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Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing in 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.

Welcome to an exclusive segment here as part of the Classroom Narratives podcast. You are tuning in at this time to what will be a spread out series of voices right from the heart of the system itself, its students. I recently thought about my favorite text, "The Help", where a protagonist works to expose the ills of a system, but in doing so, she must turn towards the very voices that [00:01:00] are being suppressed and cause change to begin one whisper at a time. In this segment and others to match, I revisit not only the students who formed the heart of the education system, but the very same students who formed the heart to my "Why" . All high school graduates and university students at the time of our recordings, these students will tap into their pasts with me as their teacher, some from their time in middle school.

We'll reminisce and talk openly about what worked, what didn't work, and what calls to action we can give onto the system to ensure that every student is equipped for future success. Now, let's go ahead and get started.



Welcome to today's episode everyone, and I'm so excited that you're tuning in today to my conversation with my former student Florence Shirman. And Florence is a junior at Florida Atlantic University and is studying towards her Bachelor's [00:02:00] in Neuroscience and Behavior. Florence was a student of mine in the second semester level writing course that I taught in the spring 2024 semester. During that semester, Florence and her peers worked with a term long academic research-based writing project called Your Voice Your Change, which I typically use to help students both reflect on live experience and also translate their insights into purposeful and audience aware communication. During that semester, Florence sought to dedicate her term long writing to produce an academic response to the October 7th, 2023 attacks in Israel that happened just a few months before our class began. Florence will talk a little bit about this process in terms of how she approached her writing, but we'll also briefly discuss what her other classmates were writing about as well, and how a classroom, how we bridge our voices into the communities around us.

This is an archived conversation from August, 2025, and the first question I wanted to ask Florence is, what does education [00:03:00] mean to you from kindergarten through 12th grade and now even well into college?

So I feel like. I don't even know how to exactly put into words because I wouldn't say it's a love hate relationship with education, but I definitely do think it has its pros and its cons, just like everything in life. I will say that ever since I was younger, I always had, uh, a positive connection with education.

I grew up in a household that grades weren't everything and that I absolutely think that shaped me into the person I am . But, uh, I definitely feel like growing up it was less pressure of my parents or by my teachers into, okay, you need, A's you know, you got to do well on these exams and these exams.

It was more so like, try your best and whatever the outcome is, the outcome is. You know, it's, it's more so the pressure that I put on myself [00:04:00] into getting the grades that I want to get, but like from like external sources, like my family, my friends, like, it was never like set into stone where if you don't get an A, that's it.

Like your life is ruined, which I'm forever thankful for because I know, you know, some of my other friends weren't as fortunate and had parents that really grilled them on grades, but I always did think that growing up, like I kind of wish that there was less emphasis on the specific grade on your report card and more so what you learn from that class.

Like seriously, because you gave us like the freedom to write whatever we were interested in, and I feel like a lot of the times, especially in English classes, we don't necessarily have that, that right to do that, but with your class you always gave so many like, words of wisdom that encouraged us even if we like didn't know

and like we were stuck in a little bit of like a, I don't really know [00:05:00] where to go with this, or like, now what, um, and I just feel like you really like set stone for what I could do. And that's why I felt so like emotionally like just attached to my work because it was coming from me and I had your support to say like, okay, this was great.

. So I just feel like, you know, like about my project personally, that's who I am. Like, I'm Jewish and I am so unbelievably proud. Always. Like, especially since like October 7th, I've been posting as much as I can and I wear my star as much as I can because I wanna show people I'm Jewish.

I'm so proud to be Jewish, like. I'm like, that's literally who I am. And like just having the ability to put something that I feel so connected to and like, I actually wanna make a difference whether or not I did. I don't really know. Uh, you know, um, I started a petition which has like 20 signatures or something, so I guess that's something, but just like, you know, [00:06:00] like.

Trying and at least doing something about it.

But I mean, just like, moral of the story is, I feel like, with education, I feel like it could be categorized into two things. You have your education where it's like the number or the letter you see in your report card.

And then you have the other category, which is like, this is what I learned, this is what I was taught, and this is what I could take on to my next class. Or even if I graduate school, this is what I could , take onto the next decade in my life and what I could do from it.

So I think that's just what I was trying to say is that with your class, I wasn't focused on the number that I got on my essays. It was more so like taking what I thought was so important to me and what I've been around my entire life.

So I think it was very important because I made it my own and I think that just made it so much more like enjoyable. Thank you for that. So you're making me think about a couple things.

And first of all, you're [00:07:00] making me think about just the way that we see grades. What exactly does that face value of a grade represent? And I was having a conversation on another podcast earlier and we were talking about standardization and compliance. Standardization as in everybody's reading the same text and everybody's writing about frogs, right? And level one, I think when you take creativity away, you're not doing standardization, you're doing compliance.

And that really limits thinking. So what I'm thinking about is in terms of our class that we had together, what were some methods that really helped you fall in love with learning? I'll say one is that you knew so many names of people around you in the class. How many classes do you go to in college where you know the names of the people sitting around you?

I had a class that there were like five people in my row. Keep in mind this is like, a chemistry class. There were like 400 people, but I knew five people in my row and I think I remember two. [00:08:00] You know what I mean? Yeah. You don't have that level of communication or just like feeling like actual humans that like we community.

Yeah. oh,. Absolutely. Community. So I feel like that was also like a very important thing or like, I took interpretation of fiction. Not this semester, like fall of, was it 2020? Fall of 2020. It was a year ago. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, fall of 2024. And I knew one girl was just like my good friend who sat next to me.

'cause it was a table of two and I knew nobody else. And it was like the same size as your class. Mm-hmm. It really got me to thinking like, I know this one girl, I don't know these two guys that sit next to me in the other tables, nor do I know , the girl and the boy back of me, you know, if I wanna say like, oh my God, this is a great idea.

I'm like, adding on that was a great [00:09:00] idea. Like, I don't really know people, and I don't think that those people necessarily cared to get to know other people. 'cause it was just like, you go to this class, you talk about fiction and then we leave. But in your class, you're right. We did have a sense of community.

I, I knew Denise, I knew the girls sitting next to me and like, I feel like it was a very, like, a more like, personal class because I was able to talk one-on-one or with other people and like, you know, it was great. I've had a conversation with a class before yours, actually, it was a, a fall 2023 class and I said to them, you all signed up to be here.

It's fit your schedule Wednesday, Friday, 1215. Cool. You're all together. Imagine how different the experience would be drastically depending on who's assigned to actually teach that class. The exact same community of students.

You think about how different it'll be if it was somebody else. Mm-hmm. So with a class like ours and classes that are like the ones that make you love learning [00:10:00] what works and what advice would you have for other professors to implement strategies that can shape their classrooms that are student friendly?

Honestly, like, I just think that the way you went about the school year and the activities that we did, and I just, I feel like it's the way that you structure things. You incorporated songs that we knew and we listened to music and we had so many different activities where we drew something or we talked to somebody, we got up and we communicated.

It felt like I was able to put my own spin on it , just because like you gave us the ability to do that. Like you didn't really like make it feel like as if like, this class was like, like a grade. Which obviously everybody knows it was because you're in college, like you're getting a grade at the end of it.

But it's more so of a class that I come, I learn, I communicate with people around me, I get ideas, they hear my ideas. I take this all information, go home [00:11:00] on my own pace, write about it, think about it, and then we come back and we do it all over again. So it was a great system that, like how you said, it felt like a community.

It didn't feel like you gave us something to do, everybody at the same time doing the same thing. Like, no, each person had different opinions, whether it was anti-Semitism, censorship, gluten , different video games, whatever it may be, uh, internet, you know. Um, so it was just great.

I forgot about the projects that went into health and dieting. Thanks. That's what I mean. Yeah. I, when this, girl said that she wrote about gluten like do you know how many other classes you would go in and you would hear a student talking about gluten for this?

And her final project was a cookbook, which was incredible. Which isn't, that's what I mean, like you're stemming these like people who were like still teenagers instead of making them think about one specific book or one specific like essay [00:12:00] prompt that you have to follow the rules to. You gave them free will to do it.

And look, now we have like a, a chef, we have, people making petitions. You have people making videos all from, you know, like what, what's one thing that you find really passionate and what's one thing that you wanna change about it? .

So Florence is talking about a semester long project called Your Voice Your Change. But Your Voice, Your Change is a project which pretty much says that, where it's asking a student to find a social issue, be a part of it, and flip it around. Find a solution to that problem.

If like, if you had to think about any social conversation that you could contribute your voice to find a way to do it and change it. And what Florence did is that she approached the topic of antisemitism in the after wake of October 7th, 2023, and created both a video and a petition around the dangers around antisemitism.

Some of her classmates wrote about dieting. One made a gluten-free cookbook, another did a [00:13:00] video on the dangers of censorship in the college class. And these students were able to contribute their voice as part of a community that made them think about ways to exchange essentially our stories.

Which I just think like, it all ties in so nicely because the classroom that you had was such a safe space that I genuinely did feel like I could talk about

my thoughts are that, you know, having like people in the back just like stare at me and like, oh, what is this girl talking about? Like her again. And I think that's such an important thing in the classroom because each person basically comes there to learn. I think it's important to remember that regardless of the age of the students that you have, each person has a mind of their own and that it's so important, like not necessarily make them think about the same thing, or I would say like, lead the way into discussing a similar topic, but let them have their own [00:14:00] way or their own perspective or their own opinions on that specific topic.

Maybe some people prefer writing. But I know for a fact I feel like others would prefer talking. 'cause it's so much, it's also easier, to look at somebody in the eyes, make eye contact, see their head nodding as you proceed to go on about what you're trying to say rather than, okay, this person wrote it on paper and I know what they were trying to say, but do I, was this the tone they intended for me to use?

Exactly. So like maybe let's not so much focus on writing it down. Give me a ticket, leave, I'll get back to you and then we'll discuss that later.

And then we should more so have a like an actual conversation in class. And that's why I also think it was so important we sat in a circle. Because in a lot of my other classes, I think in every other class I've taken in college. We've sat, you know, sat like, you know, desk, desk, desk, desk, desk, desk behind us.

So the [00:15:00] person in front, if I'm talking and I have Billy in front of me, I see Billy's head, I don't see Billy, I don't see Billy. As he's talking, I see Billy's head and the back of him and his partner also, Will, I see Will's head? I don't see when Will was talking, but being in that Socratic seminar type of circle where if Denise is on the opposite side of me, I, can clearly see her talk and I also think it's so important, like eye contact, um, seeing, you know, face like, oh, like, oh, what do, what does she mean by this?

Or, oh wow, that's really good. Like, you know, see people like nod or like they're just their facial expressions. I think that's so important. A classroom should be a, a form of community where we talk about it, it's a safe space. We have the ability to discuss whether we might not agree on the same thing.

Let's just stop for a second and talk about it. Thank you so much for that. So even beyond just having the community, what Florence is saying is it's also about validating the people who are in that community. And I think [00:16:00] those Socratic circles are definitely one way to show that validation from student to student.

Now that you are in your, entering your third year of college, right?

What are some things that you could tell either your middle or your high school stuff that you wish you'd known then and can think about? Or what is something that you wish you could tell a former teacher that really shaped you into who you've become now versus things you do or things you don't do because of your experience at school?

I think that's a beautiful question. If we're gonna go back to like middle school me or high school, me, I genuinely, and I, this might sound cliche, but I kind of wish I like, enjoyed the moment more. Like, because I remember when I was younger and I was like, I can't wait to be a teenager when I was like seven, like teenagers, like my sister's a teenager, I'm so excited.

Like teenage years. And then when I became 13, oh my God, I can't wait until I'm 16, you know, sweet 16. Then when I'm 16, okay, 17, um , dancing [00:17:00] queen, like that's gonna be me. Great. And then when I'm 17, I'm like, okay, I can't wait until I'm 19. Like my last year as a teenager, I was 19, I turned 20, I'm 20 right now.

And I'm like. What in the world? I do not wanna be 21 and I'm like, like I'm growing up like, great, like I have my life ahead of me. But at the same time, like I just, I really wish that I could just cherish the moment. Like in middle school I was stressing out over like US history and I'm like, what are you stressing out about?

And that's where it all starts. Like I was like, okay, here I need a 98 and this is where it all goes back. I wish that if I told myself at a younger age, your grade does not define you. And I actually gaslighted myself into thinking that I feel like I would be so less stressed. Who knows, maybe I still would be as stressed, but it's so much less pressure on myself because as I said when we just started talking, [00:18:00] it's not

my parents who are like, get A's, get a's, get a's. No, as long as you try your best, whatever that is perfect. . Do you care about others? Are you a kind person? Like that's what you come across when you meet people from all different parts of your life.

And just like, cherish time because, it goes by fast. But for teachers, I would say just like, again, this is probably gonna sound so cliche, but just like when you walk in their classroom and you just see them like smiling and you see them with a happy face and they're excited to see their students.

That changes everything. That actually makes me feel like they're excited to see their students. They're excited to teach about whatever the topic may be for the class. Because, I've had teachers in the past that looked miserable and you walked into their class and you're like, okay, well we kind of know that if you are miserable, you don't wanna teach about [00:19:00] rocks or whatever it may be.

Why am I going to be excited for it?

The atmosphere that you make, your classroom setting, I feel like is the atmosphere or the aura that the kids are gonna pick up on.

Uh, professors or teachers that after I graduate or I moved on from their class, not even graduate, I moved on from their class. I don't really see them anymore, but I still have a way to communicate with them. Like that shows that I am not just a name on your student sheet where you could just check off if I'm here and that's it.

Like at the end of the day, just another, another student I have. But it shows that like, I actually, I, I had, I had a connection with my teacher, with my professor, and if I'm not in their class anymore, I still talk to them. I still communicate with them. It shows that, again, I wasn't just the name, but I was a student and I hope that they definitely made an impact on my life.

Hopefully I did the same. Definitely done the same. Thank you for that. I think what I've gained as well is that our tone as the [00:20:00] instructor radiates throughout the classroom, so like if we come in and we looked really ticked off to be there, we have now permitted the students to feel the same. Ooh. We permitted them to not feel a desire to learn.

So I think when we bring in grace and we invite joy to the classroom, we have now mandated that the necessity of joy to be present with us and excitement as well for the duration of that period. For sure. I think that's also really important because, like what you said, like the, the energy that is radiated within the classroom. I feel like it goes both ways.

Definitely. We might not always get students who are excited to learn. And again, Florence, you're the exception, you were the science major who was so excited to learn composition 1 0 2, right? That's so rare that normally like you don't get that kind of feedback unless the professor shows the excitement to do that on their behalf.

And I think that really radiates. And as long as a professor shows up, and even if they had to talk themselves into [00:21:00] it, which I never had to 'cause I loved your class, but say, I'm so happy to be here. There's no place I'd rather be. That goes so far with the authenticity of that too. Absolutely. Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners today or final takeaways that you want them to leave with?

I think moral of the story is never underestimate your power, because I feel like one human could change.

It's like a domino effect because once someone sees that one person succeeding in their life and doing what they wanna do, that's it. I'm gonna go do the same thing. Never underestimate your power, because I feel like when there is a will, there's a way.

Thank you so much for tuning in, and we hope you enjoyed our Weisler alumni panel. Let's focus on the values of authenticity, flexibility and mindfulness as ways to become united as students and teachers while making our moments in school matter.

Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast. [00:22:00] 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 conversation at a time.