This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, educated educators talking
education.
Hey, here we are.
It is day after Memorial Day, so it's Tuesday, but it feels like a Monday because if you
tuned in yesterday, you got a wonderful opportunity to hear an awesome rerun from last
week, which was a really informative show about school finance and a whole lot of things,
not only about Wisconsin school funding, but about school funding transnationally.
Dr. Seldaña on there, the WPEN, Heather, awesome guests, and we have Tim still cross-country
trekking with his family, with his daughter, they're headed out for that wonderful educational
opportunity of her summer internship out in Wyoming.
I'm sure when he hopped back on the mics with us this week, he will have tons of awesome
stories, so listen, they're tuning in for some fun from Tim when he gets back.
But again, on a repeat, back by, and I kid you not popular demand, because the comments
were off the charts Friday when we had producer Anya and sound engineer slash producer
Jess with us both, kind of all three of us have an a show on Friday, and so you know,
producer Anya is like the autopilot or the brains behind the hot air that is the show
that Tim and Johnny spit out there, but we got to have a little more Anya, a little more
Jess, and a lot more conversation, especially around how we feel, or in particular how
young people in schools feel, not that Anya and Jess are token representatives of every
young person in this country, but certainly if we're going to have a discussion about
how youth feel, you know, it ought not just be Dr. Johnny Lupinacci rambling on about
these youth, let's have a conversation of all of our experiences, and especially Anya
and Jess, not only as closer to our youth, but I kind of consider you in the youth brackets.
I appreciate that.
How are you both doing, Anya and Jess?
I'm doing good.
Hearing that I'm part of the youth bracket makes me feel a little bit better.
Jess, how about you?
How are you doing down here in the youth zone?
It's nice to be called a youth again.
Yeah.
I said recently at a bar, I was like, it's nice to still get carted.
So that's kind of where I'm at.
So yeah, coming off a great Memorial Day weekend, Jess and I kind of genuinely kept the
conversation from our last show going, had a lot of talk about our feelings and bumper
stickers.
You've seen and Jess has seen about feelings and what we're going to do over this summer
and into next school year regarding feeling our feelings potentially or something with
them.
Listener, if you didn't get to catch Friday's show, it's a banger of a show.
You should loop it back around, grab the podcast, you know, or grab it off the civic
media site and give it a listen.
It was, it was, it was creative magic happening.
You know, we were just in the cut talking about things.
We had great callers.
That reminds me, call it listener, if you want to give us a call 855-752-4842, join us
here.
We're educated educators talking education.
This is busted pencils.
So Friday was awesome, but we got into it because you know what we were talking about
the week and we were talking about how young people experience schools.
And I'll include in that teacher's too.
So it's just humans experiencing the learning environments that we, you know, call our schools
and that we hold accountable to where we learn to be humans together, where we learn to
be in community, where we learn to work towards a common good.
All those, all those ideals are actualized in our schools.
But yet the backdrop to that is that it is sadly not a lot of students feel one engaged,
respected, or safe in that environment.
And so we got into that a little bit and I was like, well, come on, how shocking would
that be given the fact that I can't, you know, go on a walk or go out for a drive or
commute to work without catching at least one bumper sticker or a flag that tells me
what to do with my feelings.
And you know, it, it, I'm not much for censorship, but you know, like, come on, I do, I really
need to see f my feelings everywhere.
And in fact, even though I'm being a little bit of a softy about that, some may even say,
listen to that snowflake, giant lupinachi talking about his feelings.
But really, I, I, I think it's indicative of a larger problem.
This idea that like our feelings, one, don't exist or shouldn't exist, or even third
worse, don't matter.
And, and in fact, we talked about a little bit of the irony in terms of like, you're telling
us or the general public or whoever to after feelings, but yet you saying that is an
expression of your feelings.
So you're basically saying like, your feelings don't matter.
Mind do.
I'm having a giant mandrum.
Usually it's a man, although I shouldn't reserve it only for that, for that particular
identifying gender because we see it spread like, I'm shockingly sometimes passing these
vehicles and I'm like, what a, what, what, there are kids in this car with the big f
feelings flag on the back of it.
Like, and I am by, I am far from what one might consider a conservative.
And here I am being like, what in the world are we doing putting the f word on a flag?
You know, like, this is, I feel like my, my world has been flipped around because I absolutely
think freedom of expression is really important.
Well, the message here though, I thought, wow, you know what, it's really problematic.
Because just both you and Ania were chopping it up with us and talking about, you know, like
how important it is to be attuned and able to identify, I think you were saying like, find
your feelings, feel your feelings, be able to communicate.
I think some even consider that call like emotional intelligence or like, I like an emotional
awareness or being in tune with how we feel and how that affects ourselves and those around
us.
And then finding that resonance together.
So we were on at something on Friday.
We'll pick it back up today.
But reminder, callers out there, 8557524842, if you want to join Jess Ania on myself, come
on, give us a call.
Shoot us a comment.
We'd love to hear from you.
This is busted pencils, fully education talk.
And we're here tonight.
So, so Jess Ania, tell us, you know, kind of, you see, you said you talked about this
all weekend.
So tell us a little bit like, how did the conversation extend from Friday into the weekend?
And what were y'all talking about?
So we'll get into that.
But first things first, we have a comment from Sherry saying, hello, hello, Sherry.
Lovely to hear from you.
Thank you.
Sherry.
So yeah, we've been talking about this all weekend.
We were talking about just how, how powerful it was for us to get on air as to young women
and to talk about our feelings because there is not a lot of that.
As much as people are like, well, these women, they're always talking about the soft stuff.
They're always talking about their feelings.
Like, yeah, and, and, and what?
You got to cut, yeah, is there a criticism at the end of that?
Yeah, no, there isn't.
It's, it's, it came about initially I, I was relating to Jess a conversation I had with
my partner where he even expressed listening to the episode.
He was like, well, I like both you guys, of course, you're both friends of mine, but it
was so exciting to hear to the voices of two young women speaking back and forth.
And we even use the phrasing that comes from film and TV, which is the Bechtel test, the
idea that, and this, of course, comes from lesbian representation that there are so few
women in media and much less so few women who love other women in media that the Bechtel
test is well, did that piece of media have two different women who both had names who
talked about something other than a man and a lot of great films don't pass that test.
So it was exciting to be part of a, an episode of radio that did pass the Bechtel test and
also had a lot of, of great places, I think, for us to go to talk about where are women's
voices, where are young people's voices and where are the voices of people who don't
say, F, your feelings, the people who say, you know, we have to work through our feelings
if we're ever going to do anything about changing, changing the facts of, of our situation
and whatever our situation is, if that's Wisconsin or a school or our world. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
we talked about a bit on Friday, it's not facts, over feelings, it's not facts or feelings,
it's facts and feelings. Of course. And so when we were talking about it's not F your feelings,
we were, we were playing around with that a little bit and we were like, what about F with your
feelings? Yeah. Oh. And that's parlance that comes from people my age, but it's also people
younger than me. I hate to break it to you guys, but the kids they know about the swear words
already. I don't know how it happened. But you'll hear, who would have taught them that?
But you'll hear kids say something to the extent of like, oh, that musical artist, I F with that.
So to say like, can you F with your feelings? Can you at least be on the side of knowing you have
feelings, knowing it's okay. And from there, where do we go? You want to mess around? You want to,
you know, work on, I don't want to feel this way anymore, whatever it is. We have to start from
hey, mess, get in there and like mess with your feelings and figure out what you're even feeling
before you bring it to the when not before you bring it to the classroom. But even when it's in
the classroom, before we try to do something like, okay, now we got to learn algebra, we have to
learn. Am I am I even able to learn algebra right now? Am I able to be in a classroom and and be
a good member of that classroom and a good and and being ready to learn yourself? Yeah.
You just said something on your about, I don't want to feel this anymore. Oh, yeah. Well,
in order to know that, you need to know what it is you're feeling. Yeah. It's one thing to say,
I don't feel good. I don't like how I'm feeling. I want to feel a different way. It's like, okay,
what are you feeling? Yeah. What are you going through? You want to get away from? And is it
something to get away from or something to work? It's it's the flow chart. The feelings flow
chart is maybe something we need to develop too. But it's just this idea of too many classrooms
never even open that first question of how are you, comma, and I mean it. How like, like, where are
you at? And I'm going to listen to the answer and change what I'm doing based on it. Yeah, it's
um, it's revolutionary. And I think it's going to lead to a revolutionary change in education,
where we actually see kids learning stuff because they because they can't, you know.
So yeah, I love it. I love that. And what what an inspiring conversation and what an
honor to have you both sharing it with with us here on Bust of Pencils. Listen her out there.
If you're listening, uh, you got Anya Jess and Johnny, we got an episode on Friday that passes the
back to tell test, which is, is that still rare these days? It is. And let's be that change 8557524842.
Send us a comment. Give us a call. We'll have you on. But I love this. And before we cut the
break, we got a couple minutes before the segment ends. But before we cut the break, you know,
where you can go if you're in Madison to exercise whatever kind of, uh, sharing of ideas or being
in a safe place together, having these conversations about feeling your feels, finding your feels,
all the F's, right, to F with the Monaco Brewing Company. We got Bust of Pencils is sponsored by
the Monaco Brewing Company, who sued the state of Wisconsin to end its parasitic voucher system
that hurts public schools. Monaco Brewing Company is making Wisconsin great one beer at a time.
Check out Monaco Brewing Company dot com to see where you can buy their progressive beer.
Give us a call 855752442. Join the conversation. Just Anya, Johnny, when we come back.
We show these to see us through our days, our precious and so few. We know, we know we are
Yeah.
Hey, we are back. This is Bust of Pencils fully let it education talk. Johnny Lupinachi here with
producer Anya, sound engineer, producer, Jess. We are chopping it up here, talking education,
but more so talking about feelings and not in that sort of wrong feelings and knowing way. But
really in that, hey, what does it mean if we actually acknowledge and grapple with how we feel
are able to identify those feelings, communicate them and make sure that we're meeting our
personal needs and the needs of the people around us and by golly, what if education
is sort of founded around that if classrooms were spaces were teachers felt they could do that.
And you know, a lot of times on Bust of Pencils, we're here talking about the problem sort of
mireing in the what is. But these last few conversations have been acknowledging what is
and really moving into the well, you know what ought to be. And let's just drop it. Spill the tea
on what ought to be. And here we go. Let it rip. We got Anya and Jess here with us. So they had a
great conversation that extended from Friday's show and you know into the weekend about this whole
idea of what I just kind of summarized with our feelings. But you know, I also then had a really
interesting conversation following our show with a local reporter who reports for the state of
Washington legislation and and she was calling to ask about, you know, one check in and love the
show and was we were wrapping about, you know, school conditions and things. But what she was working
on a journalistic sort of report on was school increase in school violence. And I asked her more
specifically like, Hey, I said, this is kind of linked to some of the things we've been talking
about on Bust of Pencils and callers have been calling in and mentioning and of course we have,
you know, the whole popular discussion right now, sadly popular, but you know, necessarily so
in Tennessee where teachers can now carry fire arms in schools. And I know it's more complicated
than just, you know, teachers packing heat and walking into school, right? But nonetheless,
that has been legislatively, you know, made possible. And so we have this idea that an increase in
guns will make everybody feel safer. And I'm just not sure that's actually the case. But what this
reporter was calling about was her interest was in there was a report that came out in the state
of Washington and these reports have come out across the country in different states that that are
sort of annual reports on incidents on violent related incidents or incidents involving students
with weapons and schools. And so we talked a little bit about that. We talked about, you know, what
what is my good, she asked, what is my gut response to the fact that there's a pretty significant
increase of weapons in schools, not only in the state of Washington, but across the country.
So I give her my gut responses and an article blah, blah, blah again, another dude talking about
things in schools, but I'm wondering, so I'm going to extend that kind of candid conversation to
Anya and Jess. You know, here we have some reports coming out across the country and we know
that the number one cause of youth death in our country is gun violence. Well, there's a report
of increased incidents related to weapon and specifically firearms. They break that down further
state by state, but an increase in the presence of firearms brought by children to schools.
So just your kind of reactions on that. I'm just curious.
Well, I'll tell I'll kind of jump in first my gut reaction to give a gut reaction. You know,
it doesn't shock me to hear that violence has gone up. I have my I went to public school my
whole life, including college and I saw incredible amounts of violence. I saw kids fighting each other.
I've seen verbal violence between adults when I went to UW Milwaukee. I saw violence between folks
who didn't even go to that school who just happened to be on that campus and a row came about
between them, right? So I'm not shocked. That's that's my gut right there. To talk about
how we are allowing through legislation, more guns and more weapons to enter our schools
and then subsequently there is still violence happening. Yeah, I think not to get too bleak about
it, but ever since you've all day, I've had an and before that even a gut feeling of
while while this service has a place and offers something, the service of an armed guard in a school
is not actually to go out and fight the incoming whoever it is who wants to do do do violence towards
the students. It's not even a lot of the times to break up fights where there isn't a weapon
involved. It's just to our several kids. Their job is really more so to write the citation
afterwards and that's not to knock them, but it's to say folks, if we think that placing this person
here, minority report style stops the crime from happening, we have to walk away from that idea.
At most, we're we're reporting on what's happening quicker before it becomes more violence.
So that means we still have to create something in our schools that fills what we thought the school
police liaison school security officer dynamic was bringing. Also say this post COVID,
unless you're having really direct conversations with your kids about what isn't isn't appropriate,
I want to be really clear. They don't know. I have had students come to school with packs of cigarettes
because they genuinely did not under well, my dad takes them to work and I wanted to look adult.
Okay, well, we can't do this. Also had a student who came to me and really wanted me to show
what really wanted to show me his cool pocket knife. And when he went to grab it, just was there
for that one. When he went to grab the pocket knife, he realized he had left it on the playground
at his other school earlier that day. And that was a really fun phone call for me to make sweet,
sweet kid did not understand what bringing a knife to school. Well, no, but it has it's got a
painting of it cool. I really wanted to show it to you and my dad cares about it. So I care about
it. And that's him in moding. And then my emotion responses, oh my god, we got to call so many people.
Our kids, we have to remember that children are blank slate. We have to remember that they are
learning from what they're learning from. And if it's not you coming out and saying, hey,
this is a pocket knife. Dad keeps it on him to open boxes and open envelopes and stuff. It can't
go to school because you could get upset at school and hurt somebody with it. And that's not okay.
If we are not having those base level conversations with our kids, especially post COVID,
straight up friends, they don't know. It's part of why I ended up having to leave education because
it hit me how much they don't know and how much I don't know about teaching them things that they
weren't taught intrinsically at home. It's not my skill set. So those are the stories I go to where
I'm not shocked. But I do think adults, if you're not hearing stories like this from your co-workers,
know that they're happening and know you need to be having those simpler conversations with some
kids just about like expectation setting in a way that isn't here's a lecture about rules. It's
high. You might not know this, but even these cool things, some of them are weapons,
even the coolest weapon can't come to show and tell. Think things of this nature were not
discussing with kids and it leads them to being very scared and very ill prepared for social
situations and not to sound like a Sith Lord, but it leads to anger, which leads to hate,
which leads to, you know, it leads to classroom interruptions if nothing else, right?
Yeah, well, only sits speaking absolutes. Exactly. I'm trying not to.
Yeah, no, it's great. Jess, we have time to get yours. Joanne, we know we got you on the line,
but we're going to get you after the break because love what you're going to contribute, but
we won't talk a little bit more about maybe instead of more guns. There's a better tool.
There's a better tool that we can be putting into our schools and we can come back to that phrase
that did come up in our conversations that commitment without currency is counterfeit.
Mm-hmm. I love it. We'll not shockingly on you and Jess, we have all three,
some similar reactions. So I'll come back to that because the reporter and I got to chop it up
and send this piece out. So I'll come back to kind of what we landed on. But thank you,
Onya. Thank you, Jess. Thank you, Joanne. We'll get you when we come back.
Busted pencils. When we get back.
Welcome back. This is Busted Pencil's fully-ledded education talk and it's hard to not just let
that whole song play out, but we got good conversation to get back to. And in fact, to jump right into
it before we come back to that, my request for candid responses from Onya and Jess. We had to cut
Jess a little bit short for the break, but we're going to put a pen and Jess's response real quick.
Let's get to Joanne. Call her Joanne. Then we'll come back to you Jess and we'll have more
conversation. Joanne, how's it going? Great show. I'm following up on that theme about the
emotional life in schools with Jess and Onya. And I'm just wondering about the civic life
and our political life in schools. It takes some emotion to get involved in civics and in politics.
And I'm just wondering a lot of that cycle because professors at the college level and teachers at K-12,
our Steinmead, we can't talk about our own politics or I'm really excited about various things.
It's very treacherous terrain along those lines. And I'm just wondering, in general,
how are schools doing in terms of stimulating political thought and civic action on the part
of students? Can we improve somehow? And I know Jess and Onya would have amazing thoughts here
because they're both involved with politics and perhaps they could reflect on why they got
involved in politics and knowing how difficult it can be in schools to express themselves.
Yeah. That's good stuff, Joanne. It's so good. I love that you immediately connected,
Joanne, that politics is emotional and that when we're talking about politics,
we need to be able to get in touch with our feelings. And really, really critically,
we need to be able to have a conversation that is true about our feelings while still being
respectful of other people's feelings. Yes. Yeah. And I can't answer Joanne's question in a
cumulative way. I can't answer for all schools, but to ask the question like, what are our schools
if they are doing something for stimulating political conversation? It's so hard for me to answer
because I hear it and I go, well, nothing comes to mind because political conversations aren't
being stimulated in our students and in our teachers and in our cross-student teacher conversations,
they're being stifled. And that's concerning left, right, and center where it's like, are we,
what are we afraid of saying facts because they might offend or are we afraid of
talking about feelings because it might make us look irreverent illogically? Where is the fear
coming from? To even start with that is such a big question. But I definitely think in my experience
in high schools, one of the most important times I think a teacher stimulated political but also
emotional conversation was a government teacher I had in high school was asking a theoretical
kind of surrounding things that were happening post-Afghan war, post, you know, al-Qaeda stuff where
his question was ethically speaking if there was a building full of people, but we knew one of those
people in that building was a terrorist operative. What would be the governmental ethics of attacking
subsequently destroying this building? And I was really appalled to see many of my classmates,
even ones that considered themselves on the same political side as me say, well, if there's a
terrorist and we have to destroy it, we have to, and I was kind of saying earlier, it's a human
cost here, seeing a whole building, and then the teacher, I don't know if he even meant to do this,
he goes, it's interesting that that's your response, you know, with the building full of America
considered and everyone's happy when you didn't say the building was full of American citizens,
well, then we would never, I was so floored, hurt, offended, I was probably in 9th or 10th grade
and just feeling like, oh no, these are my peers and they don't care about what I view as being
their peers, the global peers. How do we then come back from that conversation in a classroom
where you have people saying, well, I don't care about them because Trump said to not care
about somebody or I don't care about them because they made those poor decisions that put them there.
Okay, and when your poor decisions put you somewhere, shall we have empathy for you and how do we
teach kids that? Because we sure as heck have not taught a lot of adults that, so I don't know what
that answers, if it answers anything, but it's just where my mind went of, how do we talk about
political conversation when anything that could even sniff of politics and so many, so many
public institutions, you're just afraid of losing your job as a teacher, you could be afraid of
getting in trouble as a kid, there could be this idea of like, what do I say? Will it affect my grade,
will it affect my year end review? Fear is ruling a lot of these conversations and it's why none of
these very few of these conversations are productive. And Anja, yeah, what is fear? Oh, you can't
pop a quiz on me like that. All I mean is it a color? Is it a time? No, Jess, I think it might be
a feeling, a feeling, a feeling, a feeling. Well, don't forget about those. That's the F word we
wanted to use, right? Forget your feelings. No, feel them, feel them, feel them, find them, find
them, find them, knowledge that they're messy sometimes. I think that was one of the big parts
take I took away from Friday. It's like, hey, how do we do that? In Joanne, great call. Oh, I'm
really on. We got some wonderful comments from our guy, Dr. Tim, Dr. Tim Selecker out there,
somewhere and somewhere out there in America saying, you guys are awesome. Of course, we are Tim.
We miss you, buddy. We look forward to you being back on the show, but we are glad you're out doing
what you're doing. Enjoy Wyoming. Enjoy the West, Tim. It's one of my favorite places in this
country. Enjoy it. It's our country. Big sky, country. Big sky. You know, what Joanne brought up to
and what we do know from surveying, I guess, surveying only gives us some kind of indicator,
but young people, I'll say like, especially in higher education, students in higher education,
by and large, both on identifying as left or right in their thinking and their political thinking,
both feel like it's not a safe space to have conversations about politics. When that's the case,
we're all losing and I think that's Joanne's talking about how do we get there? So I think like,
as educators, especially as like a professor in those spaces, it's like, what can we do?
Not like, hey, like, I wonder, it's puzzling, but really, like, really, that's a sign,
that's a sign saying that we are not doing what we need to be doing in order to create, cultivate,
curate, facilitate spaces where ideas can be learned, shared, where differences respected,
where conflict isn't something we avoid, but when I say that, I don't mean violent conflict,
but somehow we've structured this in a way where it's like become, you know, culturally uncool,
right? Or like, and what I mean by that isn't by like the cool kids, not the cool kids, but like,
hey, we just, we've set up some like unspoken rules about how we do school, how we play school,
how we go through those motions. And what we ought to be able to say, this is why we're
terrible at this in our country right now in our communities is because, oh, holy, holy smokes,
haven't forbid anybody starts to talk about politics and disagrees. So we have massive echo
chambers and some things about that as well. Yeah, just drop it. All right. So there's,
so my primary mode of education has actually been teaching Jewish education, Jewish studies,
Jewish values, history, all of that. And there's a term in Judaism. It comes from Talmud.
And it's Mahloka, Bishem, Shamayim, conversation for the sake of heaven. And it gets into this idea
that, well, it's not conversation, it's, it's literally argument, argument for the sake of heaven.
We do that a lot in Judaics for people of arguing. And it's this concept that you can disagree
with someone. You can disagree with someone completely. And you can come at it in a way that when
you leave the interaction, all parties are in a better place. All parties have shared disagreements.
They've shared places where they're really not seeing eye to eye, but you're not attacking
anyone else. You're not attacking even necessarily the ideas, right? You prod at them,
and you poke at them, and you wrestle with them. But you don't attack, right? You question,
and you dig into it, you see if you can come to a better understanding of yourself of the other
parties and of whatever is on the table. And so it's a concept that we, that I try to teach,
especially I work with teens primarily, this idea that it's healthy to argue.
It's healthy to not agree on something and try to find agreement. And it's so important to
learn how to disagree. And I think that is a skill that is just not taught. And I wonder and not
to take it to religion, but that's where part of my degree is in is it's this idea of with Judaism
being a religion that you can convert to, but doesn't profitize, doesn't, are not proselytized,
proselytized. What I say, profitize, doesn't proselytize is perhaps there is something to this idea of
what, what happens to your brain or what happens to the way you go through the world if you're part
of a group that say, well, we've, we're, we're doing this, and it's okay if you do that versus
if you're part of a group where it's like, we're doing that. And it's culturally important to us
that you are also doing that. That's not to speak for all religions that proselytize,
whether that's Christianity, Islam, anything under the sun. But I think there is in some ways a
difference of mindset where it's, is your goal? Is your, is the, is the mission you've been given
to make that person change or to behave in a way that displays change? And maybe they go,
I see what they're doing. I could follow that. And it's not as scary. It's not as far away from
what I was doing or what I thought it was. Instead, it's something that I could, and I'm taking this
kind of into the contextual conversations of things like people who make homophobia a political
point, right? Where they're voting based on wanting to take rights away from, from queer people.
The queer person might not walk away with like, I appreciate why that person feels that way.
But they may walk away understanding like, oh, because that person was taught this thing when they
were so young, their child brain changed it to this. And now they're actually, they're scared
to be seen as this or they're scared to be around people like this because they don't know.
The only way we can break those things apart is to be having these conversations and
the only way to have these conversations is if everybody involved knows what their feelings are
and knows that they can walk away from the debate at the end. Feel safe during the debate and
walk away not feeling like, oh, no, I, I've lost this friend forever or something terrible
way. It's an entire cultural change that you need to establish of when you're disagreeing with
someone. How do you still feel safe? Well, you can trust that the other person is playing by
same rules as you. Sure. Yes. That you are going to have an argument for the sake of heaven and
argument for the sake of making things a little bit better. Yes. Rather than
yeah, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Or that if you don't succeed in changing the person,
you're a failure. It's like, no, you engaged in conversation. That was what you were meant to do.
It's okay. Yep. Yeah. The goal isn't to conquer or to dominate, but it's to be heard and to listen
simultaneously. Yes. Right. And to do so in creative and generative ways. This is really
cool because Jess, thanks for that example and Anya and Jess, the energy you bring to this conversation
is is magical. I love it. You know, we think about this. I think about like the rap battle,
right? Or you know, the graffiti artists who are going out to one up one another, not
to conquer or to own, but to to have that spark, to have that dissonance, to have that creative
juice, the creative life force. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
It's different between sparring and a bar fight. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Right. When there's when
there's like like Jess said, everybody's playing by the same rules, right? And we're practiced at it.
We're practiced at it. You know, this is ideally, this is, you know, when when Collar Joanne
mentioned, you know, like our schools have a civic responsibility to teaching civics and politics.
But too often, especially professors, I'd say most guilty are professors, but this trickles
all the way through that it's set up in this power dynamic of like, we have the information and
what do you know? And let me tell you and you just get it and say it back. And I know I'm like
over generalizing and picking on professors and us teachers the most here because lots of us
aren't doing that. But at an essence, if we peel back the layers, we still kind of are.
Even when there's like an end of it, the dynamic in the culture, and we look at higher ed,
and I love onion said, it's really radical change. And it's actually not new.
It's deep in mature cultures around the world. These practices of how we disagree creatively,
we use humor, we might tease a little bit, but it's not bullying. There's deep love and connection
and relationship and reciprocity. And it's not, well, I agree to disagree. And I'm going to go,
pow, you know, it's not that it has resolution, but doesn't always have to happen happen in the moment.
And almost, almost always diffuses violent conflict. And this is one of the things we know about
difference in discussion. We got lots to talk about. Man, the juices are flowing. This is great
conversation. If you want to give us a call 855-752-4842 or drop us a comment, send us a text,
Anya and Jess here with me, Chinese Lupinati, Busted Pencils, when we get back.
And we're back, Busted Pencils, fully-led at education, talk Dr. Johnny Lupinati here tonight with
producer Anya, sound engineer and producer Jess with us, having a second show that's going to pass
the bettell test. And I love it because we ought to be doing that all the time. More in media,
especially in media. Let's talk about politics, culture and all the things that we're chopping up
here. Wow, Dr. Tim Slecker commenting in, Jess and Anya are making me nervous for my job.
No, Tim, we all have one big conversation here. No jobs. It's not competitive. It's collaborative.
It's generative. It's conversation for the sake of heaven. As Jess said earlier, we can disagree
with you. Yeah, Sam, are you even listening? Yeah, we can. Ah, damn yeah, are you listening?
There's going to be a quiz on this when you get back to him. We also have a wonderful comment
from our listener friend out there, Sherry Sherry. Thanks for enjoying the show tonight. We appreciate
you coming back to things. I mean, we're going to be wrapping stuff up here. You know, I mean,
Jess, we cut you off at the half hour break and want to loop back around because I think this
is all connected with this idea that there's an increase in weapons and incidents relating
to bringing weapons to school or having a weapon in school. And you know, I would,
I would like your kind of candidate take on this. So there's an increase across our country in
this. What's your thoughts? Yeah. So we see this increase of a certain kind of tool being brought
into schools. Tools that frankly, their only purpose, their primary purpose at the very least
is to destroy. There is really no generative purpose to a gun. Whether you're talking
offense or defense, the goal of a gun is to destroy things.
When we just add more of those and we say, well, this surely will fix the problem. We'll just
keep throwing more and certainly the destruction will stop. Maybe, maybe we need to consider
that that is not the right tool for this job. And that instead, we can be adding a different kind
of tool to our school systems, a kind of tool that takes those enormous feelings that lead to
outbreaks of violence and say, it is okay to feel those feelings. You are not broken for feeling
those feelings. You are not wrong for feeling those feelings. It's what you do with those feelings.
And if you are not taught how to break down those enormous feelings of anger, of fear,
of hopelessness, they're going to come out. They are going to come out. And if the only tool
that you have available is a gun or a knife, something that is inherently destructive,
that's what's coming out. Yeah, it's, yeah, I had a thought in there and I lost it.
So I'm going to throw it to Johnny. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what, both onion and just
not shockingly, because we seem to agree on a lot of things. You know, this is the conversation I
had with the reporter. We can share the article and the blog or the description for the
podcast for folks who are curious. It's just a short little, little intro on this conversation.
But then I started digging and we talk about, you know, that gun violence is the number one
cause of death for young people in this country. What? I mean, yeah, absolutely it is. That means
it's a, it's a public health problem. So the CDC has reports and investigations into, so what can we do?
On the pathway to making those suggestions and we'll get into that in a future show because
there are some concrete suggestions. But what we do learn that stood out to me is that just
over half, like not even half the students up, like, like just over half, you'll save, right?
And I came down the same thing. I had the same reaction with these numbers coming out of increased
incidents related to weapons and schools. You know, I said, well, I'm, I mean, I'm not shocked.
Sadly, I'm not shocked. And one of the reasons I'm not shocked is similar to both, but she said,
they said behavior is a form of communication. And so if we feel safe and the myth, the cultural myth
is that we are going to be safer if we have to take those matters into our own hands and protect
ourselves in some kind of way. I know that's a myth, but it is a cultural sort of disease at this
point in our country. That idea that that a young person might have that easy of access
combined with that myth that they'll be protected. Also, like, I don't want to lose sight of the fact
that their behavior is telling us this young person at whatever age sometimes as young as four or
five, six years old, it's like, I don't feel safe in here. So I'm going to do to take safety into my
own hands. That is in every way of failure of the adults in our community to providing a safe
place for children to be. So like, like, the, the, the gleaming conversation that I think needs
to be had. So I'm pouring out and I'm glad we were able to talk about tonight. We'll have it on
future shows is if we're really serious about safety, then, you know, I'm glad we're being more,
we have firm but empathetic, like consequences for bringing weapons to school, but culturally,
what are we doing as adults to say, hey, we want our communities to be safe for young people and we
want them to have facts and feelings that keep them alive. That's how dire it is that keep them alive.
Man, I hope we get to keep having more shows like this. You know, we're going to have educator
Halley. So teacher Halley, teacher Joanna tomorrow joining on yet Jess and Johnny. We have Tim
back from Wyoming this week and we'll hear lots of cool stuff. I'm Collars. We always have you,
Collars and listeners and we also have our friends at the Monaco Brewing Company. Busted pencils
is sponsored by the Monaco Brewing Company who sued the state of Wisconsin to end its parasitic
voucher system that hurts public schools. Monaco Brewing Company is making Wisconsin great again,
one beer at a time. Check out Monaco Brewing Company dot com to see where you can buy their progressive
beer. Ooh, I'm going to keep throwing it in there every time I'm on air and they have delicious
sell surf. You're not a beer person. Like me, delicious. That's right. Real time on your
rewrite in the copy. Sorry. Sorry. Oh, it's good because it's true. They also have soda they have
amazing coloring books. Yeah, they do. I was there. Man, I was like they have really cool.
I love it. I love it. I love this for everybody. Coloring books. I'm themed after the teacher
struggle. The teacher who lost their job for bringing the I believe was a Miley Cyrus and
dole but and some rainbow land that happened right here in the wauk, yep. Oh, there's a rainbow
land mural. You can go see there. It's a really, I mean, the choice wine is fabulous. There you go.
Wine. So yeah, here we are, Pog and Monaco Brewing Company, our friends there. But I just want to
say, Anya and Jess, I appreciate you. Listener out there. We appreciate you and excited to have
you back tomorrow on busted pencils with educators amplified. Oh, yeah. Have a good night.
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