Behavior Support: Who needs it more...teachers or students?

Can we reclaim the teaching profession from the brink of burnout? Join  my insightful guest, Tracy, a seasoned social-emotional learning specialist, and me as we unravel the complex web of challenges that educators face today. From Tracy’s inspiring journey from a first-grade teacher to a behavior support role, uncover the systemic inadequacies that often lead to high burnout rates and the pressing need for a community-driven conversation.

Chapters

• 0:05 Teacher Burnout and Education Challenges
• 12:59 Challenges in Educator Collaboration and Support
• 21:01 Challenges With Classroom Safety and Support
• 27:15 Educator Burnout and Support Systems

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to TAUT the podcast. Before diving into today's episode, I have an important reminder slash disclaimer to share. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, organization, employer or company. Content provided on this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional advice. We encourage you to do your own research and consult with qualified professionals before making any decisions based on the information discussed in this or any other episode. Additionally, any opinions or statements made during the podcast are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company or individual Listener. Discretion is advised. Thank you for tuning in and we hope you enjoy the show.

Speaker 2: 1:12

When I get called in to work with a teacher, it is often because things have been going poorly for quite some time and they're out of ideas. So they finally call us and I walk into a lot of spaces where things are challenging. I have experienced more in the last two and a half three years. Teachers I work with are walking right out of the profession, right Like I'll coach them, which should be supportive. It's actually proven to be the most effective support for teachers to change their practices and instead of that being the case, they're like nope, this is too little, too late and I'm done and I'm leaving. And they're either leaving the school, they're in the district they're in, or the professional together.

Speaker 1: 2:08

A few years ago, I started writing a fictitious story based on my time as an educator. It is called Taught, and the story was partially inspired out of anger and frustration fueled by burnout. Okay, actually, it was more than partially inspired by anger and frustration Okay, actually, it was more than partially inspired by anger and frustration. But taught has also become a vehicle for me to tell what I thought at the time and in some ways continue to think was and is the real story of teaching. I now realize that my perspective is not everyone's perspective, but there are some pieces of taught that resonated with many educators. This podcast is an extension of that story and I, a former teacher, will interview other educators, asking them to share how they really feel about the current state of education. Why are so many teachers burnout? Why are so many like me leaving the field? We likely won't solve any problems or come up with any solutions, but we can create a community of voices that maybe begin the conversation around how educators can take back teaching. I'm Melissa LaFleur. Welcome to Taught, the podcast. Today I have Tracy with me.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Tracy is a social-emotional learning specialist right now, but when she and I met she was a first-grade teacher. Tracy's classroom quickly drew the attention of many people in our school and our school district because she was merging her special education background with her training on social-emotional development, thus creating a very unique first-grade community development, thus creating a very unique first grade community. The students started the year with language, to discuss their feelings and strategies to cope with the big feelings that first graders can have. The results were amazing. These six-year-olds became a kind and compassionate community of learners who treated each other with respect.

Speaker 1: 4:03

It seemed as if Tracy had found the magic elixir that we were all looking for and, as happened so many times, she was pulled out of her classroom and into a different area of education, an area where the hope was that she could create the same dynamic she had in her classroom. This was the world of intense behavior support. She was transported from a classroom where she could define success and create the environment she knew would support all students into a shared space. In this shared space, she was given one corner and expected to recreate her success with students from multiple grade levels, in different classes and all with differing abilities to regulate their emotions and behavior. This is the world of most behavior specialists today, and it's a world where the burnout rate is pretty high. Today we're going to hear Tracy's thoughts on burnout as well as her current role in education. Tracy welcome.

Speaker 2: 5:09

Thank you so much for having me Excited to be here and talk about all things education so tell us a little bit about kind of your story, what brought you to education?

Speaker 2: 5:19

What brought me to education was a really, really long and twisting path. I remember being in high school and just outside of high school in college and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and all the advice I got from people who knew me closely. Everyone said you should be a teacher, you would be so good at being a teacher and I firmly rejected that idea because I had not had a really good experience in the education system I went to. I actually went to private school, catholic school and it was not a good fit for me. I asked repeatedly to not go to the school system that I went to and that was rejected and it was just really hard and I kept hearing you should be a teacher and I was like I will not be going back into this system for the rest of my life. That was not supportive of me when I was in it.

Speaker 2: 6:18

So I actually ended up working in residential for children and young adults who had developmental and intellectual disabilities and that's really challenging work. We did a lot of really intense behavior support. I actually ended up back in schools supporting, as essentially a surrogate parent or fill-in parent, many of the kids that we had lived far away from where they were living with us or their families did. So I went in the family representative in IEP meetings so individualized education plans for these kids and started seeing kind of how messy special ed was for kids who were in it when me, as like a 22 year old, was the one advocating for them and I had no business doing that. So I did that for a while and from there I actually moved into working as a behavior specialist for an agency.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Working as a behavior specialist for an agency, so I worked across 10 different school districts, again working with the same population of individual students. But then we were assigned one-on-one to work with students who basically school districts didn't know what to do with anymore, so they hired outside agencies to come in and work with these kids and that was also a really high burnout job. And so I actually shifted to work into one classroom again kids with really, really big needs and it was there that I had a really great mentor and at this point I was in my oof, I was, I was older, we'll just say older and decided that instead of being a support staff in a school, that I should be a teacher.

Speaker 2: 8:16

So I went back to school and became a teacher and thought, because I'd spent all of this time working with kids who needed more and were in the special education system, that I was going to be a special education teacher and my degree that I got in education set me up to be either an elementary school teacher or any age special ed teacher. And I tried to skip being an elementary school teacher because I didn't think I wanted to do it. I asked for a waiver. I said can I please just skip this part and go right into special ed, because this is what I'm going to do? And they said no. And so I landed in a first grade classroom to student teach and decided, once I was there and really doing it, that I loved it. And I ended up teaching first grade for a few years and I really did. As you mentioned in the intro, I loved teaching first grade. I loved making that community.

Speaker 2: 9:10

I absolutely ruffled some feathers, I think, when I wanted to do things the way I did, being asked how I could afford to spend three minutes after recess doing a mindfulness activity with kids. How could we afford that time? Yeah, and I was just like I don't know how not to right, like, have you seen them come in? Yeah, they're wild because they should be right, like they were just outside spending all this energy. Yeah, they're wild because they should be right, like they were just outside spending all this energy, and um. So I just I found ways to do it differently and make it um, in all honesty, I needed it to be an environment where I could be okay, yeah, and, and that's what I did, and it was, uh, definitely different than how a lot of people did it.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Many of those strategies work for all of us, not just for kids.

Speaker 2: 10:08

It's interesting because now that's what I do is try to onboard adults into thinking about what do you need? And if that's what you need, how do you make that accessible for the kids that you work with?

Speaker 1: 10:21

You know, I just interviewed a guy who's doing some different kind of work, but he was in the classroom and he actually was from the UK, and he said that he realized, as he was doing the activities that were meant to kind of help kids look at things differently for their own education, that a lot of it was mindfulness and a lot of it was strategies around taking care of themselves and just looking at things in a different way. And he said what he realized is that the teachers of those kids were being affected by it as well, and so he started advertising his program and things to hey, teachers, you could do this to help your kids. And what really happened is the teachers came in and got the resources for themselves first and then were able to take their kids in that path. That sounds very similar to the work you're doing that path.

Speaker 2: 11:28

That sounds very similar to the work you're doing. It really is. I keep thinking about it. I actually often tell people when they're like, oh, you're a teacher, what do you do? And I'm like, well, I work with adults. So it's not quite the same and it's often hard because you lose a lot of the joy that comes from teaching, right Like when you're with kids. They are funny and they are learning and growing and you get to see that happen and it makes it really rewarding. And when you work with adults in a K-12 system, they are frustrated and overwhelmed and moving towards burnout and things are really hard and it's hard to see the growth and it's hard to see that what you're doing makes a difference. But the hope is that you start to shift adult practice. Right, Like that's all I wanna do is start to shift adult practice. I'm not here to change or fix kids. I'm here to think about what do we do to make this a sustainable place for adults to be, so that kids can be supported.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Yeah, because if we are broken adults, we can't be showing up for kids. I don't know if you remember when we worked together I went and did this whole big workshop from some people who had started this work with Carol Dweck on mindset stuff at Stanford and then they brought their program to UW you and they put on this thing that we all got to go to for free. So I was like, yeah, let's do it. But one of the big things from their research was how educators need feedback. But they need feedback from people who are doing it right and I think that that's such a piece that we're missing right now in education. There were think that that's such a piece that we're missing right now in education.

Speaker 1: 13:26

There were definitely things that I could give feedback on, but I was not doing them right. There was something that I was doing right that I could have given feedback on, but one of the things that when I brought all this information back to the building because that was in education land if you go to the workshop, you got to bring the stuff back for everybody. Land If you go to the workshop, you got to bring the stuff back for everybody. I was in no way should I have been teaching any of that? But one of the things that they wanted us to do is to go observe, just observe each other in the building teachers, especially if we knew somebody was I don't know. Whatever, whatever, your thing is right Social, emotional learning. If you have a great practice for getting kids to calm down after recess, then have other teachers go in and observe that. So I went back and I was really excited about it and nobody wanted to do it. Nobody wanted anyone to come into their room and see them.

Speaker 1: 14:22

And I think that this is. We are such a broken people, teachers. We just live in this fear of being evaluated harshly and criticized that sometimes we forget what our own gifts are and we forget that we do have contributions to make. And boy, that is just such a not great mindset for us to be in. When we're dealing with little people, we want to be bringing them joy and them to feel confident in us. We should feel confident in ourselves.

Speaker 2: 15:01

Right, I think it's so hard to teach that to kids when we can't model that in our own practice. Right, you children should be open to getting feedback from me, hearing about all the ways that you need to learn and grow, and I'm going to close my door and put my head down and want no one to see what I'm doing or give me feedback so that I can learn and grow.

Speaker 1: 15:26

I think that makes your position in your district an amazing one that clearly the staff well, I'm not going to assume here, but the district believes that people can overcome that hurdle of having an adult come in and maybe show them some ways to look at things differently.

Speaker 2: 15:47

I appreciate your optimistic view. I think that I am really really grateful that my position exists, because my position does not exist in most districts. We do have a social emotional learning department, but our department is made up of three people for 35 schools, like 17,000 students. So to think that the three of us are making a huge impact is really optimistic. I think about the fact that our elementary success team right, they are only supporting elementary schools, which is like 22 schools, right, so it's still a lot. Maybe I'm overestimating there, but they have nine, 10, 11 people on their team, right, so, and their focus is language arts and math. So, super important. And that's where our priority is right, like that is absolutely where we're putting our investment in people is in academics, and we're sort of an afterthought and we don't often get included in things and we don't always have a seat at the table and we exist, right, so it's both.

Speaker 1: 17:03

And we know this is not new research that kids who are not doing well emotionally aren't going to do well in language arts and math.

Speaker 2: 17:16

They're just not, and that's the thing I'm like. We are the foundation and I don't need us to always be a bigger team. I don't always think more people is the answer. I do think strong collaboration and integration would make a huge difference, and that's the piece that seems to be missing for me.

Speaker 1: 17:34

Collaboration in general. I don't know why that is such a hard thing for us to get down. I suspect that again, just something being implemented poorly so many times in a row has left a bad taste in our mouths. So that's my suspicion. I have a lot of opinions on this podcast with no evidence to support them, except for my 15 years in education and my assumptions.

Speaker 2: 18:10

But I mean, I think we can say that about many things that we do in education, Like how many times have we gotten reading instruction wrong? But we still keep trying.

Speaker 1: 18:19

I'm not 100% sure we got it wrong. I think we just kept changing it enough times that none of us knew what we were doing, and we're like here. Here's a book I'm supposed to let you read every day. I'm not sure what I'm doing because I just got this memo this morning in my email that said if I'm not having kids read 15 minutes a day, I'm going to be in trouble.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Right, and that's the thing, though. Right Like, if you actually look at many of the academic results that we're getting, they're, you know, fair-ish and they're not changing.

Speaker 2: 18:55

They're not right, but we keep changing and our results don't change. Yet we're willing to keep trying and doing it and the thing that we don't invest in we actually have a ton of research to say like this actually works. When we do this and we do this, well, kids are going to learn. Kids want to. I mean, who doesn't? And I don't just mean kids, I mean as an adult who wants to show up every single day and not feel welcome and not feel valued and only be told the things that you're doing wrong. Yeah, I don't want that.

Speaker 1: 19:32

I think one of the things that I noticed post pandemic um and I only taught one year in a classroom- I taught one year online, but that year that I taught post pandemic is that most of the students, not just in my class but in general, did not feel like that was their space space, which was a really weird dynamic, and it wasn't that they. I don't know if they felt welcomed or not. I don't want to put words in their mouth, but it was more of a this is not my space. I should not be here. I don't want to be here, I'm not comfortable here. I want to be doing these other things, and I wonder how much of that was influenced by being at home in their space, combining that with learning.

Speaker 2: 20:21

And then, all of a sudden, now you have to go back to the original learning space and it's like you know, I just think we had an opportunity to think about restructuring how that works, or giving more voice to students to say how does this work, while you were doing this in a different space, so not going to think about how to welcome you back, not going to think about what you need now that you're here and it's different than where you've been and you've seen it. Yeah, one of the things that I do a lot of teaching around right now for adults is that the other thing that happened when we brought kids back and again, at least where I am, the focus was on how to have strong safety protocols and I often think in tiers of support right. So our tier one is what's happening for everybody. All the time, and previous to COVID, we would think about what are our school-wide expectations? How do kids know they're being successful? How do we make sure that everyone is letting kids know that this is what is needed and what's working?

Speaker 2: 21:39

And when we came back from COVID, we're like actually the thing you need to think about right now is how to keep kids spaced three feet apart, how to make sure people wear masks, how to make sure you are having hand sanitizer and hand washing. That was our tier one. Sure you are having hand sanitizer and hand washing. That was our tier one. And when that happened we lost so much of how to create a welcoming space in favor of how to create a safe and I say that in quotes, right Like safe learning space and it's different. And I don't know again where I sit and I work across our whole K-12 system. I don't see that many people and I wouldn't say everybody some people have gone back and things are really good, but as a system we have not figured out yet how to create those really welcoming learning environments and I think teachers set aside a lot of that and haven't picked it all back up yet.

Speaker 1: 22:33

Yeah, well, I I talked about this in previous podcasts, but not with you personally. You know when we went back, cause I taught the year that everybody went back like not half a year. But we all went back, everybody for the full and in the classroom. That was my last year of teaching and we were told you do need to do these things. The research shows this. But within a week it was oh, and you're going to do the state assessment an extra time, so start getting the kids ready for it.

Speaker 1: 23:08

Oh, and we need to know where they're at mathematically. So we want you to do this little math test it's just a little short test and send it in, just so we have the data. Oh, and we want you to do reading inventories with all the kids this week, just make sure. And ended up taking all of this time that we had been given for this data collection. And I think that on top of that, as a teacher, I felt a huge amount of stress, for if one of my kids got sick and I had not followed the protocol, we were not eating lunch altogether in the lunchroom and they had to go through a certain process to get their lunches and come back, and then the custodian had to come in and clean their room and the kids are trying to share food and I just felt like there are so many moving parts. I can't keep the kids to keep their masks on. I can't remind them to hand sanitize multiple times a day.

Speaker 1: 24:09

You know we're in Portugal right now. I'm like Camille, do you wash your hands before you have lunch? She's like what are you talking about? You do not wash your hands before lunch. I put hand sanitizer in her thing, because she was getting sick here all the time, post-pandemic. But I mean, they don't even have soap in her bathroom. In the girl's bathroom, she said the boys have it. And I thought, well, don't even have soap in her bathroom. In the girl's bathroom she said the boys have it. And I thought, well, the boys probably need it more. But this is just so not a thing here in Portugal, at least in her school. But I mean, we were supposed to have just hand sanitizer alone. Kids were supposed to hand sanitize every time they left the room and entered the room.

Speaker 2: 24:57

Right. So how did we expect teachers to do anything else Like? It's not surprising to me that we haven't created spaces where students and teachers are feeling like this is a place I want to be and this is a place I can be successful.

Speaker 1: 25:16

And how do you feel welcomed into a classroom if you're feel like you're a germ you know spreader?

Speaker 2: 25:25

Well, I think to normalize some of that and be like this is just a safety thing, right, like we can do that, but it really matters how we do that and nobody told us how. Nobody told us how. When we came back, I remember again like I do a lot around adult learning in my current role and talking to adults like who? Who told you? Like we made a list I actually pulled it off the internet, but it was like a list of the 57 things like you were mentioning all of the, the assessments that needed to happen, all of the safety protocols that needed to be put in place. Like we came back to a version of education that nobody had ever done before and nobody knew how to do it. So there wasn't a guide like here's how you create a pandemic, safe classroom where students also feel safe and welcome. Go Right, everybody was making it up as they went and there were a lot of variation in how that got implemented. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 26:23

And you did mention the B word, which is burnout.

Speaker 2: 26:28

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:28

You mentioned it early, earlier, and you've mentioned that you're working with teachers. What are you, I mean? Is it getting better?

Speaker 2: 26:54

I get called in to work with a teacher, it's probably too late, right? When I get called in to work with a teacher, it is often because things have been going poorly for quite some time and they're out of ideas. So they finally call us and I walk into a lot of spaces where things are challenging. I have experienced more in the last two and a half three years. Teachers I work with are walking right out of the profession, right Like I'll coach them, which should be supportive. It's actually proven to be the most effective support for teachers to change their practices and instead of that being the case, they're like nope, this is too little, too late and I'm done and I'm leaving. And they're either leaving the school, they're in the district they're in or the professional together.

Speaker 2: 27:41

I have a little bit of hope this year. I'm currently coaching a few teachers and one is brand new, ready to stay and keep trying. One is 10 years in gonna change schools, because we think if we change schools, it'll get better, and like it'll just get different, it'll just get different. But if difference is what you need and it helps you stay, I think that's great. Um, because we are in such a teacher shortage also that I'm doing everything in my power to keep educators. Yeah, cause I I feel it.

Speaker 2: 28:14

Um, I do a lot of work with adults and then I also get to sub because we have a teacher shortage. So the adults in our system who are in place to support the adults in our system are pulled from our work to sub because we just don't have enough people to do it. So I do spend time in classrooms and with students, and it's a lot, and even with all of our additional adults supporting our system, we are nowhere near where we need to be and every single day across our system, we have classrooms that don't have teachers, which adds to it, right, because then the teachers who are in the building, as you know, get pulled to cover all of those classrooms. So then, the little bit of planning and prep time you have, or the minute you have to breathe you're now working with somebody else's class, yeah, or you've got two classes yourself all of a sudden because you know those kids.

Speaker 1: 29:14

it's your partner, you're teaching partners, kids and you had a science lab, so you just bring them all in and a couple of paras show up and we make it work.

Speaker 2: 29:24

A couple of paras, if you're lucky.

Speaker 1: 29:25

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:27

Because that's the other thing, right. Like our paraeducators, our support staff are also feeling it. I did a series of trainings with a school this year with their paraeducators, and over half of them that I worked with over multiple sessions told me we're leaving. Yeah, we're done. This is the hardest work. We don't know what we're doing, there isn't a clear plan in place and we're not going to stick around to see what doesn't change next year.

Speaker 1: 29:58

And, additionally, they oftentimes are treated with a level of disrespect that is just ridiculous. Oh, absolutely I actually have a para this week that I am going to interview who heard I don't know if you heard Debbie's podcast, but Debbie is a para and she did a podcast. It was this week's and after he heard hers he contacted me and said I have some things I want to add. Yeah, I have some things I want to add.

Speaker 2: 30:32

Yeah, I my. My first official job in K-12 education like working for a public school system was as a paraeducator Me too, and I I look back on that and I look around still and I'm thinking how do we have these incredible people who want to do this job? That's right, and we are not training them, and we are not paying them adequately and we are not supporting them and we are having them work with our most vulnerable student populations yep and criticizing how they do it.

Speaker 1: 31:18

Yep, yep, I agree. Yeah, so burnout is getting worse. That's what I? Um, I would hope that doing things like what you're doing would be helpful to that. Educators has to be huge, but, as you just stated, for a lot of the ones that you are interacting with, it's a little too little, a little too late. And, of course, this rings home for me because I quit and I go back and forth with this. I have a lot of guilt about it. Do I think I was the world's greatest teacher? Absolutely not. Do I think I was a good teacher? Yes, do we need good teachers? Yes, we need people who can manage a classroom, who understand how to look at a curriculum and teach it. I'm not saying we need warm bodies, but we need experienced people to stay in the field and we need them to mentor the people who are coming into the field. And we need to create these communities where we're all working together and to know that I just kind of said nope, I'm out. At the same time. I needed to do that for my own well-being.

Speaker 2: 32:47

I think you really hit on it there, right, we can only do as much as we can do, and if we are in the field and burnt out, it's possible we're causing more harm than good. Yeah, right, I agree. Yep, I think about educators who are new or who are needing to develop some skill, and the thing that I hear a lot of adults say and I think this is out of frustration but they're like well, if they don't want to do this, or if they can't figure out how to do this, maybe this isn't the job for them. Or what if we said oh, if this is feeling challenging for them or they're feeling frustrated, what supports can we put in place to help them?

Speaker 1: 33:35

Yeah, how do we come at it from the top, rather than just telling them to go and we'll replace you? That idea of you're replaceable is a really icky one.

Speaker 2: 33:55

Well and also so short-sighted Like we are already feeling the pinch from being in a teacher shortage. So why, if people want to do this work, would we not support them to develop and grow their skill? There aren't new teachers coming at the rate that they need to be coming for us to have that attitude.

Speaker 1: 34:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:17

I agree.

Speaker 1: 34:19

I also think that there's a lot of work to be done around respect for one another within the community, from top to bottom, and setting up some practices around that, where this kind of thing isn't tolerated and this kind of thing is expected. Like what I mentioned earlier, you will have your colleagues in here. They are here to help you. You are here to help them because we are all working as a community. It's not a competition. You're not competing with the other third grade teacher. You are actually all doing the same thing.

Speaker 2: 35:04

You can do it your way they can do it theirs, but we all have stuff to learn from each other and we all have stuff to teach. I dream of working in a system like that someday. Let's create it, tracy.

Speaker 1: 35:12

I'm trying. I know you are. I know that that behind the scenes work is really important. I wonder if you don't get a lot of pushback, because I have been a part of conversations where we talk about those people with the district level jobs. They don't know. They have no idea what we're going through and you know what We'd have more money if we had fewer district level jobs.

Speaker 2: 35:44

Interestingly, I sit in that weird in-between space, right, because I'm still on a teacher contract. At any point I could be reassigned to a classroom and I don't have a hard time with that thought, right. So when I think about district people, I know that many people put me in that category and to some degree I am, but I often say I have positionality without power, right. Like I sit at a lot of tables and meetings where I get to, like, share some things, but when, at the end of the day, when decisions are made, I'm not the decision maker, I'm not the one deciding how money is spent and, like I said, we have a team of three in my department which I don't think is taking a whole lot of district resources away. I hope that we're a value add instead of a depletion, right, and especially for my positionality, I see so many unnecessary positions and just organizational things that are questionable at best, like why, why, why do we need all of these people in all of these positions that are much higher than me and make way more money than me, who don't see the inside of classrooms yet make all the decisions that impact everything that's happening. Yeah, that's a huge one, but but you're right, I am often perceived as that other when I and I have to do a lot of convincing to people. I am on the same contract as you, I'm in the same union as you, I am only here.

Speaker 2: 37:20

I often, when I coach, I say I'm peer-to-peer support. This is non-evaluative. I don't report to your evaluator. I don't even share with them anything you don't want me to share. I don't report to your evaluator. I don't even share with them anything you don't want me to share. So hopefully this can be a safe space for you to learn and grow, or tell me to leave, because that's actually your right.

Speaker 1: 37:39

I think that's one of the toughest positions to be in is when you are in a position where you have to justify why you're in that position to the person that is relying on you to do whatever the prescribed duty is. I think of many committees that you and I both have worked on and you're tasked and this sounds very similar to what you're going through right now, except you get to do it every day but you're tasked with this. Here's this big thing. Everybody, or this group, needs to be on board with this and you go in and you're peers, like you said, and you're faced with having to reconnect on that level, at the same time pushing us all where we need to be.

Speaker 2: 38:28

Yes, uh-huh, because nobody wants to be told what to do. No, me either, and I I think that that actually gets to. I think one of the struggles that I see consistently and and I know I've shared this with you before but I think that because we are so open to everybody just doing what they want to do and nobody wanting any feedback, we get in this place where there's no sustainable systems.

Speaker 1: 39:07

Tracy had much more to say. Please tune in next week for the second part of her interview. Today's episode was produced and edited by me. The theme music is by Otis McDonald featuring Joni Inez. If you know someone who might enjoy these conversations, please share the podcast episodes as much and as often as you can. It's as simple as copying the link you use to access today's episode and sending it in a message or sharing it on social media. I'm a small, independent operation and your shares broaden our audience. Perhaps you or someone you know will be inspired to talk about teacher burnout. Perhaps you or someone you know will be inspired to talk about teacher burnout. If you would like to get your voice on my podcast, contact me via the link on my webpage totbuzzsproutcom. Coach speaker and author Rashid Ogunlaro said it may take many voices for people to hear the same message. Join me in being one of the many voices rising up to get the message out around educator burnout. This is Melissa LaFleur. Thank you for listening to taught the podcast.