Alex Gandy is a teacher at Pearce High School in Richardson, Texas. She teaches leadership program she created called Starting Off Strong, works with Avid college prep students, student council, and is a yoga teacher at the Mat Studio and an Embody Love Movement Facilitator.

We start off with Alex sharing her story of finding her passion for teaching, the bumps of failing at self-care, moving through complete burnout, and her own healing journey. As Alex talks her fiery passion, critical thinking, and heart based leadership is extremely present. Alex speaks to the pain and challenges and push back with creating new programs in a very structured system. As Alex shares her story she reflects on specific moments that led to her realize she was burnout leading her to the yoga studio for self-introspection and healing. In her healing journey she has been able to cultivate more self-compassion as well as empathy for other teachers leading her to deeper connection to everyone and a more whole way of teaching. She emphasizes that connecting to the people around her in her school guides her to be a more wholehearted educator with the courage to face the brokenness of the system. Alex also shares how she has learned to care for herself including establishing non-negotiables and community outside of her work as an educator. This led us to a discussion of mutuality and how in service industry, those of us that serve need to cultivate things that fills up, things that give back to us - that are mutual. We discuss how in public school and in summer camp industry that there is a need for finding ways to teach both young people and educators how to connect and fill up from the inside out, as opposed to offering more time off or more physical things as a way to provide support. Alex makes a point that there needs to be more self-introspection and heart work for educators to connect to themselves and share their purpose with each other, and that one of the blocks to this work and self-care is a false belief that taking time for yourself means you are taking away time from a student. She moves into connecting how this belief and other things can lead to educators being pit against each other, which serves the system so that change does not occur. Through metaphor Alex teaches us how and why change is so difficult in the education system.

Our discussion of mutuality and change moved us into a discussion of learning how and when to disrupt the system can be a form of self-care. Alex shares that creating disruptions in the education system - aka pushing back to create change - can be fun. Doing this you will need a team to support you - that you are pushing back together. On this team she discusses how it’s important to know your strength and have people that will call you on your stuff. Alex tells a moving from her semester abroad in Poland, particularly her visit to Auschwitz - she connects this to the need to practice disrupting the system with things that are not that scary because there are times when it is scary. Practice using your courage to stand up for things you believe in your heart and for things that give kids space to explore and grow, so that when you come up to racism and other topics that can invoke fear and discomfort. She concludes this part of the discussion by reminding us that we have to be discerning about when to disrupt, picking moments that will be a catalyst for the most change, and know that we may be painted as a villain by some people.

Alex wraps up by sharing that her vision for a transformation in education is to let more of the world and current happenings in life through the doors of school, to allow students to experience real time discussion of current events and the discomfort, failure, and non-conclusion that occurs with dialogue on difficult topics.

Two of my favorite quotes from this episode:

“How we care for our kids is how we care for each other.” - Alex Gandy

“The now doesn’t come into play enough in education.” - Alex Gandy

Questions to Ask Yourself

How are you caring for yourself as you start your spring semester?

What are your non-negotiables?

What is something you need to fill you up?

Where do you go for mutual care?

How do you go about self-introspection?

Resources

CTZN Well - http://www.ctznwell.org/  is a great resource for more information on disrupting the system

Braving The Wilderness by Brene Brown

Want to reach out to Alex, you can email her at [email protected].

Follow B.R.A.V.E. on Instagram and Twitter @brave_educators and on Facebook @brave.educators Have questions or want to share your story on B.R.A.V.E.? Email me [email protected]. You can follow me personally on Instagram @embodied.soul.love

Until next week, go out Be BRAVE, Hearts Forward.

Credits:

Music by https://www.soundcloud.com/ikson