Happy Teacher Revolution with Danna Thomas
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Ross Romano: Welcome in, everybody, to the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks, as always, for being with us, and it's a pleasure to bring you a conversation here around some critical topics, some things that we've talked about before around teacher wellness, mental health, overall well being, and addressing the burnout and stress crisis.
And but it's something we can't really address enough because it is critically important. My guest is Danna Thomas. Danna is a former Baltimore City Public School teacher. She's the founder of the Happy Teacher Revolution, which is a global initiative to support the mental health and wellness of educators.
The organization has already supported thousands of teachers across the United States, Canada, Nigeria, Brazil, and Senegal by [00:01:00] providing educators with the time and space to feel, deal, and be real about the social emotional demands of the job. She is the author of a new book called Happy Teacher Revolution, The Educator's Roadmap to Claiming and Sustaining Joy.
Danna, welcome to the show.
Danna Thomas: Thank you so much, Ross. I'm so happy to be here and thank you to everybody who's listening in. I'm really excited to talk about teacher well being and mental health with you today.
Ross Romano: Excellent. So I wanted to start out with a little bit of, you know, there's a lot of research included in the book and in the background here to really understanding the extent and enormity of. of the stress levels at wellness concerns in the profession. And I think that's a good place to contextualize a lot of talk about.
So in your findings, what, how many teachers. are facing high levels of stress, higher than, you know, they should [00:02:00] be.
Danna Thomas: To answer your question, I'm going to spit a lot of numbers out so if anybody wants to learn more or specifically about the citations and, and sources that I'll be mentioning, they can check out our website, happyteacherrevolution. com, and get more information there, but there are studies that before the pandemic, coming out of the University of Missouri, has shown that 93 percent of teachers experience overwhelming levels of stress.
So if we apply that number to the United States alone, of the 3. 6 million teachers in the U. S., that means that there's an estimated 3. 3 million teachers who are stressed out, which means that there's an estimated 80 million children sitting in the classroom. A stressed out teacher. What was really interesting with Happy Teacher Revolution, now we are a professional development organization, we are MTSS, or Multi Tiered Systems of Support for Adult Social Emotional Learning and Well Being so we teach teachers, how to facilitate and hold community space for one another to really focus on that adult SEL.[00:03:00]
And to be honest with you, Ross, I was so focused on teacher burnout and teacher overwhelm, just like that study I just mentioned, especially leading up to the pandemic. And then suddenly it's like a light switch flipped. And instead of focusing on the 93 percent of teachers that are burnt out, I thought, what about the 7%?
that aren't. What are they doing? Can we measure it? Can we replicate it? Can it be a little less shrouded in mystery? And so that's when we really leaned into evaluating the program and program evaluation through the lens of external researchers who are experts in the field of positive psychology. And that's where we learned there's two big issues in the field today.
So first and foremost, This is a new frontier when it comes to teacher mental health and well being. This is something that hasn't necessarily been studied before or evaluated. When I first started Happy Teacher Revolution and Googled teacher mental health, Nothing came up. Everything was very student focused, which I'm grateful for, that we [00:04:00] have a lens of awareness around the need of supporting our students mental health and well being.
I was a student who struggled with my mental health and well being. My teacher saved my life. That's the reason I became a teacher myself. So, of course that is, is so important. But the two big issues in the field today is number one, people are doing research. People are doing research on burnout.
Thankfully, that's something that's happening more, but they're looking at all the barriers, they're looking at all the problems, and they're not looking at the protective factors and things that lead to success. And big problem number two is that people are conflating lack of burnout with well being.
Just because we might be able to say that, Oh, teachers are less burnt out. It doesn't necessarily mean that teachers are well or that teachers are happy. And so that's where happy teacher revolution comes in. It's not just in terms of being a solution or being an opportunity to develop these protective factors and develop an opportunity that can lead to success, but we're also measuring.
Pre and [00:05:00] post data of getting a snapshot of that well being of teachers and folks who participate in the program before implementation and after.
Ross Romano: What's unique about teacher stress, teacher burnout? Is it, is it the causes? Is it, is there something else that, you know, is unique compared to,
Danna Thomas: Yeah,
Ross Romano: you know, the stress and burnout in other professions?
Danna Thomas: I think what I hear from teachers the most is that veteran teachers are saying to me in years 10, 20, 30 plus years in doing this work, why does it keep getting harder? When you think about an attorney or maybe a medical professional or doctor physician, in years 10, 20, 30, It's not necessarily getting more and more and more challenging.
And yet for our educators, it's as if more is getting piled onto their plates, more is expected of them. And not only that, but the constant revolving door of teachers and teacher turnover puts an invisible weight on our veteran [00:06:00] teachers. To kind of pick up pick up the slack. There's an emotional labor that happens every time a great teacher leaves the classroom in terms of a new person coming in and teaching them the ropes.
And this is how the copy machine works and you gotta do this, that, and the other. So, I think that that's been a huge issue is that our veteran teachers, our experts in the field. are underutilized and not valued at the level that they should be. And that our teachers are leaving in droves. I mean, if we had that same number of people quitting in law enforcement, or that same number of people quitting as attorneys or as physicians the world would be up in arms.
And yet we're looking at teachers as if they're renewable resources and they're, and they're just aren't. (ad here)
Ross Romano: Yeah. I mean, it's the shortage and the lack of new teachers that are Entering the profession wanting to enter in the large numbers that have left is right now a significant challenge to solve and it's not going to [00:07:00] be solved without starting with. Retention, you know, better wellness, better you know, treatment opportunities, all the things that the current educators want, which in turn will make it more appealing outside of that.
What are, are there certain things that teachers are expressing that they want, that they feel like would solve some of the areas, you know, where they're having stress that's unaddressed?
Danna Thomas: Yeah. Well, of course, first and foremost, We need to pay teachers more. I mean, that's something that just is universal, that our teachers should not be on the cover of Time magazine for selling their blood plasma to earn a living wage, which was the 2018 cover of Time magazine but it's that and.
Valuing teachers as human beings, not human doing, so the data driven culture has been incredibly dehumanizing, not only for teachers, but for our students. I think the biggest issue is teachers lack of autonomy of being [00:08:00] seen as experts that they did, in fact, earn the credentials and attend the courses and take the praxis tests and so on and so forth.
So they should be trusted and treated as professionals. For And honestly, the biggest thing for me is the adult social emotional support for the job, so, we hear a lot about social emotional learning and encouraging things like self awareness, social awareness, relationship skills, getting along together with our students for our students, and yet, where are the it.
spaces for us to engage in those same competencies as adults. There might be the one off, you know, back to school get together that happens once the beginning of the school year, maybe at the end of the school year, but what about all of that time in between? And how can we foster our teachers, not just in terms of self care and individual well being, but collective care and collective well being?
Ross Romano: Yeah. What does contagion look like from the teachers you've talked to or from your own [00:09:00] personal experience? I guess, you know, when it is kind of going around particularly maybe you have newer teachers who are coming in optimistic about what the job's going to be or you know, but then they're in a building where it's clear that this one and that one are, you know, are overwhelmed by the stress, but you know, how does that kind of find its way around a building?
Danna Thomas: Yeah, so the good news is, joy is a contagion too. You know, it's like there can be, there can be positive contagions. It's interesting, one of the, one of the slogans that some teachers have shared with me, especially our new teachers, have shared that when they first started teaching me, We're encouraged to avoid the teacher's lounge at all costs.
Do not go into the teacher's lounge. That's the where everybody goes to vent. It's the negativity death spiral. Stay out of there. And it's really fascinating to consider, you know, where is a [00:10:00] space for teachers to be authentic? And to be uncensored and not to have the mask on or to have that performative nature and rather be their authentic selves and be witnessed in that authenticity amongst their colleagues.
And so what has been really interesting is the Happy Teacher Revolution meeting space, when it's valued and supported by leadership and in school and district communities and seen as such, That's the same, same importance as professional development for literacy, professional development for math, but this has a professional development space for teachers to prioritize and arrive at their own solutions around their own well being and, and witness others in doing the same that it gets compartmentalized, that when teachers can be in a safe space, a brave space to be authentic and not necessarily totally positive, where, where We can name toxic positivity and say, look, this is really challenging or, or here's something that I'm grappling with and not necessarily have people come in and fix and solve everything [00:11:00] right away.
But to again, just be witnessed in it. I think what is incredibly powerful is that it builds a camaraderie with the staff and it builds a camaraderie with that particular community. So that way, when we show up Monday morning, we have this level of resilience that might not have been as developed otherwise.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I was wondering and leading toward with that is what's the tipping point, right? Where the, the contagiousness of joy outweighs the contagiousness of, stress and burnout. And if it's a 93 to 7 ratio, right, that's, that's tough, but how can we chip away at that a bit at a time to the point where it's 20, 30, you know, 35, 40 percent are not just, you know, content, you know, not just not burned out, but really feeling joyful and enthusiastic so that that can, you know, really begin to rub off [00:12:00] on those who are feeling, you know, they're leaning in the direction of burnout or they're not not seeing a lot of answers.
I mean, because ultimately, yes, It is a, there's a systemic problem, there's a district and a building issue and those are things that need to be worked on and resolved. Ultimately, those things are going to happen on whatever timeline they happen or don't every individual teacher can't, it's out of their control.
But what's in their control is their own view, their own attitude, their own way of, you know, you say claiming joy, right? Claiming their, the opportunities to have the impact they want to have and to say, if this is my calling and this is my purpose, and this is the [00:13:00] work I want to do, I'm going to be responsible for.
making that happen. I'm not going to feel like I'm being forced out of it by somebody else. And, you know, so that's not to say that if some, if somebody has reached the point where they're burned out and they need to make it a decision they need to make that that's, that's a bad thing for them to do, but it is a bad thing if it's happening in the numbers it's happening now, like for the system, right, for the future.
And, but it's also a case of Everybody should make their own decisions about what they want their career to be. That goes both ways, right? That also goes to not saying, well, there's all these things. systemic issues, and I can't change them, and even though this is what I really want to do, I have no choice but to leave.
We all have options and decisions and choices we could make inside of ourselves, [00:14:00] but I would think an environment where I'm seeing examples of that, where I'm seeing, okay, well, what are these people doing? Because they seem to be this teacher's been here as long as I have, and he or she seems to be doing okay.
Like, I guess, how do we get that? Yeah, that contagiousness working in the right direction to the point where it really starts to, it's not just, okay, those, those naive, you know, two over there. But there's more, I guess, social pressure in a sense, positive social pressure to see what it means to claim my own joy, my own happiness, my own positive outlook.
Yeah. Yeah,
Danna Thomas: of a part of the book in the beginning, there's actually a permission slip I made, but I want folks to tear out and put up just like a permission slip for any field trip or anything like that for folks to consent to and actually [00:15:00] actively sign up for give themselves permission to.
claim their own well being, that they're not voluntold to do this. I like to say that word voluntold, but it's like you have, now you have to take care of yourself. This has to be something that folks arrive arrive at with their own agency, with their own sovereignty, with their own autonomy. And the autonomy piece really speaks to something that we utilize in our meetings called the 12 Choices.
And they're also in the book these affirmations are actually custom coloring pages, so to keep the book more affordable, there's no coloring, but I thought, you know, people can color this in during PD, and the 12 choices are adapted from Vicki Davis's 12 Choices to Step Back from Burnout, but they're things like, I choose the battles worth fighting.
I choose to disconnect and attach with love. I choose to make time for sleep. I choose to schedule and prioritize what really matters. And no matter how the school year started, I choose to finish well because I think that autonomy piece or folks really actively having those sentence starters of [00:16:00] I choose to let go or I choose to be grateful is really empowering for folks.
And then finally, The book itself is actually divided into three separate parts. So well being through the lens of the individual, well being through the lens of cultivating relationships, and well being through the lens of systemic change. Because it's all the above, and it's just, it, everything ends and begins with the next, that we can't cultivate those relationships that are well if we're not coming from a place of wellness, and we can't possibly enact systemic change if we aren't cultivating that individual wellness, because then we'll burn out.
There's a lot of change at, at. advocates and activists who are burning out. And there's a lot of social innovators who are burning out because it's a lot. It's a lot to be working within a system that isn't designed with the well being and mental health of the adults in mind. This is something that we're operating within and learning about and collecting data all, all along the way.
And I'm just so proud of Happy Teacher Revolution and our research teams specifically, because [00:17:00] we have now found through preliminary findings that our participants with higher self perception of that psychological well being were over four times more likely to stay in the field for three or more years, which is huge.
Because that's ultimately that's the end game is I want to be obsolete. Happy teacher revolution doesn't exist anymore because everyone's happy and we don't, it doesn't need to exist. Because really, yeah, when folks are well, they're going to stick around, they're going to stay in the work. And and it's not just.
In teaching, it's any job. I think it makes a difference when employees are well and committed to what they're doing, whether it's a barista or, you know, whether it's somebody who's a physician or in any other capacity. But when we're in the work of supporting and serving children, I think it's especially important that those adults are well.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. Well, then that seems like a really critical threshold that that number, right? Because it's going to take until that [00:18:00] third year, fourth year when you feel like you know what you're doing and you have efficacy and And, and have, so now I have a more optimistic outlook for the job because now I feel like I know what I'm doing.
It's, it's going to be a lot easier to leave a profession at the point when you're still feeling like I'm overwhelmed and I really don't even know what I'm doing. And, and so maybe I, maybe I should just kind of go do something else. But once you get to the point where, okay. Now I, I know, I, I know how to do this job.
I know how to teach. I know my students are learning. I'm, I no longer have to, I'm not overwhelmed by that part anymore. Now I have these other things that I still have to continue to, to work on, but it's less daunting because at least I have some confidence in myself as a professional. You know, it kind of is making me think there's another thing and you may have more [00:19:00] specific ideas than this.
I don't have the answers, but, but it might be worth teachers at least reflecting on is. how to use of the apparently negative realities of the state of the profession and the state of schools to your advantage and to look at it a different way. So, you know, there's not enough teachers or overworks, etc. One, you know, the reason I think why The stress is so pervasive and why it's felt so acutely is because Teachers are there because they want students to succeed and when they feel like they're not having the resources, the support, the energy, the ability to help students as much as they want to, or they feel like the school isn't doing so, right, that feels very stressful and challenging and it can lead to a [00:20:00] loss of hope.
But one thing is, okay, identify like what are the things that are making an impact on students. Success and what aren't those? What are, like, what am I being, what am I spending time on just because I'm spending time, or what am I even being asked to spend time on that I know has nothing to do with student success?
Like, what are some opportunities I have to make some choices that may improve? my wellness are not going to harm students and eventually will help them because and you know in another way of saying it like everybody's in a different situation but if you're in a school that is struggling to find enough teachers That's, I mean, and you're there and you're doing the job, you know, you have to think about you, you might have some leverage, right?
Now, [00:21:00] again, like that doesn't, that's not to give anybody what the answer is for them, but it's something to reflect on and think about. Okay, like is part of my overwhelm because I'm working all these long hours and am I spending a lot of those hours on things that I know aren't, don't actually make a difference?
And how might I Choose wellness over that. How might I at the very least. have a conversation and be proactive and advocate right with things that because it's been the status quo or because somebody may not realize the, the negative effect it's having. And rather than being silent and suffering and just continuing to do it again, another opportunity to make a choice, to have ownership over that and to say, you know what?
I can see very clearly here at this point, like I, I have experience, I understand what, what teaching is and what's helping students and what's not, and it's not helping them if I am [00:22:00] getting totally overworked here by spending a bunch of time on, on the things that I know are not the most important.
But I don't know, what does that sound like anything to you?
Danna Thomas: Well, yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing that came up was, the term moral distress, which I go into in the book, which is when what you believe should happen does not happen, which results in a caring of dissonance in the body. So not only does that cause stress, but your body actually takes on that stress.
And so I think it's important for teachers to name that and validate that, to let themselves feel like, yeah, acknowledge and affirm how valid their stress is, especially in this day and age, and in what teachers are grappling with and facing the repercussions and ripple effects of the pandemic on our students social emotional learning, as well as teachers who started teaching in 2020, you know, our teachers in years three, don't know what it's like to not be a [00:23:00] pandemic teacher.
And I think it's important to name those things like moral distress and to give our educators permission to trust their gut, trust their instinct. If there's something isn't sitting right and it's like, I don't think this is really in service of, of all students here in my community, or I don't think this is in service of, you know, there can be a lot of fear That teacher's experience when it comes to that speaking up and that self advocating like it's it can be really tough and really scary.
And so I talk about in my book in the systemic change piece that, you know, if it feels tough and scary, form allyships. Maybe there's a teacher down the hall who feels Strengthen numbers, you know, find someone else who might be able to articulate it and back them up if you feel like you're kind of the lone wolf or the only one who's feeling this way.
I think it's also important to be data driven with these things. Make sure you're referencing the school climate and culture surveys and data or, you know, whatever is might align or boost kind of what your instincts or intuition is [00:24:00] nudging you. And it's important that we sunset policies and protocols that aren't in best service of students.
I mean, I think the education system is slow to change, but we're learning more and more about being trauma informed. We're learning more and more about the importance of social emotional competencies and things like that. So I think it's important that we have a growth Mindset, and that we stay open minded in terms of evolving and improving what it looks like to support pedagogy, what it looks like to support our teachers, that hopefully when folks are student teaching and taking the praxis test, maybe there will be a praxis question about vicarious trauma, moral distress, and caregiver burnout someday, like, I'm hoping this is something that gets talked about more, and that we prepare teachers for as they embark on their journey in education, but Yeah, I think you named a lot of important things that, that is visceral and resonates with a lot of folks.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Oh, that, I mean, again, they go back to that word claiming right in the subtitle here, the [00:25:00] book that that there's at least, you know, again, like, there's opportunities to reflect and say, what can, what can I do here? There's, you know, as it pertains to compensation, as it pertains to you know, other, other aspects of the way the teaching profession is kind of handled and treated.
One of the common complaints is that
Teachers aren't treated like professionals, right? Okay, I feel like I'm not being treated like a professional. Am I acting like a professional? Like, what do professionals do? They take accountability for themselves and their work. They know how to have a conversation and advocate and, you know, do these things, right?
Okay, well, let me show. I want to have Teachers should have a voice in shaping what education is. Am I claiming my voice? Am I finding opportunities [00:26:00] to make that happen? Or am I Just going home and venting about it. But when I'm in the workplace, am I, am I doing what I can do? And look, if I try to do these things and nobody listens, it doesn't make a difference, et cetera.
Then that's another issue. But have I, have I tried that for my coalition? Like you said, have I spoken to my peers? as professionals and said, okay, as professionals, what do we want to see here? And what, what do we want to do? And how are we going to try to make that happen? And having an action plan versus just, you know, kind of saying that it's hopeless.
And, and like, there's, there's a time and place to let off steam. And there's a time and place to say, well, if I want this to be better, like, How can I try to make it better? And I, there's certainly no guarantees that every school, every, every school leadership. You know, staff, every district [00:27:00] is going to have the, you know, the insight, the the empathy to, to actually listen and make these things happen.
But sometimes we don't know until we try. We don't know. I mean, there's overwhelm for a lot of those folks too, right? There's a lot of things that are challenging. And once we get into the middle of. Cycle. It's hard to stop it and say, okay, can we just pause everything and look at whatever's happening here and change things?
So they're just, they're opportunities. But I think one of the important things that I wanted to ask is, and this would speak directly to how important it is. What are the effects on students? What are the consequences for students when When we have this 93 percent of teachers feeling highly stressed,
Danna Thomas: So the consequence for students, it's threefold. So first, when we talk about [00:28:00] academic achievement, there was a study from the University of Arizona that linked teacher depression to low student math scores. There was another study out of Canada, the University of British Columbia, that had measured, they took biometric data samples.
So they had teachers And students of those teachers, they happen to be middle school students, who loved this part of the experiment give saliva samples, so they had to spit into these containers. And the middle schoolers loved this part. But what they did when they measured the saliva samples, they were measuring the stress hormone that we call cortisol.
And they found that teachers with higher levels of Cortisol or higher le levels of stress correspondingly had students with higher levels of stress, which means to say that stress is contagious both ways. The last impact on students is through the lens of early childhood education. The Yale Child Study Center held a study where they measure teacher's job satisfaction.[00:29:00]
and found that teachers who were stressed out, burnt out, low job satisfaction in early childhood classrooms were more likely to suspend and refer students of color more than white students and boys more than girls at a rate of four times as much. And so when there are that disproportionate amount of suspensions and referrals for students of color and boys more that can lead to a ripple effect.
a ripple effect and impact in later years on their reading scores by the age of third grade. And so in places where I used to teach in Baltimore, they actually use those third grade reading level scores to determine how many prison cells to build 20 plus years later. And so if we're not adequately supporting our teachers mental health and well being, the impact on students is that we're not impacting student academic achievement positively.
We're having a negative impact on student social emotional learning and we're perpetuating the school to prison pipeline. So it's become an equity issue.
Ross Romano: you know, [00:30:00] so what does it look like when we turn it around?
Danna Thomas: Yeah.
Ross Romano: So what are what the teachers do to claim and sustain their joy? What are how our classrooms looking different? What is what is it all? How does it all come together?
Danna Thomas: Yeah. So the first way it comes together is considering work life integration. That when it comes to your wellbeing, it's not something that bookends your workday, like before you get to School, and then after you leave or on the weekends, it's how can you integrate well being into the day, even alongside your students, even alongside your colleagues.
For me, that looked like having a rest and digest. So after incredibly high stimulus times of the schedule. For my students, that was cafeteria transitioning to lunch and coming back. We had a moment of decompression. I needed it too, that we did together. And in that case, you know, my students [00:31:00] had developed such awareness that when they would see me start escalating, they would look at me at five years old and say, Ms.
Thomas, it's time to take a take five breath. I mean, they could recognize the changes and they were my little well being accountability partners, to be honest. Another strategy is a win journal. Having a journal of wins. At the end of each day, whether it's a teeny tiny little win, write it down, jot it down, write down that win so that by the end, your journal's filled up of all of these micro moments of glimmers rather than triggers.
This is a, term coined by Deb Dana, and we go into this in the book too. But glimmers are the micro moments of joy. They actually help rewire and recircuit our brain to notice these bright spots or notice these gratitude moments. And it's a beautiful practice to do alongside your students. Another thing I would suggest is joining Happy Teacher Revolution.
This is something that I'm really passionate about the network of folks who've launched and led these support group meetings within their own communities. It's been really beautiful to witness Folks who've gone through our training [00:32:00] and held these spaces in their classes, in their communities, in their neighborhoods and hearing feedback, not just from the teachers themselves, but their spouses saying my wife is a different person walking through the door at the end of the day, or my mom has time on the weekends to do X, Y, and Z, where before she was driving to school even on a Saturday to get stuff done.
So, it's just really, it's just been really inspiring to even hear from colleagues about other teachers saying like, wait a second, you're smiling in the hallway, transitioning to the cafeteria. What's going on here? Like, what's in your drink? What do you say? What's the secret? And yeah, the secret is claiming joy.
And the thing about it is I wish it was a quick fix and one size fits all solution, but it's not. Everyone has their own unique journey and roadmap to claiming joy, and it's been fascinating to hear folks evolutions of that and what brings them joy, so, some people there is a teacher I met who absolutely loves watching reruns of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, specifically from the 90s.
[00:33:00] That's her joy. That's her bright spot. So she'll put on a clip on YouTube of the Macy's parade and like that orients her in a positive space. For me, I love playing my saxophone. I love creative outlets, gardening, things like that. And that's unique to me. I have a friend who loves to run. I really don't.
Ross Romano: Yeah
Danna Thomas: But that's something that's her journey to joy. And so I hope that for folks who engage with Happy Teacher Revolution, whatever capacity, whatever spectrum it is whether it's just following us on Instagram or reading the book or even, you know, getting trained, if that's something someone's interested in doing, I think it's important that folks realize it's a unique journey and it's it's not going to be a prescribed formula for everybody.
Ross Romano: Do you have sir, you know a certain way you speak with the teacher who is? skeptical of, of joining the, you know, the revolution or is feeling like it's outside their comfort zone, right? Maybe they're feeling like, well, [00:34:00] I'm just not that joyful person in general. It's not just about teaching or, you know, anything like that, or, or it feels, you know, maybe it feels, I don't know.
I don't know how they, you know, inauthentic to them in some way, or just they're, they're worried. Well, you If I go into my school and I'm trying this and I'm one against many, I'm, I, I don't know if people are going to listen to me or, you know, whatever, whatever their, their misgivings are. How do you talk them through that and get them to see the benefits of giving it a shot?
Danna Thomas: Yeah, I've definitely come across those teachers for sure, you know, who are sitting there with their arms crossed and the bag of grading next to their chair that they're going to do instead of this whole happy revolution thing. What's this all about? And to be honest with you, I could see how the name is really incredibly misleading because it's It's not necessarily about happiness.
It's about the full spectrum of human emotions and experiencing all of it and sitting with all of it. [00:35:00] Sometimes it can be really uncomfortable to sit with joy for folks. I can feel really familiar because Chaos and cortisol is, is the norm, is the baseline. Happy Teacher Revolution, to be totally honest with you, started from a place of deep unhappiness and deep overwhelm.
I started this grassroots support group movement when I was teaching 39 kindergartners in Southeast Baltimore in a classroom without heating. Or air conditioning with asbestos in the tiles and lead in the water and administration that was harassing young female teachers on the staff who weren't tenured.
Like to say I was in a toxic work environment is a gross understatement. And so I created this. Honestly, for myself, I needed a bright spot to sit alongside my comrades, the folks to my left and to my right, who I thought, wow, y'all are the ones who really do have my back. And then I realized, wow, we're all operating within this system.
There's Happy Principal Revolution, Happy Superintendent Revolution, Happy Administrative [00:36:00] Secretary Revolution, Lunch Lady Bus Driver Revolution. Like anybody in the capacity of serving and supporting students, We've got to claim our joy and well being. And what's interesting is that in the realm of positive psychology, we're actually not measuring happiness in our research scale.
We're measuring well being and resilience, especially in the face of deep adversity. Is, is, What we're in fact measuring. I want to develop our own scale someday, the Happy Teacher Revolution Wellbeing Scale, then incorporate some of the things from the RIF Scale of Wellbeing, from Maslach's Burnout Inventory, from the Professional Quality of Life Index, but also, yeah, in some capacity, measuring happiness and measuring joy, because I think that that's really what this is all about, is sitting with the full spectrum of human emotions and not just censoring out the sparkly, blissful, rainbow parts.
Ross Romano: know, how does it change the way you see students once you start to see yourself in your reality [00:37:00] differently?
Danna Thomas: I think you start to see students as the brilliant, wise, incredible humans that they are. It's like, it opens up this pathway of exchange of teaching and learning to go both ways. And I think it really opens up an opportunity to be authentic and vulnerable in the think aloud of of navigating the human experience.
So when I taught kindergarten, I was reading a story. I would stop at my little post it notes and think aloud my thought process to demonstrate the concepts that I was teaching. Oh, I wonder if this is an inference of this one. I wonder if, and why don't we do that? Think aloud. When we're faced with real conflict in real life when it comes to those social emotional skills.
So with my students they've taught me everything I needed to know. They taught me the importance of laughter, of play, of getting outside and getting moving, of having a snack when I'm hungry. So I don't get hangry, of going to the bathroom when I need to go to the bathroom, instead [00:38:00] of holding it and numbing out my body.
So I don't have an accident. Like my kindergartners taught me everything. And it totally changed my view of them when I started taking care of myself because I'll be honest before I was pouring into my wellbeing, I started to develop resentment towards them. I would think to myself, I spent all weekend on this unit plan, this lesson plan, this bulletin board, these emails to your fan, this, that, and the other, and you showed up and you disrespected me by doing X, Y, and Z, not thinking to myself, wait a second, that behavior might be an indicator of trauma.
Oh, that, that might be an indicator that. This child is actually seeking social emotional support in this type of way. And I took it personally, like, Oh, how dare, like thinking they woke up that day just to really grind my gears. And it just wasn't that, that wasn't, that wasn't the case at all. And so I think I had so much more patience not only with them, but with myself in some of these More dialed up moments.
One of our principals who piloted Happy [00:39:00] Teacher Revolution, one of my favorite quotes he ever said was, a dysregulated adult cannot regulate a dysregulated child.
Ross Romano: Huh.
Danna Thomas: So if, if my lid is flipped, my frontal cortex is going off, there's no way that I can dysregulate a child who also is popping off in their frontal cortex.
And it's twice as many dysregulated people in the space. So, that's really the biggest takeaway for me is that when I can be grounded in myself and rooted in my practices of well being and take a deep breath and take a moment to respond, then I'm doing so from a much more grounded place rather than potentially developing resentment.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. It's I was just recording earlier today for my other podcast sideline sessions and one of the, Things that came up around the, the mental game of sports is like looking at it as what if I win versus what if I lose and putting too much pressure and [00:40:00] perseverating on if, if, if I, if I fail in this, then, and it just starts to spiral and we can't perform versus saying, what if this goes well?
Then what? You know, and and how important is that for more of an asset based understanding of our students and saying, okay, what if this kid does really great on this assignment, then we can take that and go here. And that leads to this. And, and once you start to look at it that way, do you start believing that's going to happen?
Do you? You know, take some slightly different actions or, or even does the student get a different impression from you and feel like, okay, my teacher seems to believe I'm going to do well on this. Does that change their confidence level, right? And their engagement and their joy and all those things, but it starts with That you really have to be thinking that way and then you can't, it's, it's not false, but you have to be like, Oh, I switched it.
Well, [00:41:00] what's the upside of preparing for failure or expecting failure? Well, not much, right? We do everything we can to make sure that we hold on to that C versus saying, well, you know, okay, the kid can probably get a C without, you know, Doing anything special, but what if it's a B? What if it's an A?
But you know, it all, it all comes from that overall feeling, those, those positive feelings toward the work that you do and who you are. Your wellness, well being, and your ability to affect that kind of outcome. And then seeing others around you as capable of the same. So it's, you know, it's, it's great stuff.
Before we finish, I did want to ask you, who is Begonia?
Danna Thomas: Begonia is my 25 foot peach school bus that I will be living on in a week. So by the time folks listen to this, I will be full time on Begonia, my bus, [00:42:00] in my Miss Frizzle era. She is an Austin School District bus that's been converted, so there's a bed and a shower and an oven and a sink and a bathroom and all of it.
And I will be heading across the country, holding Happy Teacher Revolution pop up support group meetings, as well as book events and book signings across the U S. So I am really thrilled to be embarking on this next adventure and sharing the work of Happy Teacher Revolution with folks who've already launched Happy Teacher and brand new folks to the movement too.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, where can listeners learn more about, about that tour? About your work in general?
Danna Thomas: Yeah, check out our website, happyteacherrevolution. com. We have a free platform, resources the revolution with a bunch of freebies and info and references and articles that I had mentioned some of the data from today. Also follow us on social media on Instagram at happyteacherrevolution. And if you want to follow [00:43:00] along the school bus adventures, that's revolutiontourbus on Instagram.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, listeners, we will put all these links below. You can find the book, Happy Teacher Revolution, on wiley. com, Amazon, wherever you get your books. You can also go to happyteacherrevolution. com to learn about the book and and the tour and everything else as well. We'll put the social media links there so you can follow along if it's It's coming to a city near you.
You can participate or you can even just read the book and and learn what you can do in your school as a teacher, as an administrator to help to, to bring more well being to the profession. We know how important it is, and each of you really has an opportunity to. make a difference there. So please do check all of that out at the links below.
Please also subscribe to the authority if you haven't already. We'll have more author interviews coming your way every week on all kinds of topics that help you every day. So please subscribe, please check out the links, [00:44:00] and uh, Dana, thanks so much for being here.
Danna Thomas: Thank you so much for having me. That was a blast.
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