We need to be tuned in to where our students are at and to make moves that are pretty subtle at times, and not be afraid to pivot and shift gears and lean into other things. Or, if our students are taking a particular material and leaning in a particular direction, not to be worried about leaning in that direction with them

because it might actually open up other curricular opportunities that deepen the work rather than derailing the work.

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, [00:01:00] 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 back to part two of our conversation with Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf, who's here today to talk about his new text Teaching in the Riptide.

And in our conversation here today, we're gonna go ahead and compliment last week, but we're now going to be focusing on trauma and behaviors and how they all work together in the classroom setting. So Adam, let's go ahead and pick up where we left off. And thinking about just the role that trauma plays,

where in terms of, let's say you have a teacher that walks into a classroom and they're suffering from their own traumas, be it home life, burnout, whatever that might look like. And they put that onto the students. And I'm gonna ask you, if you could just set up for us this preface, if you will, of your Harvard experience with one of your instructors and what this looks like when professors really try to put some sort of alignment on the students.

Sure. So I had the moment you're talking about, I write about in I think, chapter eight of the [00:02:00] book, I think it's called, When Teachers Create Bad Students: the Unintended Devil Within. And, um, in this particular scenario, I was an 18-year-old, first semester writing student at Harvard.

And Harvard has a course that every student has to take called Expository Writing, and I signed up to take the literature version of expository writing. So we would read texts and we would write about those texts. And this was something that, you know, I always felt like I had a knack for, and I always felt like kind of intrinsically motivated by, and for whatever reason in this particular experience of this, my professor who in the book I, I refer to as Professor Nathan, it's not her real name, but I, I, you know, try to be ethical.

She was giving me really bad grades on my papers, and it was the first time in my life I had gotten bad grades in other things, if I'd taken particularly hard math course or something like that. But for English, it was always something that I had a lot of fluidity with, and it's something I had a great deal of love for and passion [00:03:00] and aptitude for.

And, at first I thought that maybe, I really didn't know what was going on, why she was giving me grades like Cs on my paper. So I went to meet with her after my second poor performance. And, I kind of figured out that I just needed to do what she thought I needed to do and like, so kind of writing the paper that she needed me to write, and then if I started to do what she wanted and like, kind of even as far as like the thesis that she wanted me to write,

and then the argument structure that she wanted me to write that I could perform at a relatively high level. So I think, you know, on that third paper, I got a b plus. And so I kind of was like, okay, well, maybe I'm back on track here and maybe I'll finish out this semester kind of strong.

And, um, sure enough, I kind of went back to writing the types of things that I liked writing about, you know, the ideas that I had, my original way of thinking, et cetera, et cetera. And Professor Nathan just started lambasting me on my papers and, I think the implication was that my [00:04:00] ideas were farfetched.

They were well supported, they were kind of avant garde. But I, I, I came to kind of think, and especially in retrospect that what was happening was that, I was thinking the way that I thought and that she wanted me to think the way that she thought, and that she wasn't tolerant of my individual way of thinking.

And so on my last couple papers, I think I got a D, I think I got a C minus, and she wound up, I'll never forget this. I, I write about it in the book and it's tattooed onto my soul like the Scarlet letter, although I think I see it more for what it's worth now.

But she said she gave me a C on my final transcript, and it was the only C I'd ever gotten in my life until that point, and actually since it's the only C I've ever gotten in my life. And she said, you know, Adam, I can't insist that you retake this course because technically you passed, but I want you to know that I strongly encourage you to do so, and I highly recommend that you don't become an English major at Harvard because you don't have what it takes to make it in English at this school.

[00:05:00] And she literally wrote that on my, on my final paper. It was so stunning for me because I was 18 years old, I turned 19 at the top of the second semester, and it was like a stunning moment of feeling like, oh my God. Like what is going on here? Um, even under like the kind of worst of all possible circumstances, you know, maybe she gives me a B or a b plus.

Maybe she doesn't love my thinking or whatever, but I was a really competent writer and thinker and to prove that, you know, not that I need to, but I've published two books now that I've written. I've published 25 plus articles and book chapters, you know major journals, so this was clearly an issue in retrospect and also at the time, but I really see it in retrospect where for whatever reason this teacher wanted, or this professor wanted to, I think unconsciously bring me down.

Like cut me down a few pegs, right? And, I didn't know what the hell was going on. It, it was a very kind of powerful moment. I describe it in the book as kind of the Sisyphus moment where I was trying to push the boulder up [00:06:00] the hill, and I just kept getting knocked down.

And the hill was kind of proving myself to the institution of Harvard. And, I spent several dark nights of the soul contemplating between first and second semester how seriously I should take her advice. You know, she's a Harvard professor, maybe she knows what she's talking about.

Maybe they're saying I'm not seeing here. Invariably it wounded me for sure. But I wound up becoming an English major and my GPA and my English major was about a 3.8 or something like that. So I think she was enacting some type of something and I was an unconscious test subject of some sort. So I write about that a lot. To your point. Think about like, well what does it mean when teachers or professors are creating impossible situations for students? Right? Like I think that we tend to think of misbehavior as the student is misbehaving.

But what happens when the teacher's misbehaving? What happens when the teacher or their professors bringing in a lot of their own emotional issues into the space and we all bring [00:07:00] emotional content into the space and sometimes there's that emotional content can actually lend itself well to great teaching because maybe, so I have a friend whose mother died and in the wake of his mother's death, he was teaching Hamlet and he felt like it was the best he ever taught the play.

'cause he was in the throes of having lost a parent. And he felt so connected to the text that he could leverage it. But sometimes what happens if people, that people have been hurt in particular ways or, and then hurt people, hurt people and students become unwitting bodies for the emotional shrapnel of the educator.

And I, I, I really wanted to have a chapter about that in the book because I think that that educators need to really practice mindfulness and they need to know themselves so that they can be productive and creative and thoughtful in the space. So that was that episode of my life.

It reminds me of, of almost like this rhetorical instance of when we teach a text. Like for example, my best time teaching the Giver was my [00:08:00] first time teaching the Giver, which was six months after the Parkland shooting had happened. Wow. And I'm chauffeuring a group of eighth graders into thinking about positive moments from before the tragedy and how those positive moments have also been, in a way complimented by negative moments with this appreciation for the whole human experience.

And same thing with Elie Wiesel and Holocaust six months later. Yes. When I had a student come up to me and confide in me after she heard a Holocaust speaker talked to the whole eighth grade, she said that she had been bullied for her religion since she was in sixth grade, two years prior, and just understanding, 

wow, 

the antisemitism that existed in my school and mm-hmm.

Mind, I should also say the matrix based response that administration took in understanding the actions with that also really enabled me to go into what is hate, how does it come about? Why does somebody like Ellie Wiesel write a story like this after being silent for five decades?

That was also a pretty remarkable [00:09:00] attempt to teach Wiesel's works as well. 

That's why. So that, that's fascinating. So I didn't know that. So he wrote that 50 years after he... wow. 

He vowed to keep his silence. And then finally he just, you know what, this isn't helping me, this isn't helping society, I need to somehow retell Auschwitz after Auschwitz.

That's fascinating. 

And when we talk about, just like for example, when I was teaching the givers six months after the tragedy, I too was processing my own negative memories from that event.

When teachers are struggling with their own outside instances. How can we carry practices into the classroom that still keep the educator safe and the students safe without blurring those lines to perpetuate more trauma? How do you talk about that in your work? 

It's such an important question.

It's an interesting question. You know, because people, people's traumatic experience can hijack them emotionally, right? And they can be, and I wanna say this with like all the empathy in the world, because all of us have all endured really, [00:10:00] really complicated things in life that have been painful.

And we've brought that pain into classroom spaces. And often as people are just doing the best that they can right? With what they're working with. I think a lot of it has to do with how much effort the educator puts into really knowing themself, understanding their own trigger points.

Right. We talk about students trigger points and like whether or not trigger warnings have the efficacy that we think that they have. But a lot of this also has to do with educators kind of having like a mindfulness, like thinking about their practices, really like working on themselves. I was just talking with somebody, and maybe it's because coming up to the New Year's, you know, we think about like our exercise, we think about like what we put the food that we put into our body, the choices that we're making, et cetera.

If you're an educator, you're responsible for all these young minds on some level, right? Like when they're in your classroom. It's a really big responsibility. And, it's not something that I think that good educators take lightly. Like there's nothing innocent about teaching, right? It's political. It's emotional. [00:11:00] And we have these things called grades that have a lot of power and potentially can shape and structure opportunities or non opportunities for these students. So I think. Really like creating opportunities for educators to deliberately think about who they are in the space and what are they noticing in their students and what are they noticing in themselves, and especially when things are feeling kind of heated or they have really kind of strong opinions or reactions to particular students to really try to unpack those charged moments.

In the field of psychology, we talk about that as counter transference, right? This idea that in the therapeutic context, what is the therapist feeling in regards to a particular person that they're working with? Well, what are teachers feeling in regards to students that they're working with?

Like that professor, you know, Dr. Nathan with me, if she had taken a moment or moments to really think about why she kind of needed to see me the way [00:12:00] that she needed to see me, like what was occluding her perspective. And we all have blind spots. Um, and it can be very helpful I think, also to have conversations with your colleagues and kind of check yourself, like what happens if, if you have a particular frustration with a particular student.

And students can be frustrating, right? So like many teachers or professors might be frustrated with the same student, but how about if you're an outlier? How about if like, everybody's like, oh, I, that's a, you know, I think it's a really good student. It's a really interesting student. And you have a particular invenomed response to them in some way.

Well. Maybe then it's a good opportunity to think about yourself a little bit. Right?

So like in a classroom, we're really siloed, but finding opportunities to process things with people in our community and check ourselves and at times, rather than having like a big overblown, powerful kind of negative reaction to a student knowing when maybe it's best to take a step back [00:13:00] and to let the situation breathe. And maybe revisit it when we have a bit of a clearer head where we're in a different state of mind.

I remember that you mentioned in your text that also in terms of the competition that exists in education, like we are competing with every outside stimuli that we don't even know about that's outside of the classroom from social media to breakups and I'll go back to that comment you make in chapter one on the Monday morning ritual where you have no idea what your students have encountered in the past 60 hours and you last saw them on Friday afternoon.

Right. 

And we don't know who came in with a meal that morning, who broke up over the weekend to try drugs on Saturday. And what that looks like when they all carry in that baggage and like you offered Adam, how is somebody supposed to then stand up and try and teach Hamlet to a group of freshman or sophomores without understanding that outside baggage, which I think that kind of also causes the riptide and even the politics behind instruction within itself.

Yeah. I mean, the moment that you're referring to, which is [00:14:00] what I started the book off with, is that between, even between Friday and Monday, I think a lot of teachers go in, especially this happens early in people's career, they're like really, really thinking about their curriculum. And really, I always joke about lesson plans because I think they're kind of hilarious.

Not that I don't create them, I do, but I also think it's ridiculous, this idea that somehow we're gonna do this for five minutes and we're gonna do that for 10 minutes and it's gonna see when said this other thing for 15 minutes and we're gonna finish up like, that's just not the way reality works. And I think that when we are too wedded to what we plan, I think we should plan extensively and then walk into the space and see what happens, right?

And try to push our curricular goals forward, but at the same time, be really open to the moment or the moments in education. You know, what you're talking about is this idea that between Friday and Monday, think about how many things they've been exposed to that are potentially interference points between where we left off on Friday afternoon and where we're gonna continue on Monday [00:15:00] afternoon.

And I think that good educators pay a lot of thought to the psychological state. You know, obviously you're not gonna know everything about all of your students. You may not know a lot about most of your students, but if you're emotionally intelligent, I think you kind of tune in, you know, what, what's going on today in this space, right?

Like, how has what I've planned going to interface with where the kids are today? And to really read the room on a moment by moment basis in a similar way. You know I had a pretty extensive performance career before going into education. And when I was acting and performing or singing or whatever it was, I was at a feel for where, where my audience was at.

And um, I think that as educators, we need to have that as well. We need to be tuned in to where our students are at and to make moves that are pretty subtle at times, and not be afraid to pivot and shift gears and lean into other things. Or, if our students are taking a particular material and leaning in a particular [00:16:00] direction, not to be worried about leaning in that direction with them

because sometimes people say, well, that's tangential. Well, it might be tangential for sure. It could also be something really fruitful that we hadn't prioritized that for them might feel really valuable and actually might open up other curricular opportunities that deepen the work rather than derailing the work.

Absolutely. And sometimes, as we said, the riptide, it's just coming from a group of people in the classroom saying, let's just stop, pause, and have a conversation that can then bring everything back on track once that discourse has been exchanged. Right. Which kind of positions the classroom as like this contact zone where as language is then exchanged and corresponded.

It just reshapes the way that the setting looks in order for more people to become engaged. And when it comes to that engagement, we've also spoken in your text about just how we can get students to actually become a part of that conversation through their own responses. You, for example, use [00:17:00] music in your classes, as do I.

And I'm thinking of one of the best compliments I got at the end of the semester, because at the end of every term, I do final one-on-one meetings where I literally take time to meet with every single student in all my classes. So I met with 120 students between Thanksgiving and December 5th this year.

And Wow. Just one-on-one. I just get solicited advice, which is usually pretty similar, but it's weird because like they're all saying the same thing. They're consistent, but they don't know what everyone else said because they're private conferences, which is a really cool thing to know. And one piece of advice I got that was very consistent.

In one group at one of my schools from a community that had a pretty decent variety, and by that I mean they were all freshmen, but most of them came from other countries. I had a lot of students that came from Korea this semester in this particular class, and there were quite a handful where English was not their first language, and because of that, the level of [00:18:00] silence was pretty high in the opening weeks for a class that really, really encouraged a rather invited communication.

But by the end of the course, there were a lot more people talking and I would have students whether the English was the first language or not. I had these students come into these meetings saying, Dr. Weisler, I don't know if you notice, but you really got so and so to talk by the end, or, wow, this person has so much more to share.

Do you realize that you created that space for them? 

That's awesome. 

I'm not sure how I did it. I, I can suspect how I did, but it was like not enough to like replicate Exactly. A, B, C, D, E. Yeah. But I got that quite a bit, where they said to me, how could you not be proud that by the final class round table, as we call it in December

yeah. You got all these students talking who would sit there with their head down in August. 

Wow. 

And so what are some different practices that we can get students to really find their way out of the void as we call it, my colleagues and I, where you're talking into the void for 16 weeks where the silence is [00:19:00] deafening.

Yeah. I mean, I, I could probably name it. I mean, I've never even seen you teach, but just having had a few conversations with you, I can probably sense that your students probably think, wow, this, this is a really nice guy who's peaceful, right? You, I think they know that you're not going to attack them. You're not looking to destroy them. You're looking to create opportunities for them for speech, right? I think they probably sense that in you. I think that they probably, by your demeanor, by your kind of positivity, I think that they sense over time, well, maybe he's not like some of the other adults in my life who have tried to dominate me or been so hopped up on their own thinking that what I say is kind of superfluous

anyway. So I, I think that we give off a tremendous amount. You know, it's not even about what you say on some level. It's about the kind of, you know, to be a little metaphysical about the aura that you give off about 

Yeah. The, what you do. Yeah. 

Your disposition, the [00:20:00] delight and interest that you probably take when they open up and have something.

And also like what you notice in them. You know, one, one of the things I think about a lot with quiet students is I, I might have a student who doesn't say particularly much, whereas I have other students who are quite engaged. But then when that student who's not particularly verbally involved, but I suspect is quite with the class, takes a moment to say something or volunteer, I really zoom in on that moment and try to prioritize it and in some ways even make more of it than maybe it even deserves, because I know that

what it symbolizes is the student taking a big risk in a way, and sharing in a way that I really wanna foster. So in the book, I have a chapter about some of the quote unquote best students we think of as obedient, right? 

Yes. 

And some of that obedience we think of, well, they're very obedient, so they're good students.

They do everything I [00:21:00] say, right? And I make the argument in the book that clearly there's something wonderful about working with students who are obedient and hardworking and disciplined in ways that are really appealing for us. But also that doesn't necessarily mean that they're the best students, right?

Because the best students, the people who really change the world are people who think outside of the box. People who are not afraid to be disobedient. When disobedience is kind of superior in a way to what's being asked for in terms of obedience, right? So you have somebody like, like, you know, Thoreau who writes on civil disobedience, like there are times to be disobedient.

Martin Luther King was somebody who was disobedient, right? He wasn't just gonna accept some of the norms that his society wanted him to succumb to. So sometimes we gotta fight against oppression. Sometimes we have to fight against close-mindedness, right? And so, a big [00:22:00] job for a student is to sense opportunities in a way to help their teachers to grow. Students all the time are sensing their teachers, I think rigidities and sometimes provocative students will push at a teacher's rigidity to try to unsettle them in a way to try to open them up. And so in the same way that we're trying to get students to open up, students at times are trying to get us to open up and see what they think we're not seeing yet.

And so I think that having that flexibility on both sides will make teachers better and make students better. 

Another piece of feedback I get at these one-on-one meetings the students say your class was not what we expected it to be in a good and different way. And it sounds like what they get in other classes, the words have you used are delight, interest, noticeability, creatively risky, creatively disobedient, opportunist, I wonder if that's not what students expect when they come into a [00:23:00] a realm of learning.

And if not, what do you think we've done to align education the way that it's perceived? And how can educators like you and I really try to reshape it? 

It is a wonderful, wonderful question. I mean, I think the history of education throughout many generations and, and in multiple parts of the world, throughout history, and it's less this way now, but the classical model is the teacher's the expert, or the professor is the expert.

Mm-hmm. 

And it's the banking model. It's, it's what ferreri refers to as the banking model, right? We're just supposed to absorb the brilliance of the thinking of the person who teaches us. We're supposed to retain that and be able to parrot it in some way where we're just, you know, we're mimicking it.

One of my favorite professors of all time, I think I mentioned him on the first part of this Sheridan Blau, who recently passed away. Yes. He was the president of NCTE and he was my mentor. And on my dissertation committee, he would talk all the time about false knowledge, and I love the idea that.

It's kind of like when a parent is trying to teach a [00:24:00] kid something, if the kid just takes what the parent is teaching them and accepts it without testing it, it's not real knowledge. So we have to come to knowledge authentically through our own experiences and some of that has to do with, you know, fighting against something that we're not sure that we believe yet until the point where we get to it and then we believe it ourselves.

Right. And then it's real knowledge. So I think there's this history in education of students just doing what their teachers are asking them to do. I mean, even the history of English education or English of the field of English was just a history of students learning speeches and then reciting those speeches.

And there was no criticality, there was no real thinking, there was no analysis. And, even the history of literary criticism was, all right, so I'm gonna read what Harold Bloom says about, you know, such and such a piece of work of literature. I'm gonna learn what Harold Bloom says about literature, and then I'm gonna say, well, that's what this [00:25:00] means.

Education historically has been a kind of model of students doing what their teachers and professors are asking them to do and then checking off the box that they had done it.

And somehow that was considered to be education. And I think that where education is going in certain really great places. So one of the places that I do a lot of my work in is, is a school in Brooklyn called Bay Ridge Prep, which I've helped to build over the course of the last 26 years, and it's a space where we really are interested in what the kids have to say.

We are really interested in how the kids think. And like to your point, you're asking like, well, why do my students open up in my classrooms in ways that are unexpected to them? And again, I've never been in one, one of Dr. Weiser's, you know, courses, but my assumption is that you present opportunities for them to really explore things in ways that are meaningful to them, which align with [00:26:00] your pedagogical values and the curriculum that you're putting in front of them.

Right. It's not that, that it runs anathema to what you're doing. It enhances what you're doing. 

Mm-hmm. 

And so I think that when educators are secure in themselves and they take delight and they cherish the thinking of the students that they're working with, they create unwittingly and wittingly opportunities for students to really grow into who they are and to really be celebrated rather than just to have a fantasia reference, broomsticks that divide into other broomsticks so that, we're recreating versions of ourselves in the classroom.

I think if we're good at what we do, we foster opportunities for growth for a panoply of different ways of students' identities to flourish in the space. Mm-hmm. 

When I get students to communicate, I never offer my own insight first, 

mm-hmm. 

I never shut them down. I validate. And if it's something that is just totally outlandish, I'll challenge them by saying, tell me [00:27:00] why you think the way that you are thinking right now with that.

And it creates a community of thought instead of dominance. 

A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. 

And I really would hope that such a climate, I think, again, it works in the college level, but at K 12 it might be harder, and maybe you can speak to that, where having a community of thinkers can also really limit behavioral problems as well.

You know, it's interesting, I work with graduate students at NYU and at Wesleyan, and a lot of these people are educators who are either in the field already in service or they're pre-service. And with a lot of the pre-service teachers, they come to Bay Ridge Prep and they visit and they sit in on our courses.

And some of them become student teachers with us as part of their training. And one of the comments that I've gotten from a number of my NYU students in particular, 'cause several of them have spent a considerable amount of time at Bay Ridge Prep, is that when they watch me teach at NYU or when they experience my teaching at Bay Ridge Prep, [00:28:00] they don't see much difference.

So that doesn't mean that I might need to frame something with a little bit more clarity for a group of adolescent students versus, you know, college students or graduate students, but what it means is that. The general good practice, it's almost like eating, like if you're going to eat at age 50 versus 30 versus 15, like good nutrition is good nutrition, right?

Good teaching is good teaching. And so if your primary objective is to open up opportunities for people to become the best and brightest versions of themselves, then you're creating those opportunities and you're fostering those cultures no matter what space you're working in. I mean, I think if you're working with younger students, you might have to be a little bit more controlled with structure because young students really benefit from structure. And you might have to teach 'em certain levels of discipline that, they have to ingrain at some level, right? But it doesn't look as different as you might think, because I think that when people feel [00:29:00] regarded and when people feel valued, and when people feel like they're part of a community and that when they're engaged.

A lot of the disciplinary stuff takes care of itself because they're immersed in the act of learning and thinking and creating and being a part of a community becomes really meaningful to them. So that's been my experience. 

So Adam and I are both a part of a community of thinkers where we place Maslow before bloom, if we can call it that, where we are more attuned to the students, I guess, physiological needs and being mindful of that as we then segue into their academic needs as well.

And for a quick little story, so when I was on my first ever interview for a middle school position, first time I've ever been on a teacher interview, I went back to my own former middle school. And I walk into the room and there's four people in the room. There's the principal, there's the sixth grade, no seventh grade assistant principal.[00:30:00] 

The eighth grade assistant principal, so I knew I was probably interviewing for a seventh or eighth grade role, and then the department chair seated right in between them. The department chair who I sat next to during this interview was my own eighth grade English teacher who inspired me to become an academic myself.

I loved writing when taking her class, and she also taught night school, and I dual enrolled for her composition level two class in my second semester of senior year. So I had her technically for middle school and college in a way. 

Wow. 

This is somebody who I have always trusted as a mentor and a figure in this field.

So during this interview she paused and said, let's do a little role play. She said, and mind you, this is a very, very, 

well upheld community with very few discipline issues. That's how I'll say it. So that's crazy. 

Yeah. 

She says, let's do a role play here where she says, what would you do if a student came to you one day and said, go F yourself, Mr.

Weisler. 

Mm-hmm. 

And this [00:31:00] teacher has known me since I was 13 years old, knowing I was very, very prim. Very, very proper, very, very prudish whether, I was 13 or 23 when I had my interview. And she was definitely looking for that shock value in me. And that's exactly why she got in this interview where I paused.

I looked at her, I looked at the principal, the principal looked at her, who looked at me, and we were all just having like this stare down. And finally I just said, well, I guess I'd pull that student outside and say, Hey, we didn't have a great day, but we'll do better next time. And then the whole room just kind of looks again.

They look at me, they look at each other, they look back at, you know, everybody else. And then they look back at me. Okay, well I think you've answered all of our questions. Thank you very much for coming in today. And what I found out later through other resources in the school was that the hiring committee had no confidence that I could actually [00:32:00] teach in middle school class, which was really, really just shattering to hear, which is why they only made me interim substitute to begin with.

And so you've had an experience like that yourself, Adam, in the actual classroom where you did have a student erupt. So I wanted to see if you could take us back to that moment and how you reacted and what is the expected reaction for teachers in those climates? And can the curriculum that we work with alter those types of outbursts in any way?

Yeah. So the moment that you're referring to, I write about in the first chapter of the book, and it's something I come back to later in the book. But it was a situation where I think I was relatively early in my career, I had, you know, let's say three to five years of teaching under my belt. And, uh, I was working a Song of Solomon with a particular group of students, and there was one student in the room who had a really, she was incredibly [00:33:00] bright, but not really school appropriate a lot of the time.

And so she would miss classes a lot. I think several of us suspected that there was a bunch of substances that were going on. It didn't seem like her home life was particularly cohesive. I think maybe the dad was out of the picture and maybe the mom was working, trying her best to keep things together.

I think this particular student was involved with older men in not such appropriate contexts. But she was really bright and interesting and she had good things to say when she wanted to. And then at other times. She showed up for class high maybe, or really disinterested .

And on one particular day she was flirting with another student in the room. And it was distracting to the point where I really wanted the other 17 students to be able to focus on the book that we were reading. And so I kind of stopped the class and I said, Hey, and I tried to do it in a way that wasn't particularly, you know, confrontational.

But I also wanted her to get [00:34:00] that I needed her to be on board. So I said, Hey, can we kinda get with the program here? You know, we're trying to read this book and have a conversation around it. And she was not happy with me asking her that. And she got triggered by it. You know, I, I don't know who I reminded her of or what the moment was, but she would, she let me have it.

She stood up and, and full throated. She goes, fuck you, like full on. And um, then kinda the class just went dead silent. She stands there kind of looking at me, I think maybe even a little bit surprised about what she had done. She then proceeds to march fervently to, towards the door, kicks over the trash can, opens the door slams, and it goes down into the hallway.

And it was this moment where I was completely unprepared for this. It was unlike anything I had experienced previous. I know on the first episode I talked about trauma and cupcakes. That was a whole other, you know, thing to deal with. But it was such metaphysically violent [00:35:00] moment, right?

Where it just like, it was like a record scratch. And like, I'm asking myself, how am I gonna get these students back into this book? You know, I think we had like 25 minutes left in the class period. How am I gonna make sure that the student who just went out of the hallway is safe? 'cause she's obviously like in an emotionally intense state, how am I gonna get ahold of myself?

I'm not trying to like play this as though like everything was smooth, like, back into euphoria. It wasn't like that at all. But the first thing I needed to do was I needed to make sure that she was okay. 'cause she had just left the room and I needed to check in.

And so I did that a bit. I saw where she was in the hall, and then I also notified the school counselor to please check in with her. So that seemed like an important step. But then I walked back into the classroom and I didn't feel the need to really recap. Like everybody knew what happened.

They were all there, right? So. I underplayed the moment and said something like, well, you know, it, it seems [00:36:00] like she's having a, a pretty tough day. Like, you know, let's just do our best to kind of get back to this stuff. And, and then I started think, and, and I, I tried to conduct the class as best I could from that point, but the next question was, well, what happens with this student in the aftermath of this huge fuck you in front of everybody, right?

And, um, one of the reasons why I didn't want to have a huge reaction in front of the rest of the class is that I didn't want the, the rest of the students to see me as somebody who was particularly susceptible to being shaken. Because in a lot of ways, when you're the educator, you're the defacto leader in the space.

And with kids, when they sense that you're rattled, then they lean into the rattle. And I was rattled. I was totally rattled, but at the same time, I had a job to do and I was trying to be professional. But then there was also the issue of the student and I really suspected on a deep level, especially as I kind of took the rest of the day to think about it, I suspected that whatever had just happened was that she was in a crisis.

That whatever was going on in her life was so intense. Is that like, there's a great quote, right? Any [00:37:00] port in a storm, right? Like she needed a port, like she was in a storm. And so I let the day pass, I contacted again the school guidance counselor and I let the head of school know. And then we set up a time to meet a couple days later and when things had kind of deescalated and she came into the meeting and I wasn't there to, it was obvious that she had violated the norms.

Like I didn't have to tell her that she knew, right? So I went into that room and she was actually quite sheepish, I think, that she felt like, you know, embarrassed about what she had done. And the first thing that she did was apologize. And then we kind of just went from there and just talked it through and then she said something to the effect of like, I promise, like that's never gonna happen again.

And I'm too smart to think that that's true. You know, like if somebody's susceptible to that type of stuff, you know, she's going through a lot. But we, we tried to unpack maybe what it was that had set her off so much. And then, you know, I I, I, I did say to her, I said, you know, I'm gonna, I'll try my best not to put you on the [00:38:00] spotlight like that again.

And then, sure enough, we didn't have another big event like that for the rest of the year. but I think that it's kinda like one of those moments where you're just about to write that email because you're really angry about something and you're gonna write an email that you know is probably not the best thing to say.

So you shelve the email and then you know, you send it next day or when you can be a little bit more calm. There's a term in psychology that maybe many of your listeners know called reflective functioning, right? It's how well can I process my own mind and my own reflective capacities when I'm emotionally triggered by something?

And, usually with most people, like if you're emotionally triggered by something, you might be hijacked by those emotions and incapable of responding reasonably to something. So in those moments, as educators, we're always in situations that are potentially volatile or potentially a lot. So to take those moments to, to calm things down inside of ourselves and with our students [00:39:00] before leaning back into it.

And I think in that case, having a couple days to let this kind of percolate, let her think about it, let me think about it. Let her talk to the guidance counselor and then reconvene, I think wound up being a better moment than me somehow, firing back with vitriol. And then it just escalates and nobody wins in those situations.

And so from what I'm gathering, well first of all, I'm curious, when you came back into the room to see her for the first time after that incident, for that meeting, for educators that find themselves in those spaces, how do they start those conversations? What do they do during those conversations? How do they bring up the issue in a way that is correcting and not triggering?

I think from the educator's perspective, it comes down to cooling down our own response. Giving ourselves time and capacity, and like, first of all, after that moment with this student, this big f you moment, I unpacked that [00:40:00] moment with three different people in my department.

Right. I unpacked it with the head of school. I unpacked it with a guidance counselor, and then I unpacked it with a colleague who I had a really strong working relationship with, so that I was able to see it with more complexity, right? Like basically, the band U2 has a great album.

It's called How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, right? Yeah. Like sometimes as educators, we have to dismantle atomic bombs, right? We have to dismantle these moments. So if we can have more equanimity, if we can give ourselves a little bit of space from the moment before we go back in, we're gonna go back in with a calmer perspective.

And I think that she was probably terrified of whatever response she thought I might have and I think that she actually probably felt relieved when she noticed that I wasn't in there to be angry at her, that

whatever it was that she imagined I might feel like she needed to learn. I knew that she had learned it already. I didn't need to teach her that it was inappropriate. She knew it was [00:41:00] inappropriate, right? It was. It was outlandish. So I think that when she sensed, I think that I was coming at it from a constructive standpoint, trying to understand her side more and then see how we could work more productively going forward.

I think that deescalated her defensiveness. And allowed us to enter into a more constructive way of looking at how to move forward collectively. So one of my chapters, the chapter, one of the chapters where I talk about this thing is called basically looks at punishment versus empathy.

How do we think about that? Mm-hmm. And you know, in some situations students get punished because they need to be punished. There needs to be a consequence, you know? But in some situations, having empathy and looking at things and trying to see things through your students' eyes and trying not to move towards like a reflexive punishment or reflexive discipline is a much more productive way of creating a long-term desired result in the [00:42:00] classroom.

Definitely having support over punishment. And as you also mentioned, empathy over punishment is a great way to bring those relationships back to where they are because I think one thing that we've taken away from our conversations in two parts here on the rip tide is that we can't control our students' behaviors and their lives in terms of you cannot control how that student's life was before they came into your classroom or what was going on outside of those school hours.

But what we can do is leverage our curriculum in the way that can possibly deeper connections with students. 

A hundred percent. Yeah. and, and, like we talked about before, if a student is taking your class, they're gonna sense a lot of things about you that are probably gonna make them much more at ease about themselves, right?

Because everybody brings into a room relationship with authority figures, everybody has either parents or caregivers. Everybody has other teachers that they've had. Coaches, other people who have maybe abused their power or been inappropriate about boundaries and been [00:43:00] inappropriate about discipline.

And we're pretty sensitive to reading those things when we enter into a space. So if students, it may not happen right away, but over time, if you're consistent with students, I think they're gonna sense where you're coming from and, and get a sense of trust with you and safety with you.

That doesn't mean, by the way, I do want to clarify. We really want to provide meaningful stress for students. Not ridiculous stress, or not destructive or traumatic stress, but like meaningful stress. We wanna push people. 'cause if we push them, they're gonna get better, right?

Under the right circumstances. So this isn't about being like watery or, let's have a vacation year together. It's not about that, but it is about finding and creating meaningful learning opportunities for students to trust us, trust their community, grow collaboratively and benefit from everybody in the [00:44:00] room and for the educator to think about how to enculturate those growing spaces.

Thank you so much for that. Any final thoughts for our listeners based upon our two part conversation on the rip tide? Anything to leave us off with? 

Yeah, man, so many things. Um, we 

need a part three. 

I know. We, we need a part 20. I think that the educators who get really good at what they do never stop being a bit relentless with themselves about their own growth.

Mm-hmm. 

So when I think about the teacher that I was 26 years ago when I started versus now, I always push myself. I never, I mean, and, and maybe some of this is, you know, to my own detriment, you know, but I don't rest on my laurels. I want to grow, I want to expand, I want to keep reading. I want to keep thinking about what's in the field.

I want to keep thinking about how I can bring out more and more depth and capacity and my students and create richer and richer learning spaces. So I think a lot [00:45:00] of, educator training talks about holding students to high standards. We need to hold ourselves to a high standard. Like, if I'm not happy with how I've taught, then that means that I haven't done the best that I can for these people in the room. And I know when I'm good. I know when I'm on. , And I feel like I owe something to my students, and I feel like.

As teachers rather than using all our evaluative tools, to put A's and B's and C's, whatever on their papers and tests, et cetera, et cetera. I think we should be pretty rigorous with ourselves and I think the more rigorous we are with ourselves, the more growth we're gonna see in our students.

Totally. And I'll read a quote that you also have here as well, if I can back to our earlier part of the conversation where you say most teachers do not show up to class with , a conscious effort to do harm. And ironically, many teachers who play at their own conflicts within the context of the classroom, genuinely believe that they're helping to improve the conduct and performance of the kids that they teach.

And that goes back again to [00:46:00] just the triggering that we do with no classrooms unintentionally. But to your point, Adam, one thing that we can really do as educators is to just take pride in what we do and how we do it. And what I'd like to do is I like to see myself as a student in my own classroom and I look to think.

Did they enjoy what happens today?

Absolutely, yes. Yeah.

And as to come to the end of our two part conversation on our anchor text "Teaching in the Riptide" by Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf, where can our listeners get the text?

yeah. For anybody who's interested in "Teaching in the Riptide", um, it's available through Rutledge. It's available through Amazon, I believe Barnes and Noble, Target. You can also email me with any questions. My email is aw126@nyu.edu. And let's keep talking about education and making better teachers and better students.

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 [00:47:00] 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.