Hey, hey, welcome to Home Room.
Plus, the pencils fully-led education talk, educated educators, talking education.
June, pencil busters. We're here. It's June. May is done. June is here. Lots of schools,
teachers, listeners out there, parents got kids in schools, got maybe, maybe a couple weeks left
until it's officially schools out for summer. Maybe it's coming up this week for you,
listeners, some schools around the country getting out early June, some mid-June.
June, seniors, most of you are already out of school. You get out a little early,
but by and large, this is the time, Jacob, we talk about landing the plane,
wrapping up the school year, thinking about summer time, which I've said before here on the
show is the offseason. It doesn't mean it's necessarily not work time for us teachers, but
it's the offseason. It's the time to retool. It's the time to catch up on all the things that,
we've put to the side, being like, hey, no time for that. Got all kinds of grading to do. I got
classroom to be in all day, all week long. There's a lot of, as Tim was mentioning in the show,
on Saturday on our Saturday broadcast and civic media network. Tim was talking about
it's time where we reinvest in our ability as adults in spaces with lots of little people.
Takes a lot of energy out of us throughout the year. It's hard to stay regulated as a teacher.
Stay hydrated, stay well rested. Most teachers will chuckle and they'll be like, yeah, that's a
feat in itself during the school year. But in the summer months, we're able to reenergize,
recalibrate, find that zen, and be able to reenter our classrooms in August. Sometimes it's
early September for some folks, but we're ready to get back to it. I won't get into that, though,
because we're celebrating that it's almost summer and Jacob, this is a home room. So we're going
to get the week started right, which is also starting off our month. How are you doing, my guy?
I'm doing good, Johnny. We're coming into summer, like you said, and it frustrates me so much,
because I'm a recent college graduate. So for the first time in my life, summer means nothing to
me, because I'm still in this room, doing home room instead of on the beach, soaking up the
rays. And so I have little brothers. I'm jealous of them. They're like, oh, summer's coming up.
Yeah. Yeah. That's just another season, buddy, when you get to my age and you teachers, Johnny,
I'm sick of hearing this because I feel like I'm in my little, I'm in my little Toyota,
and you pull up in your Mazza Rod and you're like, hey, no, but listen, the maintenance,
buddy, you don't want to deal with the maintenance of summer vacation, okay? It's harder to
be a teacher than to have summer actually go to work. I wish I was at work during the summer,
buddy, because oh, don't let me tell you. So yeah, I'm not happy. This is my first stolen summer
for the next, I suppose, 48 years, and I'm settling into a new routine.
Yeah, I don't, I get that, Jacob, I get that, for many years, summer was my work work month.
It's the time when I got to return to my manual labor group of friends that I worked with
becoming a teacher and rejoin the crew and swing the hammer for the summer. So it was a working
summer, many summers as a teacher, but I get it, man, and there's that age old saying the best
thing about teaching is the months of June, July, and August. There's some truth to that. It's a
little bit of a little dig at teachers, because teachers listen, they're like, hey, hold on,
I still work, I still have things I have to do, but I get, Jacob, we're on a more relaxed
schedule when we're not with our little ones sitting in front of us in classrooms. So
I get that, that's a bonus to it. Certainly when I was working two, three jobs becoming a teacher,
one of the things I definitely looked forward to was like, hey, all those years as a student,
summer was pretty awesome. Maybe I can grab a little bit of that if I go into teaching,
and that certainly has been true. So I get that, man, big, big props to our teachers out there.
Remember, hey, you got to recharge in the summer. So make sure you take time for you. I know
most of us teachers we work in the summer too, but also find time to, you know, recalibrate to
regulate, to get things all settled and right, so that you're 100% ready to go when the season
starts back and fall. So Jacob, I get it, man, I get it, it's summertime, you know, but one thing
that doesn't stop, like you said, the rest of the world, it doesn't really slow down. And certainly
that's been true in terms of how late things have been coming to fruition. We talked to you on
last week's shows a few times about budgets in Wisconsin, and that's true for, you know, schools
all around the country we've experienced. I would say unprecedented budget cuts, but that
wouldn't be fair. It's been pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty certain that every year we're going to
have to reduce the budget by 2%, or by 3%, or by 8%. So there's been this sort of, this practice of
how do we spend less on education? Which seems, you know, the opposite direction to me as an
advocate of public education where we should be going. It's like, hey, you know, there are some
real essential things that have been trimmed away in the process of budget cutting, but you know,
we're doing that in districts around the country later than usual because of the big changes coming
from the federal government and obviously education being a state right, all state legislations have
been, you know, having to hustle to get together what they're able to fund and what they're will,
I should say willing, because able and willing are two different things, but we've talked about it
around the show that Wisconsin, you know, had a budget that went forth and there were some pretty
significant cuts. So Jacob, I think maybe did I think something came across all of our desk
civic media from last week. You want to give listeners a little, a little insight into one of the
things that's trending right now. Yes, yes, Johnny, I would. So this came across our desk and you
were just talking about taking the summer to get regulated and deal with, you know, all the things
that go on besides just work besides the mechanics of doing your job, it's the stresses of dealing with
it. And that's something that our students deal with too. And this is an article from the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel article by Natalie Islebert headline here as part of a $1 billion nationwide
school mental health cut Wisconsin is going to lose $8 million in federal grant money for mental
health in our schools. Trump administration canceled a grant that the Biden administration
had made for a five year $10 million grant. Seems we got two million. They're going to cancel the last
eight. Johnny, this does not sound good to me. I know that for some of my generation, I'm kind of
on the cutting edge of the the more awareness of mental health. And then people younger than me
certainly a lot of current high schoolers, a lot of current college students dealing with mental
health stuff. It's become a bigger deal in the the wider discussion of education in our country.
Johnny, what do you think these cuts are going to do for students and for the and not just for the
students, but for the teachers and administrators who now have kids who aren't having their needs net.
Their needs met. Yeah, yeah, I got you Jacob. I mean, you know, this is one of those things that,
you know, is less than ideal news. Right. We're saying, uh, cheese more cuts and cuts, I would say
where hurts the most and in connection with some of the, you know, the other cuts that are
happening. So we mentioned it before, like on governor Evers budget plan, you know, the the committee,
you know, shut down a lot of the things that he had proposed as important to fund in schools.
And and this is against, you know, um, against the voice of the people across Wisconsin. We
talked about that to on the show, uh, Wisconsin Public Educators Network, Public Education Network,
WPN has come on the show and shared some of the, you know, really great stories of how people from
all across across Wisconsin came to the Capitol and, you know, spoke truth to power saying,
Hey, there's this budget coming up and these are really important things and included in that.
Jacob was, you know, support for mental health in our schools. And together with that also,
the importance of feeding our kids healthy, you know, nutritious food in schools, making sure
that kids are healthy both physically and emotionally and how important that is to their learning.
And that's backed by science, right? We know as, you know, as, as experts on learning sciences,
like how people learn that if you're not well, physically or emotionally, if you're not feeling good,
you're not at your best to be learning. And so if we care like we say we do about student achievement,
well, then we need to really care about these other aspects that are absolutely essential.
Like yes, the curriculum is super important and yes, the instruction is very important and high
quality instruction for all learners is absolutely essential. But if we only look at that, Jacob,
right? If we only look at, you know, the nuts and bolts, the X's and O's of teaching and learning.
And you say like here are the math things kids need to learn and here are the resources we have
to teach them that. We are excluding really important variables that experts, whether they're
pediatricians, health experts, learning sciences, those kinds of researchers, have told us that we know.
We are ignoring some, some, some of those important factors to simplify that being, you know,
the mental and physical health of our young learners. And included in that, I'd say is even
the mental and physical health of the adults leading those learners. Yeah. But yeah, Jacob,
this is, this is, I would, I would say it sounds hyperbolic. That's a term we've been using a lot
here at Busted Pencils. I love it, especially as a math teacher, you know, hyperbolas. But I
refrain usually from hyperbolic, you know, statements. But this one, although it sounds hyperbolic,
I think is spot on. This is catastrophic because we do know with certainty, right? We have statistical
significance on these findings that young people, and I'll include like even up in the high school age
as young people, but especially our earliest learners, they learn their best when they're
healthy in all ways. And that's a, that's, that's like a public health and public education
shared goal. And those are two areas that I think we're struggling with as a country. And especially
that's falling on states pretty heavily. And, and you know, in these cuts, not being met.
So when our students aren't supported, when our schools don't have adequate funding to support
students, mental well-being, Jacob, we can pretty much say, well, those important aspirations we
have for their achievement and we'll call it the content learning. They're reading and writing.
You know, those become even harder because the whole person that's learning isn't cared for,
isn't getting what they need. And, and one thing we know, Jacob, is that especially coming out of
COVID, an increasing number of our learners have, you know, some trauma, have some, some,
some things like you said that your generation and that it's certainly even younger generations
are aware of like they have some needs that are not being met, right? We don't necessarily feel
safe in schools. We don't necessarily have stability in our economy, which trickles down to
young learners, right? Whether it's in, you know, lack of access to nutritious food, right? Or
whether it's just to help the services in general, you know, the, the, the old assumption is, well,
that falls on families. Well, that's, that's outside of the scope of school schools to just focus
on learning. But what we know as educators is when we only focus on the learning piece of it,
but we ignore those other factors. It's almost saying like Jacob, well, I bet I could not drink
water for a week or maybe a month and still be okay. That's, that's insane. Yeah. We know that
like we're 80% water as a human body. And we need to drink water in order to stay hydrated. So
if we're dehydrated, in fact, we won't even survive longer than a few days without drinking water
and having water put into our bodies. So kind of a similar logic applied to our learners. If
they're not cared for in some capacity, if their needs aren't being met, this is Maslow's
hierarchy of needs. You know, we could access that, you know, that psychology there.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If our needs aren't being met, if we're not rested, you know, if we're
not, you know, fed, if we're not hydrated, if we're not feeling safe and cared for, then learning
is nothing more than a pipe dream from educators for their students. So over the years, Jacob,
this has been a not a new debate, but public schools have said, well, we can't necessarily just
put that responsibility on the community because that's just not how society is work, especially
here in this country. There aren't necessarily a social welfare system that makes sure all kids
are cared for. And, and so public schools have said, hey, we'll, it ought to be part of our
responsibility. And so if you're a listener and you think, hey, our public schools should actually
be ensuring if they want their young learners to learn, they should be making sure that they're
feeling safe, that they're well fed and all these kinds of programs are in place in our communities
to help families ensure that the learners that are coming to our school are ready to go. They're
they're best. So, you know, these cuts, they hurt and they continue to make our classrooms a
battleground and set kids up for failure, which Jacob, when we set kids up for failure, we're also,
you know, like really borrowing from our future. I know it sounds cliche, but these youths,
they're the future, right? So if they're not their best, if they're not cared for at their
earliest years and our communities, then we're setting ourselves up for a citizenry that is not only
weak, but that is unhealthy. And that's detrimental to a strong democracy. And so, you know, I hate having
to report out on these cuts because it tells me that like even though when we have strong evidence
that this is a high need and that it's directly linked to student achievement and success and
also linked to, you know, productive citizens in our communities, you know, great workers, great
neighbors that we're borrowing from that in a detrimental way. And it sounds like in order to save
some money, money that we have, we're just choosing to allocate it in different ways, right? So,
we know that the people will take Wisconsin as an example, right? And Washington public education
network reports out on how many people came out and spoke truth to power at the legislation,
you know, about these budget cuts. But we know in large that the people of Wisconsin, and I would say
broadly across our country, we also have the evidence, support public education, they see this
connection. They say it's absolutely essential to our local economy, to our future, to our neighborhoods
that our schools care for kids. And experts say, well, if you care about kids, you care about their
mental and physical wellbeing. So figure out how to, you know, address the needs of the learner
holistically, right? That includes, that's why we have programs like, like, you know, access to
food for all the kids in our schools or access to important mental health aspects of their wellbeing.
So when we cut those things, it's sort of like Jacob, you know, we're undermining the future,
we're weakening society rather than strengthening it. So that's, that's kind of a big,
a big bummer. It's like, whoa, whoa, yeah. I totally agree, Johnny. Do you remember something
called the Cold War? Do I ever? And I was like, you know, my, my coming to age was forged in
the crucible of the Cold War, you know, in some ways, I'm nostalgic about it because I loved,
you know, the hockey rivalry between, you know, the US hockey team and the, the formally known as
the USSR, you know, Soviet team. And it was always like, USA, Russia, USA, Russia, you know,
but I remember those cold, the Cold War era, Jacob, what about it? What, how are we connected
a Cold War to a warm day? Well, I think it's that rivalry that you're talking about in hockey
and all things with the Soviet Union has left a very big impression on Americans to be very
anti anything they deemed could be socialism. It's a very scary word for Americans. And I think we
can all agree that none of us would like to be the Soviet Union. I don't think many people
anywhere enjoyed being in the Soviet Union. But I do not think that taking care of children
in our schools is necessarily the first step to communism. In fact, as a capitalist myself,
I would say that when kids are hungry, when kids aren't learning, when kids have mental health
issues, when kids go home and they see their parents struggling, can't make ends meet, can't put food
on the table, that those people do not grow up to be productive members of society who can add to
the growth of a country, who can add to the capitalist system. So if you care about those things,
if you want to see the GDP go up, you want to see our country prosper economically,
then you should make those investments in young people because they're the workers of the future.
They're the people that make this country go. And I think if you look around the world to
examples like Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Germany, all these great economies around the world,
you'll see that they're capitalist, but they invest a lot into their young people and their kids
when it comes to education and that social safety net. And you don't have to go around the
world to find it, Johnny. You can look at our greatest period of growth here in America where we
had the New Deal with FDR and we had the Great Society with Lyndon Johnson. And during those years
of growth, we had a lot of investment in American people and American workers. And that's not
socialism. That's not some scary communism. That's part of what made us this great capitalist
country and investment in American people. So Johnny, I think we need to get over some of these
fears Americans have over anything that somebody can call socialism because it might not be so.
Yeah, man, Jacob, you touch on a really important point too. And it's that it's the misconception
that social welfare when we say something like that and you reference like FDR and the New Deal.
And you know, I've talked about it on the show for for continued listeners is like the second
bill of rights and the war on poverty and these things that by and large hold space for both.
Like economic growth and country's political strength. Right. And that that that taking care of
the people in your country isn't isn't communism. Right. Like having a strong social welfare system.
I know especially growing up in the Cold War, you know, and being part of that sort of, you know,
like a product of the early 80s where political discourse was, you know, welfare is bad.
Welfare is really bad. Like it's a failure on the part of the individual, like either, you know,
a parent or a family. It's like if they could have just worked harder to make more money,
then they wouldn't be experiencing poverty. And that's that's not true. You could be working
really, really hard like so many of the hard working people in this country. And you know, especially
in these economic hard times experiencing, you know, like experiencing the impacts of poverty.
And so those are real and they have real impacts. A social welfare system isn't, you know,
isn't communism at all. You know, it is a government. It is a belief that there's a government
responsibility to the well-being. And I like Jacob, you know, your point, we could also say,
as an instrumentalist argument, doesn't it make more sense to spend the money where the
research has showed us, if we invest in young people, a smaller amount, they cost us less
and give us more in the long run. Yeah. Right. So so we can even take that, you know, that investment
as a capitalist and say, hey, if I invest in these future laborers now, at say, even at best,
like $18,000 a year in, you know, in a well-funded public school in their earliest years. But let's
say all the way, you know, pre-K through 12th grade, you know, maybe and I'll even dream bigger
and include in that. I talked this past week about the importance of higher education being
included in that. Let's just say through through to your career, your educational well-being
is accessible to everybody. You know, we talked about, you know, Trump's beef with Harvard being
an attack on the working class people, not creating more access to them. When we talk about providing
a good education for everybody, it's a drop in the bucket, money-wise investment on the return you
get. A person who goes all the way through school system that could be through vocational trade
or anything into career is likely, highly likely to be a productive member of our society. And
they're less likely statistically to be incarcerated or, you know, working against what we would
consider the common good in our communities. And so it costs a lot more in upwards of the 30,000
or more a year to keep somebody in jail. And it costs, like we just said, about $18,000 a year
to keep them in school. And so in learning well and cared for. So if we say we're investing
that smaller amount for a fixed number of years, well, then we have, like you said, Jacob, how many
years? You say another 48 years of the schedule. It's like, okay, 12-ish years of funding something at
$18,000, then we're going to make that back in all those years that we're not having to pay
for them to be in our hospital system or in our criminal justice system. That's not saying like
that crime will go away completely in things. We know that that's preposterous. But it's saying like
this is a smarter investment. We're going to spend less overall and get more in return. That's
instrumentalist argument on why we shouldn't be cutting these essential things in our schools.
And tied in with that is some altruism like, hey, isn't it just the right thing to care about
one another and a democracy? Like when did that ever become associated with, you know, the scare
like language or discourse of, well, that's communism to care about one another. Absolutely not,
whether it's Christian or whether it's being good or whether it's, you know, supporting democracy,
however you identify it, caring about one another isn't communist, right? But we'll have to
extrapolate that a bit throughout the week, Jacob, because our resident Marxist isn't isn't here
today with us at Jacob Chuckles because Tim's going to have a clap back on me continuing to call
him a Marxist because I like to tease him. But, you know, you're right, Jacob, there is a big
difference between democracy or decentralized governments or socialist democracies where we have
a strong social welfare system and still a thriving, as you said capitalist economy. Those things
can coexist and they certainly do through examples around the world. They can coexist, but that's
very different than a centralized government, like communism where essentially you have a
dictatorship, right? And so, you know, neither like dictatorship should ought to never be the goal.
That's why I, you know, go hard at the Marxist because I'm like, come on, man, like the world doesn't
need more countries with the dictator. If we're, if we're, if we're fans of democracy, you know,
in human rights and that's kind of my, my identifiers, but you might even be, you know, an economist
who wants a thriving capitalist economy and I'm not against you. I'm just saying, hey, you can have
that and care for people too. So, that's kind of like the theme, Jacob, you hit the nail on the
head. If we're not caring for one another, we're missing something and caring about people,
especially our youngest people in our community, investing in them as the future. Well, that's
not communist. That's just smart, strong democracy. And now, it's time for your moment of zen.
Small acts when multiplied by millions of people can quietly become a power. No government can
suppress a power that can transform the world. Thank you, listener, for tuning in and grabbing
this episode of busted pencils home room podcasts today. And remember, you can grab great other
podcasts filled with more busted pencils content on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and of course,
on the civic media website or at bustedpensils.com. Hey, and don't you miss this week's class
in session on Wednesday and find our special drop of producer's choice on Friday. And of course,
catch busted pencils on Saturday at 3 p.m. Central time across all the civic media network stations
for one hour of your favorite blue-collar scholars, Tim and Johnny, and keep Buston Pencils.