40 Years and Counting - Why I am Still Teaching-Episode 38
00:00:00 Jon Bergmann: Welcome back to the Reach Every Student podcast. I'm your host, John Bergmann. This is the first episode of season four. Every summer I take a break from podcasting to recharge and get away, and I look forward to sharing with you weekly my thoughts and other thoughts about the state of education I, and how to navigate the educational landscape that we are in. This summer break had been both exhilarating and sad. My wife and I were able to go on an Alaskan cruise that was super cool with my family. We had both high hopes that it would recharge us, and to some extent it did. But with the hustle and bustle of cruise life, we realized that isn't for us. It was. It was too much Vegas and not enough like rest. I guess if you're on a cruise ship with your 4000 closest friends, what would we have expected? I think we're kind of more of the get out and enjoy nature on a trail, people. Anyways, that's our experience. If you are a cruiser, I'm sorry. That's okay. That's just your jam. Uh, on the sad side, uh, we took a road trip to see our family in the Midwest. And sadly, during that time, we got a call, uh, that my mother in law had become suddenly very sick. And sadly, she passed away shortly afterwards. But, you know, it was a blessing. We were close by when things got bad, and my wife and I had the privilege of literally being in the room when she breathed her last. And as a Christ follower, I know that when she took her last breath, her next breath was in the presence of Jesus. You know, although being there was hard, it was a sacred moment and an experience that I will keep with me for the rest of my life. So my summer. Uh, yeah. Let's start on this. I guess I'm in a contemplative, contemplative mood. And today's episode, um, actually was sparked by a conversation at church this week. You see, I was at church yesterday, actually, now it's two days ago. I wrote this a couple days ago, and a friend asked me if I was still teaching. I told him that in two weeks I would be starting my 40th year. That's right, 40 years. He looked at me and said, what are you? When are you going to stop? He told me how he had taken early retirement from his longtime place of work. He's happily retired. He's enjoying his life and he wonders why I haven't done it yet. You know, on the surface, it's probably a good question. He isn't the first person to ask this, by the way. And frankly, sometimes I've asked that question myself. My initial response was, yeah, I still love teaching, and I teach at the best school I've ever taught at and my students and my colleagues. They challenge and inspire me every day. So I was, you know, on the spot thinking about this. And he proceeded to tell me that his last 27 years at his job, he had 27 different bosses. And I thought, man, I don't I've had the same boss since I came to this school. And he's amazing. Um, so with so many teachers leaving the profession and the disruption caused by Covid 19, I in schools, why am I going back for my 40th year? And so now that I've had time to sit and think, I'm going to give you my five reasons why I'm going back. So number one, amazing students. It's part of my conversation. My friend's wife's wife asked me what I taught, and you know what I said? I told her I teach kids. She gave me this like, weird look, because what she wanted to know was that I taught high school science. But at its heart, teaching is not only about the subjects I teach. I teach, and I try to do with excellence. And I think I do teach kids good science. But at its heart, it's about the students that I get to work with. They're what drive me and keep me going. Their energy, their optimism, their curiosity. That's what drives me. I'm not sure they're kids, right? And sometimes they exasperate me. They are a bunch of teenagers, after all. They sometimes make poor decisions. Often they do. And they fail to think before acting. But that's okay. It's part of growing up. I was once a teenager. Once. You were once a teenager once there, in the midst of such a huge changes. And they're trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in this world. So I consider it a privilege to have had at least some impact on each of their lives journeys. So, number one, amazing students. That's that's bringing me back. Number two, amazing colleagues. You know, I work at a school that simultaneously demands excellence of its students and at the same time intentionally develops the whole person. You know, one of our school's signature programs is that we develop students into leaders. And as students move through our program, they begin to take more personal responsibility. And it shows. Now, school, like mine, doesn't happen by accident. It requires vision, leadership, a strong commitment and buy in by all staff. You know, our school has this vision that the custodian and the principal and everybody in between matters, and they can make a difference. It's actually constantly shared from leadership that they want everyone to have a positive impact in the lives of the students. And we're on a mission. And that is such attractive to me. I can tell you it energizes me. And so I am so excited to work with such amazing, amazing colleagues. So number one was amazing students number two, amazing colleagues. Number three, more sort of looking out there. It's our own. Our only hope is our kids. So I'm going to kind of get in your business now. You know, a society that fails to invest in its children will ultimately collapse. We need dedicated, caring and passionate adults to invest in the lives of our students. I know it can be hard. It is. But our kids deserve the best. If you are not a teacher out there, man, can I say this? Invest in kids. Now, if you're a parent, invest in your own kids. But man, we need people like you to invest in our kids. You may not believe this. Okay, this is 40 years talking, but they our students today, they crave adults to speak into their lives. Sometimes it's behind a veneer of standoffishness. But what they want. My experience suggests that today's students more than ever want to know that there's an adult who has their best interest at heart. They know they're entering a world with challenges and problems. They want you, the adult, to lead them on a positive path. At least for me. I still have some energy to give to my students. It has kept me young, and their youthful optimism has had a profound, positive impact on me. Though I'm the adult in the room, they actually inspire me and give me hope for our world. So I our only hope is our kids and adults. We we can help with this, right? Amazing students, amazing colleagues. Our only hope is our kids. Now I'm going to really dive into our business and complain about something here. Number four, they need our protection. I am you've heard this. If you've listened to this podcast, I'm increasingly concerned about the adverse adverse effects of the digital world in which our students are enmeshed. When you add in AI and we have a hear this, a poison soup that will bring untold harm and suffering to our kids, we gave them devices in the early 20 tens, and childhood has never been the same. Read Jonathan Hyde's book, The Anxious Generation. It will change your life. It changed mine. Now, I've had an interesting career. You see, I taught for 24 years in Colorado, and then I was director of technology for two years in Chicago. But I left my sort of job teaching the teaching in a school job. In 2012, right after my first book was published. I then had a chance. I traveled all over the world. I taught teachers how to flip their classes and how to bring active learning to scale. So I was out of the school system for seven years. Might have been eight, something like that. I was out of school for seven years, but then I returned to the classroom in 2019. This will be my seventh year back. Boy guides and things had changed when I left in 2011. Cell phones were just getting normalized in schools, but when I returned, they were everywhere. I like, in my experience, that the frog in the pot of water. If you put a frog in hotter it in hot water, it jumps out. Or if you slowly heat up the water, you probably, you know this. I'm sure the frog will stay until it's cooked. But you see, I jumped out of the school system and missed the gradual heating up of the water. And when I got back into the hot water, so to speak, I was shocked. I saw a much higher incidence of teenage anxiety, depression, and all the other issues that were now reporting about. And as I researched what happened, I am convinced here this that big tech companies designed the most here this addictive programs, games and platforms that have ever existed. And they marketed them to marketed them to our kids. Your kids? Our kids never had a chance. You see, we left them alone with their devices, and it hasn't ended well. And now let's add AI into it. It's going to make things worse unless we take action. I'm going to scare you, I guess. One example of this, in terms of the the bad things I'm seeing are these AI companion apps. If you do know about these yet your teenagers teenagers do. These are like AI friends, AI boyfriends, or girlfriends where they have like long form conversations with people. A recent study by Common Sense Media found that 72% of teenagers have tried an AI companion app, and 52% of them are regular users. These apps are replacing real human relationships, and many of them have gone in very dark and disturbing directions. Can I say this again? We have to protect our kids. And so I want to go back to help protect our kids. Our students need people like you. Like me, I guess, to speak the truth to our students about what's happening. One thing I will be doing in the first week of school, which is a week and a half, no, I go back in a week and a half and I see the kids a week later. Anyways, shortly is I'm going to have a frank discussion about all these things with them. I actually did this towards the end of last year and the reception was amazing. The students want to talk about these things and if you're a teacher listening to this, you need to start having these conversations with your students. If you're a parent, you need to have conversations with these about these things. You need to get educated. By Jonathan Hite's book, The Anxious Generation. Read it and it's outdated already because the AI stuff isn't even in there. So, number one, why am I going back? Uh. Amazing students. Number two. Amazing colleagues. Number three. Our only hope is our kids. Number four. They need our protection. And number five. I'm optimistic for Gen Z. You know, when I tell adults. I mean that I'm a teacher. Uh, some of them will launch into a tirade about Gen Z. Oh, they describe them as lazy, entitled. They got short attention spans. Despite these challenges, I'm optimistic that this group of students will rise to meet these challenges. What I see. Okay. I don't despair in spite of the last. We need their protection once we've protected them. What I'm seeing is that they're they have a sense of purpose, and they have a growing realization of the harm that's being done to them by these big tech companies. And they know it needs to stop. And so what I am seeing with my students is a sort of rising tide of students who want something different. I remember having a student at the beginning of last year, and one of the questions I ask, I have a daily question check in deal and towards the beginning of the year, and she's I asked them kind of what highlight of your summer and what she said is this, I went to this camp and they took our phones away for three weeks or four weeks or something like this, and I, I said it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I got detoxified from that that world and, and, and there are more and more students who are seeing that that's something that they need. I know some of them, they're so they need the dopamine drip. But if we as the adults in the room can help them with that, they they will set the world on fire. And I think they really will, um, solve a lot of the problems that we, frankly, have brought upon them. So I guess in summary. I still have more to give. I'm not done yet. Hey, thanks for listening. I encourage you to hit the subscribe button and share it with your friends. It's super easy regardless of the app that you're using. Additionally, if you're interested in AI proofing your classroom, visit my website to enroll in the courses that will prepare you as a teacher for the future. These are teacher courses. If you're, uh, not a teacher, uh, share it with your friend who is a teacher. Uh, give the podcast a review, and that gets this in front of more people. Um, and that would be awesome. So know. Now go. Yeah. And reach every student. All right. Find more out about this. Uh. Find more. And remember website for this is reach every student. John Bergmann out.
