Joey: [00:00:00] 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, the 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.



Joey: Hey, welcome back to another Weisler alumni-based conversation, and today I'm so excited to be welcoming Tom Coberley, who is positively unmatched from any other alumni interview that I've had on this show so far. Tom was a student of [00:02:00] mine in summer 2024 for English Composition two. Tom is a staff sergeant in the Army Reserves and has been a communication sergeant for six and a half years. When I taught Tom, he was a student returning to school in his mid twenties as a husband and father to be at the time.

And at the time of our conversation in spring 2025, Tom was considered a junior by credit. Tom, thank you in advance for your insights and warm welcomes to the show.

Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Did I get everything right in your bio? You nailed it. Yeah. Six and a half years active duty, and I've been in the reserves for, July will be two years. Wow. Yeah. Well, thank you again for your service.

Happy to do it. And I wanted to start by asking how did the system of education either fail you or succeed you, and especially in working your way through traumatic experiences throughout what you've done, how has education become something that has either made you better or defined what those experiences were?

I gotta say, I started off with a very [00:03:00] negative view of education coming from the, the high school that I went to. I grew up in a very small town in Texas. And, um , the school, you know, had 225 children from pre-K all the way through high school. And, uh it didn't really, we didn't really, um, draw the best educators in from that kind of school, you know, or it came to funding and stuff like that.

So, uh, a lot of the educators were really based around kind of just, pushing people through, and, not necessarily, um, looking for the weak student and attempting to help them. It was more, you know, check a box, push students through. So that's why I didn't go to college immediately out of, high school.

And I wasn't planning on going to the, to the military, but I realized I didn't want to go back into a classroom because I just had such a negative taste in my mouth, from the experience that I had for the last 12 years going through, primary, middle, and high school. So. Uh, I went into the Army and, um, like I said, I was telling you before we started, believe it or not, the Army is actually really big on higher education.

They want, their soldiers and, their members, to be educated leaders. So I was [00:04:00] able to kind of use college as a, especially 'cause I took some, uh, English composition courses, in the first institution that I was a part of, and I actually did get to use that as kind of like a journal to, get out stress and stuff like that.

Uh, you know, day-to-day activities in the army, jumping outta airplanes, that kind of stuff. So it was a kind of a catalyst to get that stuff out and get it onto paper , kinda like we did in your course. And in our course together, our focus was to using the premise of Wicked the Musical to try and find a social issue or circumstance where we feel like our voice can help us defy gravity to make changes for good and to follow that issue and write it about that issue all semester long.

And for us, we had a very short summer session of six weeks, so that was a lot to ask for over the course of six weeks. It worked out though. It was really nice. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. It was so much fun. Thank you for being a part of that. Of course. And what would you say was either some kind of takeaway or a life [00:05:00] lesson that you may have gained from a classroom situation, and how do you still apply that to what you do today?

Not to flatter you or anything, but I do look back on that course and . I like that , it was writing through trauma or trying to understand trauma , through literature in the course and stuff like that. And I think that, uh, something that I really took away from that is that everybody kind of experiences it differently. It's not necessarily a blanket statement, even though in, in the paper that I wrote, I kind of, you know, included the definition from the, I think it was the National Institute of Psychiatry or something about what the actual definition of trauma is. But I think listening through some of the stories in the eyes of the, the other students that were in the class kind of helped me realize that there are different kinds of trauma per se.

And that it is still very much a trivialized term, unfortunately, , throughout, you know, popular culture and social media and stuff like that. So I think that's something that kind of stuck with me while I was writing that paper, and traumas, uh , a diverse and varied word, but it still needs to be respected and used appropriately.

Definitely. [00:06:00] And situations that we feel like they can still be traumatic and if it means something to us, the trauma that's there, but it is trivialized to the point that we still lose touch with what that definition actually looks like. What would you say was also overall as a student, your best and your worst moment in the classroom?

And why do those moments still stick with you? And if it was your best moment, how did the system succeed in that moment? And if it was your worst moment, how could the system have responded differently because of it? I typically like to focus on the good parts. Uh, again going back to the course that we were in together , I really enjoyed being able to kind of, uh, more or less mentor some of the students that were in the class with us. You know, I was, I think the oldest person in there by almost a decade.

So, uh, getting to share my experiences from outside of, of high school or college , out in the real world. And, impart maybe a little bit of wisdom or different viewpoint onto them, is something that I really enjoy doing. I, I like doing it in my military capacity. I love mentoring and teaching, and I love [00:07:00] doing it with anybody really who I feel wants me to. I'm not gonna force it on somebody, but I feel as though I got a great opportunity to kind of help, uh, steer some of the students that wanted to be in the class, through some of the topics and stuff that we talked about for sure.

And what enabled that was having opened communication or a classroom that set up the platform for students to be invited to speak, not forced nor pressured, but be invited and to share at their own. Absolutely. And, and, uh, sorry, and the way that you had the classroom set up, in a , essentially just a giant U shape around the instructor, I think is, is extremely beneficial versus, you know, the standard lecture hall , and when I do any kind of demonstrations or teaching, you know, communications platforms or something like that , to lower enlisted soldiers or something like that. I like to have 'em gather around you kind of like a horseshoe, because it's so much less rigid and it really allows you to engage, and they feel more able to engage 'cause they're not in a rigid line across the classroom.

Definitely. And when you have that capacity to have your audiences look at each other and [00:08:00] validate each other, there's much deeper connection that forms versus looking at the back of someone's head and not knowing what their facial expression looks like when engaging in really, really honorable and serious discourse that helps the classroom continue to thrive.

Can you talk to us about a type of project or an engagement that you've done as part of being a student that you're still proud of today? Maybe you've done a school project or you've been a part of a competition, or you've been involved in your school somehow that makes you feel gratification in the work you continue to do.

Sure. Uh I kind of do gotta go back to the paper that I wrote for your course. Really just the being able to write about the trauma that I've seen other people experience in the military and being able to put that on paper and help people understand that taking the, the term trauma out of context and using it in your day-to-day life really defangs the word. And that there are people out there, not even, and just in the military and people like yourself who were a part of what happened down in Parkland. And, [00:09:00] um.

It happens all over the world. And, and when those people experience that and then they go on social media and somebody stubbed their toe and suddenly they have trauma or they spill their coffee and now they have trauma, I just feel as though it defangs the word. And, I'm really proud of the paper that I wrote on that.

I really hope that it, uh, you know, it helped me kind of understand it more for myself. 'cause I got to step away, from the paper and, and think about it while I was writing it. So, that's probably one of the few projects I've actually gotten to do while in college that really required a lot of thought,

so I think that's the one that probably sticks with me the most. As the instructor. Thank you so much for that. And my hope is that the writing that you do in the college setting, the work that you're continuing to do will permit you to write your way through, maybe not out, but through a circumstance that helps you recover and find your mind, find your wholeness, and find your voice once again because, you got through.

Yeah, absolutely. My last question is if you could go back to yourself [00:10:00] during either middle school or high school and tell yourself something that you know now or maybe address a former teacher from that time who has really impacted you positively or negatively, what would that look like and what would you want others to know now, including an older version of yourself now that you're no longer a student in the K 12 or kindergarten through 12th grade setting?

Yeah, like I said, the, the school that I went to high school in was just, um , I think there were people in there that wanted to help and they were kind of caught up in the system, kind of just being told to push people through. Um, I'm not a very, great math student, if you wanna put it that way and we had a math teacher this individual didn't particularly care if you got the material or not. And I, I think that if I could go back and, speak to that person, I would say that you're, you're failing your students. Uh it's not about the ones that have the A's, it's about the ones that have the C's and why they have the C's and the D's and the F's.

And clearly they're not understanding material. And if they're not coming to you, you need to go to them. I think that that's something that I, I wish I could go back in time and tell [00:11:00] this individual because , I didn't excel in math and I'm sure you know, the people after me, also did not excel if they struggled already.

I appreciate that Tom. 'cause it, it reminds me that I was told my first year of teaching that the students who wants to get the A will always end up finding their way to get that A or that B. And it's the ones who are in the middle and on the lower end of the grade scale who need the extra support that sometimes they don't know how to get it.

And as the educator, it's not looking at them and saying, oh, what's wrong with them? It's trying to find the supports to say, okay, here's where they stand. How can I help them improve? And is there a key takeaway from our conversation that you want thought leaders in education to know? I think that everyone throughout the education, educators and and administrative staff need to realize that there's just more than one way to teach a class. And it doesn't have to be the most rigid clock in, clock out kind of classroom environment.

I don't think that's conducive to learning for most people, and it is not enjoyable. So I kind of hope that's [00:12:00] what the system will kind of change to be more geared towards a more fluid form of teaching where yes, we're, we're accomplishing the material and we're getting the point across and we're helping students succeed and excel.

But it doesn't have to be such a rigid by the book form of teaching.

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 conversation at a time.