The Rich Roll Podcast - Jessica Lahey On The Gift of Failure

Episode Date: April 3, 2017

We all want what's best for our kids. So we roll up our sleeves and insert ourselves in their education, pitching in on homework and managing school projects. We stimulate them with an endless revolving door of activities. We do what we can to foster good grades, college application-worthy experiences and self-esteem. Along the way, we celebrate victories as if they were our own. And swoop in to protect when things go south. The instinct is laudable: set up our children for success, by any means necessary. But what if we have it all wrong? What if all this hyper-competitive, overly-protective micro-management is doing more harm than good? As a parent of young girls, I desperately want to do everything I can to serve their long-term interests. To learn more, I sat down with educator, writer and speaker Jessica Lahey (@jesslahey). A graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a J.D. concentrating on juvenile and education law from the University of North Carolina School of Law, Jessica is an an English and writing teacher, correspondent for the Atlantic, commentator for Vermont Public Radio, and writes the “Parent-Teacher Conference” column for the New York Times. She is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed* (highly recommend for parents) and if that's not enough, she also explores writing and creativity on #AmWriting, a podcast she co-hosts with KJ Dell'Antonia, a columnist and contributing editor for the New York Times' Well Family. Specific topics discussed include: * the critical difference between grades and learning * differentiating between confidence vs. competence * the perils of “fixed mindsets” * the nature of what motivates true learning * the negative implications of over-parenting, rescuing, enmeshment & hovering; and * effective strategies to cultivate your child's long-term interests * ultimately its about how to best parent your child to maximize their learning and set them up for long term success. If you are a parent, this episode is a must listen. If you don't have kids, you will nonetheless find Jessica's powerful insights on the psychology of motivation and the mechanisms that promote learning absolutely invaluable and applicable to each and every one of us. I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

I think the grades tend to be a topic that we get stuck on because it's emblematic of something else. What I think we need to be focusing on is what kind of learning works and what kind of assessing works. Because testing is not inherently evil. Testing actually gives us really important information about learning. It's just how we execute that testing is a nightmare. We do it essentially in the law school style, which is here's more information than you can possibly handle, cram it in as well as you can, and then regurgitate it for me in a multiple choice format. That's not great learning. What's great learning is taking information in, having to manipulate

the information, maybe having to peer teach the information, maybe having to create a project, apply it in some new novel way, attain mastery. That's true learning. That's Jessica Leahy, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. I thought it would be interesting to bookend last week's podcast with Adam Braun, which was all about education, specifically tackling problems related to education in the developing world, as well as higher education here in the United States, with an episode that focused a different lens on education, specifically middle school education. How to best parent young people navigating this system, which is of personal interest to me, given that I have a 13-year-old daughter. And I think of interest to many who listen to this show. And irrespective of whether or not you are a parent yourself, I think you're going to find today's episode very illuminating and highly applicable to your own

personal relationship with learning. And to explore these subject matters, I sat down with Jessica Leahy. Jessica is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a JD concentrating on juvenile and education law from the University of North with a JD concentrating on juvenile and education law from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Today, she is an English and writing teacher. She is a correspondent for The Atlantic. She's a commentator for Vermont Public Radio, and she writes the Parent Teacher Conference column for The New York Times. She is also the author of a wonderful New York Times bestselling book. It's called The Gift of Failure, How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed.

I highly recommend it. It's just fantastic. And finally, she hosts a podcast on creativity and writing called Hashtag AmWriting, A-M Writing. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. And this is the podcast where we go deep and long form with some of the most thought-provoking, paradigm-breaking thought leaders all across

the globe, across all categories of health, wellness, fitness, the arts, entrepreneurship. And in the case of this week's guest, of course, education. Super excited about this conversation. Jessica is amazing. But before we dive into it. is amazing. But before we dive into it... We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care.

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I first came across Jessica when she tweeted that she was enjoying my book, Finding Ultra, which was really cool. She was reading it with her son who is interested in running and veganism. And it caught my attention. I looked into Jessica and I immediately knew that she would make a great guest for the show. However, she lives in New Hampshire, and I had no plans to go to New Hampshire. But then I found out that she was speaking at a local high school here in my area. So I made a point of going to see her speak. And that was really

fantastic. And then I wrangled her to come over and talk to me. And now here we are. This is a great conversation about a lot of things. It's about the difference between grades and learning and the difference between confidence and competence. It's about the perils of quote unquote fixed mindsets and the nature of what motivates us, truly motivates us and our children to embrace real learning. It's about the implications of over-parenting, rescuing, enmeshment, and hovering. In other words, parenting based on what makes us as parents feel good about ourselves rather than what is in the best long-term interest of the child. And ultimately, it's about how to best

parent your child to maximize their learning and set them up for long-term success. So if you're a parent, I think you're going to find Jessica's insights invaluable. And as I mentioned earlier, even if you're not a parent, please don't skip this episode because this exchange is really packed with a ton of incredible information about the nature of human behavior and learning, which I think is applicable to each and every one of us. So with that said, I give you Jessica Leahy. Well, thank you so much for coming over today. It's a pleasure to meet you and spend a little time with you. This is such a treat for me because it's just so beautiful here. It's a lovely day. Conspicuously cold for Southern California this time of year. It was like there was ice out this morning.

Well, I left a couple feet of snow in New Hampshire, so that's perfectly fine. Right. Well, it's interesting how this came about. You know, we had a couple tweets several months ago, and that's how you kind of initially came on my radar, and I looked into you, and I was like, oh, wow, she's really interesting. She's writing about all these super interesting things. I kind of made a mental note to pay attention to what you were doing. And then about a week ago, I have a business partner and he texted me and said, hey,

it was a picture of an invitation of this event that was happening at Chaminade High School where he has a daughter. And he's like, hey, do you know who this woman is? We're going to go check this out. She might be cool for the podcast, just a thought. And I was like, I saw it. And I was like, oh, wait, I know her. That's excellent. And then I DM'd you, and now here we are. That's really funny.

Super cool. And it was great to attend that event last night and to hear you speak. And of the many things that I kind of took away from that, one of the things I thought was super interesting was you didn't just come in and give your keynote and like roll out like you spent the day with the kids. And then last night was about kind of addressing the parents. And then today you were with the faculty. So this is a very roll up your sleeves intensive thing that you do. Yeah. So what I mostly talk about is how to get kids sort of back on the track of being interested in learning as opposed to being interested in gathering up as many points and scores and that kind of thing. And also, you know, from my perspective, I'm a teacher.

I've been a teacher for a long, long time. I started to notice that my students just weren't learning as well. So the problem with changing anything about the way we teach kids is you have to have the conversation with all three legs of that. I mean, you have to talk to the kids about stepping up to expectations, and you have to talk to the parents about how to back off and give kids more autonomy and help them feel competent. And then today, when I was talking to teachers, it was sort of about closing that loop and helping teachers make learning more relevant for kids, because all the research shows that kids have to be dialed in emotionally to make that happen. So I do that a

lot. What's really fun about speaking to the kids before I speak to the parents is inevitably, parents tell me that they got a text from their kid at the end of the day saying, you have to go to this thing tonight. You have to go see this thing. And then I get emails from the kids, and I get emails from their parents. And it's fascinating that sometimes they're just sort of talking past each other, but on the same topic. So I love closing that loop because then I feel like closing that circle because then I feel like at least we're all using the same vocabulary. At least we're all sort of, even if we're not doing things that are,

you know, technically whatever, correct, according to the research, at least we're all trying to go in the same direction, which is learning. Well, I want to unpack like the various pieces of that, but maybe as a preface to that, we can sort of explore just the general basis of your work and your expertise and your area of specificity. Well, and I have to say, so you came on my radar screen well before I came on to yours because I am just a voracious reader of vicarious nonfiction. And that could be, I'm a huge fan of reading about being a shepherd or making goat cheese,, you know, I just love reading nonfiction about people that have different lives than I do. Right. And so I've read, you know, I've read a ton on, you know,

various sports that I don't have anything to do with. And my son, who's now 18, runs cross country. And so I wrote an article a while ago about how to get teenagers back into reading because a lot of teenagers, even the ones that read voraciously when they were younger kind of stop reading for pleasure and my secret has always been find out what they love just find out what they're interested in and buy a lot of non-fiction about those things so I purchased every book on running I could find from books on pre-fontaine to books on the 4-Minute Mile to Breaking 2 Hours. So my son's room is awash in running books. And yours was in there.

And then I actually, we have it on paper, but we also got it on audio because we were doing a trip together to visit colleges. And I said, let's listen to one of these books that's in your room. And so we picked yours, and so we listened to your book. And then my 13-year-old announced that he wanted to go vegetarian for a while and try it. And so that was a nice confluence. Worlds collide. It was great.

It was perfect. So that's why I reached out, because we had really enjoyed listening to the book sort of as a whole family. I appreciate that. Cool. It was fun. So what is the intersection point for you getting interested in education in general? Well, I started out, I was a law school person too.

I wasn't, I won't say lawyer because I never actually practiced. I went. How did you avoid that? I went to University of North Carolina Law School because I was absolutely positive. I wanted to be a juvenile attorney. In fact, I had the job all set up. I knew exactly. I had a mentor. I had worked with a judge in juvenile court. And about halfway through law school, I was asked to teach a class on juvenile law at Duke University for this gifted and talented program they do in the summer.

And I fell so hard for teaching. I mean, it was clear to my husband when I walked home that night that I was sunk. So I did finish law school, but I went straight into teaching. I sort of switched my concentration over to more education law, con law, you know, everything having to do with kids. So wait, you got a teaching post while you were in law school? It was just a summer gig. I see. Yeah, it was a summer gig. So I finished. That's pretty great. I mean, that's a pretty strong indication that that was a path for you. Yeah, it and it came out, you know, it was one of those things where

it just landed right in my lap. And I have still have relationships with those kids that I taught that summer. And they're now in their early 30s. So I went straight into teaching out of law school. I had my first son. And I found a friend who also was a teacher. And she and I worked out our child care slash work schedule so that we could take care of each other's children. And I was off and running. And middle school really became your sweet spot, right? I love middle school.

Why is that? I hated middle school. It was the worst. I hated it myself as a kid. So I actually taught high school for a long time first. And then I was asked to interview for a position in a middle school. And I dismissed it immediately. I said, well, there's no way I'm going to, not to them.

But I said, you know, I can use this as leverage maybe to get more money for the job I really want. And they said, well, just come visit. And I did. And I, I went and visited and I sat in on a class and I went home and I said to my husband, you're not going to believe this, but I love them. And I think it's because they're in that. I'm a big fan of in between places. I'm a big fan of not this, but not that. They're still affectionate. They hug. They are not afraid to cry in front of you. Well, they are sometimes, but they are just beginning to understand metaphor and symbolism. So often in class, there'll be these moments, especially in English class, where you've been talking about metaphors and talking about

metaphors and they don't get it and they don't get it. And all of a sudden this kid's eyes will just open up and they'll say, oh, my gosh, that's what she's been talking about this whole time. I refer to them as pupa people. They're still, their defenses are not completely up yet. And they're still willing to listen. And they're still not too cool to care. I just, I love them. It can be a very awkward time, too, in a time where it's really that moment where the individual, the child, is wrestling with identity and who they're going to align with and who they're going to be.

And those questions are not answered yet. So, yeah, it's preformed. That clay has not yet hardened. And the friendships they have at that time are all about trying on identities. And the books they're reading at that time are all about trying on identities. It's wonderful. And so when you go to these schools and you talk to these kids without, are the teachers gone too? It's just you and the kids? They're always teachers there because there is one moment at which I do ask all of the staff in the room to close their eyes so I can take a poll with them raising their hands over something. But they're always there. Yesterday, I spoke to 700 middle schoolers and 1200 high schoolers and the faculty were there. They were

really nice though. They did close their eyes when I asked them to. And, and what is it that you're asking these kids? Like, what are you trying to get at with them? When I talk to kids, it's really more of a conspiratorial look. Here's what the research says about what we have done, the situation we have set you up for. Um, we have set you up to care more about grades and points and scores than the actual learning. We did that to you because we told you that all that matters is that you get into X college and that you make X income when you get out. We also have told them that they need to be perfect. They need to be athletes slash musicians slash academic superstars. But not only that, that they need to make it look easy

while they're doing it. And we've set them up to have a fixed mindset. And anyone out there that's familiar with Carol Dweck knows that kids with a fixed mindset are not only more likely to just be uncomfortable, stressed out psychologically in dire straits, but also they're more likely to lie and cheat. And as a teacher, that's a cross purpose as to what I want. So I talked to them a little bit about, you know, if I'm able to convince your parents to back off and give you more autonomy, you have to step up. And then for the kids that I say, and look, some of your parents won't step up and give you more autonomy. So here are some ways you can get some control back, that you can own your learning again, even if we are desperate to take that away from you. Here are some ways that you can get control back.

Right. And as you kind of laid out in your talk last night and in your book, it really pivots around these three kind of cornerstone ideas, right? The one you just touched on, which is autonomy, the second one being competence, and the third one being connection. Right. Right. Right. So maybe- And that's not me. That's Edward Deasy, Why We Do What We Do, The Science of Self-Motivation.

But yeah, those three things are the three things you have to provide for kids or for ourselves if we're trying to foster intrinsic motivation. And what we're doing right now is we're helicoptering and hovering over our kids. We're involved in these codependent relationships with them that are well-intentioned, that are not serving them because we're not fostering their autonomy. And then what else are we doing? Maybe explain the kind of current landscape of parenting with kids in this age group, what we're doing wrong, and then we can get into like how we can do better. Well, extrinsic motivators, you know,

undermine motivation. Extrinsic motivators can be the good things like, you know, paying kids for good. I say good with little quotes around it because, you know, it feels good. It feels wonderful to pay kids for their grades or to offer them a car if they stay in, you know, on a roll the entire time they're in high school. And the negative ones, any kind of control, anytime anyone messes with your sphere, your ability to do what you want to do, and that includes, you know, even includes surveillance of kids using cell phones. And it's becoming increasingly common for parents to have an app on their phone where they know so they can know where their kid is at all times and it's also one of the other things that's happened is schools now have these parent portals that they can parents can log on and look to see what the grades are

and the problem this would be perfectly fine if parents were logging on once a week or once a month or doing it with their kid and making it a discussion. But instead what's happening is that we have parents that are logging on and staying on all day long and just hitting refresh or checking in like 10 times a day and often finding out about grades before their kids even know what the grades are and setting up a system where we're doing, you know, we're not making kids, we're not giving kids the message that we trust them. We're not giving kids the message that they can be competent. We're raising them to believe that they need us to direct them

so that they can be competent. Right. The best part about the portal software is the fact that the teachers can monitor the parents' use, and that becomes a thing. So you know exactly. You can pretty much profile who these parents are based upon monitor the parents use. And that becomes a thing. Like, so, you know, exactly you can, you can pretty much profile who these parents are based upon the amount of times they're logging onto the portal. Right. Well, and the thing is, is that the portal, like my, my older son's school uses the portal. Um, I don't, I've never looked at it. I've never gone on as an, as a parent,

but my son uses it, you know, teachers make mistakes. Maybe homework didn't get in. Maybe you forgot. Maybe the student forgot something. And that is actually really useful to him. Some students overuse it. I know that there are plenty of students out there that are checking it themselves many, many, many times a day to see if they've moved up from a 3.92 to a 3.94. And, you know, that sort of constant baiting with extrinsic motivators

is worrisome to me. Right, as it should be. And as parents continue to hover and kind of impose on this, you know, burgeoning autonomy that these young people are trying to cultivate and develop, it truncates ultimately that development and impairs them. Right. So it's this butting up of, you know, well-intentioned parenting that is working at cross purposes with the ultimate goal that the parent and the kid, you know, jointly share. Well, and part of that is, is our fault in that we bait each other as parents. We, you know, it's all about who's the best parent, who's the most involved, who's, you know, and plenty of parents tell me, look, I really do want to give my kid more autonomy, but I'm afraid to be the first one to do it because then my kid's teachers will think, oh, she or he is not

involved enough. They're not, you know, involved enough with the grades. And that's about the parent, not about the kid. And it's about the parent's unhealthy attachment or, you know, the sort of vicariously living through the child's academic experience. It's called enmeshment. Yeah. There's a term for it. I'm very familiar with enmeshment. I'm reading a book right now called Silently Seduced. Do you know this book?

No, I don't. We can talk after the podcast. Anyway, yeah. I mean, I grew up in Washington, D.C., and I can remember vividly, you know, every car is a Volvo with a bumper sticker on the back of what school the kid goes to and what college the kid goes to. And my kid is an honor, you know, role student at this school. And when you think about that, it's just, that's insane.

All of that. Okay, so I grew up. it's just, that's insane. All of that. The ego attachment to that. Right. And there's a whole chapter in the book about sort of how we got here, sort of a historical perspective on parenting. And, you know, that's attributable to the fact that we're having fewer kids. We're having them later. We're having them after we've been in the workforce for a while.

We're using these tools of, you know, the Excel spreadsheets and all these things in order to sort of monitor our children. And at the same time, we ourselves have become dependent on the extrinsic sort of evaluations of success. So, you know, I'm used to getting quarterly reports on my performance at work, or I'm used to getting a report card or whatever that thing is. And when we don't get any feedback on our parenting, because really, what kind of feedback can you get on day-to-day parenting except our kids? And so we put it all on their shoulders to be the be-all, end-all representation of our success or failure as parents. And that is so unfair to do to them.

That is so much more of a burden than they need to be carrying. Yeah. I mean, in many ways, I'm a product of that kind of upbringing and a successful product of that. I was able to learn how to play that game and work it to my advantage and succeed and get into all the right schools and do all that kind of stuff, only to kind of arrive at this place that, who is the Stanford freshman dean of admissions? She calls it- Julie Lifcott Haynes. Right, yes. She wrote that wonderful of admissions she called it right yes she

wrote that wonderful book and she calls it she says that the students are all existentially impotent yes although I was not only that as a freshman in college I I think I was that when I graduated from law school because my entire educational experience was oriented around achievement and it had nothing to do with learning. It was all about advancing, you know, my sort of place in the world and using education as a vehicle to get there without ever looking within myself to try to determine, you know, what was important to me. I'd never asked that question. It never occurred to me. I think I got really lucky. So I grew up in a very similar place. I grew up in,

my high school is now the top ranked public high school in Massachusetts. It was a very wealthy community. But I had parents that they were the ones constantly sort of saying, really, you want to take three, you know, advanced placement classes? Um, could you, maybe you could ratchet back a little bit. Um, they had not grown up in very sort of academically oriented families. They really, really, um, valued our competence as human beings, as being able to be good problem solvers. And when people ask me in interviews, well, how are you parented? How, you know, how, what were your parents like? The best thing I think my parents did for me is that they, they trusted me. They trusted me to be, um, competent, to be able to get myself out of a jam. And they let me get into situations that I had to solve for myself. And I think, you know, while they had high expectations of me as a human

being, I don't think it was, it was very much about me as a whole person and not about me and school. And they also knew that I also was very lucky. I loved learning. So for me, it really was about loving learning. Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think that I have a lot of trauma over that, that has impaired my ability to connect emotionally with learning as a pleasurable thing. Like still, it's like the idea of reading a book. I associate that with, you know, a system that I felt like didn't quite serve me. You know what I mean?

And so I have to overcome that to get to a place where, like the podcast has been an amazing healing thing for me. I was just going to say, that's exactly what you're doing though. Yeah, because I found like, oh, here's somebody who's really interesting. I want to find out more about them, and then I'll research them, and I'll learn more, and then I'll get more into it. And that's allowed me to kind of displace all of that unhealthy emotional attachment to the educational system and make learning a separate entity outside of that.

But, yeah, I mean, it's problematic. And I feel like in kind of thinking about how I wanted to approach talking to you today, I started thinking about my own parenting skills and my relationship to my kids and their educational journey. in your reaction to this, I feel like so much of my parenting strategy is, is, is formed in opposition to what I felt didn't serve me from my parents. Right. So it's like, I'm, you know, I'm not going to be a helicopter parent. I'm going to be captain fantastic. I mean, like I'll go, the pendulum swings all the way in the other direction away from the thing that I felt like didn't serve me when I was a young person. Yeah. Is that something that you see a lot with parents? Absolutely.

And so a lot of what you talk about is the parent who's overly attached. And like in listening to you last night, I was like, I feel like I'm not attached enough maybe. Like in listening to you last night, I was like, I feel like I'm not attached enough, maybe. There was a big, you know, sort of pendulum swing in the other direction for the kids who were latchkey kids. I mean, my parents both worked and I was home after school by myself from time to time. My husband, same thing. But I think the problem is that we're prioritizing the things that make us feel good about ourselves as parents. One of the big problems is we tend to, you know this, we tend to live in these emergency situations. Like, you know, this soccer game, this homework assignment, this thing needs to be perfect.

This family outing needs to be, you know, transcendent for all of us. As opposed to sort of looking over this more long term, you know, one of the things that are going to of us, as opposed to sort of looking over this more long term. One of the things that are going to help us, help me as a human being, help my kids as a human being over the long term, as opposed to in this moment having everybody feel good. And I'm as big a fan of feeling good as anyone. But the problem is that when we parent for the moments that make us feel good and that make our kids feel good, we're really sort of keeping a lot of learning from happening. Mainly because we're not allowing our kids to get frustrated. Because it's so hard to see our kids struggle. And it's so hard to watch them be frustrated.

You just want to fix it. Right. And you feel like you're being a good parent if you do that. I mean, you told that story last night about the soccer cleats. I mean, that's illustrative of the point you're trying to make. One of my favorite quotes is from a friend of mine who's a soccer coach. And when a kid comes up to her and they say, oh, my mom forgot to pack my soccer cleats.

And she turns to the kid and she says, well, I guess your mom's not going to be playing soccer either. For me, the soccer cleat or the homework or the textbook or whatever it is that's been left behind, the story is usually just about the fact that any time you rescue your kid by giving them something they've forgotten, by delivering something to school they've forgotten, you are doing an end run around the learning experience that could happen in that

moment. And we do that with a lot of things. When I was flying here, actually, we were in Boston and we were checking in at the kiosk. And generally, I just do that stuff in the most efficient manner possible. And Finn stands, my 13-year-old stands behind me and, you know, is paying attention to some bug on the wall. But instead, I've started taking, bringing him over and say, okay, now look, first you have to put your ID in here. And then you have to do this. And then you have to do that. And, you know, because there are all these learning opportunities that we're rushing through all the time just to make it easier, faster, more efficient.

Right, right, right. Yeah. And when we get into the next kind of pillar, which is competence, right? I think it's a good launching point to talk about our unhealthy relationship with failure. I mean, the book is called The Gift of Failure, right? So maybe walk me through how you think about failure in the educational system. Well, backing up really quickly for one second, because the autonomy thing is really interesting in that in this one study, there's this woman who looked at autonomy supportive parenting

versus directive parenting. And parents who direct their kids and are constantly telling them, okay, now do this, now do this, and giving them every step along the way, those kids are less able to sit and be frustrated. Those kids are less able to sort of wrestle with challenge and they're more, way more likely to give up before the task is finished. That's important because when we start talking about competence as opposed to confidence, confidence is sort of the way we want kids to feel. We want them to feel, you know, like they're great, they're wonderful, they're smart, they're

talented. We want them to have, you know,, they're wonderful, they're smart, they're talented. We want them to have these force fields of wonderfulness around them. Competence is so much more important for learning, though, because competence is about having tried something one way, had it mess up, and then they try it another way. And having learned some tools from the first time that didn't work, and then reacting positively and trying to move forward with new solutions. And kids, and that's actually as a term, it's called desirable difficulties. There's a fantastic book called Make It Stick where you can read all about that. Desirable difficulties are one of the most important teaching tools we have, not only because it teaches competence,

but because it actually helps our brain encode information better and for longer periods of time and more thoroughly into our long-term memory. So when I can't use desirable difficulties because a kid in my class is just incapable of handling frustrations and is impatient and is scared of making a mistake, scared of failing, that kid's less teachable. That kid is going to learn less in my classroom than a kid who can be frustrated, a kid who's willing to take the challenge problems and not afraid of looking quote-unquote dumb for a minute when they don't know the answer. Those kids are way more teachable and I love teaching those kids. Yeah. I mean, if a child comes to rely on their parents finishing up their task because they have a parent who's more concerned about the child's grade than the fact that the child is going to

learn how to problem solve, then ultimately, you know, that might be a short-term win because the grade might be better with the parent's input, but long-term you're hampering development, right? And so how do we balance these things? Because, you know, the counter, the counterpoint is this is on your permanent record. Grades are important. Like you want to make your way in the world. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So how do you balance that against the notion that, yes, but ultimately you will be a well-balanced, happier, more capable human being? Yeah, that's the question I usually get at the end of every talk, which is yes, but.

Right. And so that discussion goes in two directions. That discussion goes into the whole, I am so sorry, parents, that you have been sold this bill of goods by the media. We have made you believe that it is harder to get into college these days than it's ever been. That's not true. It's harder to get into about 50 colleges right now than it's ever been. But there are 2,800 accredited colleges and universities now. And then, of course, most parents are like, yes, yes, but those 50 are the only ones

that really count. So at that point, I generally turn to the point that a kid who can self-advocate, a kid who can stand up for themselves and can tell you what you need, tell you what they need, who can go out and talk to adults, who can write an email that gets a response, that can, you know, re argue their point. And they're not afraid to do that. That kid will get a great education pretty much anywhere. Um, a kid who can't self advocate can go to an Ivy league school and get a crap education. And the reason I know that is that, um, I have sort of a group of friends who, you know, went to their safety schools and I'm one of them. I went to my safety school.

I had gotten into a hoity-toity private college that I thought was the answer. I really did. And according to all of my classmates and my teachers, that was the answer. But I fell in love with this safety school, and I went to University of Massachusetts, my state school, and as a person who can self-advocate, as a person who embraces new experiences, had got a fantastic education. And one of my closest friends did the same thing at University of Kansas.

And she and I have promised to smack each other around a little bit if we get nuts about our own kids. Yeah, self-advocacy is super important. I mean, it's about having that fire in the belly, being self-directed, being autonomous, which we talked about, and having the sense of self, self-understanding, self-awareness, and self-confidence to be able to navigate the world on your own. That is so much more important than anything else because if you have that self-directed, you know, motivation, you can, you're, you can do whatever you want. There's a great quote at the beginning, Michael Thompson, who's one of my favorite, um, he's a psychologist. He works with mostly with boys. He writes about boys a lot. He wrote a book called homesick and happy about the benefits of

summer camp. And one of the things he said in that book was when he goes and he does talks with parents about this sort of stuff, he usually asks that book was when he goes and he does talks with parents about this sort of stuff he usually asks the parents to think about the moment that they felt proudest of themselves where they really achieved something as a kid now take that moment hold it in your head and remember think about it were your parents there when that moment happened and most of the time the answer is no. Because these great achievement moments for kids, these moments where they really feel great about themselves, are moments when they've had a win that they earned on their own. That they didn't have someone saying, oh sweetie,

here and do this next and then do this. That's not a win. That's someone leading you by the nose. So I try to remind people of that. And if that fails, then I say this, research shows that kids that are more controlled and more directed lie more to their parents. They are more deceptive. Yeah. They have no, nothing of their own. Exactly. And, and kids that have a fixed mindset and feel like they can't take risks in class and they don't want to be shown up as maybe not perfect, those kids cheat more. So if you would like your child to lie to you more and cheat more, then please feel free to prioritize grades. Get in there and start controlling.

Exactly. You have to leave kids alone. To a degree, yeah. Yeah, like, I mean, we, you know, in our personal, in our family life here, we were talking before the podcast with Julie a little bit. Like, we homeschooled for quite a period of time. Our 13-year-old, you know, we had her in various different schools. Nothing was seeming to work. And homeschooling seemed to be the only, the healthiest viable option at that time to best serve her.

They're both in schools now. the healthiest viable option at that time to best serve her. They're both in schools now. And a lot of it was premised on kind of an unschooling methodology. And there was a lot of time for them to just be with themselves to kind of cultivate their own interior life. And I'm seeing the benefits of that now in our 13 year old, because she does have a sense of self, a sense of self that I didn't have when I was her age. And we're really proud of that now in our 13 year old, because she does have a sense of self, a sense of self that I didn't have when I was her age. And we're really proud of that. And it's not that we're

obviating our parental responsibilities, but it's more about kind of like trying to definitely guide it, you know, like a river flowing and trying to get it flowing in the right direction. I think there's, so first of all, many people have asked me in interviews, you know, it seems like this whole stepping back and giving kids more autonomy and more control over things, isn't that just sort of laissez-faire parenting? Isn't this sort of like hands-off parenting? And what's crazy is I have never been a more strict,

more, you know, I've never followed through as well because then when I started sort of giving them more space to make their own decisions about things, because there's, if what we're doing is about letting them, giving really clear expectations and then setting up consequences that are, you know, would be something that would naturally flow from our expectations and we actually follow through, I think if you were to ask, you know, my kids something that would naturally flow from our expectations. And we actually follow through. I think if you were to ask, you know, my kids, I think that they would say that we're actually quite strict about our expectations and our expectations for them as human beings.

I just choose not to get involved in sort of the nagging stuff because that's what really undermines our relationship with our kids. And, you know, they've done okay. I mean, and I think a lot of the other problem with that, my saying they've done okay, is that the idea that we can take credit for our children's successes is absurd. You know, I think my kids have turned out okay for the most part because they're good kids who want to learn and have been pretty self-directed since they were little and have a good sense of empathy and can

perspective take and all that kind of stuff. But I'm not about to take credit for their successes. That would be robbing their successes from them. And nor should your sense of self be informed by how well or not well they're doing academically. Yeah. There's actually an interesting story. I talk about the academic stuff. When parents ask me about the college thing, especially, I say, you know, I know a kid and I know her very well because she was my sister. She was not terribly academically oriented. She is a very smart individual, has a lot of sort of people sense and common sense, just really smart, really creative. And she just, school just, I don't know, she could do fine in some things that interested

her and not in others. And she went off to college because everyone from my high school went off to college. And to not go off to college was really just not done. It was really not the right place for her. But she stuck it out as long as she could and finally left school and revealed something that she had been ashamed to reveal for a long time, which is that what she really wanted to do was be a hairstylist. That's what she really always wanted. And she has gone on to be an extraordinarily successful, she's a master colorist with Wella. She travels the country and does all.

And it makes her so happy. And she's so good at it. It is like so clearly her calling. And the fact that she was made to feel ashamed of what she really wanted to do, what she felt her purpose was in this life, that just makes me so sad. I think of all that time that was wasted. Well, and how many millions of kids can identify with that? I mean, I think that, you know, that's a good point to start talking about the wrongs of the system in general. I mean,

we're dealing with an education system that has essentially remained unchanged since when? The Industrial Revolution before that. And I think it's fair to say that a lot of the sort of means by which we educate our kids have become antiquated in certain respects. I mean, I don't think that we're fully appreciative of just how much the world has changed, is changing, how rapidly it's changing when I'm holding my iPhone, this supercomputer that everybody has in their hands that has the answer to every conceivable question you could possibly ask has to fundamentally alter the way that we're educating our kids and shift us away from this system where we're trying to sort of accumulate, you know,

knowledge by way of memorizing facts and things like that, that, and, and, and with no appreciation or cultivation or strategies around learning how to, uh, be more creative or problem solve or think, you know, all of these sorts of things I think are lacking in our system, but you're in the front lines. I mean, I think there's room for both. And, and that the one place I'm going to stop you is with content knowledge, because I am a firm believer that having cultural literacy and content knowledge actually is one of the things we can use to break down the achievement gap. Because it turns out that if you read the work of Dan Willingham, or you look at what Core Knowledge Foundation, Core Knowledge Schools have done and and what Edie Hirsch showed is that when that that reading for example is contextual that if if kids don't

understand the context behind what it is they're reading then it's going to be more difficult for them to learn how to read so I do still think if this is this is the problem in education is that we get into these all-or-nothing conversations in education I think there get into these all or nothing conversations in education. I think there is still room for content knowledge. There is still room for learning history, for learning, you know, about the things in our culture that have come before that now inform the culture we have now. So there is still room for that. But at the same time, we have these supercomputers in our hand, and yet they are banned from most school classrooms because teachers did not grow up with them.

And we are afraid of losing control of the students and not being able to keep them in the rows and not being able to keep them paying attention. And yet some of those are valid concerns. If you text your kid while they're in class, let me remind you, we are terrible multitaskers. And if we as adults can't ignore the buzz in our pocket when the phone goes off, what you've done when you've texted your kid in class, you have removed there are some balance points to be found here, but also being afraid of technology, being afraid of letting kids have more room to do the inquiry Wagner, who's at the Innovation Institute, Innovation Lab at Harvard, about self-inquiry and high-tech high. And it's based at high-tech high. And it's about what can happen when you let kids lead the inquiry.

And it's pretty magical. But the problem is, is we're in this place now where if I talk about independent inquiry, people are like, oh, you're all progressive. Or if I talk about charter schools, they say, oh, no, charter schools, you're a charter school person. Or if I talk about content, then they'll say, oh, you're a traditionalist in classical education, and that's anti-progressive. We have little labels for everything in education. Yeah, that's a lot of labeling. I don't know how productive that is to get all caught up in that. And yeah, I mean, I understand everything you're saying. I mean, I don't know how productive that is to get all caught up in that. And yeah, I mean, I understand everything you're saying.

I mean, I don't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't advocate throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but I think we do need to develop an appreciation of the fact that this technology is here and it's here to stay. And, and we need to learn productive, healthy ways to work with it. Because, you know, this is what's happening. And parents say, how do I live? How do I limit screen i limit screen time and i say well what are we talking about kind of screen time are we talking about um watching youtube videos about um how you know about the development of the copernican method or or the copernican you know ideas are we talking about um a kid playing a

video game with their sibling and that's the only shared time they really have together because they don't have much in common? Or are we talking about, you know, passive consumption of inane media? Screen time is not creative. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, of course. It can be so many things. And there's a big difference between, you know, watching a YouTube video of cats versus, you know, using Photoshop to learn how to, you know, manipulate an image, like something that is a creative endeavor or reading a long form article or something like that. Those are, they're not even in the same universe. So yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting to see, you know, where this goes and, and, and the nature and the

sort of place that, that the role that college plays, I think, seems to be changing, right? Like, what is your perspective on that? I think we're entering a phase now where it seems like we're open to the idea that perhaps college is not for everybody. I mean, when I was in high school, that wasn't even a conversation. Well, and there's been an incredible renaissance in trade and vocational education that I'm thrilled about. Because engineering is not just a strict academic route. There was a fantastic documentary on American Radio Works, I think, called Ready to Work.

And it's about the renaissance of vocational education. And there was a report at Minuteman Tech in Massachusetts where these parents said, you know, we're very academically oriented, we're very sort of higher ed oriented, but at the same time, our son wanted to start being an engineer now, not just read about engineering, and not just learn the abstract stuff, but actually get to do the hands-on engineering now. And it just seemed to make sense to enroll him in a place like Minuteman where he's applying that knowledge in doing robotics or doing whatever right now. I think that vocational education and sort of more traditional education, that line is becoming

blurred. And I think that's a really, really good thing. Because I think we still need the people who are doing the more vocational stuff. And we need people like my sister. We need artists and we need people who are creative doing that stuff that sort of makes the world go around. We are not a utilitarian society. And we need to change perceptions around that so that people like your sister can feel good about expressing that when they're a young person and save everybody a lot of time. Well, and that's why I constantly recommend the book Ungifted by Scott Barry Kaufman. He runs the Imagination Institute at University of Pennsylvania. And his whole shtick is IQ tests cannot measure creativity. They can't measure these sort of hard-to-evaluate things

that make us brilliant creatively, brilliant thinkers, innovators, that kind of thing. So how do we value that? Well, normally we value things with a number. We put a numeric measure on it. But if we can't measure that, how on earth are we going to continue to uphold and value those sort of things in the people in our society? numeric measure on it. But if we can't measure that, how on earth are we going to continue to uphold and value those sort of things in the people in our society? Because we're not going anywhere without creative, innovative thinkers.

Of course not. And it's the creative, innovative thinkers that really push the boundaries and advance culture and science and everything else. And when we have a system that's focused on just rewarding people that are really good at doing what they're told to do, that's a cross purposes with thinking outside the box because people that think outside the box get their hands slapped, right? Often. Right.

So how can we reframe that? Right. How can we, how can we instill new metrics to value that kind of creative exploration? The create, well, and the Imagination Institute is actively, you know, trying to figure that out right now. But I think one way that we could do that is by shifting away from this sort of weird grading system, this A through F grading system we have, and possibly shift over to what's called a competency-based measure. For example, for me, the nice thing about the Common Core is there is now this set of standards that's out there. And you could say, OK, in seventh grade, a kid should

probably be able to do these skills. And instead of giving them like this weird arbitrary grade based on how well they play the game of school, why not actually measure whether they have mastery of a skill or not? So that when a parent comes in, instead of saying, oh, congratulations, your kid has a B+, and you look at the teacher blankly and say, well, what do they know? What does that mean?

Whereas if we were doing doing standards-based grading, competency-based grading, then we could have these little charts where we say, okay, look, your kid can add two fractions with the same denominator, but they're still having trouble adding two fractions with a different denominator. So that's something we're going to work on.

There are people moving in that direction. There's Mark Barnes who does what's called hack learning. There are people trying to move education in that direction. There's Mark Barnes who does what's called hack learning. There's, um, there are people trying to move education in that direction. And the good news is that it's happening alongside the realization that the lecture format is, is a,

it is, is a disaster for learning small group format, student, student led learning, whether you call it a flipped classroom, whether you call it, there are all kinds, again,

labels, um, when you can get kids engaged in their own learning because they're leading it or because they're spearheading it, because they're organizing it, that's where the real good learning happens. And I think now that more educators have figured that out, and we are moving away from this sort of factory format lecture- in rows and, you know, people not moving all day long for seven hours in a row. What's going to happen to law school then? What's funny is every time I refer to law school and I explain to kids that your entire grade is based on one three-hour exam at the end of class, at the end of the semester, they just look at me like, oh God, it gets worse. You know, it's such a nightmare. But I do tell the story, one of the semester, they just look at me like, oh God, it gets worse. You know, it's such a nightmare.

But I do tell the story. One of the, when parents, when I feel that parents aren't really hearing me, I explained that, you know, I was a high achieving high school student, high achieving college student, went into graduate school, went into law school, um, and assumed that I would be high achieving again. Cause I was, had been, I was just, you know, it went fine for me. So I didn't take practice exams because, you know, that's what dumb people do. That's what the people who need help do. So I did not take them. And I went into my first exam,

which happened to be civil procedure, and I took it and I got my grade back and I had a 68. And my first thought upon seeing that 68, talk about a fixed mindset, my first thought upon seeing that 68, talk about a fixed mindset, my first thought on seeing that 68 was I must quit law school now before anyone else finds out. And clearly this isn't for me. I mean, if I worked as hard as I did and I got a 68, then I'm just not good at this. good at this. Luckily, on my way to the dean's office, I ran into a friend of mine and she said,

or maybe we could go talk to the professor and you could find out what you did wrong. And he and I had a great conversation about it. And he sort of gave me feedback and helped me become a better student and thinker. And guess what? Next time I did fine. But the fact that my first inclination was to quit law school because I did poorly on one exam, I cannot believe that I had such a rigid perception of my own ability. So common in that. I mean, that's a place I'm sure medical schools, any kind of like professional graduate schools are filled with these kinds of people that are super high achieving. And they're used to being at the very top of the mountain in whatever environment they're in. And then you go to law school and like you just said, like you expect to be the same, except everybody's like that.

And I can remember, you know, first semester law school in the Socratic method lectures and the hands are going up and the very eager people like trying to prove that they know the answer to every question that the professor is launching at them. And then after those midterm exams, the whole dynamic in the lecture would shift. Suddenly a lot of those people who were always raising their hands, weren't raising their hands anymore. And there were different people raising their hands and it becomes this leveler. It's a weird law school is a weird place. The teacher, the teaching there. I mean, I appreciate the fact that it helped me become a more linear, organized thinker. I had been sort of a scattered, you know, open my mouth and see whatever comes out kind of thing, kind of thinker.

And law school really did force me to be more organized in my thinking. And for that, I am really glad. It also led me to teaching. So, you know, I never practiced law, but I'm very, very happy I went to law school. Back to this idea of, you know, how we quantify intelligence and, you know, the progress of students in academic institutions. What do you think of the idea of like dispensing with grades altogether? People are experimenting with that. I happen to think, here's the problem.

We need to be assessing learning. The way we have traditionally assessed learning is through something called summative grading, which is we teach, we teach, we teach, and everybody studies, and then there's a big important test that is graded out of 100 points, and you fail or you pass or whatever. That is not very effective for learning. What is effective for learning is what's called frequent formative assessments. Again, in the book Make It Stick, you can read all about that. Frequent formative assessments are low stakes assessments that happen maybe every day so

that a teacher can see where everyone is. And we as human beings, one of the things we're really bad at is this thing called metacognition, which is knowing what we know and knowing what we don't know. We tend to think we know more than we do. So frequent formative assessments can help the teacher understand where the kids are, but it can also help the teacher know what they didn't teach well and what they need to go back and do. So, for my part, I think the grades tend to be a topic that we get stuck on because it's emblematic of something else. What I think we need to be focusing on is what kind of learning works and what kind of

assessing works. Because testing is not inherently evil. Testing actually gives us really important information about learning. It's just how we execute that testing is a nightmare. We do it essentially in the law school style, which is here's more information than you can possibly handle. Cram it in as well as you can and and then regurgitate it for me in a multiple-choice format. That's not great learning. What's great learning is taking information in, having to manipulate the information, maybe having to peer-teach the information,

maybe having to create a project, apply it in some new novel way, attain mastery. That's true learning. And much harder to quantify. Exactly. That's the problem. That's the problem. And, you know, the A through F grading was never intended to be,

it was not invented to be an assessment of learning. It was intended to be a socioeconomic sifter. It was A students were the rich and powerful that you put in the front of the class and Bs were sort of behind them. And it was just a way that they organized people in class. When did that really? I didn't know. I've never heard that. There's also another little fun fact. No one could really agree on the order in which we teach science in high school. So you know why we do it the way we do? No, why? It's alphabetical.

What? school so you know why we do it the way we do why it's alphabetical what yeah so it turns out that so some schools have caught on to this and realize that wait a second physics and geometry go together really well and yet we teach them at the wrong time so maybe maybe algebra one geometry algebra two trigonometry calculus isn't the best. And wait a second, maybe everyone shouldn't take calculus. Maybe calculus doesn't make sense for everyone. Maybe statistics might make more sense for everyone than calculus. We're starting to ask these questions, which is great because that is what opens the door to, huh, check that out. A lot of girls find out, are told, that they are not great at math right around when they hit Algebra 1, let's say like 7th grade. Turns out from a developmental perspective, Algebra 1 and

7th grade, that sort of that age group, they don't go together very well. It's when I found out that I was terrible at math. It's a good thing though that in my 40s, I learned about Carol Dweck, and I got a little bit pissed off by those teachers that told me I was bad at math. And my free period happened to fall during my colleague's Algebra 1 class. And my older son was taking Algebra 1 at the time. So I retook Algebra 1 in my 40s.

Oh, my God. With my son and my students. I have all these notes where my students got to teach me things. And not only was I modeling for my students this sort of approach to being brave when it comes to learning, I found out, guess what? I'm actually pretty good at math. And you know what?

I like it. And I had no idea because in seventh grade, I was told that I just wasn't very good at it. So does that have to do with the development of the brain at that age as well, just being an inopportune moment for you to be exposed to that subject matter? It's a complicated question, but yes, essentially, I'll sort of distill it down to the easiest way to think about it. The first part of our brain that evolves, that develops and finishes sort of cooking is our amygdala, our sort of reptilian emotional center. The last part of our brain to develop is our frontal lobe. It's where executive function lies.

Executive function is this umbrella term for skills that include starting new tasks, so initiation, transferring effort from one task to another. Long-term planning, what's called self-directed executive function, which is P.S., why kids need free play time, because they need time to sort of come up with something they want to do and come up with all the things they have to do to get to that place. All of those skills happen in the frontal lobe and our frontal lobe is not fully developed until we're in our early to mid twenties. So, and it did, they develop differently

at different times with different kids. So that's the other reason I love middle school so much because middle school kids have like half baked frontal lobes and yet we require them to do way more than they can handle. So middle school teachers, our job is to stand around, wait for kids to screw up. And we only have to wait a couple seconds because someone's always screwing up something. And then make a teaching moment out of it. And that's what we do for three whole years in middle school. And it's great. But not having an appreciation of the fact that that part of the brain is undeveloped at that time creates frustration. I think in a lot of parents, you're like, why can't you remember where you put

your shoes or, you know, whatever. Creates frustration in a lot of parents. What about for the kids? So the most effective schools I've seen, there's a school I adore in Dallas, Texas called the Momentus Institute. And it's a school that's for kids of all different socioeconomic backgrounds. It's a highly diverse school. They start teaching about brain development in preschool, kindergarten. And what they do is they talk to the kids. They say, look, you seem to be having a lot of trouble paying attention today. And they talk about how the ability to track and pay attention is something that's a part of the frontal lobe skill, so frontal lobe and the executive function skill and that it's not their fault, but what could I do to strengthen that skill? Um, sweetie today, you know, when you hit that kid, you were

really operating from your amygdala, which is, you know, your emotional center. And, and they use kid language to explain how the brain works. So as they are developing, they know what's developmentally appropriate for them. And they don't feel bad about the fact that in middle school, they can't do everything. Kids in middle school that are constantly losing everything and constantly feeling disorganized and constantly feeling like failures, we set them up to feel terrible about themselves. And then something clicks in eighth grade and then we make it seem like it's because we were such good teachers that we finally taught them into compliance but when what actually happened is their that part of their frontal

lobe finally kicked in thank goodness what about what about the the individual that just is not wired to sit in a lecture hall and doesn't learn that way. And instead of shaming that person, developing an appreciation that they learn in a different way and trying to accommodate that somehow. Someone asked me yesterday, they said, you know, I'm fully for letting my kid do her homework the way she wants to do it and where she wants to do it and all that stuff. But she wants to like lie on the floor and lounge around and do all this stuff. I said, let me tell you something about how the body works and how learning works. Learning and movement are tied in together and kids need to move. And even adults need to move. If we're suddenly distracted and we can't pay attention,

standing up and shifting our weight from one foot to the other can turn our brains back on. Kids need to be moving. And the expectation that we can get kids to sit in a row in a classroom for 50 minutes straight and be on task the entire time is ludicrous. And if they're not, that there's something fundamentally wrong with them. Oh, and if they're not and they misbehave, we should probably keep them in for recess because that will make them behave. So then we take away the very outlet. I wrote an article called Kids Who Lose Recess Are the Ones Who Need It Most, which is absolutely true. And schools need to stop taking away recess because children need to move. Children need unstructured time.

We're in this culture right now where everybody is a perfectly formed, beautiful snowflake. I know. And everybody gets a participation trophy. Yeah. And everybody is a genius and has a gift for the world that should be celebrated by all. And there's something beautiful about that. It absolutely is wonderful. And there's something that about that. It absolutely is wonderful. And there's something that doesn't quite work about that. Yeah. Well, from a learning,

teachers are under a lot of stress to sort of do all the things they need to do. And there's a lot of pressure being put on them by parents who want every single sort of preference of their child, you know, to be dealt with. And parents want to get the kid the teacher that teaches according to a certain teaching style. And by the way, learning styles, they don't exist. What do you mean by that? Well, it turns out that there's the perception that if we are fed

all of our information through only one way that we technically learn best, like if we're only visual learners, then we should only receive all of our information visually, or we're auditory learners, or we're kinesthetic learners. It turns out that it actually doesn't matter as much the way we get the information. And it's important for us to have a balance of all of these things. There's actually a video by Dan Willingham that's, if you type in Dan Willingham and learning styles, he'll explain it much better than I do. But the idea that we need to be adhering to only one learning style, only one teaching style for visual learners, for auditory learners, for kinesthetic learners, whatever that thing is, is bogus for a few reasons, not just because it turns out that we can process

information through various styles equally, even if we do have a preference for one over another, but also because kids need to be exposed to different teaching styles. I had a parent once tell me that I didn't teach very well for her daughter and neither did the math teacher. It just so happened we happened to be sort of the more strict teachers. That we didn't do very well for her child, but what's great about that is that she was about to go off to high school to a school where her family had gone for generations and they'll be able to pick and choose which teachers their daughter gets in high school and i was thinking oh that's going to work great when she goes off to college because yeah you know if you've only can learn from one kind of teacher then you never learn how to adapt to other modalities and adapt to other styles and learn how to get those clues from a teacher

when they're saying something that's really important as opposed to something that's a transitional line, that kind of thing. I want kids to be exposed to all different kinds of teaching styles. Right. And yet we are producing a generation of people where it's not unusual for somebody, you know, to say, well, I don't learn that way. Right. You have to teach me a different way.

And it's like, well, actually, the world doesn't quite work like that. But to a degree, I mean, it is our responsibility as teachers to say, okay, well, we have a kid here who is really having trouble with, let's say, fractions. Now let's think, let me find something this kid is really interested in and let me use that as a way of explaining fractions to him. and let me use that as a way of explaining fractions to him. And that is incredibly powerful. Anytime we can create relevance for kids, anytime we can help them connect what they're learning to something they care about in the world,

that's going to create better learning. That triggers that intrinsic motivation that you were talking about, right? And the connection end of it as well. But are we, you know, there's a lot of talk about like generation wuss, right? Because of this sort of snowflake thing, right? How do you think about that? Like, are you, does that concern you? Or do you think that's a non-issue?

I'm concerned about the self-advocacy issue. I'm concerned about what I tend to hear a lot from college professors are kids that actually don't have social skills, like being able to write a coherent email to a professor and they're, you know, or being able to argue. Because they're used to texting and. Right. Or being able to argue their point effectively. I think self-advocacy is one of the biggest things that we're sort of depriving kids of.

We tend to, parents tend to want to go to the teacher directly and get the problem solved as opposed to having the child talk to the teacher about the problem. I'm a huge fan of getting kids to self-advocate from kindergarten on. Kindergarten teachers are huge fans of getting kids to self-advocate. You walk into a kindergarten class when the parents are there and the kids are being a little whiny and they're using these weird high-pitched noises to talk to their parents. And they're making their parents do all the stuff for them. And then you wait and the parents leave and suddenly the tone of the kids' speech changes. Their ability to talk to other kids changes. Their ability to do things changes.

They sort of have us believing that they're these little creatures that need us to speak for them. And that does them a huge disservice because that need to be, um, that need us to speak for them. And that does them a huge disservice because they need to be able to tell. And this is, I address this in the book in terms of, um, the responsibility we have to curb bullying. Part of that comes from, you know, we have two kids in the sandbox, one kids throws sand at the other kid. And what do we do? Both parents swoop in and take the kids away really quickly because we want to act like we're these great parents who are intervening and fixing. But what we need to do is keep kids in close proximity to each other when that happens

so that they can actually deal with each other. And if we don't do that, we end up with a kid in, if we don't, if a kid who's been bullied, bullying doesn't see the faces of the kids that he's hurt or the kids that have been hurt, don't get a chance to say back to the bully. Don't do that. That makes me sad. Then we end up with kids in middle school that can't do that either. And then we're in big trouble because then we've got serious bullying situations. Yeah. That's so, that's, that's so insightful. And, and the pulling away, you know, it goes back to, you know, the parents are always well intentioned. It's not about, you know, it's not about like parents being bad. It's like every, everybody's trying to do the

right thing. Right. And yet that very act under undermines the child's ability to learn conflict resolution. And my argument is, please leave them in the sandbox. I mean, what's the worst thing that happens? A kid's going to get some sand in their eye or, you know, eat some sand and maybe a kid is going to smack another kid. But that's an incredibly valuable moment because if that kid who smacks the other kid gets the opportunity to sort of see what they've done, then that can pay huge dividends later in their ability to control their own behavior. In fact, Louis C.K. has a great bit where he talks about why kids shouldn't

have cell phones, because he talks about the fact that there's this cushion. And if you're mean to someone online and you can't see that other person's face, then you never realize, oh my gosh, I've hurt them. And a similar thing happens when we rip those kids out of the sandbox. We don't give them the opportunity to have that, to get social cues. And the problem is we have so many kids that end up in middle school or high school without being able to understand other social cues that we have these weird misfit situations where, you know, as I'm talking to you, I'm not, I can't read off your face that it's time for me to shut up about this one topic because we're running out of time or i've hurt your feelings when i

referred to this your face got tense and i should stop talking about that because it's making you uncomfortable that's those social skills those interpersonal you know reading other people skills are we develop those in the sandbox right and recess. And it's crucial for learning how to navigate the world, right? And research shows that people who can read other people do better. They're more charismatic. They tend to be more powerful. They tend to be listened to. So again, for parents that don't want to listen to me about the whole over-parenting thing, I can bring it back to success rates if you'd like. I can bring it back to the fact that leaders tend to be the kind of people who can read other people's body language, mimic it and make other people feel comfortable.

That sounds manipulative, but it's also, you know, a social skill. So how do we transcend our idea of failure with our children in the educational system? Like how can we, you know, get off the dime and move forward in a more productive, healthy way? So as far as I'm concerned, it's really all about a shift in our perception. Number one, that we need to get off of this sort of day-to-day emergency, sort of thinking in the short term, you know, am I doing the right thing for my kid right in this second? Am I making my kid feel good right this second?

Am I making myself feel good right in this second? And think about where we'd like our kid to be six months from now, a year from now. How competent would we like them to be? What skills do we want them to know? from now? How competent would we like them to be? What skills do we want them to know? Do we want them to be able to pick up the phone and call someone on a landline and have an adult conversation with someone at an auto body store? Whatever. Fill out forms. Like these little moments where we're in a rush and like, you know, the school forms at the beginning of the year, that big pile you get. I don't fill those out. My children fill those out.

There's nothing they can't fill out on those forms without me putting some information on a little piece of paper about our doctor's phone number. Because I don't want, in five years, I don't want the first form my kid fills out to be a tax return or an insurance form for a car. Or to just be a terrifying experience. Right, exactly. So I try really hard to, when I start to freak out, when I start to go, oh, let me do that for you, to think for a second and say, wait a second, stop. Okay, right now it would be much easier for me to do this. But in six months, wouldn't it be nice if my kid could actually do this themselves? And I'm a neat freak. And that's hard for me sometimes.

I don't like the way they load the dishwasher. I don't like the way they do the laundry. They don't unball their socks and they leave their underwear tangled up in their pants when they wash their pants. It's gross. I could fix all those things or I could let some things go through the laundry and come out dirty on the other end and have them see what that looks like. Or I could hold them accountable for the scrambled eggs that are stuck on the plate because they didn't rinse

the plate off well enough when they loaded the dishwasher. So thinking long-term, I wrote an article called Parenting Not for the Moment but for the Long Haul. Parenting not for the moment, but for the long haul. And I try to think that way myself. And that's hard sometimes. Thinking more, number two, thinking more about the process of whatever it is we're trying to learn or do over the product. We tend to put all of our emphasis in school on the product, on what the grade is, what the test result is, all that sort of stuff, whether or not they're on a roll. If we could put all of our emphasis back on process, it can do a lot of things for kids. It can make anxious kids less anxious. It can make perfectionist kids relax a little bit into the process.

How? How does that work? into the process and it can how how does that work well so perfectionist we're having we have a situation now where i'm seeing more and more perfectionist kids in my classroom and perfectionism that's beginning to bleed on over into obsessive compulsive personality disorder and it's really troubling i'm we refer more and more kids for mental health issues um than we than i have ever before. And reassuring kids that instead of talking about that grade, you could say, you know, so what did you try last time that worked? What might you try this time? Well, why didn't that work? Oh, you know, you say your friend got an A on that test and you got a C.

What did your friend do? How did she study and what did you do? What things did you try? What might you not do next time? I've been lucky enough to work on this show for Amazon Kids called The Stinky and Dirty Show. And it's a show for preschoolers. And believe me, I'm the last person who would go on board with a television show. As far as I'm concerned, most people should blow up their televisions. But I was asked to do this thing and I said no. And then I started reading the scripts. And what this show is about are these vehicles, this garbage truck and this digger that have to solve a problem. And over and over and

over again, they screw it up. But with each iteration, they carry something forward and they say, okay, well, what did we try here? Okay, well, that didn't work. But maybe if we did this, this might work better. Okay, that didn't totally work the way I wanted it to. But maybe if we did this with it instead, that might work. That process-oriented conversation, that really needs to be what we emphasize. Right. And appreciation for how you got there, the journey, as opposed to just getting the right answer and checking the box. And that's why I'm such a huge fan of goals. I mean, I think in schools, advisors do this really well. I was doing this as an advisor in middle school, having a lot of conversations with students, not about grades, but about short-term achievable goals.

The fun thing we did when I took this home, actually, and used this with my own family was each of us had to come up with three goals for ourselves for the next month, for the semester, for the week. I don't care. But one of them had to be a little scary. And all four of us had to do that with these three goals. And my kids have seen. And the nice thing about that is they're personal goals. So if you screw them up, if you don't achieve whatever the end result was, there's no high stakes. Who cares?

Parents who have done this with their kids have reported back to me that some of the goals are really funny and things that the parents never would have thought of. I've heard everything from make a few new friends to keep my room clean to say something nice to that kid on the bus that no one says anything nice to. I mean, like the most amazing stuff. And for my part, I had one goal on my list that I failed at for three and a half years and I just recently achieved. And that my kids saw me go through all those rejections and all those failures and all those failed attempts. And we talked about it.

We put, we decided, okay, let's stop talking about grades at home. Let's talk those failed attempts. And we talked about it. We, we put, we decided, okay, let's stop talking about grades at home. Let's talk more about goals. And so we're to the point now where, you know, we definitely don't put report cards on the refrigerator. We don't really have a lot of conversations about grades because I really am more interested in their goals. And I really am more interested in whether or not they're learning. Um, and if a bad grade is a vehicle for more learning, then all the better. That's just not really what concerns me, mainly because my mindset around college is we have these perfectly wonderful state schools and lots of other schools that my kids, no matter what, if they're perfectly

average students, will be able to get into into college and if they're self-directed then there's nothing to worry about i know right i know but i love that it it also sort of demonstrates the connection pillar that's a big part of your work and i love the transparency of the of you the parents saying i'm struggling with this and being okay with that and being open with that we have this they already know we're not perfect they okay with that and being open with that. We have this instinct. They already know we're not perfect. They already know that. And yet we put on this veneer because we want them to feel safe that everything is under control and everything is fine and they don't have to worry about it. And we're going to take care of it. And that's not the way life works. We went through a very

difficult time several years ago like a lot of financial dismantling and we made a choice to be very open with our kids about it and that was scary and we had we actually we were we received a lot of judgment for that too like how dare you you know and on some level there was some trauma as a result of that because it creates uncertainty and that's you don't want that for your kids and yet our older boys they will now say you know unanimously like that was an extremely valuable experience because we were able to see like this is the way life works and it actually brought our family together right like it united us it could have blown us apart i mean that was a risk i suppose but it really did bring us together as a unit and bonded us.

And we got through it, and it's okay. And so that's an experience they can file away. Like, things don't always go your way, but there are ways to get through it. And to get through it effectively, we come together. There are actually studies that show that kids that have an active part in dealing with family emergencies, the family situation as a whole, that they're actually contributing to the family in some way, whether that's through shared problem solving or household duties or whatever, tend to have fewer sort of mental health ramifications

when things go really bad. That they, when they feel like they're participating in sort of the family as a whole and the wellbeing of the family, they actually tend to do better. And I have to recommend a book to you because Ron Lieber's book, The Opposite of Spoiled, is a fantastic book for that because one of the things he, and he's the Your Money columnist at the New York Times, the guy knows his stuff. One of the things, he profiled a guy who actually brings home, one time decided to bring home his entire salary in bills so that they could sit down at the table with actual money on the table and all of

the bills. This is all the money that we have for the year. This is it. This is the salary. It was his monthly paycheck or whatever. But here's all the money we have. Here's our mortgage bill. Here's our water bill.

Here's what is here. Now, let's talk about savings. Let's talk water bill. Here's what is here now. Let's talk about savings. Let's talk about how we're going to pay for you to go to college. This is what it looks like. And I was having this conversation with my son in the car. He's 18. He's about to go off to college. And I was talking about the mechanics of how we saved for college and how we're saving for our retirement. And my son turned to me and he said, and when exactly am I supposed to learn about this? And I said, right here in these conversations, in the very conversations that so many parents are afraid to have with children because, oh, I don't want to burden them with that. That's that. No. When exactly are our children supposed to learn about, I don't know, taxes and budget and how to tighten our belts when things are not going well and what's really important and what we spend our money on?

How exactly are they supposed to do that? I don't know. And we're not teaching it in school, that's for sure. No. I mean, is there, you know, a more valid life skill to master? You know, I think that transparency, I'm a huge fan of transparency in general. When my son Finnegan's running around outside and when, um, when he's really anxious, he tends, he has a little bit of sort of social anxiety going out and talking to strangers and asking for things that he needs. But I, I require him to do it on a fairly regular basis. And the reason I do that, he knows, he's fully clear on why I'm doing that. It's not because I said so.

It's not because I'm mean. If you were to ask him why, for example, yesterday I made him get on the phone and order something he needed, it was because I know that in order to be a good parent, I need to raise a kid who's going to be able to do those things in the future. And no, I don't want to see him distressed and I don't want to see him anxious. And I hate it when he's upset and anxious and things make him worry. But part of my job as a parent is to push him outside of that comfort zone a little bit and help him overcome that. And I hope that through that transparency, when he says, well, why can't you just do that thing for me? And I say,

because I'm a better mom if I don't. He knows what that means. And fundamentally behind that, he understands that you have his back, right? That you are his cheerleader and his support system. But yet what comes with that is your insistence that he step outside where he's comfortable as a necessary aspect of what it means to grow mature. And more and more kids, you know, have this anxiety about not doing it right the first time. And so going through a lot of what if conversations is a great thing to do with kids, too. You know, what if I get lost on the way down to the front desk? Well, then you can turn around and retrace your steps. Well, what if I get so lost that I can't do that? Well, then maybe you could text me. Here's your iPad, whatever. You know, going through all those what ifs with kids

and helping, rather than just pushing them out there and say, here, you're 18, go for it, have fun. Big part of your work now is working with kids in addiction recovery, right? So I'd love to be able to talk to you about that for a couple minutes. You know, what is it, what age groups are you working with and what are you typically seeing? What kind of, you know, drugs are these kids struggling with and you know, what kind of comes up in your daily? So I, so I teach kids, I think we've had,

the youngest we've had on the unit is like 13. And once they're 18, we really push them over to the adult unit. If at all possible. So is it like a rehab? It's an inpatient rehab. So it's actually an inpatient rehab that has a male wing, a female wing, you know, for, and then the kids. And we have to keep the kids totally separate from the adults simply because there could very possibly their parents could be there too. And it's just not safe for them. So the kids are kept separate. But part of being inpatient is that somehow they have to keep up with school.

So while 22 hours a day they're working on rehab, they're working on their addiction stuff, two hours a day they're in school and they have to be in school. And the Vermont Board of Education oversees what we do. So since it's only two hours a day, like Monday will be science and Tuesday will be history, and I'm writing in English. I share the English stuff with someone else as well.

And so I do that once a week. I'm their English teacher. I'm their writing teacher. As you can imagine, a lot of recovery stuff tends to come out in writing. With kids, it's tricky. They're dealing with, often they've been self-medicating for violence, trauma, abuse that's happened in their life. And so when we take the substance away,

suddenly they're having to deal with the actual pain of dealing with the background stuff. And so that's a challenge. You know, many of these are kids that are throwaway kids. No one cares about them. They're in state care. Often we keep them longer than we should because we have nowhere else to send them.

No one will take them. We can't find a foster home. A lot of them are wealthy kids who go to boarding schools in the area and are in the rehab to, to work through their addiction issues as well. Now I'm in Vermont. This is in Vermont. I happen to live in New Hampshire and opiates are a problem right now. Um, we get, you know, a fair number of kids that are alcoholics. We get a fair number of kids that, um, really it's weed. But opiates really are our problem at the moment. Oxycontin, hydrocodone. Whatever they can get their hands on, really. Yeah. This is the epidemic of our age,

really, the prescription medications. Yeah. And there are some really interesting things happening in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The police chief in Gloucester, Massachusetts said, you know, we're at the point now where the overdosing it's, it's out of control. So they started a program in Gloucester last year, where if you come into the police, you turn in your works, what they will do, your, your heroin, your needles, your, or any drug paraphernalia, they will, they guarantee that you will be set up with a mentor, recovery, and they have given access to Narcan in Gloucester. They've made sure it's funded so that people can have access to what you need to reverse

a drug overdose. And he's getting incredible results. And this project is spreading. Because rather than just incarcerate addicts, it would be great if we could actually do something about the addiction problem. And with kids, it's really touchy, though, because what you're talking about, often with kids, kids will say, I am grateful for the drugs because I would be dead if I hadn't had a way to cloak my pain. I hear that a lot.

I hear a lot of sort of people in their 20s say, I only made it through my teens because I was high and I was able to not deal with the pain of the sexual abuse that I dealt with. And I think it's important to acknowledge that and validate that. You know, but to find a way to get them to ultimately move past that, of course. Right. So how do you, you know, I mean, we need to change the system from incarceration to rehabilitation. Right.

Well, we need to get rid of just say no. I mean, just say no is an abject failure. And when I got to write this article for the New York Times where I asked my students, I said, in your most trusting and receptive moments as a teenager, what could an adult have possibly said to you that might have made a difference and might have made you stop for a second and not do drugs? And all of them said, if people had been honest with me, that sort of just don't do drugs, that drugs are all bad. Well, they know that's crap because people wouldn't be

doing drugs if they were all bad. And it turns out that when I went back and I talked to addiction experts like David Sheff, I said, David, is there any truth in what they're saying? And he said, absolutely, there's truth in what they're saying? And he said, absolutely, there's truth in what they're saying. It turns out that an information-based education around drugs and alcohol and a sort of here's why people do drugs, here's what it does to the brain, here's what happens when we permanently alter our ability to sort of have these pleasure centers work the way they're supposed to work in our brain, here's what drugs are all about,

and toss the Just Say No, the D.A.R.E. program out the window because those don't work. That education model actually works better to keep kids from taking drugs. Interesting. And with your knowledge and experience with adolescent sort of development and education, does that help frame how you communicate with these young people? Like, does it change how you think about sort of recovery modalities, you know, perhaps outside of 12-step or as an addendum to traditional kind of methodologies? Well, first and foremost, I'm always going to say, can we please deal with our mental health system, especially as it applies to children?

So we're in a position where there aren't enough mental health services for kids. The ones we have tend to not, you know, we have some great stuff out there, but there just isn't enough for everyone. Kids that need help are not getting it. There was a case a couple years ago in Vermont where a kid needed help, psychological help. He knew he was in serious dire straits psychologically. And the best decision he could make at that moment was to rob a bank so that he never intended to hurt anyone. He didn't want to hurt anyone. It was his neighborhood bank.

It was his neighbors working there. And he said, he went in there with a gun, and he said, I'm not here to hurt anyone. It was his neighborhood bank. It was his neighbors working there. And he said, he went in there with a gun and he said, I'm not here to hurt anyone. And I just want you to call 911 so that I can get some help. That's insane. And so if we could actually treat children's mental health issues, and again, a lot of this comes back to that anxiety stuff that we're talking about with achievement and being perfect and all that stuff and what's leading to like, you know, suicide clusters among high school students. If we could start actually dealing with student mental health. And part of that, you know, I've been writing about a lot is in the past, what we've always said is leave it to the professionals. Just, you know, as teachers, your job is to teach and to identify when someone

might have a problem, but you are not to get involved in any sort of treatment. You're not to get involved in diagnosing anything, which I totally respect. often like in crisis mode, the teacher is the person in front of them. Then let's come up with maybe like a mental health 101 sort of system in teacher training so that teachers can have a bit more of an ability to sort of do crisis management. Right. Cause then otherwise, what are you doing there? If you have blinders on, it's the, it's the elephant in the room. And until you get past that, like whatever you're trying to communicate to them is irrelevant. Right. And it's hard to get mental health professionals to sign off on that because they always want to come back around to, yes, but teachers aren't mental health professionals. So it's really dangerous for us to give you too much information about treatment because then you're going to think that you're treating. And I get that.

I hear that. Yes, the ideal is for children to get professional mental health. But I'm talking about in these crisis moments when a kid really needs an adult to help them get through the next 20 minutes so that they don't hurt themselves, so that they don't cut themselves, so that they don't commit suicide, so they don't do something dire. Let's give teachers. Let's give ministers. Let's give ministers. Let's give coaches. Let's give the people that kids are going to go to because they trust, and those tend to be teachers, coaches, pastors. Let's give those people some of the skills they need in order to identify

and help the kids deal with trauma so that maybe they don't jump straight to obliterating all of their emotions with a drug. Right. Have you read Gabor Mate's book, In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts? No, I haven't. Oh, you've got to check that out. Okay, I'll check that out. But he's essentially somebody who works, who's been working,

he's a doctor who's been working with desperate case addicts in Vancouver, mostly on Skid Row. Oh, I definitely want to read that. And he's developed this whole kind of idea, theory, around the genesis of addiction. And the idea is that it's essentially all rooted in childhood trauma, like that childhood trauma is the trigger that sort of sets in motion all of this. And until we sort of appreciate that

and really commit to unpacking that and looking at that. And some places are. There's a great project in Boston, for example, called the Witness to Violence Project. And what they do, it's a nonprofit that essentially helps kids deal with the violence they're seeing in their home, the shootings they're seeing on the street

or whatever that thing is, and unpack that so that they can get back to being kid and learning in school. Because P.S., all this trauma also short-circuits learning. So kids are not doing well in school either. Yeah, they don't develop emotionally, mentally, academically. So how does it, you know, is there, like, what is the recidivism rate?

Like, do you see success? Is it heartbreaking? I mean, it's got to be very difficult work. Well, I think many people's understanding of addiction is you get someone to understand that they have a problem. Yay, first step, you have a problem. And then we send them off to rehab, and they're fixed. And that, especially for children, is not how it works. and that especially for children is not how it works because adolescence is a time of, you know, as I said,

you don't have your frontal lobe fully developed at that point, understanding, plus their need for, adolescence need for stimulation, for excitement, for pleasure stimulation is just higher at that time. They're thrill-seeking. They're not understanding consequences very well. So you've got a group of kids that are more likely to expose themselves to risk and not understand the consequences and to be more impulsive. And yet we're asking them to think

like adults in adult recovery. And so I see the same kids over and over and over again at the rehab. And that's hard because that's the other thing is I had a girl ask me just the other day. She said, this is so hard for me to be back in this classroom because it means I failed. And often it's sort of like if someone relapses, it's really hard to pick yourself up and go back to those meetings because all of a sudden you've lost all those days and you've failed and you're starting from scratch. The shame spiral that sets in, right? Yeah. Well, and from my perspective and as a recovering alcoholic myself, I think the fear of failure gets me only so far.

But the fear of losing my days, the fear of losing everything that I have in my life at this point only gets me so far, but having the fear of losing my days, the fear of losing everything that I have in my life at this point only gets me so far. But what really gets me the rest of the way is relationships. And when I talk about connection, you know, in the gift of failure sense, and when I talk about connection in education, when I talk about connection in recovery, it's really all the same thing. When you have people who are making whatever it is you're learning, whether that's a life skill or, you know, algebra, when people make that relevant to your life and say, look, this is what your life can look like if you are able to take this information in. But the problem with some of these kids in recovery is they don't think they're worth it and they don't have a

good vision of what their life could look like. I asked kids recently, a while back, to write two essays for me. One was about how they see themselves, and one was about how others see them. And one kid was willing to write the essay about how he saw himself, and he was unwilling to write the essay about how others see him. And I started to try to help him unpack that a little, and one of his counselors was sitting right there with me because I am not expected to be a mental health counselor. He was sitting there, we were both sitting there with him, and he started to cry, and he said, what's the point?

He said, you know, the way other people see me is just like my uncles and my grandfather and my father and all the men in my family, we're just, we're going to prison. Why expect anything else? expect anything else? So, you know, we can only do so much if a kid's expectation, if they've been raised to have no expectations for themselves or for a better future. And that's one reason that these relationships and mentorships and exposing kids to people who are different from them and exposing kids to people who have done great things and letting kids have role models and, you know, in any way, shape, or form and helping kids be inspired, that's what teaches them about what they can expect out there.

Right, because what they learn academically, whether or not they learn geometry or algebra, doesn't mean anything if they can't reframe the story that they tell about themselves, about who they are. And that comes back to a thing called self-efficacy, which goes back to a guy named Bandura and his research on self-efficacy. And if kids don't feel like, and this happens a lot at the rehab, if kids feel like their actions or their decisions aren't actually going to change anything,

like I could do X and it's not going to change anything. Like, I could do X, and it's not going to change a damn thing. If they don't feel like they have the ability to be effective out in the world, to change their own life, to change other people's lives, or to change the world, then they're not going to act. And it sort of feeds back into learned helplessness. Right, and autonomy and agency and all of these things. They're all intertwined. I mean, learned helplessness is another big issue we see at schools.

Kids who have just learned that they have no impact over their environment, that no matter what they do, things will remain the same. Their parents are going to continue to expect too much of them. They are going to fail. They're going to blah, blah, blah. If they don't feel like they have any ability to change that, then they're just going to roll up in a ball and let life happen to them. All right. Well, we got to wrap this up here.

Maybe we can leave. We can't just talk forever and ever. We can. Listen, I always feel bad if I hold my guests hostage too long. Well, I even said to you when i looked at your podcast i my podcast happens to run 30 minutes um and that's because you know i i think 30 minutes for a podcast to sort of you know get a get from point a to point b in the car something like that and then i looked at your podcast and i was like holy moly he does everything in ultra because this is a long i know it's like

you're here yeah we're gonna go deep deep. Well, the thing is like, there's no rules in podcasting. You know what I mean? People are like, it's so long. And I'm like, well, you have a whole week to listen to it. You don't have to listen to it in one sitting, or you don't have to listen to the whole thing. But yeah. Well, I think my podcast tends to be, my podcast is hashtag am writing with Jess and KJ. And I do this with my New York times, former editor. And we talk about some element of being a writer, whether that's family work balance, whether that's, it was recently it was taxes last week. It was, um, you know, starting a speaking career. A lot

of it's about book promotion because my, um, my best friend and former editor is also, um, she has a book due May 1st and I'm one of those people promoting a book out there in the world, and she's an introvert. And so she's trying to figure out how she's going to do her book promotion in an introverted kind of way. And so we explore procrastination and best practices. What are our best practices for getting work done? And we tend to pick one small thing and stick with that. So 30 minutes. I like that.

I'm going to start listening to that. Well, we started out as, we both love podcasts. So we both really wanted to do a podcast. And finally, KJ said, no, we're doing this. And it started out as a way for us to sit down for half an hour and talk about the work. We have a couple of other writer friends we bring in to talk with us occasionally. We have a friend of ours who runs a literary agency. She comes in.

My friend Serena, that's her pseudonym, she writes romance. She's an extremely prolific and extremely successful romance author, self-pubbed. And she comes in and talks to us. She's also an economist, so she talks to us. She has a degree from Yale in economics. So she comes in. She writes romance novels under her pseudonym. That's amazing. Last week, she came in to teach us about piracy and how writers can

fight back against pirates who take our work and use it at other places. And I'm talking like practical things that actually work to get our stuff taken down from places it shouldn't be. She also talked to us about self-publishing, how to do that, how to market your own work. She's kind of brilliant. That's super helpful. Yeah. I mean, I know my book is all over the place. You can download it as a PDF and you tell the publisher and he's like, well, you know. Right. And it's actually really easy. If you listen to the podcast, it was just last week, I think, where we talked about piracy. It's shockingly easy to get carriers to take down your content. They just have to know it's there.

I like the idea of really trying to help writers who are introverted learn how to market their books. The idea that somebody who's an introvert is suddenly going to become a twitter star is like it's not realistic it's not going to happen so i happen to love being out there speaking and what's you know i knew i wanted to do that from the beginning and you know my friend kj she knows for a fact that's not what she wants to do. So how is she going to leverage the internet? The expectations of the publishers are now placed on the authors to market their own books, whereas the introverted author used to just be able to say, turn to the publisher and that's their job, right? Yeah, no more. I actually, my publisher paid a fair amount of money for my book. In fact, in a recent podcast, we were talking about the book Scr which is great and it's about it's by i'm

gonna say her name wrong and i apologize manjula martin i think and it's about the the writing life and the and the finances of it and she goes deep into and she gets people to talk about the amount of money they got for their books and and kj and i decided to go transparent and we did we talked about how much we got we talked about our advances we talked about you know we talk about royalties we talk about like foreign sales so we get really honest about the numbers because i think people have been really afraid to do that but it's really important if you want to try to scratch out as as the book implies if you want to scratch out a living as a writer you have to be able to talk about contracts you have to be able to understand permissions and contracts and first serial rights and all the uncomfortable stuff that we as creative people

tend to not want to talk about and deal with well also that the sort in the hallowed halls of traditional publishing it's just not it's uncouth you know to like talk about that but that's you know yeah in fact you know if youisher's Marketplace, they have this coded language for like a very sweet deal or a very good deal or whatever as like a price range for what people got instead of just spitting out the number. We're living in the Victorian era or something. I know. I know.

So it was scary when we revealed what we got for our books because we had to kind of take a big breath and we were inspired byjula Martin's book to do that. And I think it's helpful for writers. I do this all the time with kids. I use $100,000 as sort of an easy divisible number. And I explain about how much you have to give to your agent. And I explain how much, oh, and the fact that you get taxed on what goes to your agent because that's a business expense.

And then take out taxes. And you don't get it in one check. Right. And I got five. Everyone thinks that, yeah. So if you take $100,000 and you take off 20% for your agent because that's a business expense. And then take out taxes. And you don't get it in one check. Right. And I got five. So if you take $100,000 and you take off 20% for your agent, except of course you get taxed on that. And then you take out 30% for taxes and you divide that over five years, which is my experience, that's $10,000 a year for $100,000 book advance. And I'm not complaining. That you have to earn out before you ever receive dollar one. Exactly. I mean, you get to keep that advance, but yeah, no royalties come until, yeah.

Right. Well, we're entering into a whole other podcast. Go listen to my podcast for that stuff because it's all there. Hashtag I'm writing. With Jess and KJ. There you go. Cool. On iTunes and Audioboom. And the book is The Gift of Failure. And maybe you can kind of take us out, which is one thing to help parents that do struggle with,

you know, how to best communicate with their kids over these important issues, you know, to help them get off the dime and perhaps like reconfigure their trajectory. I'm just going to repeat that, you know, think about the long-term goals for your kid. Be honest with them about the fact that your long-term goals are more important than their immediate comfort in this second. And the kid's immediate comfort and your immediate comfort. And that we're all really just trying to learn from our mistakes. And I'm going to be a little bit more transparent about that. I'm going to be a little bit more transparent about that by starting with, I'm sorry that I've been doing too much for you and not giving you the ability to become a competent adult. And I'm sorry, and I'm going to do better. And the way I'm going to do that is by giving you opportunities to learn.

Beautiful. We did it. Yay. How do you feel? That was fun. You want to go another hour? I think my kid that's walking around in the backyard with your dog. No, you need to go. You need to go enjoy the rest of your day.

Well, I so appreciate your time. That was really wonderful. I got so much out of that. It's just a pleasure to talk to you. Your work is incredibly inspiring. It's important. I encourage everybody to not only pick up your book, but also read the many articles that you've written for The Atlantic and The New York Times. And you're also very generous in always sharing the sort of bibliography of all these other authors that have informed your work. You know, everybody from, I don't know, the people that you've mentioned today to Daniel Pink and all these people. So I'll probably put together like a list for the show notes where I can, you know, uh, indicate all these additional materials. I mean, just for, just for reference, all that's at Jessica Leahy.com. There's like a big button that says download speaking bibliography

and there's, and there's, um, you know, it's all there. The gift to failure stuff there, my speaking schedule there, the contact form to get in touch with me is there. I read all my emails. My assistant, um, you know, deals with like the busy work type stuff, but I deal with all the like real request stuff. Um, drop me a line. Yeah. Awesome. Where are you speaking next? Uh, next I had to, I'm speaking at Yale next week and then I go, I speak at avenues, the world school in New York city. And then I speak to the Northeast Society of Jesuit Educators and to a whole bunch of superintendents out on Long Island. And then I get to go to Pennsylvania with my dad

and do a drive around Pennsylvania while I speak at various schools. So the speaking thing is really almost like a full-time thing. How do you balance that with teaching at the rehab? I work a lot. Yeah, I guess. And I don't have a speaking agent, so I do all of that myself. And that's a lot of work. But I have a virtual assistant who helps me with some of the sort of invoicing

and things like that. Cool. All right, Jessica, thanks so much. You are so welcome. And I hope to convince you to come back and talk to me some more maybe sometime. I happen to know I will be back in Los to me some more maybe sometime I happen to know I will be back in Los Angeles in the fall all right well let's make a standing appointment all right we did it thanks for listening you guys I hope you dug it please check out Jessica's book

the gift of failure and put on your ear goggles and enjoy her podcast, hashtag emwriting, and send her a tweet letting her know what you thought of this podcast. She's at Jess, J-E-S-S, Leahy, L-A-H-E-Y. If you'd like to support this show and my work, there's a couple ways to do that. Easiest way, best way, perhaps, is just share it with your friends. Tell your friends about it. Share it on social media. Leave a review on iTunes. Hit that subscribe button. Super important. Finally, what else do I want to say? For signed copies of Finding Ultra and the Plant Power Way, as well as cool Plant Power t-shirts, tech tees, sticker packs, all kinds of cool Plant Power merch and swag, go to richroll.com and click on our shop there. We got all that stuff there. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the

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Theme music by Annalema. I'll see you guys back here in a week. In the meantime, make it great. Don't waste time. Use your bandwidth wisely. And together, let's live our healthiest, most fully actualized, authentic selves. Peace. Plants. Thank you.