On this episode of the Innovative Schools podcast, we are talking with Joseph Cope about working in Title 1 Schools, self control, and creating a space for learning for every student, even those that give you a challenge. Come on. Let's learn together. Hello. My name is Jordan, your host for this first episode of the Innovative Schools podcast.
Host - Jordan Bassett:I'm so glad you could join us today. The goal of our podcast is to talk about teaching and educating, giving practical strategies and stories to empower, equip, and encourage every person who works in the school or education system. What you guys do is hard work, and we want to give you some just great resources and great inspiration to help you do your work even better. Today, we have responsibility centered discipline master trainer Joseph Cope with us. Joseph, welcome.
Joseph Cope:Jordan, it's an honor to be here. I'm honored to be the first.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. I'm really looking forward to it. We're gonna, you know, figure some things out as we go, and have some great conversation. Joseph, can you tell us a little bit about what, you've been a teacher? You are an RCD master trainer.
Host - Jordan Bassett:You've done a lot of things in your career, but walk us through a little bit about your journey in education.
Joseph Cope:Well, I got into teaching because I wanted to make an impact. I mean, I remember thinking, when I was in college, what am I gonna do? And the truism of those who can do and those who can't, unfortunately I wasn't an academic and I didn't feel like I could be very successful but I did know that I was good at working with people and so what better place to work with people and make an impact than in education so I started in elementary school I taught for 10 years in elementary school and I found out pretty quickly that I had a knack for just connecting with people. The art of teaching came pretty naturally to me. What I had to learn was the science of teaching and so after 10 years in education in elementary I got to move my way up to middle school when we moved from one state to another.
Joseph Cope:And then after 5 years teaching middle school English I got to move into leadership and was in leadership for 3 years. And now here I am I get to be a master trainer of responsibility to center discipline sharing with teachers around the country some of the things that made not just my classroom successful, but classrooms around the country are being made successful as well.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. What kind of schools were you kind of working in, like, when you started? Where where did you start when you were teaching?
Joseph Cope:Well, I've had the experience in the classroom of teaching only in title 1 schools. And for the non educators out there, a title 1 school just indicates that there are funds that come from what's called title 1 from the government to support because students tend to come from low income poverty and they're areas of high need within society. And so you can imagine the struggles that students come with every single day in a Title 1 school. Yeah. I mean Title 1 schools are in some places are notorious where people look and go oh you teach there?
Joseph Cope:And multiple schools where I have the opportunity to teach at, I would say where I taught and some of my even teaching friends would go, oh, wow. How do you do that? Because some of the behaviors just almost feel outlandish, you know? On my 1st week of school, I had a 4th grade kid tell me to f off under his breath. I mean, welcome to education.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. Right.
Joseph Cope:Right? Like, what are you supposed to do with that? Yeah.
Host - Jordan Bassett:What do you do with that?
Joseph Cope:What are you supposed to do with a kid who tells you to f off until you start realizing I got hired in January the teacher who I took over for if she wasn't walking on water she was flying with angel wings she was that good and everybody at the school loved her including my friend who missed her and here's this stranger coming into the class and he tells you to do something it doesn't matter how engaging that lesson was his response was you're not miss Stevens. Yeah. And his response under his breath was f off you're not miss Stevens.
Host - Jordan Bassett:So you had you had big shoes to fill?
Joseph Cope:Jordan, the lady that I took over for was beloved at the school by staff and students alike. And to have to fill those shoes as a beginning teacher, oh my goodness. Yeah. It was it was it was huge shoes to fill. Mhmm.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Now you started your your first teaching kind of job gig was in Texas. Right?
Joseph Cope:So I started teaching in California.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Oh, okay.
Joseph Cope:So for 10 years, I was in California. And then in 2015, we moved to Texas which is where I got the opportunity and I say opportunity in air quotes because some elementary teachers would say how could you? But I did get the opportunity to broaden my experience and move into middle school, and once I got there, I fell in love.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Mhmm. That's great. I middle school for me was a rough time, so I can imagine, you know, just being a student even, your your favorite teacher's gone. You have this new young guy that who knows what he knows and if he's gonna do anything. And on top of that, you're working in a a title one school.
Host - Jordan Bassett:And so as a as a student, I you can imagine the whole world being shaken up of, like, what how am I gonna learn or if I even care about learning at that point. I think we did some some research just looking at where you were in Texas. And when you were there, that the district you were in, 78, I think, 778 percent of the students were low income.
Joseph Cope:Mhmm. The district where I taught, just recently has become the largest urban district in West Texas. And the needs within the students was just vast. I mean, the school that I taught at was about 4 miles away from the county detention center, and it wasn't uncommon for my students to come in and say my brother got locked up last night or my dad's back in or
Joseph Cope:my mom got sent there last
Joseph Cope:night. And when basic needs of human life aren't being met in a consistent way forget trying to learn how to conjugate a verb. Right? Forget how to creatively write a 5 paragraph essay. Like those kind of things don't even come across your mind.
Joseph Cope:Mhmm. And all of the behaviors that come about as a way of avoiding the work or letting the teacher know and through a behavior that I am not at my best today.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Mhmm.
Joseph Cope:And those manifest themselves in large, large scale behaviors.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. So what were some I mean, when you have kids coming in with those situations or from that or for whenever it happened last night or last week, on top of just the normal pressures of being middle school in general, what I mean, how did you approach helping students learn or just succeed in life at that point? Like, how do you what did you do?
Joseph Cope:Yeah. Unlike unlike many teachers I mean, like most teachers out there, I would say this is you get into education because you have a heart for humanity. Mhmm. So the first thing you wanna do is establish a sense of rapport. Yeah.
Joseph Cope:The challenge is is how do you not fall into the trap of becoming their friend because I have too big of a heart? Mhmm. And then when that doesn't work, then I get frustrated because now I need to give you some tough love. It's between tough love and trying to figure out how to get you to do the things. And when I started out teaching, one of my verse my my I wouldn't say it's my proudest moment, but for sure it's not my proudest moment.
Joseph Cope:At the end of year 1, I remember my sweet girl, Jackie, at the end of the year, she wrote me a letter. She said, Dear Mr. Cope, thank you for being the best teacher ever. Thank you for all of the movies and games we watched and played. I thought to myself, is that the impact that I made on you?
Joseph Cope:That's so so by the end of 10 years of teaching, I had gone through trying to do all these things to establish rapport so kids loved being in my class. The hard thing became when you've got a student who walks in after lunch highly agitated, agitated, emotionally dysregulated because something that took place in the middle school classroom middle school lunchroom, and now I have to sit there wondering what am I doing? What am I gonna do with this 7th grade girl who it very well could be her time in the month, not to mention the fact that there's all the things that have gone on in the lunch room and she's cursing up a storm. She's directing it towards me. She's talking to anybody who she can who will listen.
Joseph Cope:And what do you do? And I used to try to do the old, like, hey. Get yourself calm down. Go take some time for yourself. Or I would do the hey what can I do for you let me help you?
Joseph Cope:The hard part is is I was always stuck either carrying too much weight because I cared too much or carrying too much weight because I didn't care enough. And I got stuck carrying just the weight of the world of all of these kids needs on my shoulders.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah.
Joseph Cope:And I would take it home every single day. You know what, Jordan? It made me a really caring teacher, but it made me a really burned out teacher. I couldn't carry all that weight. I mean, you ask my wife.
Joseph Cope:Yeah. Like, she's the one who would sometimes say, like, let's can we not talk about school tonight?
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah.
Joseph Cope:Or she would see me at the school for 12 hours on Saturday trying to prep lesson plans that were engaging so that my kids could have a good learning environment.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. And that's kind of one of the things that maybe we were talking earlier. You're saying that, like, coming out of school, you're taught to to just make it an engaging enough lesson and the behavior problems will will go away.
Joseph Cope:Listen, it's a it's it's a truth, but it's not a full truth. Right? Because our the way that our brain is wired is we need to be engaged in something that we're interested in. You want to learn if it makes sense to you and great teachers make great engaging lesson plans.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. Some of my most favorite teachers I remember back is
Joseph Cope:Right. Yeah. You remember the gamification of the lesson. Yeah. Like, you remember the I want those points.
Joseph Cope:Right. And you also remember the history teacher who told the great stories or you actually got to be the person in history and all those great lessons that made it engaging. The problem is is if you're in a level of survival in life, it doesn't matter how engaging a lesson plan is. That doesn't change the fact that I just broke up with my boyfriend and I'm really really mad right now I don't care if you spent 14 hours preparing this stupid game I'm not doing it. Yeah.
Joseph Cope:Right? The the the truth is engaging lesson plans matter. The truth that we also have to understand is if you're gonna make those engaging lesson plans stick you have to be able to give your students a place to land emotionally so that they feel like it's worthwhile to them.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. So what, did you how quickly did you learn that? Oh. Did you learn that quick?
Joseph Cope:Well, you know what's funny is it probably wasn't until about, maybe 10 or 11 years into my teaching career that I really started realizing I'm carrying too much weight and I think one of the things Jordan that happened was I had my own kids. Mhmm. And I realized that I don't have as much bandwidth to give to the students like I used to before. There's other priorities in my life and so now it became a conflict. And it came to the point where I started to realize I don't I don't know how much longer I can do this unless something changes.
Joseph Cope:Yeah. Unless something unless unless I and I was thinking to myself unless I landed the right school right unless I moved to a place where there's no Title 1 kids unless I move to unless we move to a different location or I get a better boss or I get a better team. It was always something else on the outside that I was hoping that would change that would change the burnout within me. Mhmm. And it wasn't.
Joseph Cope:It what you realize is I mean think about this. What makes a good teacher? Right? A good teacher, obviously, somebody who cares. Yeah.
Joseph Cope:1st and foremost.
Host - Jordan Bassett:For sure.
Joseph Cope:But in the science of teaching, you gotta know your stuff. You gotta know what you're teaching. Mhmm. Otherwise, you come across as incompetent. That's why you go to school to learn what you're teaching.
Joseph Cope:And then it's not just what you have to teach, it's how you teach it. You gotta have those engaging lesson plans and you also have to make sure that the kids know their stuff. So how are you gonna go about assessing your kids to make sure that they know their stuff? But the 3rd piece that rarely gets talked about in formal education is how do you manage your class? How do you handle student behavior?
Joseph Cope:Mhmm. And there's some people out there who can do it pretty naturally. Yeah. It happens but it never gets trained formally into you. Yeah.
Joseph Cope:And so that was the realization that I had is I'm holding so much of this management piece within me and I'm trying all of the things and little gizmos and gadgets and tricks and and tokens and coins and punitive systems and clip ups and click downs and all the things that I'm trying that I got told that would work, but eventually, I'm running out of steam at the end of the day because I'm creating great lesson plans.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah.
Joseph Cope:We're having good conversations in class, but I'm going home drained every day. Yeah.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Well, I think we're gonna take a a small break. And when we come back from that, though, we're gonna continue this conversation specifically looking at what are some of those things for classroom management that you discovered along the way, to help some of the the teachers and the educators that are listening. So, hang out for a little bit, and we'll be at be back in a minute. Welcome back to the Innovative Schools podcast. My name is Jordan.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Again, we're here with Joseph Cope, and we just kinda finished talking about how school, when teachers go to school, they get the degree. There's really not a lot of training in classroom management. But you also said that teachers get into education because they have a heart for the students and for, for teaching. Is is that why you got into teaching?
Joseph Cope:Without a doubt. I didn't know what else I could do in the world except connect with humans. I just knew I was good at that. And if I'm gonna connect with humans, I wanna connect with humans who are gonna have an impact later on in life. What better way to connect and have an impact than to work with the future generation?
Joseph Cope:And that's what I wanted to do.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. That's great. We also talked about, your time in title 1 schools. And so thinking about the school's not preparing you for classroom management and you're in title 1 schools that, you face a lot of challenges and a lot of behavioral things. And so, what you said it took 10 years for you to kind of figure out, or have this realization of how to make the the most impact.
Host - Jordan Bassett:What what happened at those 10 that 10 year mark?
Joseph Cope:Well, one is I moved from elementary to middle.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah.
Joseph Cope:In elementary when you're an elementary teacher your outlook as a teacher is I'm really here to shape these lives these young lives And then you move to middle school where all of a sudden they really have a voice of their own. Mhmm. And all of a sudden they're pushing back on things you say.
Host - Jordan Bassett:I mean I did. We all do.
Joseph Cope:Yeah. It's a stage in life. It's why middle school is the most awkward phase in life because you're just discovering who you are and these poor teachers who get put into middle school who have no training around how to work through that they get stuck. Right? Or they get they get burned out or they get over invested and they just carry so much of that weight because it's so up and down it's so emotional.
Joseph Cope:I mean one of the I mean listen Jordan the 1st year that I was working at the middle school that I was working that first year the very within 2 weeks of the time that I was there I was filling out a police report for assault with a weapon. Wow. You know what that weapon was?
Host - Jordan Bassett:In elementary school?
Joseph Cope:No this is the middle school.
Host - Jordan Bassett:In middle school?
Joseph Cope:This is a middle school. Okay. That weapon was my paper cutter. The paper cutter that just 3 months ago I had been using in elementary school for kids to help me cut things out all of a sudden now that had been used as a weapon. 1 student all of a sudden decides it would be a good idea to put his finger down and another student welcome to middle school right
Host - Jordan Bassett:yeah and what do you mean why did you even have that in the classroom I
Joseph Cope:mean that's my principal asked me
Host - Jordan Bassett:Should have thought that went through a little bit.
Joseph Cope:I would have thought so, but I never would have thought it wouldn't use. But here's the thing is, those are that's like a big behavior. Yeah. Then you start getting driven crazy in a middle school setting when kids just don't stop talking. Mhmm.
Joseph Cope:Because no middle school kid doesn't have something to say. They always have something to say. Right? Yeah. And they're all they all have and so now I'm used to being able to say alright guys settle down and we settle down.
Joseph Cope:Mhmm. And now I'm in middle school all of a sudden I say, okay, guys, settle down. And half the class settles down. And I look at the other half. Okay, guys.
Joseph Cope:Let's get settled now. It's time to go. A quarter settles down. And then I just have an eighth of my kids who just completely disregard me because they don't wanna be there because they don't want to do creative writing that day. I mean, what do you do?
Joseph Cope:Like, I tried all the tricks, like, and that's the thing. It's like and I I tried the things and a lot of the thing is those tricks worked most of the time.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. But maybe so, I was I was talking to someone else in education. They're talking about their their daughter was, the teacher was trying to work on behavior things, and they had this whole system of if you did good, you moved up on on the pegboard, and you could get once you moved up to the heist, you could get a toy, but you got nothing for maintaining your behavior. So then the kid would start acting poorly to move back down the pegboard so they could move back up to then get another reward. And the teacher got upset at the student, but the parent of the student said, your system's broken.
Host - Jordan Bassett:She she's actually outsmarted your whole behavior classroom management system.
Joseph Cope:The the the way that the brain operates with motivation has actually nothing to do with rewards and punishment. When you're talking about what intrinsically motivates a human being. Right? Teachers always talk about these words intrinsic motivation. I have to intrinsically motivate my children.
Joseph Cope:Mhmm. Well, intrinsic motivation doesn't come from being handed a $20 bill to do your work. Mhmm. Intrinsic motivation comes from a place of do I get to choose for myself whether or not I can do it? Mhmm.
Joseph Cope:Daniel Pink calls that autonomy in his book Drive. He calls it autonomy is it's the way that you choose for yourself what you want to do and it's an innate need in all human beings. What teachers often mistake is teachers will often see a behavior as something disrespectful or wrong when what we can really see is what is the story that that behavior is telling me about that child and what is the skill that that child is missing? And how is that behavior telling me that they're missing that skill? Let me tell you a quick example.
Joseph Cope:Right? I I and I use this in some in some of the trainings that I give which is, I I had a student in 7th grade. Her name was Abby. She walks in after lunch and she is hot with emotion. I mean, she is throwing f bombs down.
Joseph Cope:She's telling kids that she's gonna kick somebody's a. She's calling kids b, and we all walk in and we're thinking, like, what just happened? Yeah. Like, in that moment, the Joseph, the mister Cope of 10 years ago would have said, Eby, come on. Get yourself calm down.
Joseph Cope:Get outside. We we can't have you do this. Mhmm. In the moment though once I had learned this skill of walking into a conversation with intention I walked to Ebby and I looked at her and I said girl it sounds like you're really frustrated You're really really heated right now. What is it gonna take for you to get to be your best self?
Joseph Cope:Because I created a lesson today that had you in mind. I know you're a writer and I want you to do the best but it's gonna take you getting to be your best for you to be able to participate in it today. I want you to do well. You want to do well. What's it gonna take?
Joseph Cope:But in that moment of rather than shaming her for the behavior, acknowledging the behavior, it just gave her that opportunity in that moment to ask herself, what do I need? Yeah. And she got to choose Mhmm. What it would take. Of course, in that situation, like, there were a lot more f bombs that were thrown.
Joseph Cope:Yeah. There were more skills that had to be employed, but by the end of that conversation, Abby was able to tell me that she needed 3 minutes to calm herself down. Mhmm. And when she came in after those 3 minutes, she had chosen 3 minutes. And so when she came back in, she was regulated and was able to get the work done and be successful.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. And she and she chose that. And she chose supported her through that. Absolutely. You were there to help her kinda lift and figure out to get out of the the, you know, the lizard brain back into someone who can be be rational.
Joseph Cope:People who care sometimes have to save themselves from themselves. Sometimes we're so good at doing something just innately that we forget that we're not the one that has to do the lifting. Yeah. Great teachers can create a space for students to choose to change behavior for themselves.
Host - Jordan Bassett:How do so I'm I'm in a classroom with 20, 25
Joseph Cope:Yeah.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Students Yeah. And maybe the majority of them are doing great Yeah. But there's 1 or 2 that are not in that headspace. How do I as a teacher create that space you're just talking about for those students?
Joseph Cope:Well, before I tell you what I would do in those with those 2 students, I would say this because I wouldn't be a good leader in education if I didn't say this. The environment that you set up in your classroom is gonna dictate the level of success that you can attain to with your students because you have to have structures and procedures in place because we also know that as much as we need autonomy as humans we also need to know where the boundary is so we can choose when we come up against that boundary how we're gonna react to it. Mhmm. That's just human nature. So when those boundaries are put in place, when the expectations are clearly set and routines have been established, when there are some students who for whatever reason choose to go with outside those boundaries or not meet those expectations, If Jordan and his buddy were messing around off in the corner and all of a sudden I hear Jordan go, oh my gosh, something loud that totally disrupts the independent learning.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. Were you in my 4th grade class?
Joseph Cope:Because Were you my 4th grade kid? How did I know that you were Jordan? Are you the reason that Jordan gives me nightmares?
Host - Jordan Bassett:Probably. Probably.
Joseph Cope:But what I'm saying is I might walk over to Jordan, and I would rather than saying, Jordan, smarten up. Get yourself together because 4th grade Jordan hears that, and what does 4th grade Jordan do? Shuts down. Mhmm. Or mister Cove doesn't care or, like,
Host - Jordan Bassett:fine. I'll do it. Or for for right. For me, I may, on the outside, say, okay. Yeah.
Host - Jordan Bassett:And then 3 seconds later, I'm complaining to all my friends about how mean or whatever Mr. Cope is.
Joseph Cope:And no matter how engaging that lesson was, you're just gonna get it done for completion rather than engaging the spirit of that lesson. Yeah. So to create space for Jordan to choose change for himself, I might walk over to you and say, Jordan, looks like we got something funny going on. Like, you guys are clearly having a great time over there. I'm just wondering if we can take the energy that you got over there, and can we put it into the work here?
Joseph Cope:Mhmm. This assignment here, it's only gonna take 10 minutes. Both of you are ridiculously smart. Let's get this through in the next 10 minutes. And with the conversation you have after that, let's just keep it at an inside voice so it doesn't distract the rest of us.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. You've you've successfully redirected, built in some kind of benefit, a little bit of expectations, and left me with dignity while still getting me into a position to to learn and and succeed.
Joseph Cope:I love that you use the word dignity because unintentionally sometimes we in a leader role assume that our power has the ability just the power has the ability to change someone but when you can leave a conversation where both parties have a sense of we're still human, you've left dignity intact on all fronts. Yeah. I mean think about this. What middle school kid what's well, what human likes to get called out for being for their poor behavior?
Host - Jordan Bassett:No one. I can't think of one.
Joseph Cope:Even if I'm going 90 miles per hour down the speed down the freeway Mhmm. And I get pulled over by a policeman, and I know that I've been going 90 Yeah. I still feel wronged because in my mind, I was justified going 90 miles an hour.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Well, that guy was going 5 miles faster than me.
Joseph Cope:Yeah. Exactly. Passed me. Yes. Exactly.
Joseph Cope:And or I might have been rushing to the hospital to meet my daughter. Yeah. Right? And so the the point is is that when we get called out or feel called out, we go into that survival mode, that lizard brain. Mhmm.
Joseph Cope:So when a when a teacher or a leader has the capacity to recognize that's where you are, create the space for you to I love that word that you used, still have a sense of dignity in walking away. I mean, Jordan, I can't tell you how many times a middle school boy has come over to me because they were they were making poor choices in the class and by the time we finished a conversation the kid looks at me and goes thanks. Let me tell you what it looked like. I paused up a kid in the hallway. The kid's slapping the kids' backs heads.
Joseph Cope:Right? Yeah. I'm hooting and hollering. I call the kid over. Hey, Jordan.
Joseph Cope:Come here. What's his first response? I didn't do nothing. What are you talking to me for? And I say, no.
Joseph Cope:Just come here. And I go, I saw what was going on down there between me and your next class. There's 8 adults who are gonna see you do the same thing. Adults getting on your case gets you supercharged and annoyed. For you to get to class and be your best self let's stay out of the adults way all it means is you just showing a little bit of self control for the next 800 feet can you do that?
Joseph Cope:Yeah. And the kid looks at me this happened multiple times the kid looks at me and goes I didn't even think about that thanks and what could have been a reprimand turned into the capacity for him to demonstrate self control walking down the hallway.
Host - Jordan Bassett:And I'll tell you self control that's another kind of word, you know, I I think sometimes we we position that or I think of that word self control and just maybe with food or, you know, something like that to benefit myself which I think self control ultimately can, but self control also, in my opinion, is more than just that, but it's the ability to get things done that you need to get done or, even like you're saying, you know, in the next 800 feet or whatever, have enough self control. And even with my own my own daughter, I can see she's 7 and just it I sometimes she has really hard time doing something or she doesn't wanna do her schoolwork, and, we talk about that self control. I'm like, can you have self control for the next 3 minutes? And then the next time we have a conversation, okay, for for 4 minutes. And we just start building that up to help her build that muscle of self control while also, just seeing the benefit for herself of what she's working on.
Joseph Cope:Think about the results of self control. Mhmm. The result I mean, those the behavioral folks out there will tell you that self control is like a muscle. You just mentioned it. Right?
Joseph Cope:Like, you gotta use it for it to grow. So sometimes to be able to put a timepiece on it, can you show self control for 2 minutes? Mhmm. That then becomes a benefit to them. They realize I could do it for 2 minutes.
Joseph Cope:Maybe I can do it for 3. Yeah. Maybe I can do it for 5. But the result at the end is a human being says I did that and I did it by myself Right. And I did it for me.
Joseph Cope:Mhmm. And in reflection, why is it that some students will come back and visit their teachers? Maybe it's because they were a fine teacher.
Host - Jordan Bassett:I'd never really thought about why I wanted to go back and see some of my teachers and not other ones.
Joseph Cope:Think about it. Some of them, it's because, you know, you had a good time in the class Mhmm. And they were your buddy or whatever, but the teachers that you respect the most and hold this a deep space of gratitude for are the teachers who created the space for the real you to come out for yourself. Whether that was in behavior whether whether that was in the grit that it took to get that paper done the perseverance it took to do that research paper that you didn't want to do but you end up putting the work in, or maybe it was just the fact that you were able to regulate your own emotions on your own thanks to that teacher and now you can walk into an emotionally charged situation and say I got this. Or you can walk up to another student who is in your face over something and you've learned the skill of saying you're not worth my time.
Joseph Cope:Like, you're not worth it to me. And for a student at a title one school to turn around and walk away and feel strong Mhmm. That's self control. But think about the mastery that those kids are experiencing in terms of who they are and what they can do for themselves.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. Just the just the idea that maybe they've come into this or I mean, this happens to all of us of feeling that we can't do something. I was, this isn't necessarily education related, but we had a tree, a dead tree in our backyard, that we had taken down and I told them to leave the locks because we have a fire pit to, split and I had a friend who had never split wood before and they wanted to come over and learn how to split wood and she's working at this thing for a while and she's like, I'm gonna give up. I said, no. No.
Host - Jordan Bassett:No. You need to accomplish something today. She'd been going through a couple, you know, rough things recently. I said, you need to win. And as when she got through that wood, when she got through it and she her whole face, her whole demeanor, she's like, you're right.
Host - Jordan Bassett:I needed I needed that win. And while she wasn't a master at wood splitting, she had that that moment. And so even little little moments like wood splitting or in a school of being able to walk that 800 feet and not goof off and cause other adults to say things or accomplish that paper or just get one letter grade above on a test that you thought that you weren't gonna do great on.
Joseph Cope:I would be remiss if I wouldn't couldn't didn't talk about my daughter here.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Mhmm.
Joseph Cope:Just, 2 weeks ago, not even that, a week ago, she got a new bed. So we went we picked it up and and she and I started building it together. And she she started getting to like, we put the frame together on the outside. And at a certain point, I just stepped back and said, okay. Now it's your turn to finish.
Joseph Cope:And so she had the little alum wrench and she put the slats together.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah.
Joseph Cope:But whose bed is it? It's her bed.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah.
Joseph Cope:She put it together. And there's times where parents or teachers will say, I'm proud of you. Right? But there's other times that parents or teachers can say, I'm really proud of you, but you need to be proud of yourself. Mhmm.
Joseph Cope:And when they go I really am proud of myself. I did that by myself. That's when you create that sense of intrinsic motivation. Mhmm. Let's do if I can do that then the next question is what else can I do?
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. For sure. I mean,
Joseph Cope:how many kids do we know in education that if that was lit within them, how quickly would the world change?
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah. It'd be crazy. Well, we're almost on time, but do you have one thing out of all the things that we've talked about, from classroom management, self control, leaving them with dignity? What is one thing as we close out this first episode of the podcast that you would deeply encourage and hopefully motivate teachers to do right now in their classroom?
Joseph Cope:Jordan, what I would say is that the one thing that teachers are could do more with is don't just go into your conversations with your students from a place of heart. Go into your conversations with your students from a place of intention. And what I mean by that is it takes skill to go into a conversation with intention.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Yeah.
Joseph Cope:That's the skill that I get to work with teachers and staffs around the country. Every week, I get a chance I have the privilege of being in schools training teachers in a skill, but that skill is the skill that changed my teaching profession. Mhmm. That skill of going in with intention, thinking to myself things like how am I gonna support this kid? What matters to this kid?
Joseph Cope:What's the skill that's missing? What is this behavior trying to tell me? Those are all questions that I'm asking with intention to myself before I even go into this challenging moment conversation. We all have big hearts that's why we're in education but sometimes we just got to save ourselves from ourselves by protecting our heart with a level of skill so that we can go home every day with the same heart the next day.
Host - Jordan Bassett:Joseph, I wanna thank you so much for joining us today and just sharing your experiences and the things that you learned working in title 1 schools, your thoughts on self control and how important that is to students, and just, how we can, as educators, make a better space for all students to learn, even those that are, you know, maybe challenging to us sometimes. But so thank you for for sharing all that with us. Joseph Cope kinda talked about a little bit. You talked a little bit about how, you get to travel around the country and share what you've learned. Joseph does do professional development at schools and that kind of thing.
Host - Jordan Bassett:If you're interested in that, we'll have a couple links in the show notes for you to, possibly talk to him more about bringing him to your school to talk about those things. I hope everyone had a great time today. I did. I learned a lot. We look forward to learning more with you on the next episode of the Innovative Schools podcast.
Host - Jordan Bassett:See you all later.