with grace. My mentor once told me that the day you stop learning is the day you stop growing.
And even now with the PhD in hand, I'm still over the moon to walk into my classrooms and figure out what I'm gonna be taught by all my students this coming semester. And when I go back and revisit all my syllabi and all my lessons upcoming. I put my mentality in the position of the student about to take my class. 
Emma: Mm-hmm. And 
Joey: I cannot wait. When I look at that to think about what they're going to teach me, it's like, as the student, what is the professor gonna teach me?
So in that mentality is almost like, okay, now what am I gonna learn from them? 
Emma: Mm-hmm. And building 
Joey: this course, and what questions will I ask, the things that I wanna know from them, and carry that future semesters. I love that. I love courses. Never get, it's like, ugh. I'm teaching this class again for the 10th term in a row.
It's, it's never like that because I keep it fresh based upon [00:30:00] what they have taught me, the, the time before I had taught it last. Love it. 
Emma: Love it. That's fantastic. And 
Joey: again, when our listeners hear our conversation in October, you're gonna have your book already released. Where can we go to learn more about your work?
Emma: Yeah, so my website is emma g music.com and my book, along with my interactive workbook and my other two books, um, are all available on Amazon, but there is a link to them , on my website as well. 
Joey: Perfect. And the website will be linked in those showing notes. Well, Emma, this has been a wonderful conversation.
Any final thoughts to leave us with for today? 
Emma: Just keep doing the good work. remember that. We don't know it all. Uh, to your point, if you're not growing, you're dying. But, , when it comes to challenging the norms, challenging our own understandings, , that's the best place to be, I think.
Joey: I love it. Love it. Thank you so much. So Emma g reminds us that music isn't something we listen to.
It's something we live through. From surviving surgeries to guiding teens through identity and emotion, [00:31:00] her story shows us that healing can be anything but passive and as educators. We don't just teach reading and math, we foster environments where students feel heard, valued, and brave enough to explore their own voice, musical or otherwise.
So thank you so much Ji, for being here and sharing your songs, your scars and your strength, and for reminding us all of that sometimes to help students heal. We just need to open our ears and our hearts, and as you have said in your own TED Talk, changing the world, one song at a time. Thank you again for being here.
Love 
Emma: it. Thank you. 
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 and education, one [00:32:00] conversation at a time.