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 the second episode of our conversation, Eva and I explore what it really takes to build the classroom culture we want; one where students feel safe, empowered, and ready to take ownership of their learning. From consistency and routines to compassion and courage, Eva reminds us that if we want something different for our classrooms, we have to be willing to do things differently.
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 the balance. I’m Doctor Catlin Tucker, and today I have for you part two of my conversation with Eva Jean Charles. So if you missed the first episode, go ahead and pause, check out last week’s conversation, and then you can come back and pick up on this one. But Eva is an educator, a speaker, and the CEO of Black on Black Education, which is an education solutions firm committed to amplifying student voice building, student centered equity driven school cultures.
Catlin Tucker
And we had such an incredible conversation that I posted last week that really was grounded in the idea of self-awareness. And how do we find our joy in this profession if we’re feeling a little bit like we lost it or it’s fading? And in this conversation, we are going to do kind of a dive into classroom management, but more, more specifically, classroom culture, relationship building with kids.
Catlin Tucker
So as we embark on a new school year just around the corner, for many of us, it’s really important that we kind of pause and reflect and think about how we want to show up in our classrooms for our kids this year.
Catlin Tucker
Okay, so classroom management and student behaviors are something that people talk about constantly. And you made this point that I loved, which is student behavior in and of itself is a form of resistance. And when they behave in ways that for us as educators might feel, unproductive or whatever label we want to put on it, it’s really them exercising their agency against the situation, the learning, the environment, what have you.
Catlin Tucker
So what do you want teachers to kind of understand about what students are really trying to communicate with their behavior, and how we should be thinking about these things when we go into these moments with learners.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
For sure. I mean, I and sometimes it gets it gets hard for me to fully step into another educator’s experience, because I did start my career in such a nontraditional way that, I mean, again, I was teaching the students who got kicked out of every other school. So there’s a level of, I have to, you have to I have to be on your side or I’m going to lose.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Right, right. Because and I think that that’s how you think about it, you have to be on their side or you’re going to lose. There’s more of them then there are of us.
Catlin Tucker
Outnumbered.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
You’re outnumbered by quite a bit. And if what you’re currently doing isn’t working, then the only answer is to figure out what what would. And the only person that has that answer is the expert in their own experience, which is our students. There’s nobody in this world that knows more about the experience of the young person in front of us than that young person.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so as much as we, their psychologist, can pathologize them, and as much as their parents can tell us this, this, that they are the they’re the holders of the knowledge that will unlock how we address whatever the behavior is. And so I’ve had students I mean, they fight and they throw in chairs, they curse and teachers out, and then they get to my room and and people are like, what?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Like what is happening here? What do you mean? They’re raising their hand, let alone like, what are you taught? And I’m just like, oh, well, like I know that a trigger for them is being yelled at, so I don’t yell at them. So sometimes, although it is hard not to yell at you, although it is hard not to raise my voice and express the deep frustration that I have with what you are doing in this moment.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And sometimes I do. I’ll call a spade a spade. Yeah, I make a mistake.
Catlin Tucker
Of course.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But I’m always willing to come back and apologize. Or 90% of the time I’m willing to go back and apologize, go back to second year. Even she was holier than thou. She knew, well, they shouldn’t have done that. So I wouldn’t have had to do this if they didn’t do that. And think about how, like if you were sitting in a conversation between two students who got in conflict and one of them was like, well, they pissed me off, so I should have been able to.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But that’s what you’re giving yourself license to do. When we trigger students because of whatever their lived experience is. So you don’t have to be the teacher like me, who like, come and pour it all out. If you want to tell me what your mama did when you were three years old. And that’s why you still carrying it, like, please.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Because if that’s going to help me understand you better and understand how to serve you better than that, that’s what I want. Every teacher doesn’t have to be that. You just have to be willing to be curious. Just as curious as you want your students to be about your content area, about them and who they are outside of being students.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Something that I’ve small things right in the beginning of the year when I do that welcome survey. That welcome survey isn’t something that just sits in Google forms. I put them in sticky notes, or I put them into something so that when I’m looking for an example to compare something to their life, I pull out something that a student told me that they probably don’t even remember telling me, and they’re like, wait, why is my name in this question?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And why is it this exact experience that I had? And like, it’s these tiny little ways to make young people feel like they matter and that they’re important. The reason why your high school students are going to the bathroom in vaping, they don’t feel important. They don’t feel valued. They don’t feel seen, they don’t feel loved. And that’s not just at home because they might feel very much loved in that space.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
They might. But but then they come to school and they don’t because they’re not smart, because they because they don’t, they they get so overwhelmed that they either completely stop trying or they are the kid that will not walk away from your desk for 22 seconds because they are so anxious about getting it right, because the only thing that they’ve ever been taught is that the goal is to always get it right.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Like there’s so many different ways that students are responding to this world. And if you go back and you look at yourself when you were in high school, I said this to my dad earlier today, I could not imagine watching 100 videos a day about what’s going on in the world. I could not imagine having a constant fear that someone’s going to record me and make me look stupid and put it up online, and and millions of people could see it.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I could not imagine walking around with that level of anxiety. And yet you want them to come in here, businesses you know, usual, and learn about the Pythagorean theorem outside of context. You want them to come into your history class and be excited about the ancient pyramids, that they don’t even know where it is, and whether or not they will ever have the capacity, the financial means, the the freedom to ever see that.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
So like, that is what that’s what we’re combating. So it’s not to say that that is your fault. It’s not, it’s not it’s none of our measly individuals who are not a part of the power structure that are keeping things the way that they are. It’s not our fault, but it is our reality. And the deeper that we get into knowing and understanding that our students, they have watched person after person after person come online and say, I went to school for 12 years and I didn’t learn nothing, and it’s stupid and it doesn’t matter.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And I don’t use anything I learned in school. And this person who was streaming is now a millionaire, or this person who post videos is now a millionaire, and they’re not talking about what they learned in school, helping them do that. Actually, they’re talking about that teacher who never cared about them, who never loved them, who never told them they would amount to anything.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
How many rap songs do we have to hear with that same line before we stop being the teacher that told them that they would never amount to anything, either with our words or with our actions, or with our apathy as it related to serving and supporting that child. You know, that kid that’s struggling and you keep moving on.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
You know, the kid doesn’t answer the question because they don’t know the answer. And you keep moving on. And that’s that’s what we have to confront. The resistance is to being unseen, unheard and un valued. And the minute that you do that for them and you create safety around them, trying and pushing themselves, you’re going to see a completely different version of a student.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
So I can’t give you a checklist of first, you have the agenda on your slides and that’s how you manage with a fun activity in the beginning. Maybe that works for your kids, maybe that worked for you. You have to figure out what it is that works for you in your space, and be willing to ideate around how to fix it and refine it over and over and over again as you get more information.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And rather than seeing students resistance as they’re bad or they have no home training or their parents don’t care, those are all narratives that you are telling that you don’t have evidence for them. Get evidence for how to serve them, and then do it over and over and over again until it gets easier and easier and easier.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, and I just love the idea of just be curious about them. Right? Like how often does a behavior happen in class and a teacher has a big response and the student has whatever their response is, but there’s no conversation between the teacher and the student about the K. Why did that happen? Right? Because I guarantee nine times out of ten the behavior is happening in classroom.
Catlin Tucker
It’s not just what’s happening in that moment. It’s a whole like puzzle of things going on in their lives. And to your point, if you never ask, if you never create the space for the relationship, the conversation, then you’re never going understand what’s fueling it, how to support that child in avoiding a similar situation in the future. So I get that it’s an investment in time and I get to have that conversation.
Catlin Tucker
I get that for some people, it’s uncomfortable to have those conversations. But you’re just going to relive this same situation in different forms all year, exactly. All year long. If you don’t have a conversation with the child and figure out what can we do together to support you. And I think that’s a piece that is so simple that no matter what your kind of approach is, this needs to be part of it.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And that’s the real. And that’s what accountability really is. People think accountability is putting zeros in the gradebook. They don’t care about failing. News flash, news flash, they don’t care. It’s not working right. That arbitrary number that you’re putting in your gradebook. But nine times out of ten kids will be like, oh, what’s my grading your class? I’m like, I don’t know, the computer does it?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Like, I don’t, I don’t know, and I don’t know because I also don’t care. Like what I care about is are you pushing yourself to tried? What I care about is are you willing to confront the difficulties? That is what’s in front of you. And there are going to be educators that listen to this and say, oh, that’s a fairy tale, or that’s this or that, that there’s nobody has time for that or we can’t really one my classroom structures are set up in a way so that the majority of students know how to engage, know how to get the support that they need.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And that’s almost like they say, oh, if I need a checklist or other, the where is the vocabulary bank? Or this I know where to find those things by myself. And maybe I’ll ask Miss Iva, can I get up and get a pencil, or can I go over here and pick that up? Or can I do this? Sure.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But I don’t actually have to do the step by step. And then I got my 2 or 3 babies in every class.
Catlin Tucker
Who.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Need to sit next to me. Because you can’t do this by yourself and you’re just. And then slowly but surely, we we get to October and November and December and I give you more responsibility and more responsibility. And that is where we see that the the slow drop off. My birthday’s in February. My do two weeks, oh, first two weeks of February is my birthday.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And then we go into February break here in New York. And so I’m not teaching them to do that. They are yet because by February we know how to get we know what we doing in here. Don’t play with me. And there aren’t the same kids. And that’s exactly what I’ll say, because people also think that I’m like cute and cuddly.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
The response I give to them 12 times out of ten stop playing with me right now. Be so for real about what you’re doing right now. Is that in line with our norms? Is that what we do in here, period. We ain’t never did this before. So, so either go to a calm down corner, get a journal, write about it, go outside, take your five minutes, go to the bathroom and come back.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But do what you had to do to lock in babe, because I don’t know what we got going on. And then I have my 2 or 3. But I know something going on all the time. And now I have created systems in my classroom that allow for them to be it’s student centered. Y’all know how we do reading groups.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
You know how to get your just together. I don’t have to give those directions over and over and over again, but I might have two to the 2 to 3, and I have the energy to do it for the 2 to 3, because I’m not doing it for everybody else, because I don’t have to do it for everybody else.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And that’s how we preserve our energy as educators. But too many educators are focused on the outcome, the test score, the numbers. There are two focused on compliance and control. Well, they didn’t do what I said when I said to do it. That’s your ego, babe. Because if everybody did what they were told to do the first time you’d be in the gym, you’d be eating healthy and you because you’ve been told more than once.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
So we would we all don’t do the things we know we’re supposed to do. All of us. So have empathy for being yourself. Try again and have empathy in your students and push them to try again. And suddenly we have a cohesive classroom community that allows us to learn well.
Catlin Tucker
And love that. And that brings me to the point I want to make, which I know that you’ve responded in a real and I’m sure you’ve just gotten so many comments like this. The like, you make this look and sound so easy and you push back because it’s not. And I hear you talking about the systems and structures that go into work in the beginning of the school year, and those are not nothing to set up.
Catlin Tucker
They definitely take the time and the energy, but then the point that you’re making is by February, then they have that skills, the confidence, the routines, the structures to thrive without you having to manage every single moment. So what’s your honest message to teachers who are there? They’re trying to hold joy and struggle at the same time. You’re making this sound easy.
Catlin Tucker
Like, what do you have for them?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
It is not okay. It is. It is hard. It is frustrating because the reality is that you are not just fighting against what you’re seeing in front of you. Like, I have kids in March, like, can I get up to get a pencil? You know what that tells me? Not that they didn’t listen to me the 700 other times.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I said, just get up and get the pencil and don’t raise your hand and interrupt what I’m saying. Right now they are hearing the teacher who yelled at them for getting up and getting a pencil without help, without permission. They are responding to the teacher that told them that they can’t get a tissue or go to the bathroom without permission.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
They’re responding to all the other aspects of compliance and control that exist in their home life, in their life. I mean, our kids and their relationship to policing our kids and their relationship to so, so many of the messages that they are they are getting in the entirety of their life is you don’t have agency, you don’t do anything unless you are told to do this.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so you get two versions of that, the student that as soon as you put the word, I think in a question, they’re like this. I don’t see it in the reading. I don’t see where it is. I don’t know where. And they’re stressing you out.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Were you get the students that are just like, I’m not doing none of this because everybody else telling me what to do all the time. So I’m gonna do whatever I want. You get those two versions. And so it is not easy to balance having this huge spectrum of students and the experiences that they’re coming into your classroom with.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
What I offer to you is that life is hard. I know you don’t say that to a kid or to her.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, but.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Life is hard and life is unfair and life is not set up for us to thrive. Now what all things considered, what can you do? Whether it’s one thing to bring? Commit to yourself. This is what I’m doing with people in my in my mastermind this summer. A lot of folks are like, are you going to teach me how to do it?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
No, I’m going to teach you how to trust yourself to do it. As an educator, I cannot tell you what I do in my classroom works because, baby, I got the source notion right. I was built for this. I was. There are people who I was born to do this work. I was born to do it. Kids, if you put me in a classroom.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I never met these kids before. Are we going to rock, shake and learn some today? Okay. Because I’m not afraid to make a mistake. I’m not afraid to fall on my face. I’m not afraid to have kids. Sit there. Look at me. What are you talking about? I’m not afraid of that. So I’m going to get to the solution because I’m just going to figure it out.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Figure it out, figure it out, figure it out. I can’t tell you what works in my classroom can work in your classroom. I let sixth graders go to the bathroom. They gotta go to bathroom. Maybe you’re not comfortable there. You’re not there yet. Set your systems up based off of where you’re at. So if you think you feel like there needs to be more joy in your space, what does that look like?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
It doesn’t have to be earned. What does that look like? First five minutes we do a funny this or that. Every Friday we play book it. It’s academic based, but it’s still a game the kids want to engage in. Great. Do that for the first two months with fidelity. What can you shift about that practice? What can you change about that practice?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
What can you what what questions might you ask students to get feedback on what’s working and what’s not about this practice, and then move on to the next thing? Behavior. Setting up norms in your classroom. Set those norms up with your students. Yes, asking them or telling them this is what we do in this class. This is what I expect from you.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
This is how it is nine times out of ten, when you ask them what rules you think you should have in class, they’re the same ones you would have picked.
Catlin Tucker
That is so true. It is so true.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
They’re the same things that you would have put down. But they said it and now all of a sudden you get to hold them accountable to what they said, not what you said. Well, you signed a document the beginning of the year that said you were going to push yourself to try, even when it was hard. You said that, not me.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I didn’t say that. You said that it’s much harder for them to be like you. They’ll be like you, right? Mess and go right back to DC and do what they said. Now all of a sudden, you have leverage that you didn’t have when you were committed to control. Yep. Make your learning activities engaging, babe. If you’re still printing off the same TPT packet that you’ve been printing off since 1912, pack it up.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yeah. Love you down. Pack it up. Because I’m telling you, you wouldn’t care about that if it was you that had to do it.
Catlin Tucker
Oh, yeah. If I gave it to them in PD, they would not do it.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Well, why do we have to do this? Fill in the blank. No sheet. Now I don’t like it. So now you’re up. You wouldn’t like doing it, but you expect this 12 year old to want to do it. For the love of learning. Come on, have them write a letter as if they’re Pythagoras. And how they discovered the Pythagorean theorem.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Oh, have them interview the greater than in the less than sign. What might greater than say what might greater than say to less than make it put it in a comic strip. Have them get up there and act it out. Oh my God, that is learning. You need to teach me how to do this tiny part of the show.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
You need to teach me how to do this as if I was a fifth grader. And then I sit in the back and I’m like, this. Yes, well, that was when I taught high school, but but this. But I don’t know what such and such means. So you I think I mean, when I googled it, that was, that was what was there.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But can you explain it? Because I don’t understand. If they can’t explain it, then they don’t understand. Go back and do it again.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, yeah.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
That is how we get kids to engage. That’s how we get them excited. That’s how we don’t have as many behavior issues because they’re doing something that they’re engaged with. If you have them sitting there doing a packet and you were in the way, your classroom management is a hot mess. They’re bored.
Catlin Tucker
But the.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Answer.
Catlin Tucker
And I love that you because I did this as a teacher as well. Like we’re all quirky. We’re all unique. We all have different stuff. We label as fun or that really speak to us like you. And your pink microphone in class is like one of my favorite things ever because it’s just quirky, it’s different, and it’s the kind of thing that like, kids come to a room and they’re like, this teacher’s got these things that are just like uniquely this teacher.
Catlin Tucker
And I’m like, I’m here for it. And I think sometimes teachers are so serious and I, you know, they’re the content area experts. And it’s just like, they’re kids. They want some fun. Like, don’t be afraid to lean into the quirky and the fun with your kids because it’s going to make a difference for sure.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Hundred percent I am. I am not afraid to look a fool. Not no.
Catlin Tucker
Me neither. Me neither.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
In the beginning of last year. Because I try to like bring who I am and all those things into into the classroom. And then once they find my social media like they know. So it’s like I go to the gym and I had I had a student, they were like, yeah, but you don’t deadlift, miss like you don’t deadlift.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And I was.
Catlin Tucker
Like.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yeah, I do. And they were like, well, you don’t deadlift a lot. I said, get on the floor, deadlift on the kid in the middle class. And they were just like, oh my God, I’m like, you’re like 110 pounds. Maybe it’s like many of that, but it’s it’s just this tiny thing. And then it’s the memory is, oh, remember when you did this and remember that and oh or miss, did you go to the gym yesterday because I didn’t see your story.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And I’m like, okay, first off, can y’all get off of my Instagram page? Secondly, I did go to the gym yesterday. I didn’t take a picture of it. And then but then sometimes it’ll be like, no, I didn’t go to gym last two days. Let me get it together because it’s so it’s just like, again, it’s like, you having a relationship with anybody else will, because we’re so committed to this hierarchy, we think that we have to be serious and we have to be in control.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
We have to be in. And like all these things, do I get serious? Do I get strict my kids every single year? When I ask students what they like about my class, they say two things you’re fun and you hold us accountable. Do they always say the word accountable? No, but they’ll be like, but you push me to do my work.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
But you, you always answer my question so that I can figure out what to do. That’s all that they want. They want to feel like they are supported through the thing that is hard, and the thing that is difficult, in the same way that we as teachers want to be supported and the same way as we as grown people want to feel supported and don’t and want people to show up for us and don’t.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And the only way that we’re going to have the other side of this, this getting rid of this contrarian relationship, do we do I fall into it? Do I fall victim to it? Absolutely. But 90% of how I show up in my classroom is, how can I support students to the best of my ability, and when I don’t have the capacity to, I can also give myself grace and say, you know, I don’t have it today.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yeah, y’all just working on formative today. We just write and we write in for the whole period. We’re doing a journal entry like, I don’t I don’t have it to give and I’m going to give you 12 prompts. So there’s no way you’re going to tell me that you want something to write. And that’s what we’re doing today, because now I need to replenish myself so that tomorrow I can live back into that 90%.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And I think that that’s the push and pull, and that’s what we have to give ourselves permission to do. Because guess what? Nothing in the world ever changed by people saying, but I have to do it the way my admin said. Nothing ever changed. But when we said that, all I have to do is the people who are upholding the system that I don’t believe works, but I’m going to live by their standards.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I’m going to I’m going to hold myself to what they believe, that that’s where the confidence in the conviction stands in. And knowing and believing in yourself as a professional, and knowing and believing that you have the capacity to do things that are great for kids and being comfortable with knowing that just because.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
We’re not going to get every kid from point A to point Z, but it is growth. When we have a kid that has been passed over and they’ve been at a and then they went to B for half a minute, but then they regress back to A because they had another teacher that just kept passing them on. And they get to you and they get from A to F right.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
That is incredible. Yep. And that is a meaningful experience that that kid is going to take for the rest of their life. And when we think about our job as that serious, we start moving differently. But until we get to the point where we can hold ourselves accountable at that level, well, I mean, again, I’m not gonna say we just like the kids we know a little bit more than the kid, but our emotional intelligence, we operate in very similarly.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And I had to confront that in myself. And that’s how I got here, because I believed all the theory when I first became a teacher, but I didn’t know how to put it in practice. I didn’t know how to check my own frustration and anger. I’m going to see kids graduate this tomorrow. That, like when they were freshmen, they did not have this version of me.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Ziva.
Catlin Tucker
Oh, yeah, I know. Oh, yeah, I think about that early version.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Of it too, so thank.
Catlin Tucker
Goodness. Oh my gosh. I think about the first five years and I’m almost like embarrassed because I’m just like, oh, gosh, I was definitely not the teacher. I was or am now. Right? But I still have kids find me on Facebook or like back when I had my maiden name and they’re like, hey, Miss Race. And I’m like, okay, so it wasn’t awful.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
It wasn’t. And that, like, I would every single year. I’m so self-critical. Every single year I do these letters and I’m like, oh my God, they’re going to tell me I was the worst teacher they ever had in their entire lives. And then, like, you’ve been my favorite teacher that I’ve ever had, I’m like, y’all must be masochists because I feel like I’d be in here strict.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And they’re like, no, miss, we appreciate you, we love you. We all the things. And like, that’s the reminder that sometimes that’s what we need to move forward, that we need the reminder that we’re doing something right. And back to I said it earlier, but like create the conditions for your students to thank you, create the conditions for yours to act.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Before my birthday, I said, I take gifts, I take donuts, I take I take all of those things. Just if you love me and you have the capacity to stop at the bodega and get me something, I don’t care if it’s a gummy burger, I appreciate that and like just those little things. I mean, I shout every student out for their birthday, whether it was on the weekend or not.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
We do a big celebration for all of our our kids whose birthdays are over the summer. Like show young people that you care about them, show them that they matter to you more than how they did on an exam. And I think that when we when we do that, I mean, again, we see a version of them that we didn’t know that we could see, and it comes from them recognizing that, again, they’re more than what shows up on a test.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
They’re more than what they believe that they can do and when. And once you do that too, they let go of that anxiety that prevents them from raising their hand and asking questions. And I just I’m like, I’m just super grateful for the work that I do, and I just want more educators to feel that way.
Catlin Tucker
I could not agree with you more. So I know we are at time. Do you have any very quick. So it’s the balance we’re always trying to idea share around healthy work life balance like strategies, routines, things at work, anything you want to shout out that works for you before we say goodbye.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yeah, I might not be the best person to ask this, but it’s actually something that I’m actively working on. I told you I was in therapy before this, and so we are working on the work life balance. Because I am in the classroom and running a business and then, like, trying to take care of myself in the middle of all that.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And I think that what I would offer to educators is creating the space in your classrooms to do the things that that bring that light you up. And so if you consistently say, I don’t have time to read, I don’t have time to read, I don’t have time to read. I used to love reading. I don’t have time.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
20 minutes on a Friday. Do your time, drop everything and read everybody’s reading. Now suddenly this thing that you did not have time to do, you created the space. And it has a it has a net positive on your young people. No matter what class you teach. We know we in a literacy crisis. So let’s give them the space, the time, the energy, print some things out, print some stuff off, ask them what they care about, print off a bunch of different things, and then have them be able to pick from them.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And for 20 minutes they sit in, they read, they finish early, they can make a comic about what they read. They can give a reflection about what they read. And now you have time and energy back. Put some Lo-Fi music on in the back. Bring the lights down just a little bit. Create a vibe, right? Let them sit wherever they want around the room.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Even in high school I my my sixth graders sit on the floor. They all go, I’m like, y’all, look, I wouldn’t be down there, but if that’s what you like, cool. And let them just and it’ll they’ll buy in more because you’re loosening the reins a bunch. Put all technology away and everybody’s reading. So now you you oh I don’t have time to meditate or I haven’t been able to journal.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Put time into your classroom again. Five minutes, ten minutes for y’all to journal. And it doesn’t have to be academic related. It could, but it doesn’t have to put ten prompts on the board. Put Lo-Fi music, turn the lights down, let them journal, and you sit and you do the same thing. Have activities where kids are moving around.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
You feel like you’re not getting enough steps in now. You got to move around because they’re moving around and now you’re getting your steps in. It’s these micro choices to find joy, to find excitement, to find pleasure in living this crazy thing that we call life. And I found that embedding them, if you’re if your school has an advisory and every advisory, you’re using it as an opportunity to lesson plan, stop and sit down with the kids.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yeah. And talk to them.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Read with them. Pull up. Have them pull up a TikTok video that they find really interesting. And all of y’all dissect it and all your thoughts and your beliefs about it. That’s critical thinking even though it’s not in alignment with what it that social emotional learning, that self-awareness, that’s social consciousness. You can throw a standard on anything. I listen, I’m a queen of pretending.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
A standard fits with something that they don’t. Well, okay, okay, I’m going to figure out how to make it make sense so that I can I can give my kids what I know that they need and give myself what I know that I need. And so that’s been something that I’ve done this year that I hadn’t necessarily done previously that I think has really helped support make a shift.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And if I’m going to, I mean, I have to plug every time, any time move your body and.
Catlin Tucker
Yes, yes.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
I’m so tired. I’m so this you’ve only had a Celsius and three almonds today.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
That’s probably why you’re tired.
Catlin Tucker
Right?
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Eat some food. Yeah. Right. Figure out how to. Whether it’s meal prep, whether it’s going to a meal prep service, whether it getting pre-made meals that you can plug and play, make sure that you’re eating, make sure that you’re eating things that fuel and nourish your body and make sure that you’re moving in between classes. Go take a lap around the building before you sit down for your prep.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Do like these tiny, tiny things. Make such a world of difference, of clearing our brains and allowing us to feel more in alignment. And again, everything I’m saying to you are things that I have to say to myself. Everything that I’m saying to you. I have either had to learn the hard way or that I I’m still in the process of learning.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And so sometimes I come off a little, you know, but that’s just because I want folks to like sometimes we need the call in and we need the trigger of that feeling that’s overwhelming. And getting to the other side of that, that’s where the real growth happens, not when everyone agrees with you. And so I hope that that folks pulled something from this conversation that helps them.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
To your point, live that more balanced life, because I found balance in my work as an educator by becoming a better educator.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, yeah. And I will include in the show notes all the links so people can connect with you, but also so they can connect and learn more about the coaching and the offerings that you provide to kind of help educators, you know, find the joy in this, find the really the balance and all of the crazy that is being a professional like educator.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Listen, we have to address and combat every social ill that exists in society. And the vast majority of people do not have to experience that in their positions. So I do not take it lightly how difficult our job is. But there are ways that make our job easier, that also make kids see themselves as valuable and loved and cared for.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
And when you can find the balance between those two things, you’re also going to find the balance in yourself. Because living in alignment with your values is really what’s going to cure your burnout. Not a self-care day, not a spa day. Love those things too, and I’m going to do them living in alignment with your values on a daily basis.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
That’s what actually cures your burnout. That’s what actually makes you fall in love with your job, is knowing that what you’re doing actually aligns with who you are.
Catlin Tucker
Oh my gosh. Well, mic drop, that was the perfect way to end this episode. I cannot thank you enough for making time to have this conversation with me. It was just so refreshing and I just so appreciate you sharing your perspective with everybody who’s listening.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Yes, I’m so grateful to have been here. Every time I have an opportunity to share this message with educators, it it brings me joy because it’s one more person that now knows that we can we can do like this stuff and still love our life.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Evalaurene Jean-Charles
Absolutely. Yeah. I’m excited to keep connecting with anyone who’s listening because we got work to do, y’all. You got work to do.
Catlin Tucker
We do, we do.
Catlin Tucker
There are so many parts of this conversation that just make me smile, that bring me joy, that I found so fascinating. And I think a few of the ones I want to highlight is one, as educators, we don’t have control of everything that is just the reality. But we do have control of a lot of things in our classrooms, particularly how we show up for our students, how we lean into tough conversations with them.
Catlin Tucker
Right. One of the things that Eva said that really, for me, resonated so much is if we’re dealing in the school year with classroom management problems and a kid who’s just acting out or acting in ways that are really unproductive or frustrating, the only person who knows why that’s happening and how to change it. And you know, what is triggering in those moments is the child and being willing to have conversations with kids, get to know them, understand that they are these really complex beings who are bringing all of these different feelings and emotions and lived experiences and traumas into our classrooms.
Catlin Tucker
And how are we attempting to one get to know them, to connect with them? Three give them grace. As you know, we want to give ourselves grace in moments right when we’re not maybe behaving in the way we would ideally like to as an educator. For me, that idea of be as curious about your students as you want them to be, about your subject area, your, you know, curriculum in the concepts at the heart of your subject area.
Catlin Tucker
That, to me is such a powerful reminder of what we need to do in the new school year. Another thing I think is so important to just repeat, because as we start the school year, I know many teachers begin with community building and icebreakers, but that often kind of lasts only a few weeks at the very start of the school year.
Catlin Tucker
And it’s really in those early moments that we need to be prioritizing, setting up systems, helping students understand where are the things in my classroom, how what if I need a particular kind of resource? What if I get stuck? We want to really invest the time into both helping them build relationships so they feel safe and they feel seen and they feel valued in our classrooms by us and their peers.
Catlin Tucker
But also, how are we creating routines and protocols and systems that students can get comfortable with, that we can model, we can help them practice so that eventually, as Eva said, we get to January, February of the school year and now we’re not having to work so hard because we’ve already laid the foundation that is going to help students be confident and successful.
Catlin Tucker
Navigating much of this on their own. So I feel like I could talk forever about all the things that I loved about this conversation, and how important I think they are for us to just reflect on and check in with ourselves about what are what did we do well last year, what really worked for us as educators, and where were those moments of frustration or exhaustion or moments where we just didn’t show up the way we really want to as humans in a in a classroom with lots of other humans and really get serious about how we might make positive change for ourselves and our students going into a new school year.
Catlin Tucker
I want to thank you guys for joining me for this two part conversation. I hope you enjoyed it. You found something of value. Maybe it even challenged you a little bit. I know moments I was thinking of my own work and feeling like, yep, there’s always still work to do. It’s like learning there is no end point in our own growth and our own development and our own learning.
Catlin Tucker
As educators. And so if you have any questions, you have any comments or feedback, I welcome them. You can find me on X at Catlin_Underscore Tucker. You can find me on Instagram at Catlin Tucker or on my website. CatlinTucker.com. And I will include Eva’s contact information in the show notes as well, in case you want to connect with her.
Catlin Tucker
I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week, and for those of you savoring the last bits of summer, enjoy. Relax, recharge. I wish you a wonderful last bit of your summer break.
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