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Welcome back my friends to Confessions of a PYP Teacher. This is Lu Gerlach with thinkchat. 

Today, I'm focusing on chapter one of Experience and Education by John Dewey, which is the second episode in the series. This chapter focuses on traditional versus progressive education.

Just a reminder: this text was originally written in 1938. Ninety years ago, my friends. It's really interesting. As I was reading through this chapter, I found lots of tidbits that made me pause to think about the argument for traditional versus progressive education.

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Welcome to confession number 167. My name is Lu Gerlach from thinkchat. This episode is starting a new book club series, because you know I love a good book club. 

This summer, while traveling, I've been diving deep into podcasts and books that have genuinely shifted how I see the world. I've found myself captivated by figures like Marcus Aurelius, who, despite being one of history's most powerful rulers, spent his life wrestling with the most human of questions: What is the whole purpose of why we're here? He wasn't just a conqueror or a statesman. He was a thinker, someone who looked at the world around him and refused to stop asking why.

Then I started asking, who are the Stoics of education? Who are the all-time greats, the true GOATs, who forever changed how we think about learning, about the rights of children, about what it actually means to teach? My brain started percolating. Naturally, names like John Dewey and Vygotsky rose to the top. These are people we reference constantly in education circles, people whose ideas form the backbone of so much of what we believe about how children learn.

I began the quest to return to these educators who laid the foundation for modern thinking.  The person we are exploring here is John Dewey in his work, Experience and Education.  His work is dense, but also quite powerful. 

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Welcome back to Confessions of a PYP Teacher and the fifteenth episode in our well-being series.

As we come to the end of this series, we have spent time sitting with some heavy, but very real parts of learning and teaching.

We have explored worry, fear, panic, anxiety, stress, burnout, boreout, and trauma. We have looked closely at what they can look like in our classrooms, and how easily they can be missed, misunderstood, or mislabeled.

If we are honest, there may have been moments where we recognized ourselves in those descriptions too.

That is part of our work.

Because well-being in a PYP school has never been about getting it right all the time. It is about learning to notice, to respond, and to grow with more awareness and care.

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Welcome back to Confessions of a PYP Teacher and the fourteenth episode in our well-being series.

I’ve been waiting to talk about our next topic for awhile, because it is quite heavy.  But I would be remiss to skip it, because it makes me feel uncomfortable.  If you haven’t guessed, it is trauma informed teaching. 

We have already gone in deep on all of the areas that make us feel uncertain.  Why not explore trauma too?  

I know this is deep, but it's about making a safe space for our learners. 

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Welcome back to Confessions of a PYP Teacher and the thirteenth episode in our well-being series.

Today, we are continuing our exploration of boreout, this time from the learner’s perspective. If teachers can experience boreout, is it possible that our learners can too?

In a PYP classroom, this can be easy to miss because everything might look like it’s working. The tasks are getting done, the room is lively and orderly, and expectations are being met. But when we look a little closer, we might notice something else.

Take a listen to see how learner boreout shows up in our practice and what we can do about it. 

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Welcome back to Confessions of a PYP Teacher and the twelfth episode in our well-being series.

As I am writing this episode, I can’t help but to reflect on my last year in Brussels.  I met so many people who had worked at the same job and complained of burnout and boreout.  This is not a criticism of them, but rather that system that they work in that could bring it about.  These were highly paid people in supposed interesting professions, but they were bored with what they were doing.  No matter how you talked about their work, they were no longer interested and were out on leave. 

This made me connected to how this connects with our profession as PYP educators.  These questions came to my mind.

If teachers do burnout, do they also boreout?
What is the fine line beneath the two? 
Is one more severe?
Is one more preventable? 
How can we swing back into the “in” zone? 

If you want to find the answer to teacher boreout, be sure to listen to this episode.

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Welcome back to Confessions of a PYP Teacher and the eleventh episode in our well-being series.

I have been curious about learner burnout as I watch my five-year old niece.  She is a neurodivergent thinker who has ADHD, but also struggles with speech delay. For most of her life, she has been unable to articulate herself and her needs.  I have personally witnessed her frustration to be understood.  

I was reminded of these issues related to learner burnout as I returned to the classroom three weeks ago.  My school needed an additional teacher for new learners enrolling into the school in the middle of the year.  I was fortunate to lead this class, but I was reminded of the potential burnout of neurodivergent thinkers and myself. 

I went on a hunt to determine the primary causes and found the cycle of neurodivergent burnout by New Glade Counseling based in the UK.  They state that five major causes can create learner burnout in our schools, which I think applies to all learners who are struggling to keep up. 

Listen to this episode to find out more!

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Welcome back to Confessions of a PYP Teacher and the tenth episode in our well-being series.

Fatigue is the silent pandemic of modern life that happens when repeated stressors, small or large, grind us down over time. It’s the constant, everyday pressures that compound until you wake up one day unable to face them anymore.

This is called Burnout.

In this episode, we will discuss the signs of teacher burnout and how we can prevent it, so we can remain whole. 

Let's do this!

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Welcome back to Confessions of a PYP Teacher and the ninth episode in our well-being series.  

So far, we’ve looked at fear, worry, panic, and anxiety. These are internal experiences of threat;  the ways our mind and body respond when we anticipate danger, whether real or imagined. They’re signals that the nervous system is on high alert, scanning for what could go wrong.

But there’s another side to mental health and well-being. Instead of being driven by inner threat signals, it’s shaped by the demands placed on us from the outside. This is where overload and stress come in. When the pressures of life and work outweigh the resources we have to cope, the system tips over. At first, this feels like everyday stress. But over time, if it doesn’t let up, it can spiral into two very different outcomes: burnout, being drained by too much or boreout, being drained by too little meaning or creativity. Both wear down our sense of ownership over our lives.

Let's take a moment to unpack stress overload and how it can impact your well-being.

For a written blog post and other resources, visit:   https://thinkchat2020.com

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Welcome back to Confessions of a PYP Teacher and the eighth episode in our well-being series.  

We have already unpacked all the ways that anxiety can manifest itself.  I don’t know about you, but it made me slightly anxious just talking about it!  No pun intended.  

Now, we are going to examine the anxiety disorders that may be afflicting many of our colleagues, familiies, and learners within our learning community. 

For a written blog post and other resources, visit:   https://thinkchat2020.com

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