Podcast Episode
Episode Description
I discovered Evalaurene Jean-Charles on Instagram and was instantly drawn to her joyful, honest, and unfiltered reflections on life as an educator. Her posts tackle hard truths about teaching and school systems, but always with a sense of hope, purpose, and joy.
In this first part of our two-part conversation, Eva shares why self-awareness is essential, not just for students but for educators navigating the emotional complexity of classroom life. We talk about tuning into what we’re feeling, how it shows up in our practice, and how cultivating that awareness helps us teach in ways that feel good, do good, and bring us joy.
Resources
- @BlackonBlackEd on IG
@BlackonBlackED on Tik Tok - Join the Liberation Library: https://black-on-black-ed.kit.com/products/liberationlibrarycommunity
- Join the Ten Toes Down Summer Mastermind: https://black-on-black-ed.kit.com/products/the-ten-toes-down-summer-mastermind
Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI transcription tools to support accessibility and provide a searchable, readable version of the podcast. While we’ve reviewed and lightly edited the content for clarity, there may still be occasional errors or omissions.
Catlin Tucker
Welcome to balance. I’m doctor Katlyn Tucker and today my guest is Eva Lauren Jean Charles. She’s an educator, a speaker and the CEO of Black on Black Education, an education solutions firm committed to amplifying student voice and building student centered, equity driven school cultures. I discovered Eva and her work online. I randomly stumbled upon one of her Instagram posts and was so struck by her candor, her honesty, her joy, the kind of positive nature of the messages she was sharing and quickly watched.
Catlin Tucker
I think everything she recorded and reached out to say that I would just love to have a conversation with her on the podcast, and was absolutely thrilled when she agreed. And the conversation was so rich and went on for a while. And so I’m actually breaking this episode into two parts. So the first part will air today, and then I will air the next part next week.
Catlin Tucker
Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. I’m really excited, and I’d love for you to start by just telling listeners a little bit about yourself. Your journey in education, like what initially drew you to this career and what inspired you to start sharing your experiences and your reflections online?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yeah. Hello folks. First, I’ll say I’m super excited to be here as well. Usually I am the interviewee. No, I, I’m the interviewer, so it is nice to be on the other side of the mic. My name is evil around you and trials. Most people just call me Eva. And I was the kid in high school that absolutely told my teachers on many occasions that they have the worst job ever, and I don’t understand why they would ever do this.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And then I suddenly became a high school teacher. So, the journey, I’ll say it really, really quick. I went to John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, Cuny school shout out to Cuny. Fantastic experience. And Cuny. The entire university has a program, called the Cuny Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. This is important because this is how I was able to stay at John Jay, but still study education and preparation for becoming a teacher.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
So I got a fellowship, the John Jay VR fellows program, incredible program at John Jay and I had the opportunity to be an intern. And so I thought Criminal Minds had me in a chokehold all of high school. And so I thought I was going to look for Hannibal Lecter. Like, that was my that’s it. I got in my head.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so I wanted to be a psychologist. And obviously you’re a college student. You’re not getting in jails and prisons to be able to shadow psychologists in any of that sort of thing. So I said, the next best thing is working with, justice involved youth and being able to serve and support in that capacity. So I thought I was going to shadow the mental health counselors when I got, to this, this program in Brooklyn.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And, that was quickly not the case. And they were like, yeah, we don’t have a high school equivalency teacher right now. We need you to teach these classes. Three weeks in, I joined, Cuny Baccalaureate program for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. I applied early decision to teach for America. Like, it was, like, very clear that this was what I was supposed to be doing with my life.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I absolutely loved it. My my students, my participants in that program, some of them were my age. Some of them were older than me. And we’re talking about people at a level of illiteracy. Not all of them, but some of them where like, if I it could be a picture book and and deciphering and decoding words was difficult.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so it was just like, this can’t be this group of people like this is a systemic challenge that I did not know, because my experience, I went to a school in an upper middle class, predominantly white neighborhood. And there’s traumas that come along with that. But the quality of education that I received was so starkly different from the quality of education that the people who were in this program were receiving.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And even further than that, the lack of belief that their teachers had and their ability to learn, like, made me sick to my stomach. And just by seeing them as people, and coming in like I had them two weeks and being like, you’re the best teacher I ever had. And I’m like, I don’t even know anything about math.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I’m supposed to be, like, teaching you this. Yeah. And so it just was like, oh, being a good teacher doesn’t mean that you are like a content expert, which is important and has to be a part of your goal of mastering the art of teaching. But it’s it’s I don’t think that that’s the starting point. The starting point is loving the people that you serve.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And because I got to start my teaching experience in that way, it almost made it harder for me to be a classroom teacher because I had so much autonomy. I had so, like, I could teach in the way I wanted, I could, have conversations. I could stop class in the middle and be like, so what’s what about them next?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Like, we could just be ourselves in the space. And I had participants that were, like, mandated to be there twice a week that were coming four times a week, but, like, wanted to continue to come back that wanted to know my hours every week, depending on like the fluctuation of my internship. And it just became so clear of like how important it was to build relationships, how important it was to like, actually really care about the people that you’re serving.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And how much further they could go, even with my own limitations at that point, being a sophomore or a junior in college, like, I didn’t know anything about teaching. And so that’s how I stumbled my way into teaching. I then went to teach for America. I started at my first school. I ultimately took a leave of absence and transitions, but I’ve been teaching for the last five years full time.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And it’s just it’s just been the gift of my life to serve and support young people, but also the hardest thing I’ve ever done at the same time. Yeah. And so that’s the that’s the, the short version. You go and listen to my podcast, you’ll hear me talk, all the nitty gritty of all the things that have happened, since I started this career and then what pushed me to start sharing things online.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I think the ether is just so, like, everything is a joke about kids. Everything is about that. They can’t read. Everything is back in my day. And you’re like, the average reading level for an American is a sixth grade. Like back in your day, y’all can’t read either. Like, so it’s just really, like, hard for me to sit and look at people wishing that things were the way that they used to be when the way that they used to be didn’t work.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so instead of us being like, innovative and imaginative and creative around like how we can figure out what the problem is and then find solutions for it, it’s let’s blame everyone else for why things aren’t the way that they blame everyone else for why things aren’t the way that they should be. Instead of saying like, let me figure out how to be a part of the solution.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so I really wanted to create space online, where I’m calling out the things that I don’t think make any sense in education, but I’m also like calling educators higher to the person that they imagined when they decided to do this work. Because I don’t think that most educators got into this to, like, scream at kids. Most educators didn’t get into this to, like, be depressed and burnt out and frustrated.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But you lost that version of yourself because that version of yourself was never developed. And I’m the teacher coach that’s going to breathe life into that version of you, because the version of you that’s worried about test scores is like the.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, well, okay, so for everybody listening, I don’t know how I stumbled on the very it was just random accident. Stan Stem stumbled on your first real and I don’t even remember what that first one was about. But I watched it like three times and I kept thinking, this is so refreshing. Like, I’ve been hungry to hear more positivity and more to your point, like, what are we doing that’s working and and being honest and vulnerable in moments of struggle without, to your point, always having to blame that on somebody else, often the kids or the school leaders.
Catlin Tucker
And it’s not to say that they’re, you know, there aren’t challenges in the classroom with kids or with school leaders or whatever. But yeah, just the positive nature. And in your reals you talk. Because now I think I’ve watched every single one. You talk about being this kind of revolutionary educator. And so I want you to really explain for listeners, why do you use that phrase, like, what does that mean for you?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
If you’re watching the video, I’ve got Malcolm X behind me, I’ve got Angela Davis behind me, above up there. I’ve got, James Baldwin. I have a bunch of messages, letters from students, letters from peers, reminders that I’ve heard in various places that remind me that, like, one of my favorite peloton instructors, excuses are poison.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Movement is medicine. Like we as a society are so committed to the negativity that exists in the world, and we get stuck in it and it is breaking. It’s it’s destroying us from the inside. And we still think that it’s about somebody else. And so the reason why I use the term revolutionary is because, well, the only thing that a revolution is, is a shift of power.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And I want educators to shift their personal power. They bring it back. We have so much more power and control over how we lead our lives and how we show up in our classroom than we give ourselves credit for. And the internal knowing that we all have that we just don’t listen to. Because again, we’re not focused on that personal power.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
We’re focused on how do I fix all of these people’s problems, how do I fix my husband’s problem or my sister’s problem or my and like, I mean, I was just in therapy and I’m, getting my life together because there are so many ways that we avoid the real problem and blame other people for why it’s happening, blame other things for what?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so much of the answer already exists within us. So much of the answer we already have. Put the self-help book down. If you read one, you read them all. Revolution requires you to say that I need to get quiet, and I need to get connected to myself. And if it takes my voice being the voice in your head first until your voice has been geared up enough to like, serve and support you, then, then I’m fine with that.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But I think I use the term and the language revolutionary because again, the revolution might not be televised. That was not about it not being on television. That was about the revolution. He said that because he was talking about the revolution that has to happen in each and every one of us in order for that power shift that we want to see in our classrooms, in our society.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Like for that to happen, it it requires this internal focus, that many of us are not ready to we’re not ready to have that battle yet. We’re not ready to have that fight yet. But having the fight like the change we want to see is on the other side of it.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, yeah. So I’m also I have my own therapist and I’m in therapy. And I think one of the things that is so important that like, I pick up a lot and when you’re talking in your reals to educators is like, there’s a lot we can’t control, but we can control our reaction to like what is happening around us.
Catlin Tucker
We have these spaces where we do have a degree of control in our classrooms. And I always felt that way as a high school English teacher, I was like, I cannot control all the crazy going on in this campus and in this district. But you know, what I can control is how I design, facilitate learning, show up for kids, and operate in this room, which is my space, you know, and I think a lot of teachers, they don’t read or they don’t kind of capitalize on that control.
Catlin Tucker
There’s so much focus on all the stuff we can’t control, which is a very powerless position to feel like you’re in.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think that and to be fair, most of us have never been empowered to do that or to believe that or to understand that to be true. And it doesn’t help when social media is just like the admins fault and the system and the Department of Education and and it’s like all of that, all things considered.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Now what?
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, right. If you love this profession, what are we going to do? Yeah.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yeah. Unless you’re leaving now. What?
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, yeah. And you point out how systems of control and compliance show up in classrooms, which I think that the parallels between like teacher, student and then school leader teacher are fascinating. Yeah.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Because we do everything to talk about.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. We talk about how like teachers go in and there is such a focus on control and compliance, like getting the kids to do exactly what you want, the way you want them to do it. And then there’s this same kind of scenario playing out when it comes to teachers or leaders with teachers. And it’s like, this system is so I don’t understand why there’s not that recognition of like, we don’t appreciate it or thrive under it as educators.
Catlin Tucker
So like, why would our students appreciate or thrive in classrooms that operate this way? So like in your view, what happens to the inner revolutionary when the system is focused on compliance over creativity?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Absolutely. Oh my gosh, I love this question so much. I mean, what happens is the light that we had when we were kids and we couldn’t stop asking why it disappears for some people. There’s always this way they don’t care to learn. And I’m like, what are you talking about? Like, I’ve watched kids sit on YouTube for four hours trying to figure out a cheat code for a game.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
That’s learning. That’s not the learning you want them to do in the moment. You want them to do it, but it’s learning. So how do you capitalize on the intrinsic like nature of human beings? To be curious, how do we capitalize on that and make it a little less exciting? Like I have my students write me letters at the end of the the school year.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I have my friends write me letters for my birthday. Like I just tell me I’m great. Tell me you love me like I just. I love it, right? People say teaching is a thankless job. Not for me. Because I’m going to ask you to thank me. I’m going to create the I’m going to create the space. And so they wrote me end of year letters.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And one of the things that came up over and over again was like, you gave me space to share or you answered my questions. Imagine a kid being shocked by a teacher answering their questions. What does that mean for what we’re doing in classrooms? And is that about your admin? Is that is that about like I we can talk about testing.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
We can talk about all the ways that that infiltrates the way that we operate in our classrooms. Absolutely, 100%. But there’s a confidence and conviction in your belief that you must have in order to ignite the creativity in students that is going to confront the apathy that you experience. So then now you have extra time at the end of class versus feeling like you never have enough, because I don’t have to reteach 22 times.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Because they’re listening the first time. Because they’re engaged the first time, because they’re excited to be there from the beginning. So creating those conditions in the beginning of the school year, creating the conditions for culture to be just, I mean, I care more about what my classroom culture looks like. You could give me basic on every other part of my evaluation, but I know I’m getting distinguished when it comes to them kids pushing themselves to try.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I know I’m getting distinguished when it comes to students are not afraid. Even the quietest student that I, as admin, see in other classes that refuse to raise their hand or read out loud. I have students that came moved to this country speaking, speaking another language, and they are reading out loud in front of the class in English with every and and and and making their way through the entire paragraph, because I push them to try because I make mistakes and I main them every time.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
That’s what creativity is. That’s what critical thinking is. We teach students in the way that we currently do school. We teach them that failure is what you run from. When failure is genuinely and truly the only way you will ever be successful. Yeah, it’s a systemic challenge. So the same way that the light inside of us when we came into teaching and said, oh, I want to try this actively, and do this cool thing, I oh, I’m so excited.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I’m gonna make my classroom look like this, will make my classroom feel like this. And you’re administrator. No. And you can’t. And this doesn’t fit. And what about the pace and calendar? And this is where replicating the trauma that we are experiencing of a system that is committed to compliance and control to our students, and then fighting with them when we’re having the exact same reaction, took to compliance and control.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
We feel the exact same way about being controlled. And then we turn around and do the same thing. Why? Because we’re not confronting it. We’re not reflecting on it. We’re not being we’re not saying, yeah, this my admin, who only cares about test scores, is probably not going to bring the PD that I need to listen to my inner revolutionary, like they’re probably never going to pay for that.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
So now I have to do it because it’s going to make my life so much easier on the back end. And that’s not like some people don’t know what they don’t know. So it’s not always accuse a Tory, but when something in your you see a video, this happens all the time. I mean I have people have temper tantrums in my comments constantly.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And that feeling in the bottom of your stomach when someone says something and you’re like, oh God, that didn’t feel good. Most of us can’t sit in that. And that like that’s where creativity lives. That’s where critical thinking like that, back to the original point in the question is that’s where the change in the shift lies is in our ability to say, ooh, that was uncomfortable.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Why. Because I think she’s lying. Or is it because she just held up a mirror to exactly how I’ve been engaging with the classroom in in the world?
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And something I don’t want to take responsibility for. Right. So there’s so much about what you just said. So one, I feel like this this focus on control and compliance is really fundamentally about a lack of trust. It’s a lack of trust when we’re talking about school leaders trusting teachers to know how to operate in those classrooms, how to serve the kids that they truly know best in ways that are going to work.
Catlin Tucker
And that’s why it’s like, here’s this adopted curriculum. Use it with fidelity. Don’t bring your creative spirit to this like endeavor, which is so challenging for teachers. But then there’s also this, like lack of trust that I see so often when I’m talking to teachers about how do we create student centered, student led learning? And they’re like, whoa, I don’t know about that.
Catlin Tucker
Like, can I really release control over to students and trust that they’re going to focus? They’re going to engage. And to your point, like, we are bored. We’re like built to learn. But I feel like it just gets kind of suppressed out of us as we go through school. And I was just reading this book, The Disengaged Teen, which is fabulous, and I had the two authors on a podcast, and they were talking about how, like in elementary school, 75% of those kids love school.
Catlin Tucker
They’re enthusiastic about it. By high school, 65% report being checked out, and 75%, almost 75% report negative feelings about school. So clearly this system is not serving the majority of students. And if you look at the burnout rates, to your point, it is not serving teachers as well.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yep. And I think that like what happens in that shift, we take out play. Yeah. We take out joy. We take out imagination. We take out creativity. We say get serious. We say stay focused, we say. And now all of a sudden everybody’s depressed. Everybody’s upset, everybody’s angry. Maybe those two things are correlated. Maybe.
Catlin Tucker
Maybe I would, I would argue so. Right. Oh my gosh, I know. So you talk about how critical self-awareness is, right. This is a core, competency for like social emotional learning. So we know it’s important for students. It’s important for educators. It’s important for everybody. And at the same time, you kind of pointed out that self-awareness can really be missing, especially in the way that a lot of educators talk about this work online.
Catlin Tucker
And so I want you to kind of talk about, like, why do you think self-awareness is so critical right now? And what message do you think we’re sending? Like the public, our students, like whoever is watching these messages about educators sharing their experiences that are so rooted in negativity and frustration.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Is one. Our kids watch those videos. Let’s just start there. Our kids, my kids, avid watchers of the black and Black Education Instagram page. Okay, but I bet TikTok they they’re right. And so I have to be super mindful about the way that I’m communicating for the goal that I have. For some educators, the goal is get to retirement.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And you’re going to operating your classroom as getting to retirement. I that’s not my goal. My goal is to have fun. My goal is to be joyful. My goal is to laugh. My goal is to learn. My goal is to become a better educator. And so I think that self-awareness starts with why are you here? And yes, every teacher.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Oh, we hate the why conversation in education. Nobody asked somebody why they want to be an investment banker. Okay, well, investment bankers, let’s talk about their issues, okay? I don’t want to trade places with an investment banker. We’re going to leave that there. So. If you know you know you don’t you don’t. Right. But we are dealing with a loneliness pandemic.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
We are dealing with a joy. Like people are not joyful. People feel hopeless. Like this is overarching. Why do we think that that doesn’t that doesn’t align with our students? Why do we feel like the way that we feel is the only way that we feel? So back to getting to self-awareness is when you can fully identify how you’re feeling.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
It makes it a thousand times easier to understand how someone else is feeling. I have a keen ability to have the way that a student comes in with their backpack this much off the shoulder. I know today something right? So let me right. Because this is a prim and proper child. There going to be two straps on and they only got one and it’s hanging off the shoulder.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Absolutely not. Something going on. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t do that if I didn’t know that when I wake up in the morning I look at myself and I’m the first three breaths are a little too hard. Yeah, today might not be. It like I and I’m not going to make it the whole day right now. I know I got to do something to refocus or reset myself between now and 8:00 when I got to be in front of them kids.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Because I have the awareness of why I’m not where I’m at, I can come into my classroom October usually I’m still just perky and fun and everything is great, but get me to to right before Thanksgiving break and I’m going to let them kids know, today is the day. Don’t mess with me. I love y’all down.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But if you want the version of me that is not losing it, I need y’all to pull it together. Last week, I had the energy to handle the six redirections and the walking around and doing too much. Today, I do not have it. So I mean, to me, having that self-awareness allows them to be like, miss you.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Okay, today I have kids. Come check on me. I’m not I’m not the only one trying to. So again, I think the self-awareness it just we keep coming back to the idea that all of this starts with us. It all starts with our ability to do the hard stuff, which is figuring out why I’m like this, which is figuring out why I don’t.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I had somebody say this to me in a session that I led years ago, and and she wasn’t a teacher. She just came to learn and be in the space and be a support to her grandchildren. Shout out to you and if you ever hear this. And she said, for adults, especially adults that are not joyful, the exuberance of children is infuriating.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Oh wow. When I, I think, I think it’s up here somewhere because I knew I had to remember that, that every time I’m out of my joy, they’ll start laughing and I’m like, what’s your lesson? What’s funny? Yeah. What’s so funny? Ain’t nothing funny about ancient Egypt. Like, clearly I’m off task. Every teacher here has been there. Yeah, but it’s because you don’t like your life.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
It has nothing to do. With what? The fact that they’re laughing. It doesn’t. So the self-awareness, the ability to check in with oneself and see and identify and realize I have something going on within me that if I check, I will be able to see and understand this experience better. Even with the kid who’s throwing the chair across the room.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Even with them.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. No, I, I think one of the things and you mentioned this in a reel that really like, hit me because I’ve had this thought so many times and it’s grounded in self-awareness, is I facilitate professional learning all the time, and sometimes it’s opt in. It’s the people who just chose to be there. And it’s one experience and then sometimes it’s all staff and everybody has to be there.
Catlin Tucker
And it’s a very different experience and it’s always so fascinating. I’m going to use the word fascinating that the teachers who push the hardest against releasing control the learners, reimagining the way that they approach this work, giving students more agency and choice are the same ones who are like, they won’t do it, they can’t handle it, and they’re the same folks in PD who are on their phones scrolling through social.
Catlin Tucker
They’re on their emails. They’re not doing, they’re not leaning into the activities that I’ve designed to help them understand concepts and play with strategies. And I just have this moment of like, you are doing exactly what you would be furious if your students were doing in your class. And it’s just, again, for me that that speaks to this whole self awareness component.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
100%.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, it’s really frustrating.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
It is. Yeah.
Catlin Tucker
So you remind teachers that revolutionary educators make mistakes. I loved the real where you were like, just got to tell you about the situation I was in with a student. And when a teacher has a moment like that, that doesn’t sit right for them. That doesn’t kind of square with that moral compass that we have when we come into this profession.
Catlin Tucker
What do you think healthy, growth oriented responses look like in those moments for educators?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Oh. Oh my goodness. We have to we have to give ourselves grace because we are people and people are triggered. And I think particularly those of us that come into the work with a lens of like, I want kids to be joyful, I want them to engage. I want them to like, love themselves more because they were in this space to love learning more, because they were in this space.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And then when kids push back against that, oh, I’m leading with love and you’re leading with I’m angry. And I know that for me that like, student apathy trigger. Yeah. A smart like a, a naturally gifted, intelligent student that just doesn’t try. Oh, makes me so mad. Makes me so mad. And I think that what does growth look like in that moment is letting it go.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Like being able to recognize that same way that it starts with you. It starts with them to. And so it also means like, yes, you’re 12, but you know the difference between wrong and right. And you know how it might have made someone feel for you to do that thing or say that thing or whatever, like, and sometimes they don’t.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But a lot of times they do. But being willing to have the conversation instead of it starting with an accusation or a character assassination, if the worst thing that you’ve ever done in a classroom, you don’t want that to make up who you are as a teacher, then you sure should not. We’re not going to curse you surely shouldn’t be doing that to students because they don’t have fully, fully formed frontal lobes yet, right?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Right. So their ability to make sound choices and decisions is like quite literally not accessible to them all of the time. And so the way that we adults defy young people is truly a detriment to them, because it makes them feel shame and guilt for not knowing or not being able to know or not being able to access their knowing because they might know it.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But in that moment when they’re triggered and they’re frustrated, just like you can be triggered and frustrated and say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. The growth is in being able to like most of the time, I will tell and like, I’m a meme girl and I’d be on socials just like they do, so I’ll be like, I’m finding it, give me a second.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I’m finding it. Because if I say what I want to say right now, you going to be upset? And they’ll be like, miss, no, you got it. And I said, I know I got it. I sit down, let’s get back, please, for we all lose it in here. And I think that sometimes showing the vulnerability is the growth is being honest about how the things that students do make you feel.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
It actually really hurts my feelings when you refuse to participate, because I worked really hard to develop this activity. And I would love your feedback on like, how to make it better or how to make it more engaging, or how to make it work for you more, but like for you to just decide you’re not even going to try, like for real to me, right?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And watch the difference in how a student responds to that. Then. Well, then I’ll just give you a zero because you don’t care about school. I clearly yeah, like that was a lot. But just just flip the paper over before you wanted them to like. And usually it’s a compounding effect are reactions. It’s last period. It’s last week it’s last.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so in that real like I talk about that student being one of those challenging students, someone who like, if I’m talking about the 5% of my kids, I don’t got it together. He’s always in the 5%. Yeah. To the point where his peers are like, can you get it together, sir, please?
Catlin Tucker
Right.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And but all of us in that space, learning to have more empathy allowed him to get up in front of class at the end of the year. And lead a lesson in front of his peers and have them engage in that lesson and do what he asked them to do when they asked him to do it. And like if I would have sat with that.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Because also I was publicly rude to him and I publicly responded poorly. And a lot of teachers will say, let me go pull him to the side and talk to him about it. No, I had to publicly apologize because I publicly embarrassed him. Yeah. And so I think that that’s the growth. It’s being able to do the exact thing that you would want young people to do if the roles were reversed, you’d want them to apologize.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
You’d want them to mean it. You’d want them to want to be held accountable. You’d want like you’d want them to participate in whatever the consequence was. So then you have to be able to do the same thing, because kids don’t learn from what we tell them. They learn from what we teach them by what we do. Oh man, our actions are so much more of a of a of a factor.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
My kids see me with a book. My kids see me struggle through. I’m I’m frustrated today. Today wasn’t a good day. I’m going to explain that to you. And I’m going to tell you why students see me make mistakes and be like, oh, I didn’t clean this slide up, or I forgot to put the thing on on Google Classroom, or I told you I was going to do this, and now I didn’t do that.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
How do I hold myself accountable? I got to move the kids back. I told you I was going to put the study guide up. I didn’t, so now you should still take the test because I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. Well, we’ve been working on it all week. Like I could go on forever, but I think that that’s the core of it is being able to be real.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Be honest. Look, I don’t know why we feel like kids can’t handle honesty. They can. They do a great they do a much better job with it then than they do when they know you’re lying. When you become an adult, you’re not going to be able to just you didn’t come to work three days this week, right? Yeah.
Catlin Tucker
I mean, it’s all about modeling, right? That’s really whether you’re a parent or a teacher. Our job is to model. And so yeah, we’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to have days when we’re tired. We’re under Cavani. We don’t react in the best way possible. So then you own it in a like very kind and you know, explain, explain way.
Catlin Tucker
Right. Like this is what was happening for me. I should have handled it this way. And I love that because that’s how I talk to my own children. Right. Like I want you to understand mistakes are part of life. Like you’re going to make them, you’re going to have bad days. But, like, how do you handle that? How do you communicate to the people you care about what you’re going through, why you handle a certain way, how you hope to do it differently in the future.
Catlin Tucker
Right. Like those are the best tools we can give kids.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And that’s how we create adults that like, I mean, yeah, I just like the parallels with adults. We are just big kids, like, we’re just people. We’re trying to figure out how to do do life. We’re we’re just people and they’re just people, and they’re just so happen to be people who don’t have the same level of skills, who shouldn’t be expected to know certain things, shouldn’t be expected to have figured certain things out yet.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And, but often we handle and operate with them as if, if they haven’t come into our space fully formed, that there’s a deficit there and there’s such a detrimental impact on students belief in themselves that a student calling themselves stupid or bad, it hurts my spirit. But someone has told them that over and over and over again until they believe it.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And now they’re in therapy 20 years later, trying to undo it right?
Catlin Tucker
All hands raised on the podcast.
Catlin Tucker
I think the thing that I love about this conversation is the emphasis on awareness and joy. And I think in education, we as educators are truly modeling for students, not just skills and strategies related to or connected to our content areas, but we’re modeling what it looks like to be human, what it means, and what it looks like to make mistakes or be vulnerable, or have a bad day, or act in a way that maybe we’re not particularly proud of, and then apologize and adjust.
Catlin Tucker
And for me, this concept of the importance of self-awareness, of really understanding why we’re in this profession, where we’re at on a particular day, how we’re feeling, what triggers us, what do we want to bring into the classroom? How do we want to make kids feel is all so critical. And I think the more self-aware we are, the more likely we are to experience the kind of joy of teaching right?
Catlin Tucker
To be able to appreciate that we are all just humans in a space, learning and working together and sometimes making mistakes and sometimes failing. But really just seeing this space as this beautiful opportunity to become better humans, to become better learners is both the teacher and the student. And so for me, these two big themes of how do we work on our own self-awareness, how do we try to understand how we’re feeling in a day, how we’re behaving?
Catlin Tucker
Why is that? What are we proud of? What do we want to work on? All of that makes us a better teacher. And when we create some transparency around these things with learners, I think we also help them understand that some of the ways they feel and they behave and act, they’re human. Right? And I love the comment about we cannot expect young people to be fully formed adults because they’re not they are still learning, they are still growing, they are still developing.
Catlin Tucker
And we play such an important role in that growth and in that development. So in our next episode, next week, we’re going to dive into classroom management and classroom culture and really thinking about how do we set up the year so that by the time we get to the middle of the school year or February, students are in a position to take more ownership over their behavior, take more ownership over the learning process, and hopefully free teachers to kind of allow students to lead in ways that give us more of our kind of time and energy back in the classroom.
Catlin Tucker
So super excited about the second half of our conversation. And getting to share that with you guys next week. If you have any questions, any comments, any feedback, you can reach out to me on X at Catlin Underscore. Tucker. You can find me on Instagram at Katlin Tucker, or you can reach out via my website, catlintucker.com.
Catlin Tucker
And I will make sure to include Evan’s information, contact information in the show notes for anybody who wants to connect with her. And as always, I want to thank you guys for spending this time with me. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
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