bear maximum
We realize we’ve been doing this a longtime and have started planning the three year retrospective! Get ready. Brandon dives into why teachers complain and the need to be intentional and formalizing goals. We discuss why self knowledge is necessary, but scary and is helpingful in figuring out where you’re stuck. In a complete topic shift, Brandon shares opinions on the show Alone.
Why do teachers complain about teaching?
They don't like the spreadsheets
New curriculum time!!
New areas of focus
Being intentional and formalizing end goals
Engineering file cabinet functionality
Data vs knowing the kids - staying unbiased
Have a bit of amnesia
Thinking about thinking
Self knowledge - it’s scary
Being specific and clear in expectations
Figuring out where you’re stuck
Complete topic shift!!
The show Alone
The bear minimum??
You don’t want to do the bear maximum either. Just calm down.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
PROVIDED BY OTTER.AI
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, day, thinking, class, drawer, file cabinet, problem, teacher, sixth grade, solving, kids, reading, clean, fifth grade, work, throw, science, minutes, school, year
SPEAKERS
Collin, Brandon
Collin 00:05
Welcome to Oh, brother, a podcast of three brothers. Trying to figure it all out. It's your hosts, Brandon, Colin and Aaron. On this week's show, bare maximum.
Brandon 00:20
Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh, I could not changing.
Collin 00:27
I can hear myself.
Brandon 00:28
Hello. Hi. Hey, there we go.
Collin 00:31
Oh boy and happy 150th
00:40
No way
Collin 00:42
it is. It is indeed a dude.
Brandon 00:48
At the white band, it's almost time for our three year retrospective.
00:56
Is that all right?
00:57
Almost.
Brandon 01:00
Yeah. Holy cow.
Collin 01:03
A lot. A lot of the minute. Yeah. Episode 146 over your three year like?
01:09
Yeah, and we? Yeah, it'll be our official third year. date wise and you heard like episode wise anyway. Still retrospect
Brandon 01:20
three year retrospective coming soon?
Collin 01:24
Yes, I will have put that in my notes. Haha. Countdown. Gonna put that right at the top of our show notes has wild
01:36
man.
Collin 01:41
So we'll save the rest of our remarks for that. For the retrospective for later. Just throw that out there. Hey, no, thank
Brandon 01:47
you. That's exciting. Something to keep track of.
01:51
Yeah. Thing paying, tracking. So what's new?
Brandon 02:01
Surviving the Back to Work hardships. Oh, no. Right? Well, this always like
02:10
testing the other day, I was like,
Brandon 02:13
some sort of post somewhere. And now like, it was like, Yo,
02:16
teacher's job of teaching so much. How can you complain so much about going back to school? Here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, here's
Brandon 02:25
the inside information. In the short version, the short answer to this question,
02:31
right? Is people become teachers to work with kids. Nobody becomes a teacher
Brandon 02:44
to make and look at spreadsheets and sit in staff meetings. Ooh, how hot take they're really That's why That's why no teacher likes to go back to school because that's what the first days of back to school are. Spreadsheets, in staff meetings, and new procedures, and new zany laws that your state may have passed over the course of the summer break that you now have to know about.
03:14
Those exciting things. Ah,
Collin 03:17
you know what? Nobody likes that. Nobody liked other stuff. Interesting. Interesting. Mm hmm.
03:24
So,
Brandon 03:25
if you were like, oh, man, I love spreadsheets. I was gonna become a teacher. Perhaps you're a business teacher, but other than business teacher,
Collin 03:34
no money counting like,
03:36
yeah. You're like a man.
Brandon 03:42
I was ready to teach like, my econ class about that. Okay. That's okay. That's different, but like normal. elementary and middle school teachers don't so it's all like, ah, we have all this new staff. Right? Because that's a chronic problem that every school in the country is having currently is like staff turnover is oh my gosh, stupid. So we have like all these people that I have no idea who they are. And I just keep seeing them be like hey,
04:14
anyway.
Brandon 04:18
Do you have like a we have new new person who's like an instructional coach. Okay,
04:27
so this year trauma
Brandon 04:31
in the instructional land of we have brand new language arts and math curriculum for the elementary school. Okay, okay. listeners are elementary school is weird. It's K, but we're a relatively small school. So it's
04:47
cut in half. We have K six 712 K, but we
Brandon 04:54
middles six eight still calls herself middle school because we don't do anything remotely like the restaurant That's so stressful more on that later. So K six has a new reading and math curriculum.
05:09
Right. So all day, yesterday, and parts of today. And then parts of the week
Brandon 05:19
next week, parts of several days next week are talking specifically about the new language arts and math curriculum.
05:28
For those keeping score,
Brandon 05:31
I teach science and social studies.
05:35
So
05:37
have a lot to contribute and is so much happening.
Brandon 05:41
And I'm like what does that mean for me? Oh, currently, like, it's basically it seems I know, this is not actually true. Okay. This is just like the feeling I get, like, literally, no one cares about what I'm doing right now. Like, I even had to stay in this meeting yesterday. And then the lady's like, I made everybody binders. And she's like, I'll have one for you. And I was like,
06:08
yeah, no, it's okay. Yeah, because I don't need your
Brandon 06:16
priority language arts standards, because that will be zero help to me. Yeah.
06:22
I'm not supposed to be here. So you know what I did today? What? I made my own binder. Take that. All this stuff. I
Brandon 06:33
looked at the my friend that teaches English, right. I looked at hers. I was like, Can I see there's like it. It doesn't really have anything. And it has some tabs to put stuff later. And it has like, their priority standards and like a calendar and something else. And I was like, Yo, I have all this stuff that I've made for myself already. So it's in like, because my life is unorganized. I mean, Studio Ghibli inspired. And that's my favorite term. I have like this piece over there. I had to have like this piece over there. And then I have these things in this folder, right? So I just like went through my Google Drive in my other thing, and I just like, printed everything out and hole punched it and put it in a binder
07:22
and it was like kablam There we go.
Brandon 07:26
Science binder accomplished.
07:29
Ah. So now at least,
Brandon 07:34
if somebody if somebody ever does come around this year, and he's like, Hey, what is your class looking like? I
07:40
can be like, Well, funny you asked,
Brandon 07:43
because this is really like when I take when we do our quizzes and stuff like our unit assessments, right? I can just print off the summary page. There shows like the average score, the whatever, like you know that stuff. And then I can just like, throw it in there and be like,
08:03
Look, data in a binder
Brandon 08:08
thing last year, you told me I didn't need any more. And I was like, No, I'm keeping all my stuff. Then this year, they're like, hey, we want you to have this binder full of data.
08:16
And I was like, good thing I losers. Good thing. Yeah. Well, I was thinking about that. Yeah. Dark squad.
Brandon 08:31
So yeah, there's a lot of me just being in limbo, like,
08:35
what do you? What do I do?
Brandon 08:38
I mean, I don't like really want to be in your meeting and talk to you about stuff, but also like, Yeah, could you just tell me if I'm doing anything? Wrong? That's all I want to know. Yeah, I just need a little bit of feedback somewhere
08:53
of like, do this. I'm like, okay, I can do that. Or, I'm already doing that. Nevermind. So, I mean, you said,
Brandon 09:09
how much how much guidance do you get? Me personally? Yeah, zero, but not zero, right? I
09:16
have like,
Brandon 09:19
it just feels like zero sometimes, right? That's just a me thing. It's my perception of things, which may or may not actually be correct. I get like,
09:30
my, like,
Brandon 09:33
a couple of times the somebody will come and do like a classroom observation. So they'll see that, like, they come into my classroom. There's like a checklist that the, the administrators have made up of, like, is this person doing these things? Like, what are they doing? What's happening in the classroom? Right? There's a, there's two versions of that. There's Well, I don't know if they use the other version anymore. Actually, there used to be two versions of that. There was an informal one, because sometimes the principal would just like, show up randomly, and be like, Hey, how's it going, like, say hi to the kids and then leave. But what they're actually doing is they're checking in on you, they're being visible to the kids to be like making the connection. But they're also just sort of quickly looking around to see what's happening. Are kids on task? Are we working? Are we doing stuff? Are we helping our you know, whatever. And they would just be like a mini checklist, I would get in an email, but could day or two later, they would just be like, Oh, hey, I just was in your class, I wanted to share this, what I saw, keep up the good work, or blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. Others like a comment section where they type
10:37
something for you. And then there's like, the unofficial observation, time that happens,
Brandon 10:48
where it's like, a much more involved checklist. And they come into your classroom and like, or if you're me, they schedule a time. And then something principally happens and they don't come.
11:02
And so I send, like,
Brandon 11:04
really smart aleck II text messages being like, just come whenever to surprise me. Oh, no. But they come in and they have like an official sheet. Right? And then after they make they do the observation, you have like a meeting with him. Right? Where they go over it. And they talk about so you have q and how to talk about things and whatever. So. So they'll talk about like areas of improvement or like, your goals for classroom stuff or whatever. Like,
11:39
it just depends on how your observation wins itself. So that feedback is good.
Brandon 11:45
Except for the few times I'm like, Yeah, everything's good.
11:47
Like, wait, what?
Collin 11:51
Oh, okay, cool. So anything that can work? I feel like many times, people, oh, yeah, that that kind of feedback is so not helpful. And I think there's this pressure to give that feedback or thinks that that's okay. But it's like, I really feel like, even when, overall, everything quote unquote, looks good. I think you, Kevin, I feel obligated to give some sort of feedback, encouragement, like, here's where I want to see you continue in like working and focusing. Maybe there's nothing major that we have to work on. But like, I don't know, like, I just went through some 90 Day reviews with our staff, and to have the most of them, it's like, I have nothing to tell you to improve on. So I'm going to instead of saying no, you're you're great. I'm going to say I really want to see you continuing to focus your energy and these three places, because I see, you really enjoy that. And that's awesome. So continue to do that. Even that kind of thing. Like that tells them okay, that gives me some direction to move and work more towards.
Brandon 13:04
Yeah, the I was digging around through my desk today. And I found a bunch of old.
13:12
They're like,
Brandon 13:14
informal evaluation notes from the it's the old instructional coach, I used to have like, a long time ago, like when I first started. And I was reading her stuff again. Cuz I keep all that stuff just to like, get me to think about it. Everyone's reflect on it. Right? And hers were really, really good. Because she would she would say that kind of stuff like, oh, yeah, I'm really happy to see you're really coming along in this area. And then she'd be like, Have you thought about this? Like, nothing? Like it was always phrased that way? Like, what would what do you think about like, this area focus now? Right? Because I can see that you're really good at like this stuff. But then what about this other area of focus, like, and it was never like, maybe she didn't see it? Maybe? I didn't know, we know what I mean. But it was always like a question. She would always like, put a question on there. Like, think about this, like, what could we do to make this better? Like, and all that was like, it was so good. Like, that's, that's really helpful stuff.
14:09
Like, oh, yeah, that's
Brandon 14:12
a good point. Or even if you'd like it in its house, me and my brain because like, it might be something I'd been thinking about, right. But it's just sort of like floating around in my head. You know, and then like, it would help me try to think about that process and then formalize it
14:32
into like, a something,
Brandon 14:35
you know, I mean, it's like an actual entity, and I could like write it down somewhere or put it or implement it, like, for real, you know, what I mean, instead of just like, off the cuff, it could be like, Okay, we're going to submit this as a process that we do.
Collin 14:48
Well, I think also it helps open because it opens as a question. If you had been thinking about it, and ruminating on it, and actually have some detailed thoughts. It's Once a bit easier to open up that conversation and go, You know what, actually, I haven't thinking about that. And here are the four reasons why I'm not interested in that or like,
Brandon 15:09
Yeah, or like, oh, yeah, that's a good idea you need to like, because like, you know certain things, you're like, oh, yeah, this is something that I'm doing. But like, we know before, I've talked about, like being intentional about stuff, right? And so like, okay, maybe I haven't been intentional. So I need to, like, just formalize this process or, like, better communicate my expectations to the students, you know, mean, so that they're more clear on what I'm looking for. And that will alleviate stress and frustration from me and from them, because now they just know what I mean, instead of like, trying to guess what I want? How can I more clearly communicate what I'm looking for to them so that they know what's expected? Right? Like, that makes sense to me.
15:56
So
Brandon 15:59
that kind of stuff. So that was good. I did that today. I'm avoiding. I started unboxing some of my stuff. Because like, I have all this stuff in my room, like just random stuff. And it's like, I just highlighting the big stack on the shelves. Like moving out of my room at the end of the year. You know, it's I've been going through that. I cleaned out a file cabinet drawer.
16:26
What? Yeah, sane. And I had to
Brandon 16:30
make some engineering changes to the way file cabinets function. Oh,
Collin 16:35
yeah, I don't even know what that means. So
Brandon 16:37
get ready. I went through my file cabinet. And I was like, again, this is the file cabinet I've been avoiding for a long time.
16:45
Right. Like, I've just been shoving more things in it. And this year, I was like,
Brandon 16:51
yesterday afternoon, I had a lot of time. So I was like, Okay, well. I have no more room to I have to do this. So I just ripped everything out of there. And it's from the a lot of this stuff is it's like the old the teacher that was in that room before me stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You've you've talked about kind of how you Yeah, dredge through things every now and then. Yeah. And so I had this drawer was like, okay, and it was a lot of just like, I couldn't really tell what all of it was at first. So I actually went through at this time, and I was looking at stuff and like, Okay, this is a file folder. Luckily, she was a quite organized person. So that's really handy. That's so nice. At least all the file folders are labeled. Right. So that's nice. But like the middle of file folders, you know. So I was looking through there as like this is some like reading and writing materials, like, I kept some of that stuff, because we do have a response to intervention, like extra help with reading and writing stuff time. So I was like, I don't know if this will be useful. But that particular section that we teach is so fluid and random. It could literally be anything at any moment. So I was like, I want to keep some of this, right. It was a small stack, though, like, very small. A bunch of the stuff I got, I threw away. In the very back of this file cabinet. I found these like instruction manuals, like old teaching manuals, or whatever. And one of them definitely said 1998 on it.
18:22
And I was like, I don't think I need that.
Brandon 18:28
So that would have been from a teacher like before, before before before this, the building that I'm in was built in 2000. Just so we're clear. So that was a little bit. And I told my friend that I work with my co worker. And that I found it. Because she's been in that building. She's been she's worked. She was working there then I think she's been working there for 20 something years, so right about that time. And she was just she started laughing. She's like, Oh, my Lord was amazing. But I got rid of stuff. So I have this big empty drawer. So
19:05
I discovered that
Brandon 19:08
you know, the little metal piece inside the file cabinet that you can like they like slides around? Yes. And you can like so we need to the joy is not 100% full. Your stuff. Is it like randomly laying down?
19:22
Yeah, you know. So it turns out
Brandon 19:28
that is designed because you're supposed to load the drawer from the front
19:32
to the back. Right? You want all this
Brandon 19:36
stuff at the front of the drawer in the you know, the drawers are really really long. Yeah. But you want everything at the front by the
19:42
handle? Yes. Yes. However, I don't. I want all of this
Brandon 19:49
random stuff pushed to the back so I can have this big open space in the drawer for
19:55
science instruments and stuff. So I just happen
Brandon 19:59
there. So I took out that piece, I turned it around and reinstalled it backwards in the drawer, so that all of my file folders are now smushed to the very back.
20:13
And I have more room
Brandon 20:15
to easily access like science instruments and random things that I need threads, like my have some like weather instruments, you know, and like some other things, so I'm going to put them in there.
20:27
So I can just grab them. And that's
Collin 20:29
the important distinction here that listeners might not have cut on is that you're using the file cabinet to store more than just documents, right? Yeah, it's, it's fine. Other things, which, which I think is fine. It's massive drawers, we use them for something. Yeah. But you're trying to co store to simultaneously store documents that you may or may not need access to. Yeah, you also need to store like you said, like instruments, rocks, I'm sure.
Brandon 20:56
I'm not gonna put rocks in them, because it's only a two drawer file cabinet. So if I pull it out too far, it will probably start leaning. Fair enough. You know, maybe the bottom drawer, I haven't done the bottom drawer yet. That could be a candidate for a rock drawer. Except for they have to move my file cabinet out of my room every year. And I think the custodians will be super mad at me if I feel the file cabinet rocks. So I have another cabinet in one of my things that doesn't move. spied for cleansing, there's like a couple of drawers that I haven't purged yet. So there's at least one that I know there's a bunch of stuff in there
21:32
that I can throw away. So rocks incoming for that
Brandon 21:37
one. And I just have to, I'm gonna have to go through and continue paring down the rocks, because every year, they'll find something like really cool. And like you should keep this one. I'm like, yeah, yeah. Put this rock. Yeah, no. Having to do
Collin 22:05
oh, you should, you know, the, just like the Missouri State Fair is on right now. So you can have like a rock grading contest of like, the best tracks of these 10?
Brandon 22:15
Why do you have some that I like set out? Right? There's a couple of like gems that are they just have a perma position on the desk, right? So like, because we found some, like, really cool fossils and stuff. So I just leave those out, you know? And then, cuz at the beginning of the year, they'll look at him like, oh, that's kind of cool, blah, blah. And, and so they've seen them around, and then later, they find out what they actually are gonna like. Because like, I don't tell them like what they are. They're just like, oh, yeah, you'll later Don't worry. Because always tease me my favorite words later, right? Because I'm like, oh, man,
Collin 22:48
do later.
Brandon 22:49
Don't worry. It's coming. So then, once they we get to that section, and we actually know what we're looking at, then it's like, oh, that we can look at them again. Right. So that's handy. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's nice and fun. So that was kind of doing some of that make him a binder. Doing. The High School has ruined my life. Right? Because we are in very small school, we are in K 12. In one building. Right? There are several wings to the building, but it's a building. The High School has decided this year, in their wisdom that they shall add a an eighth hour into the schedule, right? So it's not actually an hour long. It's like 25 minutes or something. And it's gonna be a rotating flex class where kids can go to different rooms at different times, they get different help on homework, enrichment, all that stuff, right? extra attention, whatever. They were saying that up today. But what that means is all the other hours in their day they have shortened. Oh, right. You have to shorten every other class period by X number of minutes in order to have this 25 minute block at the end of the day. Wow. So what that means is their their hours are shorter, which means my special class time. Second hour is now shorter than it was before. And that special class was. That's the class that's the rotating class where kids in sixth grade like one day, they'll go to counseling one day, they'll go to library one day, they'll go to a band, right? Okay. Yeah, but because we share the band teacher. Our special time, it's the only teacher we share. Right? So our especial type has to be the same length as theirs. Right? Because they're ours. So that means that now my I clot, we had to completely re subdivide our class times into new blocks, because the sixth grade is the only grade in the elementary that this affects the only one. Right? So like, we have, we're stuck because like first hour, well like, Okay, if school starts and then between that start time and the second hour start time that you I can't change that, right? Second hour special class time, I can't change that, then this weird amount of time between the the beginning of third hour and then whenever lunch starts later, I have to now read divide that so it's even more even. Because if we didn't read divide it and we just went by the high school bell schedule, we looked at it and like, third hour would be like 40 something minutes. And then third hour would be like 27 Oh, my God, or fifth. And that that can't work because I teach three sections of science in a row. So I can't have one science class be 40 minutes, and the other one beats 3030. Right? Oh, it doesn't work. So we had to re subdivide all of them, and they're not quite right. And there's nothing we can do about it. You. So that was awful today trying to figure out how to re subdivide that we subdivide our schedule into because they make our master schedule, but like they don't look at it for this experience, right. So it doesn't really you don't really notice, until you start reading the math that like these hours, these blocks of time are not equivalent. And again, in the elementary school, none of that matters, right? Because they do like a reading and writing combined. So their reading writing time was like super big. And then they have like, a small time for like science or like, and then a different time for math. So there's are not like their subject time in the elementary school are not like equally segmented. Right, they spend more time on some subjects than others. Okay, which is weird, but that's what they do. We don't do that. And so they're always talking about it. And we're always sitting in the back raising your hand be like, we can't, we can't do that. Like words outside of music practice. They'll just be like, movie, just they'll talk to elementary, and they'll be like, yeah, elementary, we're just gonna move our reading and writing time to the afternoon. And I'm like, the six year olds are going, Ah, no, that's not a lot of things that we do. We can't do that like. And of course, when they make the master schedule, they don't take into consideration that in the elementary school, the sixth grade is the only grade that has to account for passing time.
28:15
Right? Because
Brandon 28:20
going moving, they move classrooms. They move. So in in fourth grade, right? When you're gonna switch from writing to
28:29
math, you're in the same room. Right? So it doesn't matter. You just switch? Yeah,
Brandon 28:38
you just like go the bathroom. Or you could like just like put your binder up and get a different binder. And you start again,
28:43
yeah, that's, you know,
Brandon 28:46
in in sixth grade, you have to traverse to a completely different location, block after block. So we also have to subdivide in a passing time of the week, just sort of mirror the high schools, whatever, like the four minute, you know, the classic, four minute passing time period of like, so we have to engineer that into our own schedule as well. So we chunks of our time get eaten up that administration never remembers exist, right? Because
Collin 29:20
why would
Brandon 29:22
we lose many minutes per day,
29:24
right? I mean, we're talking like 30 plus minutes a day traveling. You know what
Brandon 29:31
I mean? Like, because their schedule thinks that you're in here and like math, and then you're magically in lunch like you just know. You think we get we have to get there while we do it. So like, that was their headache for today. saying like, No,
29:49
I ah yeah. So that's fun. Making your own
Brandon 30:00
schedule, because everyone forgets about you. And I have a read
Collin 30:04
that on top of that class that's already shorter trying to account time for the passing time. Right. The Yeah, I mean, so like, I have these classes where like,
30:15
one will be like, you know, at all
Brandon 30:19
plus our Monday skit, we have that little shortened day Monday. So then it's like, everything's like Mega short, it's awful.
30:27
You know what I mean? So that's not fun. But
Brandon 30:34
then I'll have like one class that's like,
30:39
like, 50 minutes, right? One class,
Brandon 30:42
it's 52 minutes. And one class that's like, something very, like, it's so hard to keep everybody on the same page. When every single class time is a different length
31:02
of time. Right?
Collin 31:04
How are you planning on? Like, like, realistically? Normally,
31:14
I just have to kind of like I think, in some
Brandon 31:22
instances, the first class I have, I just have to say, like, Alright, I'm gonna pace everything on this class, because I think it works out that maybe I have to double check. My first class of the day is the shortest one. Anyway. Oh, so I have to pay everything by them. So sometimes, the classes that will come later, we'll have like, five minutes of just like
31:47
nothing, right? We have to fill out we have to do something. Right. But like, they have dead time in their classes,
Brandon 31:54
that we have to fill this stuff, because I am like, not gonna go past where I stopped in the first class, right? Because then we're all kind of all crazy. We're all out of whack. That's no good.
32:07
But there's a real big pain, right? And so like, it's difficult with,
Brandon 32:13
and my classes now that are going to be a different length than last year. So I'm wondering how that will affect some of my multi day assignments.
32:22
Right? Like projects and stuff? Like,
Brandon 32:25
how many days do you get? Will it be good enough? Do we just go yeah, we're just gonna keep it to. We have to do something because it's shorter. Like, I don't really know how that's gonna work. Sure.
Collin 32:40
Well, yeah. And make sure that you are being so mad, fair and consistent with everything. Yeah. And yeah, cuz gosh, if you're like, well, these people have this group is technically had more time to work on this or get these concepts, how do I you know,
Brandon 33:00
react. Because if you, if you figure in multi day assignments, you could end up in a situation where this class has had 15 more minutes to work on this assignment than this other
Collin 33:08
class. Yeah. And while that might sound like a lot, I can get a lot done in the context of a class like, oh, a lot of time, that's a lot of time.
33:23
And so that's, uh, I may just make a slight little
Brandon 33:28
sheet that has these times and be like, Hey, do you realize principle that I'm losing X minutes of instructional time per week, compared to last year based on this new schedule? Yeah, just wanted you to know that. Like,
33:43
I may read the numbers
Brandon 33:43
next week, and just see what it's going to add up to.
33:47
But I was like, Oh, my God.
Collin 33:51
Yeah, cuz you also don't want to unfairly give the classes that have more time, like, push them more and further and disadvantage. The ones that don't get that time? Yeah.
Brandon 34:03
But then on the other hand, like if you have five minutes to do like a review game, you know, the other classes would be like, we're going to put a game like, Yeah, we didn't get through. I'm sorry. Yeah, right. So it's very
Collin 34:21
just like getting towards the end of being like, stretch it any more stress.
34:26
Yeah. Some
Brandon 34:30
days, it's not a problem, right. Some days it is a big problem is it depends on the classes too. So
34:35
that's another thing that's gonna be weird. So because every class has its own pace,
Brandon 34:42
it moves out anyway, because some classes like want to ask like 12 billion questions and other classes are like,
34:47
Yep, okay. Uh huh.
Collin 34:50
I have work to do. You're like, wait no.
Brandon 34:54
More when you want more time. I wonder like
35:03
That's
Brandon 35:04
also exciting. So let's
Collin 35:05
hope that the classes that are going to naturally have more questions have a longer time. And
35:10
see, I don't know. Yeah, that's
Brandon 35:15
hard to judge because I have literally no idea who these kids are. So like, I don't know what to,
35:20
like. Have their reading level range, which again,
Brandon 35:26
not super helpful, currently, so like,
35:31
Ah, interesting. So
Collin 35:33
you can take this or not, what kind of information do you get about each kid? And I'm sure there's some other stuff in there. But we're like, generally, like, what do you like to look for? It gives you an idea of, and I'm also going to preface this and that getting information about a person is different than actually meeting them and working with them. So yeah, it's like, how do you try not to, you know, get ahead of yourself when talking about kids. And even though you have this information that's quote unquote, tells you about them.
36:05
So like, I actually don't get very much like, academic information about them. Right? I have a class list that has they,
Brandon 36:21
the way that we do our reading levels, they're like, if you're in like, x range, you're assigned like this color, you know. And so I have a list in a spreadsheet that has names grouped by colors. Which, again, as a science teacher, only moderately relevant to my life, right? Like, I can see like, Okay, this kid is going to need
36:45
maybe a partner, when we do readings of, like, do that with everybody anyway. So
Brandon 36:55
because everybody? Well, science vocabulary is
Collin 36:59
difficult.
37:00
Well, yeah. So like,
Brandon 37:03
so I don't, I don't, that tells me some, you know, this tells me like, Oh, these are some lower kids, I should just keep an eye out, see if they need extra help on this, or this or that or whatever. Later on, whenever they show up, I may get to see the MAP scores from last year.
37:25
Right? They're big testing scores,
Brandon 37:28
I guess, fifth grade tests for science, you know, so I get to see those. But I usually don't even bother looking at them. Because in our school, we keep changing the reading and writing curriculum so much that like, science curriculum instruction is kind of not a thing, you know, and in elementary school anyway, not in sixth grade boy data. So in fifth grade, is kind of the first year they have any science, and then they have to take a science and math test on it. So that that score is basically useless to me. Right? Like, I don't care what that says, that doesn't mean anything, like, get out of here.
38:16
You know, you could tell
Brandon 38:18
he was good at taking a test, I guess. But Tada. That's it. So that I get to see that, but it doesn't help me in this particular situation. So yeah, I get to hear about because I am next door to the fifth grade,
38:33
we'll talk about like, you know, behavioral stuff,
Brandon 38:39
sometimes.
38:42
As a general rule of thumb,
Brandon 38:45
I try to, like I take it in, and I keep it into consideration. But I don't do anything with that information for a
38:50
while. Right? Because I want to see what happens. Right? I kind of don't want to judge
Brandon 39:00
too fast, right? Because that's dangerous with behavior stuff. So like, because in fifth grade, they're, you know, they, they will take that in consideration. And so, in sixth grade, a couple of things happen, right? Number one, you're maybe not at the very beginning of the year, right. But later on in the year, you're a more mature individual than you are in fifth grade. Right? Yeah. It's always very shocking to me. Beginning of sixth grade, after in my head, having just done the end of sixth grade last year, right? That is a at a gap. Like if you have in your mind what an end of sixth grade student is like, and you're hit with the beginnings of crazy old G's the ways you can readjust my expectations here for a minute I got to nevermind, we got to build back up. We got to build back up to that. That's what we got to do. Okay, leaps. Yeah. So like, how do you start maturing a little bit More, you're in a different group of people. Right? Because they mixed the group's up and do stuff like that they kind of like read, if there's a particular, two students that like just fight all the time and never get along, they split them
40:13
up. And they're not in the same class group. Oh, scheduling
Brandon 40:18
level and the scheduling. Yeah. So like you're in because the fifth grader teachers help decide the groups that the kids are going to be in for sixth grade? At the end of the year before, right? Yeah, they put their input into the principal, right. In our school anyway, that's what happened. And so they can be in a different mix of kids. You know, it could just be a different environment. Because I had one time this kid, he moved, he moved our school, right. And they told me, right principal told me, like, Yo,
40:54
this kid,
Brandon 40:56
you know, his old principal called me to warn me about him, you know, and they showed me his discipline file, not like in detail, but they showed me the size of his discipline file. You could
Collin 41:08
enormous table right. Yeah, right.
Brandon 41:11
That's exactly what you're thinking of like a magazine or like the detective movies where they dropped a huge file and it was like that,
41:17
right?
Brandon 41:18
So they were they were hyping this kid up.
41:20
It's the worst kid you've ever seen. He's so bad. I've never had one problem at all. When he was in my classroom, see row? No office referrals. No negative
Brandon 41:38
behavior reports.
41:40
Nothing. So how
Brandon 41:45
do you know like, you literally have no idea what right like, cuz sometimes you'll be like, oh, people be like, Oh, this kid's gray. They're just so lovely. Blah, horde. Right. Like just a mess. Raisa? Like
42:00
you never know, man like that
Brandon 42:06
Beckett is telling you about last year, he would come to see me every day. And I had him like two years ago. He was still like, come by, hey, it was fun. Casper saw me. Just like, as I did, right? It's like, this kid. This is supposed to be the worst kid in the world. Right here. Yeah, I mean, like, he's, he's both on paper. You don't want to be anywhere near this kid. Right? He's terrible. Like my experience with he's a nicest dude I've ever met. He's a great, like, we talked about like, I like this guy. Like, so. It's gotta be really open minded, you know what I mean? And just like, go with it. He's gotta be willing to go with it, give it a shot. And you know what, that's why. The other thing I found, this is my personal sort of philosophy. You have to have a bit of amnesia,
42:57
right? about these things. Because like, if a kid has a bad day, one day, and you come in
Brandon 43:07
the next day, and are still treating them, like they're having a bad day from the day before.
43:13
They're going to respond appropriately. Right. But if you come in, and you're like, new day, man was up. It can help some kids, right?
Brandon 43:25
That having a real short memory about that stuff. Like
43:30
is, I think it's important. You know what I mean?
Collin 43:34
I mean, they didn't want to
43:38
start out, they were,
Collin 43:40
like you said they were having a bad day, they weren't intending to have those. And that's the time of a lot of emotions, and a lot of growth and a lot of things. And so
Brandon 43:49
they don't want to start a new day thinking about yesterday. Right? We want to think of we want to start a new day thinking about today, right? Better.
Collin 43:57
That's an important if you didn't it important for a lot of adults just to give to themselves do and if you don't have like, a lot of people, but they they hold on to what they did yesterday, going into the new day like that just internally as an example. And that weighs on you right? You have no chance for growth or for new things in your life. And so to have somebody externally imagine being
44:25
12 or that right, well, no.
Collin 44:29
But to have somebody externally who saw you the way you were yesterday and like knew you and maybe even talk to you about it, brand new day like new thing like that were freeing thing because what that gives them space to do better and I obviously I know that some kids take advantage of that. Oh, yeah,
Brandon 44:50
you know,
Collin 44:52
but, but you know, at the end of it to go like yeah, like this is new opportunities like new You have space for everybody every day and to give that grace to others, and hopefully, that teaches them to give that to themselves. Like, the more they experience them.
Brandon 45:12
Yeah. And it's, it's kind of a, it's a little bit culture shock. He almost like coming from a from fifth grade to sixth grade in that regard. Because in fifth grade your, your with the same teacher all day still. Yeah. Right. And so it becomes, it's more difficult in that situation, you know, because you spend all day every day with the same people. Right? And so it can be more difficult to keep that attitude. Right. Oh, yeah. But in sixth grade,
45:44
you know, it's easier for me, because they come in my room, you know, for,
Brandon 45:53
you know, whatever amount of time I set my schedule up to today, I only remember, and then to be determined,
45:59
then they leave, you know, and then I see them in lunch. And then the afternoon, they come back for another class, you know, and so, by splitting it up, you know, and like, if you had a bad day in like, three English class, if you were not, you maybe didn't have a good hour. But then you come into my class, you're starting over again, right?
Brandon 46:22
Because this, you have an opportunity now to make this hour better than last hour. You know, what I mean? And sometimes we text each other and warn each other, like, Yo, keep an eye on so and so because they were having a rough time, you know, like, but then you can just
46:36
be like, Hey, man, what's up? How's it going? And then, you know, try to ease it out and kind of smooth it down. Because, like, it's
Brandon 46:44
fine, right? Okay. It's fine. It's nobody doing you had maybe you were struggling with whatever you were doing in English, or math or science or whatever. And now you're gonna go to a different class, and you have a new new learning opportunity in there. You're doing different stuff, you know, maybe you do better there. Right? That's all fine. It's good. It's okay, man.
Collin 47:06
Calm down. Okay. Yeah. Well, you know, in the end, like, also, you don't know what they're coming from, it could be school related. It could be home life related. It could all that kind of stuff. So I definitely think it allows, again, just that, that grace, that humanity that you can bring to the situation with somebody who's so young, who's so lost in a lot of ways of like, like, and I think that's, that's a lot of, there's a big chance for growth for them. And I,
47:42
when working with a kid, like, Mike, it is very hard to do that. Because it's like, it's like, I know what you're
Brandon 47:51
capable of. I know, you have that in my office too. Because like some days kid comes in, you're like, you're better. You can do better than that. What can you do with me? Come on, but like, you know, you gotta judge about how much of that you tell them. Right? Like how far you push them that day, maybe the next day, but like, Yo, you know, I knows we struggled yesterday, we could we, you know, think we can do better today, you know what I mean? As you know, it's tricky. It's hard. It's different for it's difficult for them to come in and do that and
48:21
make that shift. I had another thought, oh,
Brandon 48:24
I, like you were saying about that I had I've been like, it's, it's weird, right? Like, all these things sound good on paper, you know, and I have been in a room before with other teachers. And they wrote things, they it was like a exercise, it was dumb exercise, we got to write stuff on a piece of like, paper on the wall or whatever, you know.
48:48
Like team building community,
Brandon 48:50
nonprofit, and they were talking about, like motor educational motivations and stuff like that. Right. And a lot of people focus on the on that, like, Oh, I just want to love them. Especially when you talk to like, second grade teachers. No offense, great teachers, but it's crazy down there. And I have said in these places, any spaces, like some of my goals, and the things that drive me to be educated because I want kids to want to be at school. Right? I want this to be an environment they want to be in and I want them to be excited and interested in learning. Right? And I have had people tell me that
Collin 49:34
Oh, no. Like, I
Brandon 49:35
wanted to be excited about science or like,
49:38
No, you shouldn't do that. Like, excuse you get out and
Brandon 49:46
I was like, I want them to be I want school to be a place like, you know, even if you're like, you can especially if you're you know you're struggling at home, you're having a hard time at home like if you're at school, and I you know I understand that it's hard, but school can be your escape. Right. And if we're focused on science, and we're like super into science, you're thinking about science. Everyone in the class thinking about science, you're not thinking about what happened last night, your house. Your friends aren't thinking about what you told them happened last night, your house. We're focused on other things, we're moving our focus away. Right? And if that can help distract you even for like a little bit
50:21
when, right? I mean, like, think these things are important, right,
Brandon 50:26
like, be excited about learning new things. I told somebody one time that I wanted kids to be excited about learning new things, and they were like,
50:33
That's dumb. I was like, what? But what now? Why were you so grumpy?
Brandon 50:47
But it okay, because I still want that. So.
50:55
Yeah, yeah. So well, you've got a lot.
Brandon 51:01
Yeah. Yeah. So next week, it's not this week is nice, because it sort of eased into it. Right, because we had to work. What's today Thursday, or? We set to work this week. Right? We just worked
51:17
yesterday, right? Yeah. Yesterday, today. And then next week, we'll work Monday through Thursday. And the school starts the week after that. So
Brandon 51:30
ease it in with two days this week. Get it in there nice
51:35
and gentle.
51:39
Dive overexertion after two days only
Collin 51:45
two days Oh no.
51:47
Yeah, that was going to do that. That's basically what I'm doing.
Brandon 51:51
Sorry monopolize the whole conversation yet again. This has been educational philosophy
Collin 52:10
I did want to see her you touched on something about being intentional and formalizing about formalizing goals and like trying to put things down into like, basically, you're thinking about thinking and how you work and operate? And yes, it's something that I've been, I've been, I believe the teacher word is metacognition no bland. Thinking about things.
Brandon 52:36
That's literally the definition.
Collin 52:39
No, I don't believe that. Oh. But I don't think, in your opinion, do you? What do you do you feel like that that's something a lot of people do. Um, maybe just, you don't have to say like, in teaching you specifically, but but just like, in general, like, people sitting and thinking about how they think, how they work, how they move through life, and are actually intentional in that way.
Brandon 53:11
I'm not real sure. Because the majority of my friends are teachers. So like,
Collin 53:16
so like, sampling?
Brandon 53:17
I don't know. Yeah, sample bias, right? I don't know. Because I think a lot of times, it is something that you do sort of like
53:29
for lack of a better term
Brandon 53:29
without actually thinking about it. Right? Sometimes these are things that you're doing,
53:34
but you don't really think about it in the context of doing it. I think it might be a better way to say that.
Brandon 53:45
So I don't really know. The to what extent other people do this, right. Yeah, like normies you know what I mean? Like, I don't know, they're out there V and like, Yo, I know
53:58
that my Okay, so
Brandon 54:02
example in my personal life, from like, for a couple episodes ago, we're talking about reading books, right? I was like, I feel so like, tense and like scatterbrained that I can't focus on anything, right? Like my, my ADHD tendencies, or my ATD tendencies were like wrapped up with all this like, get rid of them at school not so. So like, I need something to focus on. So I consciously thought through like, what can I do to help me and I thought about reading other mysteries. I know that the gauging their store chatters. They story moves really briskly. You have to think about puzzle solving the whole way through. So like I knew
54:39
that that would help me. Right.
Brandon 54:44
But I don't know if other people do that. It's difficult to do. It's a difficult thing to begin to do because you step one is kind of like you have to I have a lot of like self knowledge.
55:03
Right? And that's a scary thing to have. You I mean, you have to understand you are
Brandon 55:12
thinking process. Right? And I mean, you had to have some knowledge of thinking processes in general, ketamine. So like, when we talk about this in school and connection to like reading, right? You want to be It's in that context is metacognition thought is, I believe I haven't taught reading in many years. So give me a break here. Other reading teachers, sorry. But like,
Collin 55:35
then your letters to
Brandon 55:37
Yeah. Tweet us your response at
55:44
we can, like you are
Brandon 55:50
trying to understand how your brain is processing the information that you're reading. Right, and like nonfiction stuff. So it's difficult because you first have to kind of start at the ground level of
56:09
like, basic like thought, work, right? So it's a lot of reflecting. Right, so
Brandon 56:20
you kind of to reflect on not just your actions, but like, the thoughts you have while doing them. Because it is a lot of it's, in order to kind of practice that reflection is a big important thing, right? Like, what, like, so in school, if you're like, Oh, here's the answer, right? Then being able to think like, Why did I know that was the
56:44
answer? Right?
Brandon 56:47
How did I arrive at this answer? How was I able to do this in a certain way? And it it shows itself up I think the most in real life and like problem solving
56:59
strategies. Yeah. Right. Like, I this is broken, or this is gone wrong. What do I do to fix it? You know, what I mean? Like,
Brandon 57:14
what is the best course of action to solve this problem? Whatever problem you have, it can be a major problem. It could be a minor problem, right? And I think starting with the minor problems, any examination process simpler because there's less steps?
57:32
Right? I mean, like, problem, okay. real world context problem.
Brandon 57:40
The reservoir, or automatic drip coffee pot is dirty.
57:48
What do you do? Right, like, so you could go, okay. I,
Brandon 57:57
this place that holds the water is filthy in there. Even after I ran so I do step one clean coffeepot run vinegar through it, right. That's step one. People know about that. To try that. Okay, that's the got the basket in the pot cleaner, but the reservoir still gross. Okay, so then you're gonna think about how do I clean things? Okay, and you're gonna go, huh? Normally, when I have to clean things, I scrub them with a towel in the kitchen, right? Like I get a rag and wipe it.
58:28
I can't get a rag in this tiny space because my hand is too big. Yeah. Right? And then you might go, what if
58:38
I tied the rag to a spoon. And I stuck it in there and tried to wipe it.
Brandon 58:46
And you might even try this or you might go that is horribly inefficient. And it's never gonna work.
Collin 58:53
Right? It's not repeatable.
Brandon 58:54
It's not repeatable. I can get the flat part. But the little weird cribs at the bottom, there's no
58:59
way it's getting out of there.
Brandon 59:02
So then you start coming up with other options. And you might think to yourself,
59:05
Oh, my sink. has one of those spray nozzle thingies. Right?
Brandon 59:13
I don't ever use that for anything. I wonder if I just spray higher pressure hot water in my coffee pot. If it will help clean it. You might try that you might get some water on yourself. But you might find Oh, it did work. It's way cleaner now.
59:28
Right? That's the
Brandon 59:33
problem solving steps. You have just done some metacognition about problem solving right through there. Until you I don't know to what extent people know that that's what they're doing. Because they might not know these vocabulary words or they might not understand the process fully. That's what you're doing. So next time, your coffee pot is dirty. You go straight to the end one. Yeah, right. You don't go through all the steps again. You go straight to the thing that It was successful.
1:00:02
Right? Same thing like in school.
Brandon 1:00:04
If you go through this process, right, you the next time you do these things like when you're reading or whatever, are you doing a science experiment? Because this is like the same thing as the scientific method, basically.
1:00:16
Just less formalized, right? You go to the thing that worked last time. You know,
Brandon 1:00:24
the frustrating part in education is, as you progress in education, you do the thing that worked last time, and then all of a sudden, sometimes it doesn't work.
1:00:32
And then you go, crud, okay?
Brandon 1:00:38
What new strategies have I learned
1:00:41
about to throw at this problem to see if it can fix it?
Collin 1:00:46
Or maybe it's something that this is an interesting scenario, because something that I actually encounter a lot with pet care that you don't a lot of people think of, is I use a lot of vacuum cleaners. Because we vacuum at the end of each, at the end of the day, so the owner comes home to a clean home. And the number of vacuums models out there are varied. And there's a lot of different options. The number of
Brandon 1:01:15
vacuums that we had as children was varied and crazy, right. Like, what was that white thing? What was that? Why? For one? Yeah, don't even make those anymore. It was crazy.
Collin 1:01:27
Canister Vacuum is a is technically a canister vacuum, because the vacuum was separate from the backyard.
Brandon 1:01:33
dragging along it was a weird foot trying to start it right as a whole thing. Like, yeah, no, I understand what you mean. Yeah, how? Yeah, that's a good point. That's another good
Collin 1:01:41
one. I have similar problems with things like, oh, it's the suction is bad, or it doesn't seem to be picking up this thing on the floor. Ha, why? Right, like, and then you start going, okay, like is the canister full? Is the filter okay is the other filter in the modern ones, it's like is the other other other filter? Yeah.
Brandon 1:02:06
It was an embarrassingly large number of years before I realized that, where the filter wasn't our vacuum cleaner.
Collin 1:02:15
I screw up, I scrub so many air filters.
Brandon 1:02:19
Because nobody knows that they're there. And this, when I discovered it, I was like,
1:02:24
I'm throwing this out.
Collin 1:02:26
Because this is horrible. As long as it's foam, you can usually wash it. But that process of it's not just building those connections in that that pathway of thinking it's also being able to back up in that in that stack and go, where did it fail this time? Like with your example? Yeah, cleaning the pot. It's like, Oh, I did the exact same method and it didn't work right now. It's like, oh, well, maybe it's the being able to step back and go, Oh, well, the craft is different, or the reservoir is different, or this is a new model or whatever and go how far up the chain, do I have to go to see where it broke, and then rework it from there. And that takes a huge amount of not just self knowledge, but self awareness of your surroundings, and the world. And I see that more and more when I talk to people have these conversations with them about about problem solving? And it seems, and I know, that's a big thing, like in education of like, how do I teach problem solving? And like, well, we need to do teach more problem solving. And it's like, that is an immense, and it's challenge.
Brandon 1:03:39
Basically, you just couldn't have to like, throw problems at them, and watch them solve it right? And then just be like a coach
1:03:46
be like, have you tried thinking about this? Yeah, exactly.
Collin 1:03:52
And like, and then and then, but the other other aspect of that is being able to go, and I forget, there's a word for this, and it's gonna, it's gonna bug me, but like, okay, so you solved it in this context, being able to see how that applies to other contexts in other scenarios, is, I think, another step of going, Wow, I did this process, or I understand this. It's like, so for me, it's like, okay, I understand this concept in biology and biological modeling, and how population dynamics work. And then going, Wow, all of these same principles, apply over here in economics, and in investing in how people handle money and stuff. And then I think, once you start getting into the problem solving, and again, that makes it sound like it's this big, grand thing, but it's actually just like, working in living and daily life and being aware of it basically, basically, like going well, in this context. When I'm at work, I do these things. When I'm at home, I do these things. When I'm with my family, I do these things. When I'm recreating I do these things. And there's there's similarities between All of them, and they're not just these individual distinct chapters or blocks in my life. And, and that's where I think there's another breakdown of, of cell of awareness in people's life and going out. Because I would be, it's kind of interesting to think. And I wonder how often this happens where people solve problems at work. But when they get home, it's a struggle, or maybe they're really good at solving problems in their home, but when they're at work, they have issues there. And that could be their support systems, or the type of problems or whatever, but like, I knowing, okay, like, I can approach these problems in a different way. And I think it just leads to a lot of, it's just, it's something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, especially as we've been hiring people and trying to help get them set. And like, under trying to help them understand how they work, and they function. And because I see the same trope over and over again, by other people and businesses who are hiring, who they complain about how they're hiring, or the complaint about the quality of people that they're getting, and they're so frustrated, and they don't know how to, you know, work these days, or they're all ridiculous, and they don't know a thing. And it's like, Well, okay, but like, what's your role in this? And how can we help them? And really putting that educator hat on and going, okay, maybe you've never thought about thinking and maybe you've never thought about this in your own life? Um,
Brandon 1:06:31
that's you too. And it goes back to expectations as well, right? Like, in that instance, like, have you clearly can't like you cannot just what I mean, like if you walk into a sixth grade classroom, and just like, assume everybody knows what
1:06:44
to do. Yeah, you will die.
Brandon 1:06:48
Right. That's what like you will not survive. Because that's the most idiotic thought anyone's ever had. Right? It was security just know what to do automatically on the first day of school,
Collin 1:07:01
because graders, they don't see it on this piece of paper. It says they're in sixth grade.
Brandon 1:07:05
Yeah, right. That means they should know how every expectation I have that they represent they've never seen before. That's what they know.
Collin 1:07:14
And I just see people get so frustrated where they go, Well, they should know. Right? I said, clean like, like a phrase like, okay, let's just think back to the vacuum cleaner. Like, clean? at the, at the second to last? Well here, I'll just say is before the client
1:07:30
home gets home, clean. What like, that's very vague.
Collin 1:07:36
What is that? What what does that mean? Right?
Brandon 1:07:39
So like, yeah, like, see, that's problematic, because that could be interpreted as, okay, this claim is gonna be gone for four days. I just have to clean sometime in the next four days. Exactly. Yeah. Clean on day two. Gonna be there. I did boss, a clean band we talked about,
Collin 1:07:57
or, or? Well, I think clean. I wiped out counters. And
1:08:03
there you go. Yeah,
Brandon 1:08:05
I think about this, when you think about my, when I worked at Pizza Place in high school, right? When I did my training, right? It was a very specific, like, the boss, dude, the manager would just like walk around and be like, he's like, this is what I like, this is how we clean tables. Yeah, and he like showed me exactly
1:08:29
how to do it. Right. Like,
Brandon 1:08:34
and then, you know, later on, like, when we're cleaning the floor at the end of the night. These are the things that you need to do. And they're not the floor is not clean until this is done. Right. He was extraordinarily specific about everything that he wanted done. Right. And that made it easy for me. Okay, that makes sense. I understand that. Boom. Right.
1:09:01
You know, so it was like, Yeah, that's a good, that's a good lesson. And just like, you need to sometimes you have to show
Brandon 1:09:08
people to right, like, because you can't just be like yo clean, right? Like Well, well, cleaning, cleaning at your house and cleaning it a restaurant setting are not the same. So when we need to talk about what that means.
Collin 1:09:20
Well, and with that, like, okay, cleaning your home versus cleaning a client's home when you're actually technically being paid to care for the pet is also different. I talk to a lot of our staff but like look, I am I am probably one of the most OCD people you will know about cleaning and like we got to just stop at some point because we have a lot of other things do where we can't be spending all of our time just cleaning because we could like cleaning this house and I will but but that's but you're going to leave and then I'm going to go crazy
1:09:58
but trying to help it people and I think, again, tying it back to
Collin 1:10:05
thinking about thinking and how we process and knowing that how I process is different, how you process different how everybody else, processes. And I think it's kind of on. It's both at the individual level, right? There's some responsibility there. But having good people around you that can help you, in that process, discover how you process and think, and how you can be productive in a good way. Is, is very.
1:10:36
Oh, man, I think
Collin 1:10:37
that that that's kind of part of just being a decent person.
Brandon 1:10:40
Yeah. And I think I think one really important step that you can take to help do this. If this is something that you're interested in listeners, is that, like, I, this is a thing that I do with my kids, right? Today. When they're working on something, or they're doing something, or whatever it is, we could be doing a project could be a sheet, it could be the reading passage, whatever, I don't know, like, they will call to you, because they're still in this process, right, of understanding this. And they'll say, they will just tell you, I don't get it. Yeah, and I say, Can't help you. Right, go do what you know. And the first few times they do that they look at me, like I'm an idiot. And I'm like, if you I was like, I don't know what it is. Right. So I will ask them, like, questions, right? About, like, try to figure out what it is? Like, what is the like, let's back up. Where did you start having trouble understanding? Right? What is confusing you? What specific part? Do you not understand? What Rite Aid me guide? The first times we do this, they hate it.
Collin 1:12:03
But it's doing what I said earlier about the coffee pot, it's backing him up the stack because they've never encountered this problem before. And they thought their way of problem solving and thinking was sufficient to tackle this issue. And then we're teaching them that process of you're pushing the boulder back up the hill, and going nope, nope, nope, because that's actually the hard work like like that, that is insanely hard to back up the momentum and inertia. And I know for like solving complex mathematical equations, or in physics, like you get on a train where you're like, oh, great, I can go chunk a chunk a chunk, can I just go all the way through and get the answer, and then you get one with throws you a curveball, and all of a sudden, you're
Brandon 1:12:41
like, you hit the wall real hard.
Collin 1:12:44
I did everything. What do you mean, and you have to erase all that work. And you have to go back line by line by line, until you can see oh, yeah, that's where that was. And it's even harder for work. It's even harder for work that the more creative or out of the box thinking, like problem solving, or like design, or like art, or writing or things like that, or science where you're like, I am doing something completely new here where nobody's ever done this before. I am now kind of guiding this myself. How do I do that? How do I think through this in a new way? Because then you're having to break your break. You really are breaking your brain? Like I have to think a new way. What do you even mean? Like? Yes, how I think?
1:13:33
Yeah, so sometimes, you're getting backed up enough where they'll just be like, Okay, I don't know this word that I
Brandon 1:13:42
can help you with. Okay, like,
Collin 1:13:45
the specificity of there. You have to tell me like, in and what's good about that, is it? And I think it's a good practice. For everybody. Have, I need to be able to verbalize or write out what the problem is, in my own words, in my own way, but until I can get it down and out. I'm just nebulously moving around. And that's as soon as you get that question where you can lock into something, that's where you can actually start getting traction, on, on, on moving forward, and getting help and getting connected to other resources. I mean, there are times where it's like, I know there's a technical word for this one thing I have no idea what it is. I'm just gonna go to Google and Google this phrase that I think describes. It's like a cut off like I have. I have words that describe what I need help with. Like you said, don't just say help. Don't just say I don't like this. Don't just say it doesn't make sense. I'm like focusing on the hit. What what is it? What is the struggle like? Really focusing? Forcing them to some extent, to get that out is where those skills come in down the line of like, nope, specificity in asking for help is where we can start actually getting back to the list.
1:15:05
Yeah, definitely. Right. Figuring out just where you're stuck, right? I mean, it's important. Like I said, they really hate it. The first few times we talked about this.
Brandon 1:15:16
The first time they come up to me and they go, I don't get it. And I was I get what
1:15:21
they're like, I don't get it. Like,
Brandon 1:15:24
doesn't help me, man, when he's,
Collin 1:15:26
ooh, you said it more forcefully. We do this with, with the kids to where, you know, they'll be doing the schoolwork we're getting we don't we don't have school for another Bobigny after Labor Day, good grief. I know it's lunchtime. And yeah, you try to do homework, and they'll get frustrated. And she'll be like, you know, I don't like it. Don't like it, I don't get it. And I know some time. For me, sometimes I'll say that, when I'm kind of just, like, done working on it. And what I actually want to say is, I need some space, and I want to work on this later. But I don't want to say that I'll just say don't get it so that I can just keep moving forward, and I'll get the help that I need. Yeah, and again, getting that like, okay, it's okay to say, I want to work on this later or okay. Like if you can, like obviously, sometimes you have in life, sometimes you have to do hard things that does include pushing through to get things done and deadlines, blah, blah, whatever. But like, now I do it later. Editing that part out. But like, like, really like, now you're opening up to other forms, and you're actually having a conversation about it to have like, okay, like, at that point where you can say, it's not just like, Okay, I said this phrase, but it's like, I'm actually what I'm actually asking. Like, that's another thing too, like, once you Yeah, more self aware about this, too. It's like, oh, what I'm actually trying
1:16:55
to say is
Collin 1:16:56
I want to go outside for a walk. Because I'm tired of doing my audition table. Yeah. Okay, we can let's handle that. Like, that's good. That's helpful. That's more healthy than just sitting here and you saying, you don't like it? Or you don't understand? Because, you know, I'll help you versus you just want to go take a break. Okay. Like we can work that.
1:17:16
Yeah, definitely. So that's, uh,
Brandon 1:17:19
yeah, it's important just to identify the problem, right, step one.
Collin 1:17:25
That is, anyway, okay, cool. That's it. Yeah, I was. I was curious about that.
1:17:32
So we've been, that's it. That's an ongoing issue.
Collin 1:17:35
Issue, ongoing topic that I spent a lot of time thinking about.
Brandon 1:17:42
or problem solving, thinking. So yeah, it's hard. Because that's like, a big thing. And it is difficult, right? And you just have to kind of challenge people sometimes, though, rather than them. Think about this. I'm adding to my to our topic list. Adding I'm I want to know about this, about this.
Collin 1:18:07
productivity in ways of working. Oh, Lord,
Brandon 1:18:09
I don't think you want to hear my thoughts.
Collin 1:18:12
Oh, no, I want to know about this. This is adding to the topic list. It's right underneath concert horror stories and cake wars and food shows was Yeah.
Brandon 1:18:22
And my workflow is very addled and erratic. And I don't, some people are like
Collin 1:18:28
this. This is what I want to know. It's my watch. So I'm adding it to the list. And we'll we'll we'll get to that. Right after we get to Columbia. Cocaine, hippos must be called. I think we talked about that, actually. Well, I see a lot of things. Things we've like mentioned, I sort of touched on it. I don't know what to mark them off, because it's like, it might show back up.
1:18:47
Right. Exactly, exactly. So
Brandon 1:18:51
anyway, before we go, I have to tell you what Susan said a little while ago, this is a complete topic, shift, right topic shift. We just sort of like this is this is our new T shirt design. Okay, this is how good it is. Oh,
1:19:04
she goes watching. While we're eating supper,
Brandon 1:19:09
we were just like kind of flipping through and we were watching that show alone. You know what the show? Right? Okay. Listeners, if you don't know what alone is, it's where the History Channel just takes people out into the woods and dumps them there. And whoever survives without dying or getting sick the longest wins a prize. It's like a survival a thing. Right? So the one that started tonight was like about it was like a
1:19:37
special like, you know, people
Brandon 1:19:39
that had been on the show before it's like second chance what it's like a winter super wintertime. But anyway, they were talking about they're like way up in Canada, right. So there's like stinking polar bears
1:19:48
are on their right. And their feud.
Brandon 1:19:52
If there's one animal that you'd never want to meet in person, it's a polar bear. One of the very few animals that will actively hunt and eat your face off. Like, it'd be like, Oh, that was tasty. Let's do it again.
Collin 1:20:05
Yeah, yeah, they're merciless.
Brandon 1:20:08
So they were talking about survival, blah blah. And the guy had made some sort of comment about doing the bare minimum you don't want to do the bare maximum either fell off
Collin 1:20:36
the couch. That's hilarious.
Brandon 1:20:39
Sorry, I do shirt needs to say don't do the bare ba our maximum just can't just calm down down to the bare maximum. Calm down it was so good. Like, oh my gosh. It was so beautiful. I'm so proud of her. She's lovely.
Collin 1:21:07
Google Docs is throwing a fit about this it's got everything underlying it's like do you mean by her BA are even in the moment you do not know
Brandon 1:21:17
where you do something so over the top that you've run the risk of getting eaten by a bear.
Collin 1:21:23
That was the context. Bear back. Back. Don't
Brandon 1:21:27
do that. Don't do maximum bear print that sucker up. That is the one though.
Collin 1:21:45
Okay, well those words of wisdom. Yeah, well wrap it up. Next Episode Episode on 50 grand three year retrospective this episodes if you remember there we go.
Brandon 1:22:07
Let's make into a countdown three. Don't forget
Collin 1:22:12
episodes to go.
Brandon 1:22:15
Do you still use your third favorite ice cream still the same?
Collin 1:22:20
Do you remember what your results? Were? No.
Brandon 1:22:23
Do you? Have you started eating your eggs in a new way?
Collin 1:22:28
What is everyday every update?
Brandon 1:22:31
Oh, we do need to do that at some point. We keep talking about it
Collin 1:22:41
now we've got so much fault. It's just going to be two hours of follow up from All right. Great. Well, well with that as our cliffhanger. Wrap it up.
1:22:55
Love you