Taught: The Podcast
Taught is a podcast where educators and others discuss how they really feel about education, burnout, and strategies to make the world and education burnout-free.
Taught: The Podcast
Taking Back Teaching: S2E8 Navigating Burnout and Reform with Jackie Scully Part 2
Imagine a world where the classroom isn't just a place of stress and competition, but a haven for mental well-being and authentic connections. That's exactly what Jackie Scully envisions as she reflects on her personal journey from burnout to recovery. With raw honesty and heartfelt insights, Jackie unpacks the urgent need for mental health prioritization in education. This conversation is a powerful reminder of the vital role mental health plays not just for students, but educators too.
jackie.c.scully@gmail.com
Season 1 :
Join the Conversation: https://taughtbymelef.blogspot.com/
Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Email promelef@gmail.com. Include your name, role in education, and a summary of your story.
Here's the book that started it all:
Taught: The Very Private Journal of One Bad Teacher
Available @ Amazon in ebook or audio:
https://a.co/d/1rNZ84h
For immediate help use link for resources:
https://www.healthcentral.com/mental-health/get-help-mental-health
Other resources:
Amy Schamberg Wellness: https://www.amyschamberg.com/about
NHS - Resources for Grief and Burnout
https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/feelings-symptoms-behaviours/feelings-and-symptoms/grief-bereavement-loss/
Melissa Anthony MA, LPC Trauma & Grief Counselor
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/melissa-j-anthony-grand-rapids-mi/944381
so I think one like takeaway from this is that we we have teachers that aren't healed and have their own trauma, and right, they're trying to be there for students who have it too, and it's a there's a lot of trauma in the system. So we have to prioritize self-care mental health resources for not only the students, but the teachers, the faculty, all the adults. I mean, we don't really prioritize that quite yet. We're talking about mental health and what to do with the kids, even though it's kind of like not fully funded and there's not a lot of resources. We don't really talk about the adults in the community. We just expect them to get over it. Right, it's kind of that old generation like well, that's from your childhood, get over it, which is not how it works.
Speaker 2:How much I miss not knowing that we're all screwed. 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 fueled by burnout 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 perspective, but there are some pieces of taught that resonated with many educators.
Speaker 2: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 I like to be educated, but I'm so frustrated.
Speaker 2:Don't forget, this is part two of a two-part episode. If you missed part one, go to taughtbuzzsproutcom. So if I gave you a magic wand and I said you know, you can change one thing in education, just one, what?
Speaker 1:would it be? I would say I would love to see more of a stripping down. Less is more in education. I think we're piling on too much and what happened after the pandemic was we needed to pile on more because we thought we lost time with our kids and they're behind, right. So that whole sense of competition, just having time in school to really be present and have, you know, joyful conversations, joyful experiences, letting kids embrace who they are, be kids even when they're teenagers, be kids and not put all this stress on them and stress on all the teachers and everyone else in the system.
Speaker 1:So I would just love to see us focus more on stripping things down a little bit and let's like talk about what do we really want to see with the time that we have with these kids? We want to see them having fun. We want to see them connecting with each other in community. We want to see them happy. We want to see, you know, better mental health. I mean, we are on a crisis. There is really struggling with depression and suicide rates and kids falling through the cracks. So all the statistics are there, all the evidence is there. So it's like is it time now? Can we really just say, like, what really matters here, and ask the kids I think the kids need to be part of these changes.
Speaker 2:They need a voice, yeah.
Speaker 1:They need a voice too.
Speaker 2:Especially the older ones, and even as you said that, I thought to myself they need to be taught. I feel like every year it was more and more of my students need to be taught how to be present. They don't always know what that feels like. They know what distraction feels like, but they don't always know what it means to be present. And if they can't be present, how can we help them explore and find their passions?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly If we're always distracted.
Speaker 2:How do we get them there? So I think you have a wonderful idea. I I like that. I have heard this stripping down, but when you said being present, I thought, wow, that's a, that's a huge piece of it. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1:I have heard this stripping down, but when you said being present, I thought, wow, that's a huge piece of it. Thank you for that. Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 2:So and I ask this question every time I like to explain it a little bit. Most educators experience some secondary and sometimes firsthand trauma directly due to just being an educator, and I do ask my guests to share one of these moments because, when these things happen, they are heart-wrenching and jarring and, frankly, I don't want anyone to feel alone when it happens to them, and I do think it's lonely when you feel like you're the only one experiencing those things, and I also like the public at large to know what's happening as well. So, to your comfort level, can you share with us a time when you experienced this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was early on teaching in Hawaii. I was teaching a very diverse population. It was a Title I school immigrant community outside of like Pearl Harbor area on Oahu. Come to me during lunch I'm only like 23, 24. And she told me about incest rape that happened to her and that she was pregnant. And I'm thinking I don't, I don't even know her that well, like I'm still kind of a new teacher in the community, but for her to come to me I felt like, wow, she's really calling out for help, like she doesn't have anyone. And so I was taken aback and really and I it's very hard where teachers, especially new teachers, to not get emotionally involved, like with their students trauma. So I I kind of felt that and I was like, oh my gosh, I felt this responsibility but I didn't know what to do. There's like protocol and I first just wanted to give her the space to come and talk with me. Luckily she was with a friend that she trusted, that was with her, that already knew about it and came to talk with me. And then I was like we need to have you go see the counselor. We need to talk to the guidance counselor If you, if your friend, if that's okay, if your friend can go with you, if you want me to go or if you just want to go, we can go to her office. And eventually she did me with the counselor and then I can't remember all the details from there, but there was more involved, right, you know, with children and youth and all of that.
Speaker 1:I also saw a lot of trauma with my dad. He was a social worker and he worked for children and youth and so I didn't see firsthand but I heard a lot of stories and just like from him sharing. So that was kind of like coming back around with that. So teachers carry some of that with them and then sometimes there could be an event that happens with a student that may trigger something in you that happened to you. And that was not something that I went through, but it does happen and I've had teachers on my podcast talk about their own trauma from their childhood. I've had teachers on my podcast talk about their own trauma from their childhood and then to be a teacher and have to hold that trauma for others is really really heavy, it's really hard.
Speaker 1:So I think one takeaway from this is that we have teachers that aren't healed and have their own trauma and they're trying to be there for students who have it too, and it's a there's a lot of trauma in the system. So we have to prioritize self-care mental health resources for not only the students but the teachers, the faculty, all the adults. I mean we don't really prioritize that quite yet. We're talking about mental health and what to do with the kids, even though it's kind of like not fully funded and there's not a lot of resources. We don't really talk about the adults in the community. We just expect them to get over it.
Speaker 1:Right, it's kind of that old generation like well, that's from your childhood, get over it. Like it's not how it works. And we all grew up you know, some teachers grew up in the seventies, I grew up in the eighties, nineties. We did not take care of mental health, we did not really go to therapy, we didn't talk about it. So I think that's something we need to bring to light and really see how we can resource it.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you saying that. I also appreciate your observation that I think is so true, especially those first, when you're a newer teacher. It is really hard to separate those emotions from the students. It's very easy to get very connected with the student and then when a student has something like that happen with the student and then when a student has something like that happen, it's even a tougher road for those teachers and a lot of times I found even I was older when I started teaching but some of those experiences that students went through were still the first time I had ever heard of something like that happening where I was just in this state of wow, I can't believe that a child is having to go through this, and this is a child I see every day.
Speaker 2:This is you know a child who comes in my room just to talk about Pokemon and this is what's happening. So, yeah, we definitely need better spaces for these things, and not necessarily to you share the experiences, but to access resources about how we process them. I think, that is a big missing piece for us, because when we have an event happen, we're usually processing it on our own Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then the flip side is that we do get to experience some pretty funny things too. So I like to end it on a positive here. So what's the what's a funny thing?
Speaker 1:that happened to you in your time as an educator. There's so many funny times. I always say teaching middle school, just teach middle school, and for the most part you're just going to laugh a lot. You're going to cry a lot because it's a really hard, but you are going to laugh a lot. Those kids are hilarious. But I'm going to go to something that popped in my head and wouldn't be like thinking I was going to make a connection to something funny.
Speaker 1:So I taught in an all girl Catholic school in Delaware and I loved it. I loved it and when I started I'm like what the heck am I getting myself involved in? Like I went from like just regular public school, obviously like mixed gender, and I was born and raised Catholic but I wasn't practicing and at that time I was like not religious. I'm like what am I doing? What is this going to be like? I thought it was going to be like a sorority. It kind of was a little bit. It was a little funny, but the you know, being a female teacher and I was still kind of young, these students just want it to like you know everything about you and the things that they would do in school. They were hilarious. So it was all girl Catholic school. So they had to wear uniforms and they would do everything they could to make sure their uniform was not on right and like there was holes in their stockings and they just they looked like a hot mess express all the time and didn't care. But I think the funniest thing that I liked about this particular culture of the school is once a year, during Catholic schools week I think it was in January they would put on a comedy skit and make fun of the teachers and it was. They had to get it approved by administration, but it was so funny and for the most part besides maybe one or two times it was really lighthearted and the teachers were laughing. It was. It built so much community and culture Like I loved it and I couldn't wait to see how they would, you know, try to be me and it was like the most boring role.
Speaker 1:So I'm like, oh man, I need to be like, I need to stand out more. Why am I so boring? Like the only thing that they had with me is like I was best friends with this other teacher and I always wear scarves and I was very bohemian in my dress, so like they just made me look like that and they had me and like the other you know student playing the other teacher be like besties. I'm like all right, well, at least that's cute. But there were some oh. So we had one sister, we had one nun in the school and they would always do her every year and she like played guitar, she sang, she danced, she was like an anthropologist, like she would do the digs in Mexico. She was the coolest nun ever. So they always did something really like funny with her. So yeah, that kind of came to mind and whenever I talk about that school experience, like nobody is like expecting some of the stories that I share because they're like, okay, all-girl Catholic school, I'm like it was wild.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm not really surprised because I had to take and this is nowhere near that experience, but I had to take kids to camp sixth graders every year and I had to. I was in charge of the girls, right, I had to. One year I even had to stay in a cabin with like 12 girls and, yeah, I was like this is not what I see in the classroom. Ladies, Come on, I was going to have to sleep in front of the door that night, so I can only imagine yeah, oh, and we did a sleepover at the school and I was in charge of that.
Speaker 1:One of my yeah, oh, and we did a sleepover at the school and I was in charge of that. One of my all the jobs you take on when you're in education. One of my jobs was the ninth grade coordinator, which sounds really cool and like leadership position. I think I got paid peanuts for it, but anyways, one of the things I had to plan was a ninth grade sleepover at the school and I had to. I had to try to recruit teachers and any adults in the community, like parents, to want to chaperone that. That was like pulling teeth. That was some silly times. I slept, I didn't I mean, I did not sleep at all, but oh, it's so goofy, it was so. So, like the things that I heard. And yeah, it's just, education can be weird.
Speaker 2:It can be. I mean, and sometimes those are the moments, though you know what I mean when you're like so, speaking of moments, I call these glow moments when you're like this is me, this is me walking my purpose right here, working with kids, work, you know, whatever teaching that I'm a rockstar teacher. Today, this everybody got my lesson. Can you tell us about one of your glow moments?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this isn't actually in the classroom, but it's in my role. I mentioned briefly that I led a trip to Germany. It was something I wanted to do before I transitioned out and I got to do it in 2023 and it was a heavy moment but it was a glow. So we went to a concentration camp because that was part of the itinerary for this world war ii trip and I had, you know, some jewish students on the trip as well and we had this tradition at my school, because it was also a religious school, it was Quaker and we had meeting for worship, and so we brought that to our trip and then we wanted to do it on the bus because it was a little bit more intimate than trying to do it outside, on the outside of the concentration camp.
Speaker 1:And I will just say, these students, they really went there, they opened up, they shared their heart, they cried, they got angry you know all the emotions that are brought up and they just, they fully were present and they went there and they connected and I had my little moment with them and had like my like little speech to say about how we're truth seekers and how proud I am of them, of coming on this trip and like really kind of digging in, and then I turned around and started crying. I'm like I can't hold this in very much longer between going through that experience myself as an individual I've never even been and then what they shared, it was powerful. That was probably, yeah, one of the most powerful moments that I've had as a teacher.
Speaker 2:What a fabulous example to show them how to connect via community, to, to give them that experience, you know, and obviously made them feel safe enough that they felt they could be vulnerable.
Speaker 1:So yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, is there anything else that you would like to talk about before we say goodbye today?
Speaker 1:I just want to say thank you for creating this podcast. I love it. I love what you're doing. I love that you're giving a pretty raw and real space for people to just say what they want to say. Coming from the education industry, and it's needed, and so I really enjoyed connecting with you, and I don't think this is just going to be a one-time thing either. I see in the future more collaboration and growing our connection. So thank you, melissa.
Speaker 2:Me too. Thank you, jackie. I really appreciate you coming on. Today's episode was produced and edited by me. The theme music is by Otis McDonald featuring Joni Ines. 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 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. If you would like to get your voice on my podcast, contact me via the link on my webpage. Taughtbuzzsproutcom. 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.
Speaker 2: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, 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.