Resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration are critical mindsets, and skill sets, for students to develop. For schools to support those outcomes, educators must have the opportunity to develop the same. Mitch Weisburgh, the author of, “Mindshifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success,” explores the importance and possibilities.
What’s the role of wellbeing and hope in achieving long term, deep learning?
Visit the Mindshifting Website & connect with Mitch here.
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Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.340] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:29.720] – Steve
Building resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration. Our podcast guest today is the author of, “Mind Shifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success,” Mitch Weisburgh. Mitch focuses on teaching people to reframe their thinking, confront unproductive narratives, and replace them with clarity and action. He provides professional development courses that equip teachers with research-backed cognitive strategies to transform the way they approach teaching, conflict resolution, and student engagement. I’m especially looking forward to learning about his insights on building resourcefulness, resilience and collaboration – all important for students, teachers, and school leaders. Welcome, Mitch, and thanks for joining us.
[00:01:31.130] – Mitch
Well, Steve, thank you for inviting me and looking forward to a spirited discussion. And we’re gonna be talking about these different topics, but please, anything that you disagree with or you question, let me know and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong. [laughter]
[00:01:46.750] – Steve
laughter] Okay, that’s great. So would you start with just some description of what you mean by mind shifting and the connection, you know, within the title of your book about sabotaging happiness and success?
[00:02:00.840] – Mitch
Sure. So basically, the way our minds operate, and it’s an oversimplification, is we have really two modes of operating. One is what I would call survival mode. And those parts of the brain evolved first. And survival mode is basically as it sounds. It’s allowing the organism to survive. And that part of the brain needs very, very little information to come to a conclusion and decide what to do. And it’s primarily looking for threats. That part of the brain wakes up in like 2/100ths of a second. So, you know, somebody bumps into us and in 2/100ths of a second, we start like, some reaction that, we have to push them back or we can ignore it or whatever the reaction is, it’s really quickly. Then the parts of the brain that we’re really trying to develop in school, which is the part that, you know, critical thinking, innovative thought, empathy, executive function, that part of the brain evolved much, much later in organisms. And it takes maybe 2 seconds to wake up. So you think about it, something happens, we come to some survival mechanism in order to handle it. And then our thinking part of the brain wakes up, it takes a look around and says, “oh, we’re doing this? This must be the reason we’re doing it.”
[00:03:27.230] – Mitch
And so we come up with a rationalization for whatever it is that we’re doing, whether we know we can’t do math, or we know we have to push back against this person, or we know we have to out-talk somebody, or whatever it is that we’ve decided to do, the rational part of the brain, by default, comes up with a reason why that’s the right path to take. But it also has the capability to be self-aware. And when we learn the techniques and how to recognize when we’re in survival brain, we can take a step back, pause, and come up with actions and feelings that are much more appropriate to the situation. Because very often, it isn’t a threat, but our survival brain has interpreted it as a threat. But we can say, well, wait a minute, you know, saying I’m just feeling a little bit uneasy about math, but I feel a little bit uneasy every time I try something new. That’s just part of getting ready and trying something new. And then we can change our whole attitude. And that would be a shift. We’re shifting from a survival mechanism into one that actually aligns more with what we really want to accomplish.
[00:04:36.770] – Steve
So does that shift generally require a pause?
[00:04:41.990] – Mitch
It’s funny as you said that – I’m thinking that shift always requires a pause. And actually what that shift requires is number one, a degree of self-awareness. And so part of what learning about mind shifting is learning to recognize the situations where we are in reactive mode and even better recognizing situations and preparing for situations where we will be in, where we would normally be in reactive mode so that we can prepare to be in resourceful mode when we confront them.
[00:05:20.640] – Steve
As I was listening to you, a piece that I hadn’t connected until I was hearing your explanation, but starting years back, one of the trainings I did in verbal communication skills was for people facilitating a group or leading a conversation and getting a resistant negative response from a member. I used to teach a skill called the supporting statement. But as part of the training, I suggest to people, when you hear it, you take what I was calling an aggressive step backwards. In other words, you aren’t running away, but you’re stepping back. You may even be spreading your feet a little bit because you’re now going to be in a position to explain yourself.
[00:06:14.840] – Mitch
Yep.
[00:06:15.420] – Steve
But without that step backwards, you tended to defend yourself instead of being able to explain yourself. That’s a mind shift.
[00:06:25.510] – Mitch
Yep, that’s a mind shift. And I’ll say, none of the things that I put into the courses that I teach or the two books that I wrote, none of them, or virtually none of them, are mine. They’re things that I’ve gotten from reading the research around psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, coaching, organizational development, military strategy, economics, decision-making, you know? So what I’ve tried to do is pull together these different things, just like your step back is how do you – how do successful people navigate these situations so that we can move forward instead of just constantly tearing at each other’s throats?
[00:07:08.420] – Steve
So I’m wondering what in your experiences or background led you to tackle working in this area?
[00:07:15.970] – Mitch
Well, I’ve always taken courses you know, in neurolinguistic programming back in the ’80s and ’90s. I took the Landmark series of courses, which stemmed from Werner Erhard. I’ve always been interested in books, but the thing, there are two things that really crystallized it for me is, you know, having been through all those, and I can’t remember the exact meeting where this occurred, but I was at this meeting with, you know, like 70, 80 people and somebody says, “Mitch, Why don’t you tell us about your mission?” And at the time, I was in education and it was like, “I don’t… My mission…” But I had to talk, right? So I stood up, you know, and it’s like, okay, so my mission is that education should be the mechanism where we give every kid a chance to live great lives as adults. That’s my mission. And if you look at it, we’re failing virtually every kid in this country right now because 20 to 30%— and this is like off the cuff, right? 20 to 30% of the kids who go through education, they don’t graduate.
[00:08:25.980] – Mitch
And if they don’t graduate, they’re behind – their life is over, basically. They have no chance. And then two-thirds of the kids that are left – by the time they graduate, they’re not ready for work, they’re not ready for school, for college, they’re not ready for families, they’re not ready to be citizens. And we failed all of those kids at all as well. And then the kids that are left, so many of them, they could have soared, you know, in 3rd grade, they could have been doing reading 9th grade books. They could have been doing 10th grade math. And what have we done to them? We’ve said, you know something, you’re in 3rd grade, you finish your work early, here’s another worksheet, do this again. And so we hold back all those kids, so we’re failing those kids also. And so as a country, as a society, we’re failing virtually every kid and we have to do something about it. And so that kind of crystallized in me that something was really wrong. Then, the second thing that happened is because I was known as kind of an expert in education technology, this is around 2017, I get an email from a university saying, “Mitch, can you talk to our undergraduates about, about edtech?”
[00:09:36.490] – Mitch
And I’m like, “no, I got into education because I thought edtech was gonna do this.” And 15 years later we’re no better off. So I’m not talking to them about edtech, but you know what I could do? I could talk to them about how successful people navigate situations so that they end up with the results that they really want. And how do they make sense of situations and proceed. And so we started negotiating because they’re saying, “Wow, that’d be really good. Why don’t you teach a semester course?” And I’m like, “I don’t think I can teach a semester course.” But we settled on a 2-day workshop. And we’re talking in like June 2017, and I was gonna give the workshop in February. And being kind of an entrepreneurial type person, it’s like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do this. I’ll teach it in February. It’ll be a 2-day workshop. It’ll be great.” Okay. We shook hands and it was free, but you know, it’s still, you know, closed the deal. And then like the next day, it’s like, Mitch, you idiot. How are you going to do this? You’ve never done this before. But I had 6 months.
[00:10:41.690] – Mitch
So, I read all these books on all these different, you know, as I said, economics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience. I put everything together, I go to teach the course, and after the 2-day workshop, the kids stood up and cheered. So it kind of confirmed to me all these skills are learnable. When people learn them, it’s like, oh my gosh, I can really use these. They’re teachable and we don’t teach them. And so that then became my mission. I switched over from advising schools and companies on education technology to doing mind shifting and developed this mission of like, what if we could get a critical mass of people on this planet who could be resourceful, resilient, and collaborative no matter what the situation is and return to that state? Wouldn’t that, A, allow them to live happier and more productive lives? But B, wouldn’t they then inspire the rest of us to live that way and start solving all these issues that we’re facing instead of fighting about them? And so kind of an arbitrary number. So I chose 5 million people.
[00:11:52.940] – Mitch
Like, how could we get 5 million people? And, you know, because my background is in education, it’s like, well, you know something, who are the, who are the people who most influence the next generation? Teachers, right? You know, teachers touch kids all the time. And so, how do I reach teachers so that teachers can teach these techniques to kids and learn them themselves? And so through dumb luck, really, I was able to get approved for the courses in the state of Washington. And then a couple years later in the state of New York. And so now I teach a course on resourcefulness, the course on resilience, and the course on conflict and collaboration. I teach them to educators in Washington and New York. Teachers take them free. And they register for the courses and teachers take the courses because they look at it and, and they say, you know, saying, the kids I’m teaching, they don’t have grit, or, they’re not innovative, they’re not using their creative thinking or not critically thinking. And this course says I can teach them that.
[00:13:06.690] – Mitch
And so I’m gonna take this course and they go into the course and then, and then within 15 minute, the teachers, the people in the course are like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not living this way. How do I learn to be more resourceful? How do I learn to be more resilient?” And then they start developing techniques that not only apply to the classroom, but it’s like, “Boy, I’ve been having this argument with my wife for 10 years, and I just realized those are just our survival reactions. And the issue really wasn’t important to either one of us.” You know, and so they learn that in the personal life. They learn with the kids, like, I always thought this kid was difficult, but you said for one of your exercises, you said I have to be empathetic for the entire day. And so every time I’m interacting with somebody, I have to think to myself, how would I respond if I was empathetic? So I saw this child there and they were frowning, and normally, I would have just let them go, but this time it’s like, how would I respond if I were empathetic?
[00:14:10.200] – Mitch
And I went to the child and I talked to them, and it turned out that their pet died the previous day, and we talked about it. And she says, and then at the end of the day, I’m walking out, and this child comes running to me, jumps up, and gives me a great big hug and said, I had the best day because of you. So, that’s how people are affected by this material. Yes, I put it together, but none of this stuff is mine.
[00:14:36.870] – Steve
Well, Mitch, as I looked at your work and dug into your website a little bit, I got very interested when you talked about the interconnectedness of resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration. And those words have all been big to me for a bunch of years, going back to looking at building the 4C’s into curriculum. And our company and my work years before that were talking about giving kids experiences with what we were calling, “live event learning.” It’s the real world is where those things are kind of likely to happen. But would you start first a little bit about how you describe that connectedness of resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration?
[00:15:36.770] – Mitch
Sure. So, I call those the three elements of mind shifting. And so the resourcefulness part of it is how do you control your own brain? And really, that’s the basis of everything, because if you really, really control your own brain, then that affects the way you look at situations, that affects how you work with other people. So how do you develop the capacity so that it becomes a habit to be monitoring, am I in survival mode? Am I in resourceful mode? Am I going into a situation where I would normally be in survival mode? How do I prepare myself to be resourceful throughout that situation? And so that’s number one, is your own brain. And then the second part of it, which is what I call the resilience part, is how do we react with situations? And again, you know, you can think about it with our brain, but with this situation, you know, we’re primed to think that every situation has a right solution. And then if we do that right solution, it’s going to solve the problem. And, actually neither one of those are generally correct. So very often we walk into a situation and there is no one right solution.
[00:16:51.940] – Mitch
There are many possible right solutions, and they need analysis, or they need expertise, or they need data. And you put them all together. And for example, if you wanted to build a school, okay, you could go to 5 different architects. They’re all experts. You’ll get 5 very different designs. Any one of them could work. Now, there may be trade-offs, you know, one may have bigger classrooms, might have, one might have bigger common areas, but basically any of them would work for a school. Okay, and that is what we call like a complicated issue. So that’s one way that one solution isn’t necessarily the right solution. And the other thing is that so many of the things that we do, nobody is an expert in. Just take a look at COVID – there was no expert in how we’re going to survive COVID, but people presented themselves like experts like, “oh, masks don’t do anything. So nobody wear a mask because it’s not going to do anything.” And then like, “oh no, I’m the same expert. And what I told you before, okay, no, as long as you wear a mask, it doesn’t matter what kind of a mask it is.
[00:18:00.380] – Mitch
Just put on a mask and nobody’s going to catch COVID.” And you know that we had this contradictory pronouncements by the experts time and time again when actually this was a brand new situation. Nobody was an expert. And And so those we call complex situations. And in a complex situation, since nobody’s an expert, then what we have to do is we have to come up with different things that we can try. And the things that we can try are not gonna really put us in harm’s way, but they’re gonna give us information back that we can then use to take the next step and go through an iterative approach. So then going from that, since most of the things we actually do, most of the problems we confront, are complex, then the question is, well, how do we deal with those complex situations? And what I recommend is an iterative process that was developed in the Air Force in the 1950s and 1960s, where it has its elements of observe, orient, decide, and act. And then it’s a loop because you go back and you observe again, and then you reorient to come up with what you do, and then you decide on something to do, and then you act, and then you observe again.
[00:19:06.620] – Mitch
And you’re prepared to go through that loop. So in resilience, it’s up to a large extent, how do you assess what type of a situation it is? And then once you’ve assessed the type of situation, how do you come up with different things that you could do? And if it’s a complex situation, how do you prepare for the fact that the first thing that you’re going to do is at best going to give you information, but it isn’t going to really completely solve the situation. And when you do that, this whole idea of grit and persistence melts away. Because if I go into a situation and I think I’m gonna succeed and I do something and it doesn’t work, I have to like say, “Okay, Mitch, you’re a failure. You screwed it up. But if you were a man, you would work your way through it and you would do it right. Now, come on, do it again.” And you know, that takes a lot of energy, right? So if I go into the situation understanding that it’s complex, it’s like, “Okay, you know something?” Here’s a situation, what can I do so that I can get some information back?
[00:20:04.190] – Mitch
And I do it, I don’t get angry at myself when it doesn’t work. I say, so what was the information? What was the gift here? And I look at the information. And to a certain extent, so you should see how that’s related to the resourcefulness, right? Because you’re kind of controlling your mind, but you’re doing it in relation to the situations.
[00:20:20.810] – Steve
Just before you jump there, because that’s really the definition of teaching. There’s certainly no one right answer.
[00:20:28.780] – Mitch
There isn’t? [laughter]
[00:20:31.640] – Mitch
Wait a minute, you mean all these people who said all we have to do is test, they were wrong? Come on.
[00:20:38.980] – Steve
[laughter] I mean, it’s really the whole built-in piece for me in my work of the coach being a thinking partner. So the coach is collecting data that the teacher perhaps didn’t see or hear, and then creating the opportunity for the teacher to add that data to the data the teacher was able to collect. And then the teacher to think through what’s the next step.
[00:21:10.050] – Mitch
So as you’re saying that, the thing that that triggers in my mind is also is we have a choice with information like that. We can use the information in order to improve or we could use that information to punish or reward. But we can’t use the information for both because as soon as we use the information to punish or reward, we’re changing the whole behavior to get to avoid the punishment and to get the reward. And so that’s one of the big problems that we have in this country is that we use grades and test scores in order to punish or reward kids.
[00:21:48.100] – Steve
Right. We try to use teacher evaluation to improve teaching. It ain’t never gonna happen.
[00:21:52.740] – Mitch
It’s not because we’re also using it, you say, you know, to fire or promote or whatever. So yeah, you know, and I know, you know, we may be touching on AI, but that’s part of it with AI also is that if we’re gonna reward or punish results, then the use of AI is going to get corrupted to produce quicker results or better results. Whereas what we really want for education is building skills.
[00:22:17.500] – Steve
So build the collaboration part in yet for us, because it’s almost sounding as I was getting to talk out loud to you about the concept of coaching, tackling that resilience issue of there isn’t a right answer, that almost seems in my head like I’m setting up collaboration there.
[00:22:37.980] – Mitch
It really does, yes. That’s a perfect segue. Because if we’re going into coaching and we’re sure we have the right answer, then the person we’re coaching, what they’re going to be picking up is, this person thinks I’m bad. This person is attacking me. Whereas, if we’re picking up the information, what we really want to happen is like, okay, here is teaching, these are the results we wanted, but these are the results that we get. How can you and I work together so we get closer to the results that we want? So instead of me telling you what to do, it’s how do you and I attack this problem together. And so that’s, you know, part of what we’re doing in collaboration or conflict and collaboration. Anytime where we see, we want a person to do something different from what they would normally do, whether acquire more skills, that sets up a possibility for conflict. And so, we should be prepared for that. We wanna learn how to present the information in a way that’s non-threatening so that there’s a much less likelihood of a conflict. And when there is a conflict, we have to learn the techniques of how to defuse the conflict.
[00:24:00.600] – Mitch
And our natural ways of doing that don’t work because rewards and punishments, they might work in the short term and they might elicit compliance, but nobody is for the long term is motivated, or very, very few people are motivated purely by rewards or punishments. You learn how to manipulate the system in order to be rewarded or to avoid the punishment. Facts and logic, that’s not how people make decisions. Decision-making actually takes place in the limbic, in the emotional parts of the brain. So we rationalize it by facts and logic, but presenting facts and logic don’t win people over. People are won over when they have a connection to you and when they feel that you’re really interested in them. So how do you develop the techniques to be able to phrase things in a way that people are willing to collaborate? And I will say, that’s not saying that everything has to be in negotiation because there are times where you’re in a position of authority and you need to make the decision and you need people to follow what you do.
[00:25:10.350] – Mitch
You know, there’s a fire or a kid isn’t doing their homework or a kid is misbehaving or you’re a parent and it’s bedtime for your child. So how do you phrase that in a way that makes it clear that you are the authority? You’re doing this because you believe it’s their best interest, but it’s the rule and they have to do it. So learning how to phrase things, learning how to establish those connections, learning how to build a long-term connection so that you can move forward, that’s the whole basis of the Conflict and Collaboration course, or that’s the whole basis of the Mindshifting Conflict and Collaboration book.
[00:25:50.590] – Steve
So what do kids need to be experiencing in school?
[00:25:55.530] – Mitch
Oh, that’s such a broad question.
[00:25:57.910] – Steve
To move us in that, I mean, you’re describing a really important, powerful direction.
[00:26:06.060] – Steve
I wonder if there’s a big – is there a big picture of what does a school look like and feel like that heads us in that direction?
[00:26:16.950] – Mitch
So long-term deep learning takes place from a feeling of well-being and hope.
[00:26:25.620] – Steve
Powerful words. Can you repeat them?
[00:26:28.260] – Mitch
Okay. I’m probably not going to get it exactly, but long-term deep learning takes place from a position of well-being and hope.
[00:26:41.340] – Steve
That’s quotable, Mitch.
[00:26:43.080] – Steve
Very quotable.
[00:26:43.600] – Mitch
Oh, thank you. So if schools can help kids get into a place, if teachers can do this, if the environment of the school can do this, and if the environment of the school can do this for the teachers as well, where the teachers also – especially because you want the kids to have it, the teachers have to feel –
[00:27:03.920] – Steve
Absolutely.
[00:27:04.400] – Mitch
Well-being and hopeful as well. So if we can build school communities where the participants in the community are coming from a position of well-being and hope and self-confidence, then, that’s the whole basis.
[00:27:22.580] – Steve
So administrators and instructional coaches, in effect, need to be modeling that in the way that they work with staff.
[00:27:35.660] – Mitch
Well, only if they want to build deep learning and happy lives for the kids. Okay, and I’m half joking, but practically, administrators, coaches, they have their jobs. And to the extent that society says it’s test scores, then they have it’s a really difficult balance because, you’re being judged on the test scores, but the test scores aren’t really what builds the school. They can be used as a result of all these other things that you do, but the pressure is like, okay, do the things that improve the test scores. And then that destroys the long-term effects of learning skills because learning is something, something that’s really enjoyable if you’re coming from a place of well-being.
[00:28:29.620] – Steve
I implemented a phrase years ago that the job of effective leaders is to protect the people you’re working with from the system.
[00:28:39.080] – Mitch
Wow.
[00:28:40.540] – Mitch
Oh, that’s so powerful.
[00:28:41.680] – Steve
So if you carry that back, it’s the teacher’s job in the classroom.
[00:28:45.980] – Mitch
Yep.
[00:28:46.470] – Steve
There’s a curriculum, there’s standardized tests, there’s things that we have to happen here at school. And part of my job as the teacher is to protect the kids from those things. And if I move it up to administration, if I move it up to I move it up to superintendent and board, the system is gonna exist. And sometimes, hopefully, I can change and modify the system. But a lot of my time as a leader has to be spent – I need the system in order to have the school open and have the kids there. So I can’t shut down the system, but I have to do my best to have the system not serve the system instead of the people that it’s supposed to be serving.
[00:29:29.920] – Mitch
And that’s a balance. And that’s an art. And it’s complex.
[00:29:37.620] – Steve
Yeah. Mitch, you touched a little bit on AI and knowing that’s a hot topic now, you got a little bit more you wanna say about how you see AI fitting in here? How does AI help us build resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration? And how can AI get in the way of those things happening? I’m assuming we’re gonna be dealing with the same kind of balance question.
[00:30:04.040] – Mitch
Right, yep. So I’m gonna say, I’m gonna first talk, I guess, a little bit about how it gets in the way, okay? And I think the reason it gets in the way is we have this emphasis in education on results. So we test based on, you know, test scores. And, you know, and so when we want kids to produce essays, we want kids to produce presentations, and so then we judge those presentations. And if the emphasis on education continues to be on the end products then AI will really prevent kids from learning the skills because you can always produce something faster and probably better in AI than if you did it yourself. If we can change the emphasis in schools into skills, skill development and knowledge development, and I realize that you test it based on, or you assess it based on the outcomes. But if you can build in your assessments so that they’re non-rewarding and non-punitive, and so just like if I’m playing a sport, I know I win by winning the points or I win by scoring baskets or whatever it is, but I’m really conscious of building the skills and I get good feedback like, okay, I’m not dribbling well or I’m not hitting my backhand well.
[00:31:37.770] – Mitch
Or when I’m doing dance, I’m not doing this well. Or when I’m playing notes, I’m not doing that. You know, I’m getting great feedback as I do things. And my whole mindset is I’m doing these things to develop the skills because I love doing it. And if I compete, it gives me a better chance of winning. And so with AI, we have to change the emphasis to skill development so that the kids are motivated to develop their skills. And the teachers are there to help the kids develop their skills, and the education system is there to help kids move up to become good adults, rather than where it’s become the tail wagging the dog. It’s like everything comes from the tests, and the tests determine – if you don’t get the high test score, then you get punished, or you get the high test score, then you get, you get rewarded. So in Conflict and Collaboration, we talk about really three mechanisms that we can use to go into a collaborative mode. One is strength-based feedback, one is motivational interviewing, and one is nonviolent communication. And I’m not going to go into them now.
[00:32:47.500] – Mitch
But if you’re going in, if you’re a teacher and you’re about to meet with a parent and you know that the parent is coming loaded for bear, right, you can put into AI, you know, something – “Here is the situation with the child. I’m talking with the parent. Here’s how the parent is likely to respond. I want to use strength-based feedback, motivational interviewing, and nonviolent communication despite the fact that this parent is likely to give triggering statements 3 or 4 times no matter what I do. Give me an example of how that conversation might look.” Whatever it comes back with, it’s not gonna be right or wrong, but I will guarantee you it’s gonna give you different ways of expressing things than you would’ve come up with on your own.
[00:33:35.370] – Steve
So Mitch, I think I’m at the same place you are. I’ve been using the word process where you’re using skills, and I think I want to bring that out. So if teachers have to switch their assessment and feedback to kids so that their assessment and their feedback is on the process rather than the assessment and the feedback on the finished product.
[00:34:00.420] – Mitch
100%. Well, 90%. And the reason I say 90% is it pains me to say the teachers have to do this because we always dump it on the teachers. And I think the teachers are doing – we’re all doing the best that we can. And when we come back and say, you know, teachers, you only have to do this, it makes it sound like, okay, nobody else is at fault. We have this whole system that we have to protect the kids from.
[00:34:29.790] – Steve
That’s the system. I have to protect the teachers from that system.
[00:34:33.000] – Mitch
Exactly. Exactly.
[00:34:34.160] – Steve
If I’m higher up.
[00:34:34.950] – Mitch
Yep.
[00:34:35.830] – Steve
But actually, it kind of fits my coaching approach because the process, if I’m giving feedback to the teacher, the process is important. So we can have a lesson where the kids learned a lot, but they didn’t learn the tested outcome.
[00:35:00.060] – Mitch
Yep.
[00:35:00.880] – Steve
Or the teacher learned a lot. The teacher learned a lot from a lesson that didn’t work.
[00:35:05.680] – Mitch
Yep. And teaching teachers, teaching people, to look for the gifts from things that didn’t work out rather than look for validation of I did it right or I did it wrong. So the gifts are,this is what I learned, this is what I got a chance to practice, or I’m just going to reward myself for having tried this and it didn’t work out. But still, I’m going to go for a pedicure because I tried this and I’m going to congratulate myself for trying it.
[00:35:37.150] – Steve
Well, Mitch, you’re going to have to come back on.
[00:35:40.850] – Mitch
Oh, I’d love to. I’d love to.
[00:35:42.360] – Steve
This is too much fun for me.
[00:35:46.140] – Mitch
Oh, thank you.
[00:35:47.470] – Steve
I hope the listeners can get as caught up in it as I am. But before we move on, would you, would you talk a little bit about the resources that you have available that listeners can, can follow up with and how they can go about that?
[00:36:03.310] – Mitch
Sure.
[00:36:04.120] – Steve
I only mentioned one of your books and you got two other books. How do people find out about those?
[00:36:09.860] – Mitch
Okay. So basically you can find out pretty much everything at my website, which is mindshiftingwithmitch.com. So if you go to the website, there’s two books out. One is, “The Mind Shifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success.” And then what should be the third book, but was the second one that I wrote because it seems to be this time of divisiveness, but it’s, “Mind Shifting: Conflict and Collaboration,” is volume 3 of a 3-part series. And this summer I’m going to start working on volume 2, which is the one on resilience. And I teach 3 courses. I’d love to get those courses accredited in more states so more teachers can take them. Those courses are free. And right now they’re, if you in New York State, if you go to New York State Teacher Center, you can look up MindShifting. If you’re in the state of Washington and you go to PDEnroller and you look up MindShifting, you can find the courses there. So I’d love to be in more states. And then also, again, so my mission is to get more people who are thinking this way. And so outside of the books and outside of the courses, I have a weekly newsletter which people can see on the website, but I also am putting together conversation guides so we can get these conversations going within schools and within PLCs and within districts.
[00:37:32.180] – Mitch
And the first one, the link will be on the show notes, but it’s how do you lead a discussion about why we react instead of respond. So you put together your PLC, you put together the school, and it’s understanding the mechanisms within the brain that get us to react instead of respond. It’s a discussion of how these things apply and what happens in schools with the administrators, with the teachers, with the counselors, with the kids, why each one of these different constituencies is reacting instead of responding. And then start discussing, well, what are some of the things that we can do so that we’re more likely to respond? So these discussion will be however long you wanna make them, but they’re designed to be 45 to 60 minutes. And the first one is out. They will always be free. And the link to the first one will be in the show notes on why we react instead of respond.
[00:38:28.910] – Steve
Thanks so much, Mitch. I know listeners are gonna wanna follow up with that. And as I said, I will be following you.
[00:38:37.080] – Mitch
Okay.
[00:38:37.400] – Steve
And I’ll be back to you to, schedule a return. And if something sparks you that, man, Steve and I ought to talk about this, feel free to reach out to me before I reach out to you. Yeah, thanks a lot, Mitch.
[00:38:53.330] – Mitch
Okay, thanks, Steve.
[00:38:56.450] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn @SteveBarkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs blogs at barkleypd.com.
