No, it's not dancing with the stars, it's busted pencils.
Only let it education talk, educated educators talking education, Johnny, come on, that music
makes people want to dance. I can see them right now going like this must be dancing with
the stars. It's not dancing with the stars. It's it's it's it's breaking pencils with bald
guys. There you go. Wow. There you know, so last last time we met it was we figured out
that Johnny's a teacher teaching teachers to teach educated educators talking education
and now we got busting pencils with bald guys. Love it. I also learned that Johnny is a
well-coached coach, coaching coaches from another program we did. So there's a lot of
literature around here. We got a little thing called the teacher coach connection, kind
of like the rainbow connection, but a little more yelling. Well, hey, so you know, yeah,
it's Tim, Johnny, Jacob, and oh my goodness, who knew it could become Friday so quickly. And
you know what that means, pencil busters, trying to do my Johnny impression there, you know,
what that means, pencil busters. It's Jacob's producer choice day. Jacob, we are so glad you
invited us on our show again today for two, two, producer. Jacob's choice chairman of the board.
You and I will have two choices. Chairman of the board, Jacob. Jacob chairman of the board.
I bet the board is spelled B-O-R-E-D. We choose to go to the moon. Life's a tough choice.
Tim, Johnny, thank you guys so much for coming on your own show. I really appreciate
having you guys here. What a mix for the world. That's it, man. So on the producer's choice show,
sometimes we, we really like to zig when the show has been zagging. We, we come out with some
really out of the box topics. But sometimes on the producer's choice show, we also like to
continue to develop on things we talked about during the week. And this week, it's going to be
that type of producer's choice show. We talked about on Wednesday, this big wacky imposition of the
12, what is it? 12 credit hour per semester demand from the Wisconsin legislature. Do we recall
that conversation? I do, Jacob, I do. I remember, yeah, you know, the realization that the whole
world now sees that, you know, Wisconsin legislature to the rescue and mandating that faculty actually
work 12 hours a week. And that's exactly what we, what we decided that it's, that it's just a
demand that you work at least 12 hours per week. No, no folks, we talked about it. We had a great
conversation on classes and session. I recommend you go back and listen to it if you haven't had the
chance yet. But we talked about why that 12 credit hours per semester number is not exactly what
it sounds. We talked about how teachers do a lot of work outside of the classroom with research
and preparation for class. There's a lot more to it. But with all that being said, I think that a
lot of people would agree that students, parents and taxpayers do have a legitimate interest in knowing
that employees of the government, which when you're state employee at a state college, you are
working for the people. They have an interest in knowing what it is that you do. I want to start off,
I just asking that simple question, Dr. Tim Slecker, as an educator, what do you do on an average day?
Well, it depends in my new position as administration. I do a lot, but you know, back to when I
was a full-time faculty member, you know, kind of back to that to put the framing around that.
When I was preparing future teachers to teach social studies, both elementary school teachers and
future secondary social studies teachers, and when I was also teaching what we call the foundations
of American education classes, both to beginning teachers and then an advanced graduate level.
I mean, that was my workload was to prepare, and I actually being at the State University of
New York at that time, had a 12 credit hour mandated teaching assignment, which meant I taught
four classes during any given week or every week during a 15-week semester, and I'll give you my
schedule, my very first year as a faculty member. Monday Wednesday and Friday, nine o'clock,
till 9.50, social studies methods, 11 to 11.50, Monday Wednesday and Friday, social studies methods,
1 to 150, Monday Wednesday Friday, social studies methods, Tuesday night, 5 p.m. to 8.30, education
foundations for beginning elementary education teachers. That was, and that was a three hour class,
so those were, that makes up what you could say 12 credit hours of teaching, and so Monday Wednesday
you could see what I was teaching from nine to one teaching on Tuesdays. I was teaching from
five to 8.30 in the evening, and on Thursdays, I did all of that other stuff that Johnny was talking
about, which is, guess what, my full-time job actually also required that I spend time with the
students that I taught all those days in advising sessions, getting them in preparation for either
the next courses, helping them understand the content we were going over, and also then writing and
doing my own research to get myself published, because that was part of my job, and then at the same
time working in community with local public schools to do some American history school enrichment
with teachers out there, because as Johnny pointed out, that was my service to the university,
and I always think about services, my expertise is being put out in the public to free of charge,
you know, in that sense. So that's a work week of a traditional faculty member who has to teach
what is now being mandated by the Wisconsin legislature, a 12 credit hour workload. So
how's that for, you know, brass tax? Tim, it sounds like you worked pretty hard, so I'm going
to give you an approval stamp. You're okay. I'm going to move on with my inquisition here to Dr.
Johnny. Johnny, tell us about your average day as a public educator.
Well, I'll take an average day. I have three types, Jacob, for my workload, and can you
can imagine? I like to keep it pretty tight to my schedule, so I'm pretty fortunate that I have,
I think I mentioned this in the show earlier this week, that I am on a contract as a professor
that during the school year, I am 40% of my time teaching, 40% of my time researching,
and 20% of my time in service, which we talked about in the previous show, what that meant.
But essentially, for me, that means that two days a week, if we imagine, no one quite gets to
have a 40-hour work week, but if you can imagine two work days a week are focused on teaching.
I teach my classes on those days. I hold study groups. There's some grad seminars. There's
some time to do some tutoring with students that have difficulties in class or just need to talk
through concepts a little bit more. And those days, Jacob, they start promptly at around 7-20 AM,
and they often end around 7 PM. Those two teaching days are pretty packed.
Fortunately, though, I think most educators out there will agree we set that in a previous show.
Those are rewarding days because I love teaching. Sort of what really brought me into becoming a
professor was how much I loved teaching and how much I was learning about it and could then teach
other teachers about or grad research students becoming educational researchers.
So the least two days a week, that's what it looks like, 7-7, pretty close to that. Try and stick
to it because too much work can sort of wear you down and lead you to burnout. The other two days,
a week Jacob, I wake up around pretty early, work out, clear my brain, and I work on research.
Typically for me, that can range anywhere for whatever stage my research is at, reading, writing,
editing, giving interviews, transcribing interviews. Sometimes it's just listening to audio recordings
of interviews, whether it be teachers or students or participants in a research study. That's
qualitative research that I do. I'm working on the research and those days Jacob are pretty much
start clocking around 8 and get going, take a half hour lunch at noon, and then it's back to it
until we're on the show in the evening. So it's not as long as the day, it's my teaching days,
but it's also a slog. It's pretty much sitting at a computer and just grinding on whether it's writing
or it's reading or some kind of formality aspect of the research. And then sprinkled in there
is this the stuff Tim was talking about that doesn't get accounted for. Every day and every break
starts and ends with just making sure you check your emails, which can be a, then anybody listening
can be quite a task for a professor. You get a lot of questions from students. You get a lot of
emails and queries and also schedule meetings and it's like emails constant. So if I don't have a
routine for factoring in at least half hour at the beginning of the day, half hour at the end of
the day, usually 15, 20 minutes after lunch and any other break just glancing at it throughout the
day. You can fall behind and one thing I think we all probably know about our professional world is
even though email isn't the same as a text message where you could give a quick direct response,
I like to say 24 to 48 hours is the expiration date on an email. If you haven't responded to someone
email in you, it's not junk mail, right? If it's a student or it's a colleague within 24 to 48 hours,
then then I'm slacking at my job, right? So I take that pretty seriously. And then for me,
at the point of my career, I'm at Fridays, is when I schedule a lot of committee meetings where I
work with other teachers to review our curriculum, we might talk about what's going well in our program
to certify teachers, what we need to work on, what kind of graduate program credentials need to
change. That's when we're doing a lot of meetings. So Friday ends up being a pretty long day,
despite popular beliefs that professors are, you know, let go on because they don't teach on Friday.
You know, we're pretty, we're pretty bogged down, at least all my colleagues, we're lucky enough to
sort of earmark Fridays for meetings. And it's a slog of a day, it's a lot of meetings,
it's a lot of collaborative work together, but it's also a joy because you get to check in with
the other educators and researchers. And it's a great way to end the week talk shop about,
you know, what's worked well that week? What do we need to be working on? Are we meeting our goals
and expectations and we go from there? So I would like to say it's not a nine to five job,
but I try and make it, you know, that's the blue collar scholar or me. I try and make it as close
to a punch in, punch out kind of job as I can so that I can stay, you know, strongly productive
on taxpayer dollars. And that's something I believe in firmly as part of a democracy, right?
Me doing my work is practicing my civic duty, my democracy and action, you know, teaching teachers,
also doing research on school and schooling. So I take it seriously, I love it. And it's a grind
and I approach it the same way I approach being on a construction site, right? Or being on a remodeled
job. It's not lazy work, it's hard work, even if you're not outside, you know, physically working
all the time. Your brain is working, your hands are going. And Jacob most recently, I tried to build in
because I experienced burnout a few years ago, because I used to not have this schedule. I used to
go until the work was done. And that led led me to burnout really quickly. But what I've tried to
do this, this school year, in fact, I learned from other colleagues research that the amount of
sitting I do is actually really not good for me. So I've been starting to try and go on more
walks, but when I take a break, and also I got a standing desk at work. So, you know, I'm still not,
I'll admit to all you listeners, I'm still not used to it. I don't feel as productive standing
as I do sitting. That's just like the muscle memory. As soon as I sit at the computer,
my brain knows it's time to write, right? So, you know, I'm working on standing desk. And on my next
move, as I think I'm going to get a walking pad so that I can be walking and like checking emails
in my office. I'm pretty excited about that new, that new might be, might be a new year's resolution
for me, put a walking pad in my office. Did I answer the question, Jacob? Yes, Johnny, you answered
the question adequately and satisfactorily. And I'm going to give you another passing grade
for being a hardworking teacher. That was good. And for a second, Johnny, when you're talking about,
you know, it's not good for my health to be sitting all the time, but I don't like the standing desk.
When you started that next sentence, I thought you were going to say, so I'm getting a walker.
I'm just going to pack it in, you know, this is not working out. These attempts to make this more
healthy or just failing. So I'll commit to full walker. That's not, I didn't tell you, I mean,
I have the Chuck Norris total gym in the back of my office. Whoa. Nice P90. I don't, I don't use it,
but it's there. It's always good to have just in case, you know, in case, Chuck Norris were to show up.
But Tim, something that Johnny touched on there that I think is something important to bring
home to people and our educators out there, they're already aware of this. But Johnny said he makes
these efforts to try to get this to fit into that nine to five type of range. But as a lot of
people will know, and I think Tim, you can tell me more, that's not necessarily something you can
take for granted as a teacher that works stops at that whistle at 5 p.m. Is am I correct about that?
No, I mean, you're exactly right. Even teaching in, you know, traditional American K-12 public schools
is a second grade teacher and is a fifth grade teacher. You know, you, you, okay, people are like,
oh, teachers, you know, they work from nine o'clock and what, like, are Wendy at one school over 315?
My God. Well, you know, it's like, well, I get there at seven to get ready for the students
who are coming at nine throughout the day teaching all day. You know, you're accumulating the work
then of all of the things that they've done. And then at 315 after bus duty and maybe meeting with
a few parents, then you try to do all of the work, you know, grading the papers, getting ready,
and kind of getting set up for the next day. But then sometimes realizing that at six o'clock,
it might be time to say, you know what, I come back here again at seven o'clock tomorrow morning
and start all over again. So, I mean, yeah, that is, you know, for, for people to talk about,
you know, well, the teaching hours, you know, you hear 12 hours or it's like, are you just said,
you teach like three, 50 minute sessions. So what the heck? Hey, that's the act of physical teaching.
There's preparation. There's afterwards interactions. There's continuing to work on assignments.
So just to point that out, yeah, it really, really, you know, I've not met and I will say this
a good teacher who ever works the clock. Okay, because if they work the clock, you would be a
horrendously crappy teacher because it's just you're not able. So again, back to that
classroom teacher, if you showed up at quarter to nine and left at three thirty five every day,
your ability to be even a mediocrely bad teacher would be problematic.
I want to ask you this, Johnny, because this whole conversation we're talking about the daily
lives of teachers. And I think we saw from Tim's story and from yours and thinking about other
teachers. It's not exactly a one size fits all thing. You know, you've got every day, these are
the classes. And then there's a lot of more work that needs to get done at, I guess, a little bit
at your discretion, but you also do have times that needs to get done by. There's all these different
things going into it being a teacher when it comes to the workload. So a one size fits all
12 credit hours per semester demand put down by the legislature may not fit and make sense in
terms of trying to make sure everybody's doing the things that they have to do. Now given that,
how do we properly keep educators accountable while a skewing ill-informed quotas in artificial
metrics, Johnny? Oh, can you repeat the question? I certainly can because I've got it written on
this note paper pad in front of me. How do we properly keep educators quote unquote accountable
while a skewing these ill-informed quotas in artificial metrics?
Yeah, I like this, Jacob, because I think accountability is a really important thing, right?
I think you, and it's, there is a myth, and every myth has some little bit of truth to it that
gets the ball rolling, right? And there's a myth that, you know, professors especially are just
out there kind of wandering around bebop and through town and, you know, they pop into class and,
you know, talk about something they know about and then go back to their strolling through,
you know, college town and live in the good life. You know, that, that's just sort of like a stereotype
and myth, but some of the truth that helps lead to that is that by and large, it's one of the
few professions I've been working in full-time where you don't have a direct like boss. You do,
but there isn't like a shift you're on. You're not necessarily like you have your office hours
and you have your accountability, but you're your own boss for the most part. You might have a chair
if you're a faculty in a department and the chair, of course, answers to the dean and the deans,
you know, to the provosts and the presidents and all. There's like a chain of command on university
campuses, much like at any school or any company, right? But, but professors have a lot of autonomy.
And this is certainly linked back to that legislative push, Tim's talking about. It's to,
you know, remove that autonomy. And they're using this myth and sort of stereotype of the lazy
professor or the like laxed, asical, non-hardworking professor to sort of push, you know, that that
erosion of autonomy. And Jacob, I think this is where I mentioned in our show earlier this week,
some real creativity from leaders in higher ed, not necessarily creative and like make up a new system.
But understand, I like how you put that, non-escued ways to, you know, measure and be accountable for work.
So like really, these, these ideas like, hey, everyone must teach 12 credit hours. Well, that
doesn't necessarily make sense for everybody, right? And so I think you kind of, I think there is
some need to, you know, document a little bit more, maybe have conversations. I know great higher
ed leaders do this. They talk to all their faculty members. They have a good sense of what they're
working on through the weeks that they're working on those. You, we report, you know, what article
are we most currently working on? What, you know, what research proposals or grant proposals
are we working on? How much time are we spending on those? So I think those things are really
individualized and important. And it, I think it elevates and makes more meaningful the work
that chairs and deans do because they're in those managerial roles in higher ed. They can really say,
I know what all my faculty can, in another sense, my work force is doing on a day-to-day basis.
They're either, you know, teaching these classes, which is real easy to see because it's in the
schedule and on the, you know, it's there's a physical presence of it, or they're working on their
research. And here's what their current research is. And a lot of every higher ed leader I know,
and that I look up to, they do this. They have conversations with their faculty all the time to be
accountable. Now, currently, Jacob, there is a system that every faculty listening, anyone who's
part of higher ed knows this. There is an annual review process, sort of like doing your taxes.
Every year, once a year, we are required to report on in overarching what we've done over the past
school year. So we like file, like just like filing your taxes, like what were your earnings for
the year? You know, what articles did you publish? What articles did you work on that are in
review? What grants did you write? What curriculum did you work on? What did you teach on your courses
and what are some examples of assignments that you really feel proud of from last year?
What are things that you hope to work on for next year's of setting goals? And we, you know,
we enter that into a computer system. It's a little impersonal, but it creates a report that our
managers, like our chairs and deans have a meeting with us where we sit down and we go over our
review. And it's a really thoughtful and self reflective. And then you get feedback from your
superior, you know, these words are kind of sometimes a little problematic, but they exist.
There's a hierarchy, right? And they give us feedback and, you know, we have good check-ins
to make sure we're all aware of what's going on. And the myth I'm going to say here is that
this is not happening because everywhere I've ever worked, this has happened. And everybody I
talked to and listener out there who teaches an I or Ed or, you know, or if you're a student,
you can ask your professor about their annual review process. It happens every year. And
everyone knows about start like doing your taxes. It's like we know this happens. This occurs.
And there it's it's a good system of accountability. Jacob, but it's also what is, you know,
a summative form of assessment is also formative to get nerdy about it in the education context.
Yes, I'm expected to meet certain criteria, just like a sales person is like sell so much.
I'm expected to have published so much, you know, written grant proposals have good feedback
from my students and teach a certain number of courses. And do I meet or exceed those goals?
That's a discussion that's tracked and that I have with my superiors. And this is not unique to
me or my institution. This happens at pretty much every institution of higher ed. So that I think
that works pretty well. One of the things that I think is in question at the moment is how important
are things like publishing articles are things like doing research. And there is a little bit of a
battle right now culturally in our country about the value of research. And so, you know, to loop back
around to Tim's discussion this week around, you know, the legislative overreach to mandate that
every professor is teaching 12 credit hours is to me an action taken to devalue the research work
in time that many professors are engaged in and to honor that not as in addition to their teaching,
but as important as their teaching. Sometimes in a percentage wise, more
represented in their labor than maybe the one course that they're teaching. But we all can't be
only teaching or only researching. That's one of the really unique things about being a professor
is that you have a nice balance of both. And sometimes that balance aren't equal amounts.
Well, how about that Jacob?
I think Johnny makes some interesting points, but I'm kind of wondering where you come down on this
Tim because Johnny, you know, Johnny brought up the idea of the the annual review as a means of
tracking progress and keeping accountability for educators. But I wonder how do you feel about?
Do you feel that the annual review is a good enough metric or do you, if not, our state legislators,
Tim, perhaps some sort of strange oversight committee or what do you think? Or are you more of an
anarchic person on this front? Antartica, do you mean like a big burr cold like a polar bear?
Are you a polar bear? No, I am not an anarchist. And I know where you're coming because I put here
in the chat that I actually all caps hate accountability. And then also followed it up with
for real, no sarcasm here. And let me put it this way when you do this. The whole word accountability
just creates a sense of, as we say, a superior oversight that has no trust in the professionalism,
the intellectualism, the commitment of people to do the work they're supposed to do.
And I'm also going to say that a lot of this comes from my anti-testing movement,
where we're going to hold schools accountable, we're going to hold those teachers accountable,
we're going to hold those kids accountable. And all of that really meant was we're going to blame,
blame, blame, blame, blame. And the word there too. And so before people go, my god, he just wants
to do whatever it is that he believes is feels right. I know it comes across, no, what I want to
talk about is how are we going to maintain and create an inspiration with people to be responsible,
to have a commitment to doing the work when accountability gets introduced. It can turn into
a sense of going, okay, I'm going to do what I know I have to do to stay out of trouble.
And I think that that just sets up a toxic environment. I know some people are going like,
accountable, don't just asking, you know, the taxpayers are paying your salary, shouldn't they
have some sense and shouldn't somebody be able to demonstrate what it is that you do.
Yes. But you legislators, you have a responsibility to the taxpayers, you have a responsibility
to shepherd for me the opportunity to do my best work. I have a responsibility to put in every
effort that I have there. And so there's a more of a less anarchistic and more utopianistic
in what I'm trying to point out, but I'd rather be in that realm of what should be as opposed to
what ought to be. So it's not anarchy I'm talking about. I'm actually asking for just a different
culture and the culture of accountability. I think actually pushes people to not do their
best work. How's that? And I did Johnny's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, go ahead.
A few things. First, as an anarchist scholar, I'm going to nerd out for a second. The definition of
anarchy, what are the simplest ones I could give is, you know, let's go denotation versus connotation,
like the actual thing, not the myth of it, the myth of it being it's anything goes. And that's
what Tim's referring to here as the like, he doesn't think it should be anything goes, right? But
anarchism is actually the practice of decisions being made by those directly impacted by the decision.
And there is actually leadership within anarchy. It's just not authoritarian leadership. It's not
hierarchical, right? It's horizontal. And so thinking about that, Tim, I just have a question about
like accountability. I get like, again, the popular use of the term has been to instill punishment.
It's imposed through an authoritarian kind of system, right? The idea of like superior,
your superior is trying to catch you, not doing what you're supposed to, or it's trying to limit your,
you know, your thinking or your work because you're just trying to meet quota and not really doing
risk-taking or courageous thinking or research, right? So it's murky and I'm right there with you.
I think we vibe on the same level with this. But I hesitate a bit to say, you know, that I don't like
accountability, because I have to ask you like, you like the Pittsburgh Steelers, should they not
have a coach? Yes, they should have a responsible coach. Well, yeah. So this comes back to
accountability. So Tim, you're speaking of like, you hate one way accountability. So really great
coaches will say accountability is a two way street. I work hard for you. You work hard for me.
That's sort of the mantra of like being part of a team, right? We trust one another to do the hard
work. But also part of me, if I'm a coach or I'm a leader, right, is that my hard work is being
responsible to making sure you have some structure so that it's not anything goes. Also so that you
have recognition for the hard work that you're doing so that you can focus primarily on doing the
hard work and part of my hard work is making sure that you're not doing it in conflict with others.
So like if I use the metaphor of Pittsburgh Steelers again, my kicker isn't also working hard to
to learn how to pass block. I actually probably kicker needs to pass block on a fake kick, right?
But I should say isn't working hard to learn to snap better. It's not his responsibility.
And it's like generally oftentimes the coach's responsibility. If they see him working really hard
at some task that might not really be what he needs to be working hard at, say we already have
guys who do that. So they're kind of in a managerial role. And it's hard in our culture to be a leader
and not emphasize like not fall into authoritarian leadership. But certainly there is great leadership
that is together with not top down from, right? So I kind of still lean on like I want to reclaim
accountability and emphasize Tim, you know, I think what you're saying is you hate one way
accountability where like legislation says do this. And there's no like, yeah, I agree with you,
we should as faculty be accountable to taxpayers dollars. That's what pays our salary. But at the same
time, our legislators should be accountable to those public as well and to the service and labor
of those doing teaching and research. So accountability is a two way street. And that is certainly
at the foundations of democracy, right? Democratic citizenship and popular sovereignty or core
value of democracy, right? That government for the people by the people, right? It hinges on that
like you had said, I would even agree an anarchistic principle that everybody's working hard. I work
hard for you. You work hard for me. Our work is different because we're in different roles. A
picture on a baseball team has very different work than the catcher than the center fielder.
They're all working hard, but the baseball's head managers job is to make sure everybody's in the
right spot at the right times and doing the tasks that they need to be doing to be better at their
position and their role on the team. So I'm a big fan of accountability, but I'm going to clarify and
go back and say the kind of accountability Tim's talking about two way street accountability.
I work hard for you. You work hard for me. We're only as good as our work together, which is different
Tim than that superior top down kind of stuff that, you know, I think it works best. I'll get
sure a quick story and get kick it back to Jacob. I didn't hate principles, but as a teacher,
especially as a new teacher, I constantly blame the principle for a lot of stuff happening in my
school. I was young. I didn't quite know how schools fully worked, though I had a hunch.
I really blame my... Oh, I can't do more project-based learning because my principles,
you know, really big on these tests that I have to teach too. And, you know, the disciplinary
system that I might like in my classroom, I can't do because my principle really wants to make
sure I'm handing out a certain number of the merits of my principle, my principle. I blame my
principle a lot. And then, as I started to learn more about prints being a principle,
start learning that like as some of the very principles I was blaming would be saying things like
I really would love my teachers to do more project-based learning and do different disciplinary,
you know, management in their classrooms. I'm like, wait, the teachers are saying the same thing,
the principles are saying, but then they get into school and the principles are saying my teachers
aren't doing this. The teachers are saying my principle doesn't support this. And so, you know,
I think about what happens when we remove the hierarchy from those positions and we emphasize
the reciprocity needed to be really good. And one of the things that happened is a group of teachers
and I said, we're going to move from this school and we're going to join this school that doesn't
have a principle where the teachers lead that like the school, we know what we need. We're good at
teaching. We know what kids need and we're going to run the school. Tim, I'll tell you about a year
and a half into that experiment and that really awesome idea. We had a meeting together and I think
this is really good because it's the kind of accountability you're talking about, Tim. We sat in
a circle, looked at one another and we said, who's going to be our principal? Because we need
somebody to kind of lead things, just the simplest things like when classes were happening. What,
you know, who was responsible for what wasn't getting done? And we missed our principal. We missed
someone being in that role. So we created a system where teachers took turns, you know, for a half
of the school year being the principal and very quickly that school still very successful has a
teacher that's a principal for a few years and then they passed that on to. So there's a leadership
role that changes the labor, right? But I think it's understood because those leaders were themselves
teachers and will then become a teacher again. So they kind of have a different take about I think
Tim, the kind of accountability you're talking about, right? That that two way street. I work hard
for you. You work hard for me. But my experience has been leadership, not authoritarian kind, right?
Responsible, two way horizontal leadership is invaluable and it's part of our everyday democracy.
Jacob. Wow. Help me. What? Just man. There's a lot of choice. Deep man. Deep. We're talking about
two way horizontal leadership and anarchy. And I'm advocating for it in light and desperate as hard
as I can. But I think we've had a really good conversation there. Exactly.
Desperate. The benevolent dictated the king Arthur. I like a good Napoleon III. But we don't have
time to get into that today. Though Johnny, I think has as close as he can to the Napoleon III moustache
prepared there for us. Very nice. Guys, thank you for coming on your own show. It's always great
to interview you and have a chance to pick some of the brightest minds in education. But I'm afraid
there's time for one last 60-second type segment around here. Let's go. I'm going to start with you,
Dr. Tim Slecker, because Johnny just said a lot of words. Tim, what's the best part of your day
as an educator slash administrator?
Best part of my day. Actually, the best part of my day is when I get to be with others in a kind of
a connection with a conversation that turns into a moment where I get to feel like those days of
being in the classroom again, where the engaged dialogue between colleagues about creating new
opportunities for future higher education students, being in that, as people say, there's a flow
zone that happens and it even happens for an administrator doing administrator work. You just
got to get in that right mix of people and realize that actually it's not administration,
it's leadership and leadership is really, really rewarding.
That's the jock there, Johnny Lupinacci.
jock there, Johnny Lupinacci. How about you? What's the best part of your day?
Lunch. I love us substantial meal. No, I joke, but actually it's an important break in the day and
I do love it and I love it especially because my teaching ends at promptly at noon and oftentimes
we have lunch together. My favorite part of the day are the informal conversations that I get to
have with my students. I love when they get to class early and they have music going and they come
in and we talk about what's been happening in their world, what's going on in the world, what we're
going to be doing in class today. I love class, but then I love lunch because we all kind of take
a break together and eat and man, there's nothing more that I enjoy than a substantial meal.
Tim loves the flow state. Johnny loves lunch. I'm more of a recess guy myself, but I think there's
time for one last thing. And now it's time for your moment of zen.
While some people think that descent is unpatriotic, I would argue that descent is the highest
form of patriotism. Thanks for listening to today's episode of producer's choice. And don't forget,
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