The things we read, view, and hear influence the ways we interact with the world. How can we be authentic and keep an open-mind to learning more in a world that constantly touts a confusing mix of information? Ruth and Becca discuss paying attention to the things we pay attention to in order to nourish healthy regulation in ourselves and others.
Show Notes
Choice Literacy sponsored this episode.
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Quotables
“We want kids open and thinking, not closed and unwilling to consider other opinions.”
“Who we are as people is influenced or designed by the things that we’re exposed to.”
“Intentionally curating the media children are consuming is of benefit to the children and to society.”
“Good and hard live in tension together.”
“Whether you’re in a good or hard moment, you are a worthy, lovable human, and you are doing great things.”
“Being authentic and genuine in part means being able to hold two different emotions at the same time.”
“Pay attention to what you’re consuming, how it’s impacting how you’re interacting with other people, and the way you’re viewing other people.”
“Pay attention to what you pay attention to and see where it goes.”
Let’s Be Social
Transcript (AI-Generated)
[00:00:00] Ruth: If our bias is these unconscious thoughts based on a particular characteristic, then really, how can I draw a wider circle around the things that I’m understanding?
The things we read, view and hear influence the ways we interact with the world. How can we be authentic and keep an open mind to learning more in a world that constantly touts a confusing mix of information?
This is sticky Hope.
Hey, Becca. So I was wondering what you’ve been either reading, viewing, or hearing lately.
[00:00:46] Becca: So recently I dove into the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.
[00:00:52] Ruth: I’m reading that too.
[00:00:54] Becca: That is crazy.
[00:00:57] Ruth: Who started it, huh?
[00:01:00] Becca: I’m really not that far into it, but already it’s kind of shifting my thinking around how I’m viewing my students and the lens I’m using to think about what they’re exposed to. But also it’s like impacting my own thinking and decision making as a mom and as a teacher, and the choices I make about what I’m allowing to be consumed.
[00:01:25] Ruth: When do you read it? Do you read it in the mornings? No. You don’t read it in the mornings?
[00:01:30] Becca: No, no, I am not reading in the morning. Honestly, it’s like an evening read when the kids are up in the middle of the night and I’m waiting for them to fall back asleep. I’ll read then and then I get some time on the weekends.
[00:01:45] Ruth: I’ve been reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.
I’m almost to the end of it. I have less than a chapter left to go and I.
So everything that I’m kind of thinking about is filtered through that.
I also just today. Well, I sent it to you because I was so excited or interested in it, but on LinkedIn I was following some more, just pages or people who are doing some thinking about trauma informed care, the way that brains are working. I was really watching that and I came across this one. That’s the alliance against seclusion and restraint. And that really piqued my interest. So now as I’m following more and more, you know, I’m seeing more and more information about. About that.
[00:02:39] Becca: Yeah, you sent that to me and it was super intriguing one to like just even think about that, right. The idea of an alliance against seclusion and restraint when, like, I’ve had to be intentionally trained in those things for safety purposes. So I really want to learn more because, like, we don’t want to use seclusion and restraint if we don’t have to. But if there are even more alternatives that I don’t know of yet, like, I’m excited to learn about that. And it Was interesting to see, to kind of compare the list of speakers at this conference. Like, people I’ve heard before, like, oh, I kind of know what that person’s stance on things is. And then, like, oh, here’s a new name for me to learn from. And it. As the afternoon kind of wore on, it made me realize that, like, I was excited and saw it as a lens of learning. And how, like, how did I form that kind of thinking when I could have taken it as, like, oh, I just don’t agree with that. Or I don’t. That’s not the stance I take. And, like, close the door. And it’s been, like, intentionally built in my thinking on my own part, but also, like, who I surround myself with and the work that I’ve done in grad school is to be so open to new ideas and new learning.
It just has kind of become a part of who I am. And that’s what we want for our kids. Right. We want them open and thinking as opposed to kind of closed and unwilling to consider other opinions.
[00:04:13] Ruth: Last time, we were talking about Savann’s definition of bias, which is an unconscious thought about a particular characteristic. And then, you know, as we were just talking about the things that we’re consuming, how that leads our thinking to a different. To different things. You know, we’re just kind of angled and ready to hear. Like, I’m perking up whenever I hear people talking about habits, which everybody’s talking about this time of year. And I, like, I started atomic habits several weeks ago, and I just think that the way that we’re seeing the world really ma. Like, the what’s cons, what we’re consuming is influencing that.
[00:05:03] Becca: Yeah. So I. When you started this conversation with me earlier, you were thinking through kind of like, what are we consuming? What are the kinds of things we’re consuming? And we kind of came up with three different categories. Right? Like, what we’re watching, what we’re reading, and what we’re hearing. And I feel like there are environments in which you do each of those things, and then some environments you do all of those things. Right.
And who we are as people can kind of be influenced or designed by the things that we’re exposed to. Right. And if we think about the students in front of us, they’re kind of in the most vulnerable place in some ways, because they’re surrounded by people who are intentionally or not curating this world for them to consume. And so if children are allowed free reign to consume and read and hear and see media without Any filter, they’re exposed to a lot of information that they may not know how to process. And, or they could be consuming some very specific information or media that their parents have screened and have intentionally approved for them to have access to.
And I think that you could go to either extreme with that. Right. There’s. As, as usual, there’s some kind of continuum here of like no filter at all and too much control. And how does each end of that influence who these children are becoming and the, how they’re viewing the world?
But I don’t think in the world that our kids are living in right now. And I, as I read the Anxious Generation, this is like even more in the forefront of my thinking. Like, I don’t think that we’re considering how much access they have to information and how it’s impacting their choices and how they’re viewing the world. And we could use it to our benefit to intentionally curate what they’re exposed to and to their benefit.
[00:07:14] Ruth: Yeah, I was a little while, it was a while ago, I was reading a book called Worthy and she was talking about the information that was coming at us. And really people who, they know things that I don’t know and they’re tracking things that I’m not tracking, but basically notice that there’s kind of two buckets that the information we’re consuming can go into now. Of course, there’s more than two buckets. We all know we just don’t live in a binary world, but a lot of what we are reading, viewing, hearing can either fall into this bucket of good vibes. Okay. And so this is where we hear people talking about the highlight reel.
Has even. Have you gotten.
Okay, so we, but we’ve heard the, the impact of the highlight reel in social media on the way that people are feeling anxious or they’re feeling their self worth is just declining because they feel like everybody else is having a good time and they’re not. So it’s kind of this good vibes bucket.
[00:08:30]Becca: Yeah. And I think if we think about our students who are growing up in a world where the good vibes bucket is, is kind of what everyone’s aiming for. Right. So our youngest students are watching all of the adults around them, you know, capturing moments and immediately posting it on social media and wanting to get, to take 30 pictures to capture a moment to get the perfect one to post. And watching the teenagers kind of comparing looks and who’s doing what this weekend and the reality that that’s creating is actually like this desire for perfection and this Yearning to be able to do all of the things and be all of the things that they’ seeing all of these people be and do when in reality that’s just like a sliver of information of the reality of this, this world these people are living. And that, that’s really scary and detrimental for our youngest learners and our youngest kids because we don’t want them thinking that that’s what life is because it’s not.
[00:09:35] Ruth: Right? Right. So, like what, what actually happens when a lot of what we’re consuming falls into that good vibe bucket is we learn this positive mask and it’s, it’s not authentic, it’s not genuine. And I think there’s a lot of roots of perfectionism that are growing when we, when everything seems like it’s good vibes. Now, the other bucket, and remember there’s more than one, but the other big bucket is this bucket of endless mishaps. So if we’re thinking about our feeds and our listeners, if you’re thinking about your feed, sometimes you can see a name before they see the post and you’re like, oh, I know this is going to be like drama or there’s going to be something catastrophic happening. And, and sometimes, like you, we could think about there’s maybe a news, like different news channels where it’s just endless mishap, but this, the announcements that are coming and if we, you know, we can think about social media feeds, we can think about our inboxes, we can think about the conversations that we’re having maybe in the lunchroom or on our way out of school. And lots of times they’re falling into one of these things. So we, when we see these endless mishaps, we actually, we can really become desensitized to that and we can fall into this trap of just persistent negativity, like it’s just one catastrophe after another.
[00:11:17] Becca: Yeah. As you were saying that, it made me think about the kids that I live with, my foster kids.
And when they first came to us, all they knew was the endless mishaps, the negativity. And they were so used to having to tell all of the hard things that that’s all they saw the world through. Right. They could tell you every hard and negative thing that happened in a day, but they didn’t know how to look for positive things. And so we had to intentionally teach them that. And that surprised us. That wasn’t something that Ryan and I expected to do or even kind of really knew how to do because it wasn’t thing that we ourselves did and to see kids who lived a lot of hard. Right. These kids have lived a lot of hard and traumatic things and we don’t want to take away from that. But that’s not their whole story or their whole life. And we want them to start to feel the positive and see the reality that like, good and hard can live intention together and, and no matter what, you’re a worthy human and, and lovable and going to do great things and you do great things every day.
And it’s been an incredible shift. They’ve been with us almost two years now.
It’s been an incredible shift to watch them now just happily be able to name positives and negatives and see the good vibes and the mishaps at the same time.
And a pretty adorable example, our 10 year old. This weekend we do a high and low at dinner and Ryan and I were out on a date and when she was with the babysitter, she told the babysitter, her high is that Ryan and I are out on a date. And her low was that Ryan and I are out on a date because she was happy for us. She was so excited for us to go and do the fun things we were doing and she missed us. Right? And so that felt like this perfect example of like her being able to hold that tension and to see the good and the hard at the same time and be okay with it. Right. To feel secure in that.
And we can only hope to be able to do that for our students too.
[00:13:28] Ruth: Becca, I’m so glad that you shared that because I think it just encompasses the work and it is hard to be able to hold both those emotions. This one situation is causing me to feel two very different things. And that’s important that we learn, if we just learn to be that authentic and genuine, I think it’s important that we pay attention to what we’re paying attention to. And so as we’re ending, that’s what I hope that we go about the week just really paying attention to what, what we’re consuming and how that then is impacting the way that we’re interacting with other people, the way that we’re viewing kids in our classrooms or colleagues or family members or the driver. That’s annoying. You know, whatever it is, I just think there’s a lot of influence and keeping in mind, continuing to think about then if our bias is these unconscious thoughts based on a particular characteristic, then really, how can I draw a wider circle around the things that I’m understanding? Like you were talking about at the beginning and just really beginning, like leaning into how do I learn more? How do I understand more and really become aware of of the differences that that are happening in our classrooms and in our lives?
[00:15:08] Becca: Yeah, that’s our hope. Pay attention to what you pay attention to and see where it goes.
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This episode was sponsored by Choice Literacy, a powerful hub of articles, videos, and resources for teachers by teachers.