INTRO Aviva Levin: Welcome to Lesson: Impossible, an exploration of educational innovation. I'm your host Aviva Levin. As always, I'm chatting with educators of all types who are on the forefront of pedagogy or making effective changes to old practices. Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to be compassionate to yourself as you develop strategies for mental wellness. The special agent assigned to help you with this task is counselor, coach and podcaster Marie Kueny of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

INTRO Aviva Levin: As I was editing this episode about taking care of our own mental wellness the news of George Floyd’s death at the hand of police officers came to international attention. Mr. Floyd’s death was not an isolated incident of violence against Black people: in May alone Breonna Taylor, Sean Reed, David McAtee and Tony McDade were fatally shot by police. As teachers we need to be aware of the profound impact these deaths, the subsequent protests, as well as years of systematic racism in our schools are having on the mental and/or physical health our students.  For white educators specifically, it’s important that we not burden our colleagues of color with the task of explaining what is happening, how to help, or what to say. It is also important that we be informed and ready to talk to our students about institutional racism in a way that is accessible, affirming of their feelings, and does not retraumatize Black students or put them in a position where they feel they need to defend their lived experiences. If you feel in need of guidance, a quick Google search will turn up countless resources to help you and I personally recommend starting with Joe Truss who has excellent resources on his site, Culturally Responsive Leadership.  As for this episode’s special agent, Marie Kueny, she is the host of the podcast “The Compassionate Educators Show”, former school counselor and now a personal coach for teachers. It was a sunny day in Wisconsin and a rainy day in Washington in early May when we spoke.

Aviva Levin: First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I'm really excited to talk to you. But before we begin, do you mind giving just a summary of who you are, what you do? Anything that you feel makes a good intro?

Marie Kueny: Yeah. So I am currently the founder of Compassionate Educators, which I just started last year. And I have been in the world of education for about 20 years. I have seen a lot. And so I am absolutely loving my role right now and working with teachers and coaching them in how to bring social emotional learning into the classrooms and doing that really easily and effectively. But without adding on one more thing, because we know that teachers already take on so much. And so one of the pieces that I really like to focus on is addressing that burnout and compassion fatigue. So how do we truly bring that wellness to not just our students, but to ourselves as well?

Aviva Levin: I have a lot I'd love to talk to you about, but today, what my burning question really is about, is your work around the growth mindset for teachers. Because we talk so much about a growth mindset for students, but I feel we don't offer that same compassion or that same mindset to ourselves a lot of the time. And we just expect perfection or nothing. And so how do you help teachers instill that growth mindset into themselves?

Marie Kueny: Sure, sure. So, you know, one thing that I've noticed, and I'm sure that you have, as well is that many, many teachers grew up being very good students, right?

Aviva Levin: Yeah.

Marie Kueny: So there is this, you know, decades, decades worth of learned behavior of how to be a good student. That then is transferred into our role as a teacher. And there continues to be this belief that we must dot all of our eyes, cross our tees. And there's this idea of perfection for many, many teachers. And it oftentimes depletes us as educators because striving for this perfection, first of all, is there is there there's no true perfection. Right? It's just, you know, it just doesn't exist. Second of all, you know, as teachers continuing to strive to gain something really really makes them believe that they don't already have exactly what they need. And I truly believe that every teacher has exactly what they need within themselves. They have the innate skills and knowledge. They have that wisdom and passion to truly make a difference for their students. And it's not so much reaching outside of ourselves for perfection, but it's looking within and seeing for each individual teacher what are their own unique strengths and what are their talents and what just really makes them shine and come alive. And when they can bring that into the classroom, then it completely transforms the dynamics and makes whatever subject of whatever grade level, whoever they heard teaching, it just makes it so much more powerful.

Aviva Levin: I think the amazing thing about teachers is that we're constantly trying to improve, which I think is amazing. But I remember in my first couple of years of teaching, I was still at school and I think it was like seven o'clock on a Friday night. And I was still there. And I was like, you know what? It's my first few years of teaching. You know, this is to be expected. And then I go to the photocopy room and there is a seasoned teacher also still there at 7:00 on a Friday night. And I remember just thinking like, oh, God, it's never going to end. And I know that you coach teachers to pack up and go home. What is it that you think keeps us there? And then how can we go home without a giant bag of marking slung over our shoulder?

Marie Kueny: That's a great question. And I actually I have a friend and colleague, Danielle Felton, who wrote the book Teach And Go Home, and she has some really amazing insights as well into this. But she really advocates for preparing and planning and having a system. And so that's what I really work with with my teachers, so we work on how do you truly make really concise plans ahead of time? Right? And again, this isn't about perfection. This is about what is the most critical. So what is the most critical to get done and do that and not stress about this idea of perfection and having to have everything just so. So when I think about a lot of times we want to have whether you're in, let's say, elementary school, you want to have like the perfect clipart with your worksheet. And you could be doing all of this work for many, many hours. But when you really examine deeper, is that truly essential to what the lesson is and what needs to be done? And so really being in tune with what is the most critical aspects. Right. And this goes with so I know that this is a little controversial sometimes to talk about the grading, but I really encourage the teachers I work with to look a little deeper into their grading practices as well, because we could spend hours upon our grading every minute detail. Or we can look at what is the most essential pieces? What assessment tools do we truly need? What you know, needs to be graded with a fine tooth comb or what can just be looked at and realize, okay, the students needs a little more work in this or they got this down. And again, just making sure, though, that we are being very... [Thoughtful?] Yes. Thoughtful, very thoughtful, very mindful of our time because time is our most precious asset. And so really treating it that way. Treating every moment as if it's just so precious and is, you know, when you're working on something, is this what your time needs to be spent on?

Aviva Levin: The idea of being mindful and aware of the value of your time reminds me of an older teacher that I knew and her husband had taken her salary and broken it down as if it was like an hourly rate. And whenever she'd go past a certain point, he'd always like nudge her and be like, hey, how's it going working for lower the minimum wage right now? And that was kind of like his way of saying, like, I think I think you're putting a little too much into this.

Marie Kueny: That's a great one. I mean, that's a great idea. Just again, being very cognizant of where you are putting your time and. Yeah. That made me think, too. I have a teacher I work with who she's she's been an educator for several decades, is close to retirement. And she's still just as the woman at the copy machine you mentioned, she still spends, you know, many hours outside of the school day. And so we've been working a lot on that this year. And we realized one thing that happens is she has her email going to her phone and she checks it every time it dings. So she could be in the middle of dinner with her family and gets an email from school and she's checking it. So it feels like she's always working. So I had to help her see that it's OK to not respond you know, during her personal time, unless it's an emergency, of course. But, you know ninety nine percent of the time that's not the case. And so it was really hard for her, though, to change that mindset around but I'm a good teacher and I'm an effective communicator, so I need to be able to respond immediately. So we did a lot of work around that piece of it so that she could begin to see she is still an amazing teacher. She is still a very effective communicator, but she gets to have her personal time as well. So all she did was turn off that notification. And I believe that we also had her put like a notification, an auto responder, on her email saying these are the hours that I check my email so that when parents did email her that they knew what to expect because they were used to getting immediate responses. So she kind of had to train the parents to realize that she valued her personal time as well and that she was receiving their messages. But these are her office hours, so to speak.

Aviva Levin: Yeah, you say, just turn it off. But I imagine that there is a lot of hours of counseling to get her to the point where she could do that and not break out into a sweat.

Marie Kueny: Well, I think she's still she still struggles with it a bit.

Aviva Levin: And you talk about the helper's trifecta, which sounds positive, but it's actually quite negative. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to that as well.

Marie Kueny: Well, I don't necessarily want it to be seen as negative. But again, just something to be aware of. So the helpers risk trifecta is burnout, compassion fatigue and secondary trauma.

Aviva Levin: So my understanding is that burnout is when you just are overwhelmed by all of the responsibilities, usually outside of the actual teaching, like the administrative and the politics and all that. And then compassion fatigue is when you just have no more emotional energy to give. And then secondary trauma is when you take on some of the traumas that your students are sharing with you and aren't able to to let them go at the end of the day. And I kind of on the right track or...?

Marie Kueny: Yes. That was a fabulous summary.

Aviva Levin: Thank you.

Marie Kueny: And this model is something that I created after spending about a decade of researching compassion fatigue and secondary trauma and burnout. And a lot of times it's seen as a continuum in such that first you might experience the compassion fatigue, and ultimately, it leads to burnout and then edge. But what I've seen truly, upon putting all of the research together and then also my own experiences and also working with many, many teachers is that there's actually three pieces and you can experience just one of them without experiencing the other two. So sometimes they... If you, you know, get all of them together. I mean, that is going to be taking such a heavy toll. But it is absolutely possible to experience, let's say, one of them. Let's say you have, again, a student who has come into the classroom and they have, you know, a heavy burden that they're carrying and they have a lot of trauma history. And you begin to learn more and more about their story and they start relying on you as a source of kind of hope and healing. And while that's wonderful, it can it can take a toll on you. And where to the point where that helper, so as a teacher you are a helper, can actually have, for example, nightmares about things that the students went through, start to feel some panic and anxiety, as if you went through those experiences yourself, even if you were not even present. So, you know, if something like that happens, it's absolutely essential to reach out and to get your support system in place, because if it's just ignored, it creates a downward spiral and can lead to anxiety and depression and it can become a very dark and confusing time and place. But again, if we recognize and bring that awareness, it sheds light on it and it opens it up. And we can recognize wow that's not even my story, that's, you know, my student's story. And what can I do to protect myself so that I can continue to help and not be within the story? Does that make sense?

Aviva Levin: Absolutely. And I think giving words to it also makes it easier for us as teachers to protect each other. So instead of necessarily praising someone for how well they handled an abuse disclosure, which you absolutely should do if someone handles it well, definitely tell them they're doing a good job. But also, maybe we can tack on like I know this is going to be difficult for you. You need to watch out for secondary trauma or compassion fatigue or if when you're trying to deal with government officials, you know, burning out in the system. We can then A) make our colleagues aware, but B) know to keep an eye out so that we can direct them to get help before seeing something go astray.

Marie Kueny: Absolutely, 100 percent. And it can take a very big emotional toll. For example, you mentioned abuse disclosure. Just making that phone call as a mandated reporter is very, very challenging a lot of times. And so as a school counselor, for example, I would like to sit next to the teacher and offer them that direct support. And I know that sometimes we're not able to do that based on confidentiality. But if there is someone who can, you know, be present during that time or after. And again, just be there to take on some of that that emotional burden that can offer such such relief to the person who's having to make that report.

Aviva Levin: It's interesting because as counselors, you guys are technically just there for the students. But I can't tell you how many times I would end up in our school counselor's office talking about a student and then, sure enough, we'd be talking about me and my relationship to the student. And I was like, you know, at the end of it, I remember turning to the counselor and being like oh man. You just counseled me. You sneak counseled me.

Marie Kueny: Well, I mean, we have to remember, though, that as school counselors yes, we are there to support the students, but we also are there to support the teachers because if the students are in a classroom where the teacher feels supported, they feel that they are in a healthy environment and supporting that just really healthy climate and culture of the school that is also making an impact on the students as well.

Aviva Levin: For a new teacher going into the profession who wants to set up her career or his career or their career in a way that is going to best benefit themselves and their students. What are some tips that you have, like habits that you should form off the bat so that you don't have to undo them down the line?

Marie Kueny: I love that question. That's so good. So one would be to figure out who your support network is. So who is in your support network? That is really essential because in the beginning, I know for myself I used to think that I could do it alone. And I was so, so student centered that I didn't really form relationships with the other adults in the building initially, or I did when I needed to. But I was so focused on just what was in front of me with my students. And as I got older, as I spent more time in education, I realized what a downfall that was, because, again, we need to be able to lift each other up. And there's also so many there's so many amazing ways that other teachers teach and connect with their students and with things that we can learn from others who have kind of been there and done that. The second would be to really work at making that separation between school and home, because if you start out with bringing everything home, spending hours and hours of planning and preparation at home every night, using your weekends solely to grade papers to create all of these pieces, then it's really hard to stop. You know, if you get into the profession before you have children, if that's something on your radar or if it's a possibility at all, you know, just being really aware that things do change and even if it's not children, it might be that you just have other interests that you want to pursue and hobbies and just making sure that you have an identity outside of the role as teacher. Because that's another kind of trap that we fall to, is that we have our entire identities wrapped up into our profession. And once there is a life change or once we are out of that honeymoon phase of teaching and we want to add maybe some some hobbies, some other interests, then it can be really challenging to make that shift. So for a new teacher starting out with those boundaries and having really clear boundaries in place for your time, for your energy, and that way when things do change, there doesn't have to be such a dramatic shift. And, you know, there's not that feeling of guilt once it does change, as do I used to be able to do this before and now I can't and there must be something wrong with me or I'm not as good as I was. And, you know, like we talked about that perfection idea at the beginning of this episode is all of that comes into play. So if we can just be really mindful again about the way we are approaching our life as a whole versus just the identity of teacher, that can help a lot for years, for decades to come.

Aviva Levin: A couple of things that that that brings to mind for me. The first is that I do have some regrets about what I missed out on in my beginning years as a teacher. For instance, when I was just starting out, the Olympics were in Vancouver, B.C., and we were teaching through the Olympics and I went to maybe one or two Olympic based things, but I was so focused on getting it right in my first year that I completely turned down all the other events. And I think back now and I'm like, those kids don't remember. First of all, they don't remember anything they learned during those two weeks because they were going to all the Olympic events. Second of all, they're not going to remember anyways because it was a long time ago. But third of all, I would have had a lot better memories than being holed up in my apartment doing these giant stacks of marking or planning. And the same went to concerts and things like that that I never went to, and I'm like I, I could of, looking back with the perspective now, it felt at the time like I could not. But I know now that if I had had a different mindset, I totally could have. So that definitely was a lesson learned for me. And the thing you talked about, teacher identity, I think is is really important. I know I talked to Kwame Sarfo-Mensah recently about the idea of teacher identity and forming your teacher identity. But we also talked just a little bit about, at least for me, once I left the classroom, just feeling who am I if I'm not Madame Levin. If no one's calling me that who am I? And that took a while to figure out it was a lot more difficult than I expected it to be.

Marie Kueny: Yeah, that's so true. And right now, that's coming up a lot as well. So when we have teachers who are teaching through distance learning, teaching online and not in their classroom, I'm seeing a lot of that teacher identity come into question as well. And a lot of teachers are really struggling with that. So if we can really make sure that we have some focus, some activities beyond the classroom to start out with, like you said, you know, making sure that you are spending time actively engaged in, you know, your example was in the Olympics had come. And wow, that's like an amazing opportunity. So allowing those other opportunities to come into play as well. And, you know, letting go of that guilt. We get so sucked into that guilt and the what we should be doing that it's sometimes clouds our perspective.

Aviva Levin: That's sits really heavy with me. I think you sneak counseled me there to a little bit.

Marie Kueny: Well if you need to talk more after the episode, feel free to reach out.

Aviva Levin: That brings me to my next, kind of last question, which is you have a podcast which I've been listening to and enjoying called The Compassionate Educators Show. And it's a lot more in-depth looking at some of the stuff that we we talked about. My favorite being a sneak peek behind the school counselor's door, as well as really getting into the helper's risk trifecta. And I'll put links in the show notes. But if they wanted to get in contact with you to set up an appointment to talk through these things, how would they do that?

Marie Kueny: So anyone can send me a message support at compassionate educators dot com with any questions. I also do free 20 minutes clarity calls just to kind of get a perspective on where everything is at. So one other ways that listeners can get in touch with me is I do have the Facebook community, Compassionate Educators, and I am sharing tips and tricks and resources and free trainings as well, all about social emotional learning and growth mindsets and all of the other wonderful pieces that you wish you would have learned in college. And so we have this wonderful community in which you can dive deeper.

Aviva Levin: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking your time to to talk to us about this. I think it's going to be really great for listeners, whether they're at the beginning or their end of their career, to really reflect on the ways that they're being compassionate to themselves as well as to their students.

Marie Kueny: Absolutely. Absolutely. Always make sure that you are having that self compassion because your students are going to see the way that you treat yourself. And as we know, children are sponges and so we are truly models of everything that they see.

OUTRO Aviva Levin: So there you have it, Agent Marie Kueny with letting go of the perfectionist mindset, looking out for ourselves and our colleagues, and recognizing that sometimes you just need to stop working and go home. If you want to find out more about what innovative educators are doing around the world, go to Lesson: Impossible dot com. And if you like the podcast, please consider forwarding it to your colleagues and rating and reviewing it on iTunes. This has been Lesson: Impossible and I was your host Aviva Levin.