The upcoming school year is going to be different. And that sentence, my friends might be the understatement of the year!
Join host Adam J. Salgat, Mike Desparrois of Our Community Listens, and Kristy Houle from Educate. Today as they discuss how the skills can have a major impact on teachers and students.
Kristy is a former public school teacher, assistant principal, and principal and is currently homeschooling her three children while she does educational consulting, and speaking and works for Educate. Today as the Educational Outreach Coordinator and Podcast Host. Kristy is an alumnus of CST, and we are excited to hear how she has used the skills she has learned from a class for educators and in her home life.
Visit their website – educate.today/
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Kristy Houle is a former teacher, assistant principal and principal who shares her experience and expertise as an educational consultant, speaker, and podcast host. She is highly passionate when it comes to advocating for learners, across all educational settings.
Kristy now serves as the Educational Opportunities Director for Educate. Today organization and the host of the Classroom Matters podcast. In her role with this not-for-profit organization, Kristy assists in website development, planning quality programming for K-12 students, developing professional development, and building partnerships with local school districts and community organizations. As the host of the Classroom Matters podcast, Kristy
delves into current topics in education and interviews the nation’s most sought-after experts.
Kristy has been in the education field for over 20 years and has done extensive work with superintendents and local universities in the field of quality classroom instruction and building relationships within the educational setting. Kristy holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from Missouri State University and a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and an Educational Specialist Degree in Administration from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
Kristy is a wife and mother of 3 wonderful boys and enjoys spending her time with friends and family, traveling and experiencing life to its fullest.
AI-generated dictation of the podcast audio
Please note that this transcription was completed using AI software. Occasionally, unanticipated grammatical, syntax, homophones, and other interpretive errors are inadvertently transcribed by the software. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
Adam Salgat:
Hey listener, we would love it. If you could take a quick moment to give our podcast a review on iTunes, Spotify, or leave us a message on our Facebook or LinkedIn pages.
Hello and welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast. My name is Adam Salgat and today’s topic is utilizing the skills in youth education. I have two wonderful guests with me today who have many years of experience working in education. I’d first like to welcome back to our podcast, Our Community Listens, Leader of Educational Initiatives, Mike Desparrois. How are you doing today, Mike?
Mike Desparrois:
I’m great Adam. Really really excited to be back, not just for today, but the future education podcasts that we have. And just super excited about our first education guest that we have with Kristy.
Adam Salgat:
And that’s right. She is our second guest Kristy Houle who resides in Edwardsville, Illinois, just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. She is the Education Outreach Coordinator for Educate.Today and is also a fellow podcaster and she hosts their Classroom Matters podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today, Kristy.
Kristy Houle:
Yeah. Hey Adam, thank you so much for having me, and hi Michael. Nice to see you again.
Adam Salgat:
Christie, tell me a little bit about your work as the Education Outreach Coordinator and podcast host.
Kristy Houle:
Sure. So at Educate.Today, we are a not-for-profit organization. And the main thing that we do is to produce high quality, first person curriculum and content for K through 12. All of our resources are online, and we are a team of educators that really have a passion for putting great resources in the hands of teachers who can then pass those on to their kids. So I do a lot of content development. I do a lot of community and partnership outreach with other educational organizations and school districts, and just sort of serve as that liaison between the educational resources that we provide and the schools and the students and the teachers as well. And then of course, like you said, I’m a podcast host as well. So the podcast is Classroom Matters and it’s exactly what it is. It’s matters of the classroom, and been doing the podcast for about a year. And we really look for stories that are stories of inspiration and hope. And stories that let teachers and parents and students know that they’re not alone and that there’s a lot of stuff going on. And we’re just there to support that.
Adam Salgat:
Thanks so much. I will say I listened a little bit to your latest podcast, and while I have young kids, it was very educational and I enjoyed all of the information that was being presented about keeping your kids safe on the internet.
Kristy Houle:
Yeah. Thank you.
Adam Salgat:
You’re welcome. Mike, before we go too far and everything, I want everyone to have a little bit of a background on your history in education. I know we talked a little bit about it on a prior podcast, but give me a short synopsis of that.
Mike Desparrois:
Just a really quick breakdown. I’ve been in education over 20 years as a behavior specialist, a special education teacher. I got to work as a education consultant doing lots of training at Education Service Center in Texas. And then prior to joining OCL, I was also a coordinator of special education. I overlooked 33 school districts that are small too.
Kristy, can you give us a little bit of your background because I know you and I have known each other now for about seven months, and you’ve had an opportunity to go to a communication skills class through OCL. We’ve had an opportunity to fly to a location and look at a place that was working on OCL skills and other school. And got to know each other pretty well, but you have such a really cool unique background in education. And if you could walk us through as like a teacher, as an administrator, and then also someone who does homeschooling now and with everything else that you do with Educate.Today. If you could give us a little bit of that background, because not only is it unique, but I think it’s extremely dynamic. How do you use all that to continue to grow in the field of education and support folks?
Kristy Houle:
Sure. So, as you said, I started off my career in education. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, an educator. So I was sort of one of those people that said, “Oh, you know, I used to play school all the time and in my grandma’s basement.” And I was always the teacher. I was never the student, regardless if I was three or five or seven, I always had to be in charge. So I went into education and I began by teaching second and third grade. And I did that for about 10 years in a fairly large school district in Missouri. And then I was offered an assistant principal position within that same district, which I did for a year. And then I was called by another large school district in Missouri and offered a building principal position. And so I took that position and did that for 10 years.
And I absolutely loved every minute that I spent as both the teacher and an administrator. And, you know, it’s funny about my teaching background and my administrator background. It’s because I went from a very, very, very high socioeconomic school district to a rather low socioeconomic school district in a year. And so it was a huge transition for me, but I was able to see firsthand what amazing things were happening within the low socioeconomic school district, that people just didn’t even realize was happening. And so I felt that that really helped me grow as an educator and especially with some of the stuff that I learned in the art communities lessons. It sort of helped me understand how to be a better listener, when you worked with those types of families that really need you.
So from there I decided that I had some personal things that were happening in my life, and I have three children that really needed me. And my youngest was actually diagnosed as being on the spectrum in kindergarten and was struggling. And so at that time I decided to resign my position and be at home full-time and be a homeschool mom. So that then led me to homeschooling my three children. And I’ve been doing that for the last four years while also working at Educate.Today and sort of still having one foot in the world of education while I have one foot at home with my family as well. So it’s really been the best of both worlds for me.
Mike Desparrois:
It’s such a unique background and very cool, and how you use just the different things that you have and all the diverse… Dealt with the kind of focused on. And I know as an OCL alumni, or someone who’s taken the communication skills training, we’ve talked a lot about what you’ve learned, how excited you were. Talk a little bit about the pivotal point we are in in education. We’re starting a brand new school year that doesn’t look like any other school year we’ve ever started before. And what are your thoughts going in, like some advice not just to educators, whatever role they serve, but also the parents out there and just kind of like giving folks grace on both sides. So we can really support the bottom line, which is our kidos.
Kristy Houle:
Yeah. And so I think that you’re exactly right when you say, we’re going into some really unchartered territories. Something that none of us have ever had to experience before. And I think that one of the biggest things that I’m seeing, aside from the obvious, which are the logistics of where the children are going to be. And the internet, and who’s got a computer and who doesn’t and how are the kids going to learn? I think that what I’m really seeing and folks that are coming to me is such a high level of anxiety and unsuredness of themselves. And parents that are really, really stressing out and really sort of… I don’t want to say freaking out, but you know, really kind of, sort of freaking out about, Oh my gosh, how am I going to do this all day with my kids? I can’t do this. I’m not ready. I don’t have the skills. And teachers are saying the same things about themselves. I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never taught remotely. I’m not used to this.
And so I think it’s pushing all of us into looking internally and we are bridging gaps between homeschool parents, teachers, now parents that are going to be homeschooling that we’ve never been able to bridge before. And so I think there are some silver linings in there, that we’re all learning a lot of really good lessons. And you talk about grace and space.
And I think we’re all learning that, we do have one common goal. And that is that… Adam you want your children to grow up and be happy and healthy and successful and be able to be prepared for whatever comes for them. And that might look different than what my children have in their journey. And Michael, that might look different than what your children have prepared for them and their future. But I want what’s best for your children, Adam, and you want what’s best for my children. And I want what’s best for Michael’s children. And I think that as long as we keep that mentality for each other, the grace and the space, and giving people time to acclimate to these new circumstances, to put the judgments aside and just really walk together, we’re going to be okay.
Mike Desparrois:
I really like how you kind of broke that down and explained that and taken a look at it. Because as Adam and I were talking earlier, we don’t know moment to moment what’s going to happen in location to location. So like some places might be starting off online or someplaces might be like,” we’re going to be in person.” But tomorrow that could shift to online or a hybrid. And it’s just really having that flexibility to understand whatever is happening at this moment in time, let’s just focus on the kids and the outcomes and what we can best do. Understanding that role. Just trying our best, whether we’re a parent or a paraprofessional or a teacher or a counselor or a principal or a school board member, or just a really supportive grandparent. Whatever it is, we all have something that we want as our outcome to be for the kids as well.
Adam Salgat:
I’d like to mention that my wife is an educator and when we’re talking about judgment, the words teacher evaluation came up in my mind. And I’m just wondering from former principal perspectives, I know she’s always worried about how her principal’s going to evaluate or what are they going to say? She’s doing well, not doing well. And we’ve had the discussion already and we haven’t had one day of this 2020 school year. And I think she’s coming to the realization that as long as she goes through it with a positive attitude and tries to do the best she can, most likely she’s going to come out okay. Can you talk about it though, from that leader perspective, that principal perspective. What you imagine they’re going through before that type of teacher evaluation?
Kristy Houle:
Yeah and I think that’s a great point that you bring up Adam. Those are some of the things that folks don’t necessarily think about when you think about us going into a school year like we’re going into. And so, as a former administrator, who obviously, I was responsible for evaluating everyone in my building. And I had about 50 teachers plus, paras and everybody else that works in a school. And I think a good leader, anybody can tell you that a good leader is someone that walks with their staff. They walk beside them. They don’t walk ahead of them. They don’t walk behind them. They walk beside them. They’re doing this alongside of them. And it’s funny that you bring up that she’s already stressed out. If you are not doing your due diligence as a leader to bring down the level of anxiety and stress, then you’re sort of setting your folks up for failure to begin with.
And it breaks my heart. I’ve had so many teachers and so many parents reaching out to me over the last couple of weeks. And I feel like the first couple of days, I just have to calm them down and reassure them. You’re going to do fine. Take it in baby steps. We don’t know, like Michael said, tomorrow might look different than today. Next week might look different than the day before that. We don’t know.
So, I think just letting people know that… Is it important that your kids learn multiplication and division? Of course it is, but that’s not really the pinnacle of what we want to be doing right now. I think it’s important that teachers are making sure that their students are mastering the content and that they’re giving the students the tools and resources and guiding them through the learning process. But I think it’s much more important than that now. That kids are seeing that we as adults and that the adults, whether it’s the principal and the teachers, are really coming together as a community to keep everyone healthy and to feel loved and to feel accepted and to feel supported in the walks that we’re all taking right now.
Mike Desparrois:
Yeah. I think your comments about the leadership and walking with them are so important to understand, and for us to kind of focus on how we really support each other. Even view each of us as a leader. So, how does the principal also do that with the parents? And how do the parents do that with the principal? And then the teachers do it going up as well too. So my thoughts are, I’ve had a lots of conversations with teachers and principals. Just stressed out folks coming up to this year, just like you kind of talked about. Is there a certain skill you lean on that you’ve learned in communication skill training that you bring to every… You remind yourself of rather than like throwing out an opinion or something, that you’re using at this time to kind of just support those folks that are calling you up, sometimes out of the blue, you’re not ready for it. Is there some you kind of leaning on with an OCL skill?
Kristy Houle:
Yeah. Well, there’s so many things I’ve talked with you before and you were on my podcast and I could literally go on and on for days about how the Our Community Listens training, it really was truly, and I don’t want to sound cheesy, but when I say life-changing. It really is a way that you live and you emulate these skills that you learn and you do have to learn them and you do have to practice them. So when we’re talking about people today, when I talked to them, I think that really looking back on some of the Our Community Listens skills, especially when we’re talking about the reflective listening skills.
And you mentioned not throwing in your opinion and not judging people. And really, truly listening. I think that really just listening with empathy and not… Because we learned in that training that, everybody has a motive, everybody’s just trying to get what they need. Even though it may not feel like they’re doing that. I may have the best of intentions, but when I’m constantly trying to, in a conversation with a teacher or a parent who might feel stressed out or anxious, they might just need me to listen to them. Not to try to cut in, not to give them my opinion, not to tell them how I’m going through the same thing. And now let me tell you my story. Just really, truly listening and giving them those acknowledgements that we talk about and those reflective listening skills.
Letting them know that, with either a verbal or a non-verbal, we understand what you’re going through. And I need you to tell me how to support you and I can do that. So, I really think that the silence, that’s a great skill. It’s one of the great principles of the reflective listening. Just allowing some time for silence. Not feeling like you always have to be jumping in the conversation and just the acknowledgement piece and really thinking and giving them an opportunity to talk to you about how they’re feeling.
Mike Desparrois:
That’s great. When you’re going through this and you’re really talking about the reflective listening skills and you have someone who calls you up, or maybe you meet for that with coffee or something. If you can feel that anxiety we talked about earlier. That tension is there on that person’s mind, and you really just start to listen and practice that silence piece. Do you feel like people kind of calm me down and maybe working through some of the problems on their own? Or they get more tense, or how do you feel like the skills support that person with just going through the list?
Kristy Houle:
You know, it’s funny that you mentioned that because I think that specifically when you talk about the silence, people aren’t used to that. And as human beings, we feel a lot of times if there’s silence, there’s something wrong. And I think it takes a while to get used to when I am speaking to someone, but most people already know me by now. So they know they’re probably going to get a lot of silence, because it’s me opening the door for them and just really being able to process it.
But to answer your question. I think it does sort of calm them a little bit, because they don’t feel as pressured to continue the conversation. Sometimes they just need that silence. And I think that combined with the attending behaviors, which is really, really, really hard for people in the times that we are. That attending behaviors, I think that might be one of the most important things that you can do. Is, but you know, everyone with their cell phones and with this, and with that, and thinking about all these other things that we have to do. It’s really hard to be fully present with someone.
And I think that that really makes people feel valued if you’re able to do that. But it’s hard. It’s not something that comes easy. Not even for me, I find myself like, Oh, let me just check that really quick. But you have to… It’s something that you have to learn how to… That to be your new way of living.
Mike Desparrois:
I love the value idea because it’s a connection piece. I’m looking at my cell phone while you’re talking. It’s different than when we’re looking eye to eye and we really are practicing those attending behaviors because then there’s a trust and there is a value or as well.
Kristy Houle:
And I think with the way we’re going with Zoom and all that, it’s just really important to convey the message that you are more important to me than anything else that’s going on in my life for these 10 minutes. And I’m going to honor you by giving you my time.
Adam Salgat:
Really love what you just stated there. Cause I think that’s pretty important. And we’ve talked a lot about how this is kind of translating to adults. And I’m curious, I heard you mentioned silence and when there’s silence, there might be something wrong. Well, I have a one-and-a-half-year old, so anytime I hear silence, I am wondering what is going on?
Kristy Houle:
What are they doing?
Adam Salgat:
So, thinking about that one-and-a-half-year-old, not quite the age range that we’re talking about. But when it comes to kids specifically, a lot of these things are transferable. But I’m kind of curious, from both of your perspectives and I’ll let either of you jump in. I’m not sure if either you have a direct answer to this right away, but when we’re talking about kids and utilizing these skills, how do they shift or how do they change if at all? When we’re speaking to a 10-year-old, to a 18-year-old at that age range, that’s pretty vital.
Mike Desparrois:
I think, and Kristy you can back up or say,” I have another idea as well.” The role modeling piece is so critically important, right? So what I do with my children, whether they’re at my home or I’m coaching little league or Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or whatever or teaching in a class. How I present myself is really how role modeling to them the expectations as well. So, it’s not just saying do this. It’s showing them that you are a part of actually doing it as well too. And I think that role modeling is really important process. Because if I just say, you need to do this, and then I’m not doing it, I’m losing like a really big connection piece. And sooner or later kids are just going to… There’s not going to be a sense of belonging. There’s not going to be a trust level with us as well too. So, really trying to role model that I think is critical and also to say, “Hey, guess what I messed up.” [inaudible 00:20:28] mean to you? And I just kept budding in Kristy. I’ll let you, you follow up with your thoughts.
Kristy Houle:
Yeah, no, I mean, I think that you hit on a few things that I was thinking of as well. And I think a lot of it depends on the situation and the relationship that you have with the child. Obviously relationship is… For me I’ve always been even as a teacher, my first year of teaching, I almost literally got let go. Because I was not a hundred percent on the content. And so I had a lot of parents that were upset that this was wrong or there was a misspelling in the newsletter. And granted I was one year out of college, first teaching gig I’d ever had, and it was actually an overflow class. So, what that means is they had too many kids in a grade level and they needed to add a teacher in September, but 20 plus years ago, there was no system. So every teacher got to choose which three kids they wanted to give up to the new teacher. Well, you can imagine the class that I received and let me tell you, it was not a super fun year.
But you know what, the one thing that always remained, I might not have been the best at teaching math, I might not have been the best at understanding the curriculum, but I absolutely loved those kids. And they knew that I loved them and we had a great relationship and I told them that I loved them and I hugged them. And so, I think it really just depends on when you’re talking about the listening skills and transferring those down to children. It’s going to look much different with a class full of kids and the relationship that you have with them based on if it’s your own ten-year-old that you’ve told 17 times to pick up their socks and they’re still not doing it.
But I think, Mike is right on when he talks about… We assume a lot about kids and I think that’s a big mistake that adults make. That just because my child is seven or eight or nine, doesn’t mean that he automatically knows the right and wrong way to behave and the right and wrong thing to say. He’s going to learn that by watching me. They’re going to learn that by emulating. And that’s what you were talking about Mike, they’re going to emulate what they see us do. And so I think with the Our Community Listens principals, it’s a way for us to sort of force ourselves to look inside at what our behaviors are. And then once we have a handle on that and we can work on that, then we can sort of help our children to emulate the same behaviors.
We can’t just assume kids automatically know, because we don’t know. We don’t have the right behaviors a lot of times. So how in the world can they? So, yeah, and you both have children, so I’m sure that you’ve seen them pick up things and say things that you say or emulate. And just the other day, my ten-year-old walked down. He was like,” Oh my gosh!” And I was like, “honey, why?” And my husband goes, ” that’s you. He sounds just like you. You say that all the time.” He’s like a little mini-me. And I’m like,” Oh my gosh, you’re right.” So, you know what I mean? So Mike you’re right. And they emulate us and we have to really be the leader on that.
Mike Desparrois:
Yeah. I think that it’s so interesting. Sometimes we have to have other people point that out to us. Sometimes it’s not our spouses, our friends, it’s the kids. We really have tune into that rather than just kind of push that to the side. So for sure.
Adam Salgat:
I’m just going to say yes, because when Mike gave that advice in a prior podcast, it made me think. And your example just now of the, Oh my gosh, your ten-year-old let out. I’m like, ” yep. I’ve seen that with my four-year-old.” And on both sides. So absolutely, great comments.
Mike Desparrois:
Kristy you brought up your own kids, right? And we talked a little about like a 10-year-old and some of the other stuff. So you also play this role as homeschooler with a big background in education, pedagogy, content curriculum, and then following like the whole school pieces as well. And I know you do a lot of well, Pre-COVID, you would do a lot of outreach with your kids where you’d go to a museum and really [inaudible 00:24:41] . As a parent homeschooler, where you’re also playing the role of a parent and the teacher, what skills do you find most helpful in working with your own kids? Because it’s different with your own kids sometimes because it’s a little bit hard, right? Because of that trust is there. So you may see behaviors like they wouldn’t show to the other people.
Kristy Houle:
Absolutely.
Mike Desparrois:
How do use those skills to support you?
Kristy Houle:
You know, that’s a good point. And I think that that has been something that I’ve really learned over the last four years, is that I think that the biggest thing that parents need to really focus on, before they focus on what their kids need to learn as far as content, is know your children. I didn’t know my kids. And I’ll be the first one to tell you that, because I was never with my kids. When I was an administrator, I was gone 10, 12 hours a day. I couldn’t tell you other than a quick look through a binder and signing a paper and all these things. How my kids learned, what type of learner, whether they were visual or an auditory learner or a hands-on learner or… I knew none of that. And it took me a while to really know my children and know what their interests were when it came to school and know how they learned and what time of the day they learned best.
And to just lower the expectations that I had put on myself. And I think that’s what a lot of parents are doing now. And that’s why they’re struggling it’s because they’re trying to emulate the school system into their home and that’s not even possible. And you shouldn’t want to do that. School systems were set up for a large number of students. It’s an institution. It’s an organized institution, where you’ve got 25 kids in a rooms. So you have to do things that are on a stricter schedule, but when you have two or three kids, you don’t. And so I think parents just getting to know your children, getting to know how they learn best, getting to know the time of day they learn best, how they ingest content and what is really important for them to retain. We call those sort of the must knows and the good-to-knows. You must know this, and it’s good that you know this, but that’s not a have to know, right?
And so I think just, that’s sort of my advice when I talk to parents right off the bat is, baby step it. Don’t try to emulate what they’re doing in the school, because you’re just going to end up in tears. And if you get to a point with your children in the middle of a math lesson and they’re frustrated and you’re frustrated and… Stop. Just stop. It’s okay. You know, lower your expectations on yourself. But it’s difficult for parents because they think everyone’s looking at them, everyone’s watching them. I just was on a conversation with a mom for two days, and I’m not even sure what state she lives in, but she reached out to me and she is just really panicked. About how she’s going to make sure that her kids get all this content. I’m like, “just slow down, stop. It’s okay. You’re going to be all right.” So yeah, it’s just basics. Get to know your kids.
Mike Desparrois:
It’s almost like even allowing yourself to practice that pause.
Kristy Houle:
Yeah.
Mike Desparrois:
[inaudible 00:27:48] To get that. What’s also nice probably is that you’re not held up against the clock like, “you have five minutes before the bell rings to release my children.” And stuff like that as well too. To be able to kind of say,” okay, let’s all take a break, come back later on.”
Kristy Houle:
Just advice not to put strict timelines on yourself and your children, because they won’t work and you will feel like a failure when you’re really not. Just don’t even do that to yourself. You know, it’s funny my very first year of homeschooling, I literally redesigned our dining room. Took everything out of our dining room, created a schoolroom. Blackboards on the wall, white boards, three little desks all in a row, teacher’s desk flag on the wall, posters. And it failed. It failed because I was trying to emulate something that I couldn’t emulate in my home. And the first year was really, really tough. And I was a lot of tears. There was a lot of fighting ,because like you said Michael, I could control a building of 500 kids, and those kids would do anything I asked them, but I couldn’t control my own three. And get them to do what I wanted them to do.
And finally, one day my husband came in and said, “What are you doing?” And I said, “I’m teaching. What do you mean? What am I doing?” He’s like, “this isn’t working.” Because my husband works from home as well. He’s an engineer and he’s got a home office. So he would hear us arguing and my kids upset and me upset and people going into this and, Oh, you’re going to be great. You’ve got all this background and you’ve worked with kids, but it’s not the same. And so I had to lift some of those expectations off of myself and just say, “you know what we’re done with this.” Let’s just, you know, give your kids a chance to adapt to the environment.
If you’re homeschooling this year and it’s something new. Yes, the reflective listening is great. The empathy is great. The non-verbals and … All these things that we want to try to take with us from this Our Community Listens training is great. But just slow down a little bit and try to let your kids have some time to adapt to a new situation.
Adam Salgat:
Kristy I wanted to give you the opportunity to share a little bit more about Educate.Today and your mission.
Kristy Houle:
Yeah. Thank you. So the mission at Educate.Today is really to just provide enrichment for students. We don’t provide the actual curriculum, but what we do is, we provide content that enhances the curriculum or the unit studies or the content or the topics that your children or students are currently learning. And so our mission is really just to support teachers and educators, and to really put great resources in their hands so that they can put those resources in the hands of their students. And we really try to create first person experiences. And if you go to our website it’s just Educate.Today, that’s all you have to type in. You will be able to search by content area, by keyword. And so what you’re going to find and what your students are going to find are, you know, we’ve had a lot of folks coming and using our civil rights with all of the civil unrest that’s been happening in the nation over the last six months.
And what you’re going to find that’s different with our resources is, we actually offer a first person account of things that happen. So when you look at our civil rights resources, you’re going to be hearing from folks that were involved in the civil rights movement. People that were walking with Martin Luther King Jr. People that were in Selma. And those are the stories that you’re going to hear. You’re also going to hear a lot about people that are working in the field that you’re currently researching. So if you’re learning about weather, you’re going to hear all about weather, but you’re also going to hear from a meteorologist and they’re going to talk to you all about what it’s like to be a meteorologist. So all of our resources on our website are free. If you just go to Educate.Today, you can use our resources and stream all the video content that you want. There’s also lesson plan activities that go with the videos and the Classroom Matters podcast is available there as well.
Mike Desparrois:
And they’re free. I like the free cause everyone’s looking for such resources, but funding is obviously a big issue right now too. So I love the free [inaudible 00:32:07] as well.
Kristy Houle:
All of free.
Adam Salgat:
Storytelling is a very powerful tool to get people to understand and hopefully reevaluate. So I think what you have… Sounds like what you have going there is very, very smart, and I wouldn’t expect anything else from this wonderful woman that I’ve gotten to meet today. I do want to know though, tell me a little bit about your story in the idea of why Educate.Today is important to you.
Kristy Houle:
Oh gosh. I think being a teacher and being an administrator. I think that we try to have our children digest a lot of information that is not authentic or applicable to the world that we live in. And it seems at times that we are growing as a society, but sometimes the things that we teach our students are from the dark ages. And it doesn’t fully prepare them for the world that they’re going to be living in when they turn 18 and decide to be on their own. So I think to me, it’s sort of been like being part of a passion project. That I can really have the flexibility to know, this is what I wish I would have had. I would have loved to have had this to show my kids to spark interest in children. We’ve got such a variety that you’re going to find something for that child.
And I think a lot of, you know, I’ve always had a heart for students that are suspended or have had disciplinary issues and are really, really struggling to find their way. I think these resources have been a great way for us to reach kids like that. That may not have another way to learn about these things or school districts that don’t have the funds to go on field trips and talk to folks like this. So it’s really been great to be able to be an advocate and to be someone working on such a great, in a great organization that offers these resources to kids because they may not have them anywhere else. And it’s a safe environment. They’re not just surfing YouTube where they could like go to who knows where. Which is the whole online safety thing that we talked about on the Classroom Matters. But yeah, I think that I’m just so proud to be part of what they’re doing at Educate.Today. I think it’s just a phenomenal resource for teachers and kids and parents now too.
Adam Salgat:
Mike and Kristy. Thank you both for being on the podcast today. As always, we like to challenge our guests to come up with a couple of key takeaways for our listeners, Mike I’ll let you go first.
Mike Desparrois:
Sure. Thank you, Adam. So my key takeaway with the school year starting, and as we progress in the school year. Knowing that lots of changes that are going to take place. We don’t know what’s going to happen from day to day, week to week. Is just be in the moment, lead with empathy and just kind of practice the pause that we’re all trying to learn. And that there’s going to be some really good things that come out in education to move us in a better direction. We continue to have that focus.
Adam Salgat:
Kristy.
Kristy Houle:
Well, I was going to say the exact same thing that Mike said.
Mike Desparrois:
Ditto.
Kristy Houle:
[crosstalk 00:35:16].The end. No, I agree with him, but you know, I think a key takeaway for me is, really, we’re all sort of in the same… We’re all the same person now, right? There’s not just one person that’s a teacher and one person that’s a parent and one person that’s an educator. We’re all doing the same things together. And so I’ve used the words bridge the gap I think a couple of times here, but I really think that that’s, we need to… Instead of looking at what we don’t have and what we can’t do and sort of the negatives and the this is terrible. Think about the things that that we’ve talked about in this podcast and things that are happening that are positives.
We are sort of coming together. We are learning how to support each other. We’re all doing this together. It’s not teachers against parents, and now it’s homeschoolers against public schoolers. So I think that that’s been a silver lining in this. That we’re really truly learning to be supportive and understanding of where everyone is and just being accepting of the choices that people are making. That they feel are best for their family at this time.
Adam Salgat:
Well said. Thank you both for the key takeaways and all of the information. If you’d like some further information and further resources, check out Educate.Today. Thank you Christie for being on the podcast.
Mike Desparrois:
Yeah, Thank you Christie.
Kristy Houle:
You’re welcome. Thank you. It’s awesome.
Adam Salgat:
If you have any suggestions about subjects for our podcast, feel free to reach out through our Facebook page. And if you’re interested in taking a class, visit ourcommunitylessons.org. Thank you again for listening to our podcast and don’t forget, each word, each action, each silent moment of listening sends a message. Therefore, you are the message.
