This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Of course it is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk,
educated educators talking education to a little something different right here.
But jump in quickly, if you want, we've got the mailbag.
The mailbag is open right now, 608-557-8577.
Johnny Lupinacci, before we even get started,
given people the opportunity to drop their messages in our mailbag, 608-557-857-8577.
Johnny Lupinacci, class is in session, so good to see you, my friend, what's happening?
Oh, man, not much, you know, it's full swing fall.
We're getting into it.
So all kinds of things, education, we're not too far out from the big election,
so hopefully lots of classrooms discuss and the importance and the weight of preserving
and working to, you know, care about democracy in this country, so big weeks coming up.
But Tim, before we get into it, we talk about all the conversations and all the big emotions
and moments happening in classrooms all around our country, really all around our world.
Man, it's a tough time to be a kid.
It's never been an easy time to be a kid.
But sure is a tough time.
So we have all kinds of discussions around emotions and learning.
And Tim, you found us just an amazing guest for class in session this week.
We got a guest, Tim.
Introduce yourself.
Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
We have got a guest and talk about emotion.
I'd say, you know, Johnny, you and I are sometimes a bit emotional.
So this could be the episode we've been looking for.
She is a multi-disciplinary language artist, an international presenter, and a person
a powerful force in art space learning.
As the co-founder and principal artist of emotion literacy advocates, she has dedicated
her career to creating transformative tools, songs, books, scripts, and songbook movies
that have been integrated into educational and social service programs across the Pacific
Northwest and beyond.
Welcome to Busted Pencils, Pamela Sackett.
How are you, Pamela?
Thank you.
Happy to be here.
Very happy to be here.
All this is music to my ears.
We love it.
Okay.
Now, so we're getting this.
But before we dive deep into this emotion, emotion literacy, how did you find your way
on to Busted Pencils?
Is something about some kind of crazy twins or something?
Yes.
Some amazing twins, one of whom approached ELA as a volunteer to do an animated video,
explain her video, I believe, is what Lisa calls it.
Lisa and Michelle, I met Michelle later, although she was in on all of that.
And so we worked together.
She did an avatar of me and an animation introducing emotion literacy advocates in my relationship
to that.
A great experience.
And then Michelle, I learned about Michelle, and then eventually I met them both directly
in the video chat.
And then she told me about you.
Michelle.
Yeah.
You know, I Michelle told you about me, right?
Well, she wanted to share about her personal life.
Well, and she thought we should meet, she thought we should meet.
She thought we should meet.
Michelle, Michelle, my wife and her twin sister have been working with Pamela to create
some digital animations through their business, Nerdy Bird.
And so they, after meeting Pamela, we're like, you guys got to have Pamela on the podcast
because the things she is doing with emotions, emotion literacy.
And so that's why so glad that we actually have you here, Pamela, to talk about this.
I want to put this into this up very quickly, though, on this.
On all of your information, in fact, we're going to give you lots of time to promote everything
you've got.
But there's a quote.
And this is from you, emotion literacy translates emotion when emotion obscures the truth.
What does that mean?
Talk to this because I'm going to say the majority of busted pencils listeners who've been around,
they're probably going, oh, this is social, emotional learning, and I know that that's not.
And I saw this quote from you, emotion literacy translates emotion when emotion obscures the truth.
Hit us.
Well, I've been interviewed on radio a lot.
And before podcasts, actually, so I go way, way back.
Probably I've been doing this for about three decades.
And I was always asked, what is it?
What does it mean?
What is emotion literacy?
And most of my way of addressing the topic is through art forms,
through music, through lyrics, through poetry, through prose, through books,
songs, scripts, and I hadn't really ever come up with a definition per se in plain English.
Well, now I've got a book, I've got a little book you can fit in your pocket that lays it out
in plain English, even though some people said, this isn't really plain English, it's got to be unpacked.
But in any event, I struggled and had to try to, you know, talk about it in linear terms.
I'm not a linear thinker, I mean, you know, the kind of writing I do, it's not linear.
And it represents complexity well.
But in any event, at one point, for one interview I did, I'm one of the NPR affiliates in Seattle,
that's what I came up with.
And actually, I came up with it with a woman who had done a lot of work for us as a character actress,
and in a number of ways she was involved with us, but we kind of came up with that together.
And the thing about that is what most people don't really, most people, from what I hear,
from what I observe, think that emotion and feelings are interchangeable terms,
that they're the same thing.
It does not make sense to me at all, because feelings are non-verbal.
They live inside us.
They're a somatic experience.
Emotion is more, is an expression, emote.
So when people say buried emotions, it doesn't make any sense to me.
It's not an emotion, if it's buried, and a feeling is buried in a way,
because it's in our bodies, and it's a different language.
Emotion can also be a somatic experience, because an emotion can be in your body language,
in your facial expression, doesn't have to have words to go with it.
But even so, when emotion can be seen and heard, you can say things when you're angry,
you can show that on your face.
However, anger doesn't necessarily communicate clearly, and directly,
what the feelings and the needs internally, that are prompting that response.
Emotion is like a behavior, really.
I see that as a behavior.
So when emotional intelligence says their whole thing is emotion management,
they're really talking about behavior management, and from what I've observed
from a lot of these programs, it's still about that.
And that's a whole other thing.
Yeah, in fact, that's a whole other thing.
Jess and I were talking last night, getting ready for this interview,
and Jess was talking about, she really does some work in this realm.
Jess, do you hear what Pamela is saying here?
I do completely.
I work as a supplementary education teacher, as well as producing radio.
And one of my greatest tasks is helping my students to understand
what it is that they are feeling, and from there to move to what are they emoting.
So what Tim was telling me about you, Pamela, was just resonating so deeply,
because I work primarily with seventh graders, and they are at an age
where they are feeling so much, and they are trying to express so much.
And a lot of times it gets crossed over and muddled, and they're not quite sure what they're
feeling, and the behavior is coming from sometimes places that they don't understand.
So a lot of times what I do is I build in breaks into my lessons to say, okay, let's take a break.
Let's do a check-in.
What are you feeling?
What do you need?
What is your body trying to tell you?
What does your brain trying to tell you?
What's your heart trying to tell you?
Let's try to address those needs.
Yeah, yeah.
And it is a deeper dive, really, and, you know, it's interesting.
There's a historian I've been seeing interview lately.
He has a book out, can't think of the name of it.
But anyway, he talked about the truth is complex, and it's costly, and it's often painful.
And so, you know, science has proven, we go the path of least resistance,
and I would add to that that security is probably the first priority, whether we're conscious of
that or not. And if we rely upon, if we're aimed in that direction, then a lot of what we think
about and how we respond comes from the security brain, the primitive brain, which is not a brain
that is going to explore question, observe nuance.
No, it's going to put us into a black and white world, which is where we are in this world
in large part. We're in a really black and white.
Quick decisiveness, quick reactivity, quick decision making.
It's not, it's not the sphere of creative problem solving.
That has to happen from another part of us physiologically, the critical creative thinking part of
the brain. However, the critical creative thinking part of the brain could be jammed with all
of our thoughts. So we have to clear that out. And it's difficult when the bridge between feelings
and emoting is a system, a belief, a protocol, a demand to be a certain way to adapt.
So what I'm teaching is more of a process that first starts individual in the individual cell.
It's a group and the individual one often gets sacrificed for the other.
When somebody is attempting to be true to themselves, they may be banished from the group,
because maybe their truth is not acceptable. Or maybe they don't know how to express it in a way
that makes it understandable. And then so many, this is really such a complex thing.
I think a lot about adaptation and evolution. And in some social emotional programs that I've
observed, it's more about adapting to the world as it is. And the completion of that definition
and emotional intelligence offers emotion management for social success through the application
of the hard sciences. And what I'm doing is language management for self-understanding
and social change through the application of the creative arts. Because the creative arts has a
way of representing that complexity better than a linear kind of conversational approach.
And I know this because I've written theatrical material. People talking, I've written a whole
series of books of theatrical monologues and I've written several plays. And people talking
to each other, there's a lot between the lines. And back to the idea of adaptation and evolution,
can we figure out a way to have the individual integrity preserved and explored and preserved
as well as the group being tended to? Because even in eating habits,
the group wins and the individual health doesn't necessarily. You know, we traveled the planet
out of our natural habitat and it's been eating things that we may not be geared really to eat
individually. But as a group, we weren't able to live in places where we weren't really designed to
live. And so it's kind of like that in a school. Teachers are hired to teach. And if they're
facing a room full of chaos, they have to figure out a way to manage it. And I have to say a lot
of social emotional programs are tending to that first. Is there time for us to explore each
uniquely individual process that each student is having in that classroom? Where can that happen?
How can that happen? In any event that it's not happening isn't observed. It isn't really recognized.
And that, I would say, would be square one with what I'm doing. Let's look and see, first of all,
social emotional learning panel. Let's hold on. Let's hold on. Let's hold on on square one right now.
Hold on. Hold on. Because I'm going to go off and stand. And I know Johnny's got a question for you.
Okay. Oh, I was enjoying listening to Pamela. Talk to us about all the ways that emotional
literacy is kind of illuminating. This conversation illuminates so many of the things I think our
listeners, especially teacher listeners out there, are experiencing in their classrooms. And I
appreciate the clear distinction between emotional literacy and what we're often getting forced
into social emotional learning. And it's not that I don't like social emotional learning. It's just
become a label of more of the same old same old. And I like what Pamela is saying. It's responding to
and in no way helping us to reframe a recenter over actually celebrate and lean into the
differences that make us a strong community. You know, Pamela was talking about the the way that
majority rules in organizing our group decision making is problematic. And we talk about this a
lot when we learn how to be together in community. I love Pamela. She said, there's a balance in
emotional literacy of knowing one's needs, but also being aware of the diverse needs of the people
around us and finding a way that it works for the whole group. And then I know in my classroom
it's called consensus decision making and how do we do democracy and democratic learning in a way
that we learn about consensus. And I love how Pamela really gave us a succinct definition
balancing and being able to know oneself's needs where we're at emotionally and what our reasoning
is and what our actions are, what our needs are, and the needs of those of us around us and being
practiced in being able to make decisions together to function together in a community. So there's
a balance of self and community that I absolutely love about this. So thank you Pamela for your work.
I got a question for you though. I know I just kind of was pulling out highlights because as a
listener and a learner myself, I was like, who I hope to highlight some of this for our listeners.
I want to interject one thing though. Can you remember what you're going to ask? I just want to
interject that when it comes to a group, you know, consensus is a way to guide decision making.
However, oftentimes there's a leader in the group. And one of the things Dr. Arning Mandel talks
about, I don't know if you know about him, Dream Body, Process Oriented Psychology. He he passed
recently, but he's a mentor of mine. He talks about in a group, lead the leadership role can
be passed around. I don't think that's going to happen in a classroom necessarily. I guess I'm
talking more about adults, but sometimes somebody else in the group that isn't the designated leader
may have something that an insight that could take the group in a different direction. But anyway,
I just want to throw that idea into Nick that leadership role can be passed around.
Absolutely. I mean, and I love this. Remember what you're telling us with emotional literacy is to
reframe our understandings of these concepts that have prioritized the individual over the need
of the group and really homogenized all of our diverse connections to our motions and our needs.
So yeah, we got to reframe leadership. And that happens. I think in really good classrooms,
because we assume automatically the teacher is the leader because the adult, and that's highly
problematic. I'll get you here. Oh no, dare we say the a word on an education show, but I'll
pitch here what Pam and Johnny are talking about here is really close to something that's been
you know, understood in in mainstream media as a problem, but it's just anarchism.
And that's not anything goes, but it's actually talking about really reframing what's understood
by leadership that's non-hierarchical that isn't based on the problematic assumptions that maybe
the adult is the only leader in the classroom, but leaning back to that Pam. So we're teachers,
right? And we're in a classroom and we're going to wrap up here in a minute. I want to save time
for you to share your work some more, but I want to hear like if you have teachers sitting down,
listening to this right now, in their classroom, what's one way they can really top into emotional
literacy practice in their classrooms right after they listen to this show? Oh, after they listen,
well, I would say the entry level, I mean, if you're asking me about some of the materials,
I'm assuming that's what you're asking me about, is a basic organizing principles of emotion
literacy. And again, it's emotion literacy, not emotional literacy, although you'll find emotional
literacy everywhere on the internet. I have a different definition intent and methodology,
but this book, I would say this is the plain English book that goes through 12 steps,
12 ways to witness the heart and that I want to add that I'm so appreciate that you mention
about needs because feelings don't happen in a vacuum. They're part of our needs and especially
our soft needs. It's a whole constellation of things. It's not just about the feelings. There's
all this other stuff going on. So this would be a great way. And then a lot of what I have
are prompts, really. They're prompts to get people on a reframing, a different way of thinking.
And you know, Einstein said, you can't solve today's problems with the same manner of thinking
that was happening when the problems were created. So yeah, reframing. And most of what I have is
artistic methods to prompt self-reflection and writing and discussion. So you have your own
process, you have your own private process, and then you have one sharing with the group.
Because social, that social circle is part of our survival. We have to have that intact,
and we have to have a way, even in conflict of finding some kind of harmony and where everybody
has a voice. And really, if you go deep enough, you find that universal component and people,
and because that's what I've found with my work for so many years, is I talk about my own
particular story on a very deep level. And what does it do in the audience? The people that hear
that, they automatically start thinking about their story and understanding it differently.
Because I've expressed it, I've taken that, I've asserted that, and they feel safer to do that
with themselves. Pamela, I think there's so much here, and I say, you know, we're just
scratching the surface on the idea to emotion literacy, as you said, because so many automatically
just jump into emotional, social emotional, you know, learning literacy, we've gotten so used to
those terms that you're even coming in right of way and going, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's reframe
this first of all, it's emotion literacy. It's not emotional literacy. And so as a teacher who's
listening to this show, that's where I'm going to kind of give them that opportunity. Say,
hear what we're saying right away, which is the potential to go, what if there was something
different other than behavioral control type of techniques that typically get turned into this
social emotional learning. We're not talking about behavioral control. We're talking about
emotion literacy, language, and ability to, you know, do you emotions? And it's to say,
we went this there and we're just getting to the, you know, the surface. And we knew that this
was going to be the point when a problem, not a problem, but a thing we knew when we got you on
the show, because this is so deep. But what we do is we're setting, we're lighting, you know,
lighting a little bit of a flame for people to get more because we know they want more.
Also, remind, you know, listen to, if you want truly, truly want more,
608557, 8577 is our mailbag. That way, you can drop a note in there directly. If you want to talk
to Pamela, we will be forwarding any of those messages to Pamela, to make sure that you're able
to ask her these questions because I'm getting a sense that boy, if somebody really wanted to have
the ability to learn what you offer, Pamela, because I saw on your website all of the testimonials
that when people have you do a full presentation or an example, this is where that deep learning
really occurs. Just thinking about this too, I can't believe we're already at this point,
but where should people go to find everything, emotion, literacy, Pamela, a second?
Well, right now, I'd say the most focused, contained, approachable place is the Patreon,
Patreon store. It's patreon.com, email lit, underscore resources. We have managed to get most
all of our learning tools, multi-disciplinary music and prose and books and songs and scripts
and songbooks. On that, in that store, they're all digitally available now. That is the best way,
really. There's so many things there. There's a whole, I mean, there's a lot of things, and maybe
in another visit, I could tour people through what's there and a little bit about it. We've got
projects underway. I've got a new book coming out early next year. I've got this whole painting
verse project going on that's shown on Patreon and bunch of books. They're the songbook movies,
and there's also a way to contact me. One of the descriptions, there's a link you could set up
an appointment with me very easily online. If you want to conference or have an initial consultation
to see what of what we have would serve you well. And we are going to make sure that those links
are in the podcast description so that people can get to all of that and invite, yeah, we would
encourage you invite Pamela into a conversation so that you can get the richness there. Emotion,
literacy advocates is the organization. She founded our guest Pamela Sackett. Pamela, here's
what we always say. Thank you for busting pencils. Thank you. It's been a pleasure,
all of you. Just a tremendous pleasure to be in your company. Thank you so much.
And now for your moment of zen.
Human beings are not machines and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so
moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. And that
historical possibility lies hope. Check out Busted Pencils, first downs in Friday nights,
this Friday when that drops and don't be late for our home room on Monday.
Thanks for Busted Pencils with us.