The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Piper’s Picture Power by Linda Zeigler

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Piper's Picture Power by Linda Zeigler Amazon.com Piper loves to think and imagine as she plays and learns. She wonders just HOW this process happens. Her new friend, The Thinker, helps her realize she can choose to make pictures in her head to remember, imagine, to know what she knows, to manage emotions, and to make plans for life. She shares what she learns from The Thinker to help friends and family make personal use of mental pictures. She even asks questions of the reader to encourage their use of individual imaging. Using imaging intentionally expands and deepens thinking; it becomes a SUPERPOWER for Piper and her friends!

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We have an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to be talking to her about her book, Off the Presses, out November 1st, 2023, called Piper's Picture Power. Linda Ziegler joins us on the show with us today. We're going to be talking about her insights and everything that goes into it. Welcome to the show. Linda, how are you? Linda Ziegler I'm doing great. Thank you. Pete Slauson Thank you. And give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to look you up on the interwebs?

Linda Ziegler IntentionalVisualization.com is a website and it has my books for teachers and I have my children's books, so that would be a good place and some information, other information. Pete So, give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside this book? Piper- This book is about real children and a dog. And the main character, Piper, wonders things. And she says, how do I know things? How will I grow? What makes me imagine? I want to know. And that starts the journey and the adventure. And she meets a brain, which I noticed on the beginning of your show, you talked about brain.

And this is a character in our book. And so I'm going to introduce you to our brain. And his name is the Thinker. The Thinker. And so Piper wonders those things. She's kind of the oldest character in the book. And so what she does, she meets this brain. And this brain starts teaching her about learning

and about her own brain. And then she wonders if it's true. So she takes it back and tries different little activities with the other children that are in the book. There's ten different lessons that the brain teaches and it's a lot of fun. It's an interactive book. There's questions so that the reader gets involved and all the, now the brain character itself is an imaginative character, but everybody else is real. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Piper, you have Piper there where we can meet her, correct? Yes. This is Piper. Hi, Mr. Voss. Hello, Piper. How are you doing? How does it feel to be a main character in a book?

It feels really good. It feels, you know, it feels just like I love to read. So it just feels wow. If you know your own name is in a book, you feel just like really good about it. That's awesome. You can grow up and be like, I'm a main character in a book. And then this is going to be this series, is that correct? Yes. And tell us about the series. What hopes to play out here? Let's call the Picture Power Series. And it's to extend, you know, image, mental imaging.

People think it's just making pictures in your head, but it's way bigger than that. It is about imagination. It is about remembering and we all need to remember. And it's about knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know. It's about conceptualization. There's so many things that it helps you with. Dealing with your emotions, dealing with your senses, all of these things, critical thinking, creative brains, all of those things. The next book is actually at the Illustrators, the Illustrator for Piper's Picture Power for the book is an art teacher here in Wichita, Kansas. Her name's Taylor McQuarrie. And the brain itself was created by my niece. So, I used those in the classroom when I was working with preschool, kindergarten,

teaching them about their thinking. And then I decided, wait a minute, that would be a perfect character for the book. And then she ended up creating the children. Now Piper had this- Piper did? No, the illustrator. Okay. This is the back of the book, Mr. Voss, and this was Piper's idea. So I'll let her tell you about why she thought that was a cool idea.

Okay. I thought it would be cool so that way kids could see, you know, like, that we're not just characters in a book, it's real and that you really do in real life need to use imaging to be able to learn and think and you can even make up your own stories with that and it makes it a lot more entertaining and fun. Pete Is this your first podcast you've been on? Anna Yeah. Ever? Congratulations, you're starting early.

You might be our youngest guest we've ever had on the show. I'm not sure we've had anybody this young on the show, unless somebody walked in during filming with somebody's kid or something. But congratulations. And so, you came up with the idea for the other people in the book or the back of the book, correct? Kirsten Yeah. One of that, she, and I've had people tell me that's one of their favorite things, is to know that the characters are real. And so, there will be pictures on the back of each of the, I have five books in my brain.

There's one at the Illustrator called Always Imaging Alice. And then there's another one ready to go once Always Imaging Alice is finished. That's called Switch It, Change It, Rearrange It. And it's how when something drops into your head, if it's not a good thought, you don't have to let it stay, you can switch it. Pete Yeah. Pete Yeah.

Pete This is probably an important skills for young people to, and it's targeted towards young people, correct? Pete This is, but I'm going to tell you us old people need it too. Pete Yeah, I know some people on Twitter and Facebook that need it, definitely. Pete Mm hmm. Pete It sounds like one of the things you explore is the Dunning-Kruger effect, right? The effect that people, you know, they think that, you talk about, you know, the aspect of you know what you know, you know what you don't know, and then the one aspect that a lot of people don't focus on is what you don't know you don't know. And that's

usually what gets you in life is not paying attention or looking for what you don't know you don't know. But a lot of Dunning and Kruger is part of that effect where you don't, where you know, usually the less people know the more they think they know something. And as they really get into it and try and master it, then they find out that they really don't know anything about it at all. And, you know, and the journey to mastery is a definite learning curve. Because they're not even open then. So if we teach this, and it's called metacognition, mental imaging, you know, making the concepts and knowing that is cognition. But when you talk about your thinking, it actually is metacognition and it takes it

deeper. And that's when we can share who we are. So the classrooms change when this is used and relationships change. Because when I care about what you're thinking and you care about what I'm thinking, actually it bonds us. And you feel like you belong together because not that you have to agree, but it's just to care. Pete Slauson Yeah. Yeah, we need to care about each other. We need to be stewards of each other and, you know, rising tide lifts all boats as it were.

Debra Larson Right. Pete Slauson Definitely. So, you got the series. What made you want to get Piper involved? Or does she volunteer to get involved? How that all worked out? Tell us the story if you would. Debra Larson As I, you know, as a grandma does, you share your wisdom or what you think is wisdom. But that all work out? Tell us the story if you would. Julie As a grandma does, you share your wisdom or what you think is wisdom, but she really liked it.

And we had a lot of fun with it. And that's when I decided, hey, I think this could be a really fun thing and expand thinking. And then she's always supportive. Plus she has really good ideas. You know, so we, yeah. She, we're working on a game called Perspective and she's a consultant on the game and she's played it. And so that's another little aspect that we wanna have people interact and talk about what they're thinking and what they believe, and then we

can learn from each other. Pete Yeah, most definitely. The, you know, it's good that you have a perspective. So, tell us about your background. I know you mentioned that you've done teaching and let's bring that around to, you know, what your influence was, how you were raised, how you became a teacher and want to teach other people, and then the proponent for what got this book launched. Mary Flaherty I was an educator for 35 years, 10 of them in the classroom, 10 of them as a, I had a reading specialist. And then I became a principal, elementary principal, a high school principal

at time for a year and then the superintendent in a small rural school, Quinter, Kansas. And we spent a number of our years there, kids graduated and I learned some things there. And this is how we decided that we were going to test all of our first through fourth grade students pre and post with a reading inventory. And we chose Dr. Jerry John's basic reading inventory. And I ended up writing my first two books with Jerry after he came and observed everything we were doing. Because what we found was that students were not automatically using mental imageries. A lot of them didn't even know

they should. You know, our environment has changed, but there was a segment, a culture, that these kids didn't have any screens and they didn't have any televisions at home. And by golly, reading was their entertainment and they could tell you everything they read. They saw it, they answered the comprehension questions easily. So I just started thinking about what are they doing different? And how can I get the other kids to do it? And so that's where it all started. And then teachers bought in. We went from being at the state average in reading in our school, elementary school, to 20% above the state average by focusing on teaching this intentionally.

Wow. Yeah. That's pretty freaking awesome. It absolutely is. And the kids taught me, because I would say, how are you doing this? Like one little guy, I said, do you ever make pictures any other time when you don't read? And he said, you know, my folks tell me to do chores, and I picture myself doing them,

and then I remember what to do. That's the kind of stuff they would tell me. So, it'd be exciting. Pete Now, there are certain people that I think see in pictures, there's other people that see in video or there's… Julie Concepts, there's conceptual, yes. And so, imagery isn't, it's not like you flip it on and off. You know, we do it differently and based on everybody's imaging is different because all of our experiences are different.

And the book says, your experiences come from what you've seen, heard and read. It's also all in rhyme. So it's kind of fun. Yeah. So, you hope to put this series out and I guess is the target to try and teach kids how to just be more well-adjusted? What would you say? Julie Yes. And to enjoy their learning. That was one of the things when I saw this group of kids that, you know, were loving to read and were ready to talk about it all the time, they didn't have distractions.

They could focus, they could, and needless to say, technology is not a bad thing. It's just gotta be in a balance. We cannot have kids online all the time and think that they're going to have their own thoughts because actually when they're on and they're going to have their own thoughts. Because actually, when they're on and they're looking at somebody else, that's not their thinking, they're looking at somebody else's ideas.

Pete It's true. True. You gotta form your own ideas or use your own brain to think and all that stuff. Otherwise, you're just living someone else's life and all that sort of thing. Pete Right. Pete Mm hmm. But what else have we talked about the book that you want to tease out to people to get them to pick it up? Piper P. What about you, Pipes? Do you have something else you want to say? Piper P. I guess that just really, kind of just what we were just talking about. It's better to have a screen balance because you're just kind of like a lot of kids my age now they just sit all they do is just sit on like an app called YouTube and just sit there and scroll on Shorts and stuff and go outside or read a book and go have fun and do something instead of just sitting there

Watching videos all the time Definitely, that's how we grew up walking walking outside and doing stuff and all those things. Communication, you know, I feel like that is something we... I see parents doing it. I see parents on, you know, watching their phone and their kids are sitting right there on their iPads and nobody's talking. And I feel like that's a problem. That's a real problem. And the questions in the books ask the reader to respond. What is your favorite animal?

So memory, they're remembering their favorite pet, and they're thinking, and so that they can feel it and can label that, that that's memory and the importance of it. So in with the characters they all picture something different. So here's one and so you can see that that Piper asks them to write and that writing is a very important thing and that's kind of leaving us too. But she puts pick up litter, then they all picture something different. The dog pictures, of course, picking up dog poop. And the one little girl picks Alice picks up a cup and,

and Cooper picks up a bottle. And Violet pictures kitty litter litter because she likes kitty. You can be confused sometimes too when you picture something different than what the meaning was for the person that was talking. So all those kinds of things are in this book. Pete Slauson And as we go out, give us a final pitch out for people to order up the book. Piper, you're welcome to throw in here too. And any dot coms you want people to find you on the interwebs. I am starting to make a, my own thing that's kind of like about imaging too. It's like more of writing letters.

I don't know how to explain it quite right. But if you put a, like a paragraph out on a internet or like a website typing about imagery and that stuff. So she she's a believer and my the other granddaughter is Alice and she's four and she loves it too. I will say that she had a little stuffy, her sleepy sheepy, and she had it and she said, you know, you can make pictures in your head. And so when three and four year olds can tell you that, I will say a little story. When I went into a preschool classroom to try to introduce this to them, I said, now, I'm going to say a word,

and you are going to tell me what comes to your head and in your mind. And so I just said the word rabbit. And they were in a little circle. And then I went one by one, and they'd tell me. And they would show me, or they would get up and hop. They'd show me what the rabbit was doing, and the size of it, and the size of their ears.

And they were just totally engaged, and they were each watching each other. So the engagement that they feel by listening to each other is, I didn't even know it was going to do that, but it does it at all ages. And so then I came to the last little girl and her eyes were sparkly, and she said, my rabbit's a rainbow rabbit. And I said, oh, what an imagination. And so even that basic core of helping kids understand what's real and what's imagined.

So that's part of the beginning of it. And to understand, you know, then, are you telling me a story? Is this real? Because they try that too. So wonderful to have you on, give us the.com as we go out. Okay, it's on amazon.com. And my specific is the intentional visualization.com, and my specific is the IntentionalVisualization.com,

which it has all the books. This is the latest teacher book. It's called Imagine Cognition Using Intentional Visualization. So, it wasn't hard because I already knew all the concepts that I would want to teach. It was just putting it in a narrative format and having some fun with kids being interactive in the book. Awesome, Soss. Thank you both for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for watching us, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1, The Ticktockity, and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. Thank you.

And that should have us out, ladies.