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KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments through microschooling. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
Episode 68: Centering Humanity in Teaching. A Conversation with Matt Eicheldinger.
Matt Eicheldinger, NYT bestselling author and educator, shares his journey of persistence and the power of meaningful connections with young people. He centers on building trust and creating space for kids to develop confidence, curiosity, and resilience.
• Becoming a teacher because he enjoyed kids and had parents who modeled empathy
• Writing his first book for struggling readers, facing 600+ rejections before succeeding
• The impact of small moments that resonate with students years later
• Playing "the long game" with disengaged students by building trust before pushing academics
• The importance of boredom as a catalyst for creativity
• Creating space for silence and reflection in our overstimulated world
• Showing vulnerability by sharing rejection letters with students
• Helping children develop identity beyond academic achievement
About our guest
Matt Eicheldinger is a New York Times bestselling author, storyteller, and educator who brings humor and heart to every story he tells. With a knack for finding the extraordinary in everyday moments, Matt has captivated readers with books like Sticky Notes: Memorable Lessons from Ordinary Moments and Matt Sprouts and the Curse of the Ten Broken Toes, and continues to write stories that capture the imagination and heart for readers. Beyond the page, Matt shares relatable stories with his hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, and has amassed over 100 million views where he makes people laugh, think, and appreciate the small moments in life.
Connect with Matt
https://matteicheldinger.com/
The Matt Sprouts Series
Sticky Notes
@matteicheldinge
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
Important links:
• Connect with us on social
• Get our free literacy curriculum
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As a teacher and as someone who works with kids, you are making all these decisions so quickly all the time that I think we lose those smaller moments that are going to resonate years down the line, Because we're usually looking for what is the immediate outcome of this lesson to show learning when in fact, like there is these little steps along the way that might matter just way down the line.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to the Kindle Podcast. Thanks for joining us. I'm Katie Broadbent, your host for today's episode, and today we're talking to Matt Eicheldinger. Matt is a New York Times bestselling author, storyteller and an experienced educator. He's the author of Sticky Notes, memorable Lessons from Ordinary Moments and the Matt Sprout series, the first of which is called the Curse the 10 broken toes. He shares inspiring stories on social media to hundreds of thousands of followers and is an overall, very cool person. After my conversation with Matt today, I'm feeling super inspired to lean into curiosity and empathy as I interact with the young people in my life, and in this episode he's going to share a ton of practical take-home tips as well as his broader philosophy about how we can interact with young humans in a way that builds trust and encourages them to persist through failure. So hope you enjoy today's episode. Let's go talk to Matt. Matt, welcome to the Kindle podcast. We're super excited to have you on today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:So you're an experienced teacher, a New York Times bestselling author and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people following you on social media. First off, congrats on all of that.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I just want to, kind of I want to understand why you do what you do, like why do you write? Why did you? Why did you start writing initially? Why share on social media Like what's your big why? What are you trying to accomplish?
Speaker 1:Sure, I think maybe I'll give like maybe an overview of all of those, but I'll start with teaching.
Speaker 1:Like, why did I go into teaching? I think that's important to know. I grew up in a very small town. I had the idea of I wanted to make a lot of money, so I decided I was going to be an architect. So I like had the school chose. I figured architects make a lot of money, I can kind of draw, so I'll do that.
Speaker 1:And it was right before I decided to choose my college that I realized I, what did I enjoy naturally doing? And what I enjoyed naturally doing was hanging out with kids. I was always put with the bumblebee soccer players, like the really little ones, and I did vacation Bible schools and it was just great to be around kids. And I also had two parents who really led with empathy and understanding. My mom owned a dance studio and had classes for kids with disabilities, and so I was exposed to that at an early age and I just thought, like that's what feels comfortable and that's where I feel my true self, and so that's why I went into teaching. It just felt like a very natural fit as far as everything that's going on now in terms of like writing books and telling stories online.
Speaker 1:There's like a couple different reasons I do it. The first part, though, is my books. I never had a plan to be an author. It was a dream, but there was no plan. Everything that I've created so far that's gone out into the world was created for my students, which is really strange. So, like my first book, that's a New York Times bestseller I wrote when I was 21 for my struggling readers in class. That was the only purpose. There was no to put it on a shelf, my book of sticky notes, of all those stories, that's because I was writing things down for myself, because I wanted to remember the things happening in my classroom. And I've got a poetry book coming out later for kids. That was written because I didn't have poetry material. So everything that I've done was always for my students, which is really cool because it's so natural, it's so genuine.
Speaker 1:Because there was no plan, yeah, and then sorry, I just keep going. Was no plan. Yeah, and then sorry, I just keep going. And then, as far as like telling stories on Instagram, I mean, I was. I was selfish at the beginning. I was trying to just be visible because I had books coming out, but I really wanted to share things that would leave people feeling better about either themselves or the world when they left. And since I happen to have thousands of stories, I thought that would be a good place to start, and so now I continue to tell them, because I like seeing how it resonates with other people and how they see themselves in so many of these stories. So that was everything.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. That's a really beautiful story and something that just really comes through when I listen to your stories on social media or to just read anything that you've done. You are such a good observer of humanity, like you could go into teaching or go into anything, and it can either feel like mechanical and like I'm just here to get a job done, but, like every time I hear you talk about a student or a parent or a teacher, like you can feel how much you care for that person and I think that's really unique in a world that is so fast paced and so focused on like metrics and assessments and all of these things that kind of like push on the educational scene, and so I just really love that. So how did you, how did you get to be a New York Times bestselling author? Like what was that path like for you? It's so interesting to hear that you were just writing for your students and just real quick an aside, what were you teaching?
Speaker 1:So I've taught the same thing my entire career. I've taught sixth grade language arts, and so that's what I've taught. I primarily taught it in the same building too. So the way this story and I've gotten better crunching down a very long story in a short period of time is when I was 21 and got hired to be a teacher. I noticed that all my teacher friends had like unique qualities about themselves, like you can remember the teacher that danced, or the one that told bad jokes on purpose. So I was trying to think about like what can I give students that would incentivize them to want to be with me? And I happen to have a really good memory of my past and so I remember all of my embarrassing moments, at least the majority of them.
Speaker 1:So I started by telling these silly stories to kids and it just kind of exploded. There was other kids from other teams who wanted to hear Mr Ike's silly story. So I created this big glass jar in my room that has hundreds of slips of paper in it and every sheet of paper is a little Mr Eicheldinger story from his childhood. So if we finish like a task, I tell this embarrassing story, that usually has some sort of lesson in it. But they're really grounded in humor because that's what gets kids' attention. And so kids really liked them. So I decided I'll go home and write these down before I forget like actually scribe them in like long form.
Speaker 1:And when I was doing it, for some reason that I still don't understand, I decided to weave them into one story, just like a narrative, and went back to my classroom, printed it out on the school computer, three-hole punched it and just had it in my classroom. And over the next several weeks I had kids who were struggling readers, who wouldn't read, and I was like, well, do you like the silly stories I tell? And they're like, well, yeah, I'm. Like, well, then, read this thing. And it quickly started traveling around our school Kids, took it to other kids and I was like, well, maybe I made something good, maybe I can refine it and really aim it towards reluctant readers. And so that began the next 15 years of me trying to get it published I've sent hundreds of letters to agents in New York was rejected hundreds of times, more times than I can count. I did stop keeping track at like 450.
Speaker 1:My best estimate is I was rejected over 600 times from experts in New York. Yeah, it was, but the thing I tell people is I had other experts and those were my students and students who weren't mine too who really enjoyed the book, and so I had the data that I needed. I just needed someone to believe in me In 2021, nobody did yet, so I decided to make the book myself. I did a Kickstarter campaign. My wife and I decided how much money we could risk to put into this project, printed 3,000 copies on the initial run, and then only one bookstore in the whole Midwest would take me One in the Twin Cities. So then I joined TikTok in the middle of the pandemic because I was like maybe I can sell on there, and that was my first introduction to social media and that helped me sell a lot of books.
Speaker 1:I won these independent awards and it was great, but no agent and no publisher wanted me, and so I had like 20 books left in my basement because every time someone bought one, I had to march to the post office. I would sometimes buy McDonald's for everybody there because I would be there for so long doing the postage with them, but I was tired right, after 15 years it's a long time I was able to meet with an agent who gives advice like a consultation fee, and so I paid that fee and I was like I just need you to tell me whether or not to give up on my dream. Like that's really what I'm paying you to do, which is a heavy question. And I said because I'm not going to, I don't want to raise money again. I'm getting literally done everything that I know how to do. I have a social media presence, which was small at the time, it was like 10,000. I had sales numbers, I had awards.
Speaker 1:I was like what else can I do? And she's like well, I'll read the book. And she read the book, called me the next day and she was like I love it. There's a catch, though I want to represent you, but I only sell women's nonfiction. And I was like did you actually read my book? Because it's written by a male about a male. And she's like well, that's how much I believe in your idea. And she said I'm going to try and sell it. So I signed my contract with my agent. I was told that it takes a year, maybe four, to get a book deal, and we got one within two weeks of pitching it.
Speaker 2:My goodness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that book deal came on the day before the day the day before the last day to put in for leave from teaching, and so I had to go home to my wife and we'd look at each other and be like how much do we believe in this dream, and so financially we were able to do it for a year. That's what we could do. Mac can take off for a year, go in all this in the stream. And then that summer is when I started telling stories on Instagram, and at the same time I started telling stories on Instagram, my book launched, and on the first day that it was out in the world it became an instant New York Times bestseller the first day. And so it's been a wild ride since, because when you are a New York Times bestseller, it gives you credibility and so people understand that you can write more done.
Speaker 1:But I have pumped out At the time. By September I'll have had five books out in under a year and a half, which is pretty phenomenal for a new author. So I'm told, and I've got like four more coming that are already contracted. So I don't even know how long I get to do this for, but it's been very fulfilling to know that the thing that I knew worked is actually working. That's been the best part. It's not an I told you so moment. It's like I'm a teacher and I know this works. I just needed one person to believe in me and it took 15 years. But that's kind of where I'm at now. I get to sit at home and write and figure out what is To be. On the other side of education is very interesting, right. I'm creating stuff for kids and for adults, but mostly kids, and that's been. It's been really cool.
Speaker 2:I'd love to just like tangent a little bit into your writing process and so teaching sixth grade ELA like what are, what are some of your? Like writing pedagogy, like tips and tricks, Like what does work in that classroom? What have you seen that is successful?
Speaker 1:So something that was frustrating for me is I was in a district where and this is going to sound really backwards, but where you were given a lot of things I've known teachers who go to districts and they don't even get a curriculum. They're literally building from scratch and we would get stuff that like laid out your whole year. And that was great as a new teacher because it gave you a path right. It gave you structure and scope and sequence. But if kids don't like what you're doing, there was like well, what now? What? What do I do? And so I was always creating writing prompts for my students. I have probably thousands just saved in folders and they've moved over time. But my pedagogy for writing is kids have to see the potential of an adventure in it. So if I don't give them an opportunity to write about something that's adventurous whether it's navigating their own brain or creating something from scratch it's really difficult for kids to buy into writing for longer than five minutes.
Speaker 1:As far as my own writing process, I'm still figuring that out.
Speaker 1:When I wrote my New York Times bestselling book, I wrote the initial book in 30 days and so far that's about how long it takes me to write a 70,000 word book, and I've met other authors who are similar and others who are different. The other thing that is unique about my writing process is I don't have a plan when I sit down. So when I sit down to write a book, I have the title and that's it. Yeah, it's so like it's what I've told people to is. It's been very freeing because, as educators and anyone who works with kids, you, your creative, creative energy gets put into lesson plans, and when I was a teacher, I would come home and if I wanted to write something, which I rarely did, but I had no creative energy left. And so now I'm in this space where all of my creative energy goes to writing, and so when I sit down with a title, that's all I need, because I'm completely focused on one thing, and it's been really cool to figure out what that process is like.
Speaker 2:Has this been cool to see in your students the whole time you were teaching and trying to get your book published? Were they part of the process? Were you telling them I got rejected again, or were you just doing?
Speaker 1:it kind of on the side.
Speaker 1:Yes, they were very involved. I showed them every rejection letter. I don't know if there was one that I ever did not show. So as soon as it came in, if that class was sitting in front of me, be like, hey, look what I just got, and we'd read it, talk about what my next step would be. I think one class saw me cry because there was one agent that I thought was going to pick me up, and then I got the email right in the middle of class and like, what do you? I'm so you show them a rejection letter and they're like write another one, Mr Ike, write another. I'm like, well, not right now, but I will. We're in class, but I will. And so it was really cool to see them part of that process.
Speaker 1:And when I did the Kickstarter campaign too, I didn't ask, you know, my students or families to pitch in because that would be like a weird I can't use the data of the school system to do. But they knew about it because I talked about how, hey, this day coming up, I'm going to be gone because it's a big day of this campaign launching and I learned that so many kids were going to check in on the Kickstarter campaign that they basically clogged the filter of the school Wi-Fi and broke the Wi-Fi in the building because so many kids were going to my Kickstarter page just to watch the ticker of the amount of money coming in. So, yeah, they were very invested.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, Like what a cool example you are showing them of like going after your dream perseverance and like growth mindset around, like I mean. Earlier in our conversation you said I've had 600 experts tell me that I was not good enough, essentially like my writing was not good enough.
Speaker 2:And I loved what you said about having other experts, and I think that that's like very core to what we're trying to do here on the Kindled podcast is like keep kids at the center. And when we let the adult world kind of infiltrate what we're doing for kids, it doesn't usually get better for them, right, like they're kind of this voiceless entity in a very complicated equation. And I just love how you like brought them into that adult world and made them feel like like worthy of like conversation at that, like adult level. Right, you weren't hiding that from them and just like brought them in and that you're also being super vulnerable with them and sharing. I mean, it's hard.
Speaker 2:We I think our generation is, by and large, doing a better job at this than maybe previous generations but like the adult used to the adult in the room used to be infallible, like you could not be wrong, like nothing Right, and so it's like well, how are how? And then we can put all these posters on the wall about having a growth mindset where it's like it's okay to fail, mistakes are safe, but then we do nothing to lead the way in our example, because that takes humility and it takes vulnerability to say, yeah, I tried this, I swung super hard and I missed, and I just love how you're creating that culture in your classroom. Are there any other ways that you've found like, obviously, leading by example? Is one like any other ways that you build that culture in your classes?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to steal a quote from somebody else because it's so good. I am a writer, but Jason Reynolds, who's a phenomenal author. I heard this quote once and he said stories are baked in empathy machines and so when you share stories with someone else, you're constantly trying to see yourself in that story or someone you care about in it. So in my classroom I put a heavy emphasis on learning about each other, and we do that formally and informally. But I have noticed that the greater amount of time that I spend getting to know kids and their past more than what they're doing right now, because things so often we're asked like oh you got sports and you know what are you doing this weekend, and all that is good.
Speaker 1:But when you, when you backtrack and start to learn about the history of that person, you really start to build a deeper foundation, and so I try and carve out time to learn about kids, and in the last six or seven years of teaching, before I went on leave to do this stuff for books, I created something in my classroom that is similar to other strategies, but it's just circle time, like in kindergarten, except with 11 and 12 year olds, and we literally sit in a circle for the first 10 or 15 minutes of class and we don't do anything about school, not a thing.
Speaker 1:I'll put questions up on the board that deal with pop culture or you know weather, or, and then there's always a question that says anything that you want to share. So like no boundary at all and kids aren't forced to talk, but we go around twice and I always find that when I do that, class goes faster, like, and we get to things quicker just by carving out that 10 or 15 minutes. And I know some districts can't do that because of policies and procedures in their building, but I always found that carving out that time just set up kids for better success in that class.
Speaker 2:What do you think that is Like what's going on psychologically or neurologically in the child, when they're like feeling connected and like you care to listen to them.
Speaker 1:That then sets them up for and I think I'll kind of think of myself as a child too, because that's often when I'm teaching. I'm trying to think about how I would feel in that situation and I'm constantly thinking about myself as 11 and 12 year old, because that's the age of books I write for, too, right? So I think when you're able to alleviate fear, that's when kids can relax, and fear comes in many forms in middle school. How am I being perceived by my friends? How am I being perceived by the teacher? Who am I?
Speaker 1:We joke that kids want to wear different hats, like am I the funny guy at this new school? Who am I going to be in the future? And when you can start to alleviate that pressure of the building or of the assignment, then kids start to loosen up and then they're more willing to make mistakes, they're more willing to share about who they are, and then you get better data as a teacher, right? So it's not just a one, it's not just I'm creating opportunity for you to learn better, I'm also learning about you, and it's just sets them up for better success.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I'm hearing you say is that when you are, when you focus on creating a foundation of connection and like safety, first they you mentioned earlier creative energy, right where it's like if your system, if your brain and your body is spending so much time kind of coping with the stress of all the things you just talked about, like how am I perceived as that girl?
Speaker 2:I think I'm cute, like all of these things you know that that are at the forefront of the minds of our, of our children. And then we're suddenly like right, you know, like be creative, and she's like sorry, like I have a lot going on in here and I don't have that. But it seems like when you allow space for that, it almost is like you're creating a shelf for them to just kind of like check all of that stuff in and you're helping them hold that and then they freeze up their engagement, their attention, their interest, their buy-in is another way that you had put it earlier. Is that what you see?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's not like when kids sit down they're willing to share everything right away, right, like you have to build it, and so one way that you can build it is sharing a lot about yourself, and it doesn't have to be formally so. Every day in my classroom started with something that happened to me the day before every single class, and most of it was funny, and it was, you know, things that were funny because we're laughing at my inexperience or we're laughing at my mistake, and so a lot of it came from parenting too, like I would talk about when my kids were infants, like the mistake I made that morning or the thing that I wish I would have done. Then kids, immediately they're like it's like in kindergarten. When you ask a kid, hey, do you have any questions? And then kindergarteners just want to tell you a story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the same thing with middle school is everyone's just probing around to see how can I connect with you, and the best way to do that is with a story, and so you share a story, and then later in that class maybe not all of them, but one kid might come up and be like oh, my little brother used to do that too. He used to drop his diaper. My mom would have to chase him. And you start to make those little connections over time. Then, when you have that circle moment, then more kids are willing to share.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Okay, so let's dive into Sticky Notes.
Speaker 1:Sticky Notes. Tell us a little bit about the book, and then I'd love for you to just kind of like share some of your Sticky Notes, sure, so Sticky Notes is a book that came out in October, and again it was something that just kind of came naturally. I had a mentor teacher my first year teaching who told me you need to like reflect on every lesson so you can see how to improve it. And that sounded like a lot of work and you know, when you're just stepping into the classroom for the first time, there's so much going on, there's so much to learn, and that became like a low priority. But also he would meet with me to hold me accountable, so I had to have something written down, and so the first things I started writing down were just funny things that happened in my classroom, because I didn't want to forget them when my profession was over.
Speaker 1:I was like someday when I'm retired I would love to just look back at things that happened in my room, you know as like a soft spot in my heart, like that would be cool. And so they started as funny things. And then, as I matured as a teacher, these memories matured over time, right. So I would start writing things down about professionally, things that hurt me or times that I saw kids disagree with their parents and it was not going well, inspirational moments, just like everything in between. And I wouldn't write them down in long form, like they weren't paragraphs or pages, they were literally like one or two lines on a sticky note or in a notebook or an electronic file, and I did that for 15 years, and so it wasn't one thing a day, it was, you know, sometimes four or five, depending on what happened that day. And so I've amassed all of these stories and I never had a chance to look back on them because, as anyone who works with kids know, you don't have the time to do that.
Speaker 1:There's other priorities right, and so when I went on leave to help promote my books, that was the first time I got to go back and look at everything, and what I started seeing were like these. I guess you'd call them life lessons, because I would write the story down for one reason and then, when I would remember it because I have a really good memory I would start to see these other elements in it, and so I thought that would be neat to share with people, because looking at life through the eyes of a kid is very different than looking at life from the eyes of an adult. So what if I shared stories and just kind of put them on a platter and said here's the story from the eyes of a kid. What do you think? So Sticky Notes is 100 stories from my time in the classroom, and it covers a vast array of things. It covers death, it covers love, it covers all sorts of stuff. My hope is the book shows people the humanity in the classroom. What are teachers actually doing?
Speaker 2:What's actually?
Speaker 1:happening in those four walls of the classroom. I also hope it helps people remember their own teachers, but also just the great little moments in life that you tend to miss when you're not looking for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:I used to be a speech-language pathologist in school, so so my office door sandwiched in between the principal's office and the teacher's lounge, and so I had a lot of like ear to the ground moments of like what's going on in both of those situations and I just developed like such an empathy and love for teachers.
Speaker 2:You know, like as a speech language pathologist I would like sneak into the back and like take my one or two speech kids, and here is this woman or man just like rocking this room of 30 kids sometimes and it's just like like bless them, I don't know how they're doing it and I, I. So you look at the teaching profession and like some people are like built for it, some people get burned out you know there's so many different pressures on the teacher and then you come back to like the humanity of what's going on there and then compare that like, put that on a scale between like what I'm doing for these kids every day, who I am in their life and how I'm affecting their long-term development and their life trajectory, and then like their math homework score, you know like whatever the district wants you to do, it's like wow, like can we keep these things in balance? These things are intention, but I just love, love your work, and so what would you share some of some of your stories?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll tell the first story I thought about when, when we were talking at the beginning, when you're asking like what's your why or why do you lead with this? This is one of the first stories I wrote down and I'm not going to read it verbatim because I think that's boring, so I'll just tell it. It's just called Parent Teacher Conferences. In the district that I was hired, I was told that it was a high profile district. I'm not from Minnesota, so I got hired in a very wealthy community it's one of the wealthiest in the state of Minnesota and so with that came a lot of rumors that my new colleagues told me these parents expect the best of their teachers. It's going to be high pressure and on open house even, I had these parents of 11 and 12-year-olds who asked me what I would be doing to prep their kid for the SAT. And it's like I just took the SAT. What do you mean? Your kid, they're 11. But some of those rumors were true and I don't want to paint a bad picture of any of these families because that wasn't the case, but there was pressure, there was a lot of pressure, and so I felt like I needed to come to parent-teacher conferences, ready to defend my job, basically Like here's why I'm good. And so I bought a suit with shoulder pads I'd never owned one, got my tie. I hand wrote 150 letters for every family so that when they came in they would have something tangible to read of, like what their kid was doing well, what they can improve on. It was definitely meant to defend me, right, like I know your kid. That's why I'm writing this letter is to prove I know your kid. And then I compiled folders of data from every test score, because it's only like a month into the school year and the first family walks in for conferences, both parents in business attire, looking way more professional than me.
Speaker 1:I'm already nervous because I'm only 21. And their kid comes in too and they sit down and I go like right into my pre-pand spiel. Here's the letter, here's the data. And I'm talking really fast and the parents aren't saying a thing and I'm getting more nervous and all of a sudden the dad holds his hand up like this to indicate me to stop and he goes. We're going to ask our son to step out for a second and I go. This is going to be the moment I've heard about I'm about to get yelled at. I understand that. I know this face. My dad has this face sometimes.
Speaker 1:And so the kid leaves and the door clicks shut. And as soon as that door clicks shut, the mom just loses. It just starts bawling uncontrollably, and I've never had a crier in a classroom. So I scramble, I find the tissues, I bring them up and we get it to a place where she is more collected and the dad goes hey, we're really happy with our son's academic progress. We were seeing him grow, that's great. But our son doesn't have any friends and we do not know how to help him. Can you help us?
Speaker 1:And I remember that I don't know how much time went in between him saying that and me speaking, but I was just spinning because I was so caught off guard by these people asking me for help on something that had nothing to do with academics, the thing that I was prepped for. And so you know, I quickly was like, yeah, well, we can get them connected with lunch buddies. And I had all these strategies that I thought everybody knew about. And within like a couple of weeks that kid had a pod of friends. And that was the first moment I was like, well, this is what teaching is. I get it, this is what my career will be.
Speaker 1:And then I was all in. I was pretty much all in because I knew I'd be working with kids, but I was like, oh, I'm helping them grow as people, I'm helping parents grow as people. I'm all into this. This is great. And so that was one of the first memories I wrote down. But I wrote it down initially because I was terrified. I was like this is the scaredest I've ever been as an adult. Is this moment right here? Wow?
Speaker 2:Something that is just really standing out to me that you just said is that you were preparing and you just used the phrase. I literally had a visceral reaction to it when you said it.
Speaker 2:You said here's why I'm good you were going into that meeting in defense of yourself being good, and I think that that is at the crux of so much human fear, both adult fear and kid fear. Right, like a kid sits down and they're trying to get those grades and they're trying to behave and they're trying to show you like here's why I'm good, here's why I'm valuable, here's why you should protect me, here's why you should like invest.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When we're treated that way as a child, like we grow up still always looking to the external world for that validation, right, and then we're kind of living our whole lives running from something. We're running from this like fear that we're not good enough, or that some expert and your story is so beautiful, like I've got a list of experts that don't think I'm good enough, right, but like yet I persist and.
Speaker 2:I think that just being aware, when you interact with anyone a teacher, a parent, a student that like they're probably in the frame of mind of like trying to show you that they're good and to be able to like show that you already think that about them and that they don't need to waste a lot of their like energy on proving that to you, like you are good, you are valuable and we can move on and we can progress just think that we forget that sometimes. It gets lost in the noise sometimes, but I think that story oh, thank.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say too, like we get focused on like this one thing that you're doing, this one thing you're trying to impress me with, or like what you said, like trying to show that I am good enough, but what you have to tell kids is, like that's just one aspect of you, like there's all these other things that I will probably never get to see. That's why I love field trips. When you go on a field trip, you see a side of kids that you don't see and a lot of teachers would say, like that's the time of misbehavior, which it is sometimes, but it's also the time of a lot more data that you never get to see. Go to a kid's sporting event Like before I had kids, I had more time to like go watch my students play basketball or watch them at a hockey game that kid who maybe is really quiet in class, like you're tenacious on the ice rink, and they're like what's tenacious?
Speaker 1:I'm, like you are, you're tenacious. And then they walk around with, like this new sense of self, like I didn't know that word, like that's who I am and so you know, allowing kids to understand. Like I only see you in this capacity, but I know and I want to recognize that there's so much more to you that I might never get to see. It's really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. All right, next story.
Speaker 1:Just like rattle one off. Yeah, let's just do it. I'm loving this. I'll tell one that I really like. That I think would be good for listeners to understand. So I call the story the silence and the stars. In our district we are lucky enough to take all of our students up to an environmental learning camp for an entire week. We take 600 11 and 12 year olds during the same week to an environmental camp up north in the middle of January in Minnesota.
Speaker 2:And it's terrifying.
Speaker 1:It's as terrifying as it sounds. I've learned a lot about myself and kids during that trip. But you know, most of the camp is run by college age students who are like getting certain degrees in environmental sciences, and so it's pretty hands off for us until it's the evening, when kids are a little cranky and missing home. But we have these classes that are indoors and relaxing. But one class is outside and it's called Night Hike and it's just like it sounds. I take pods of 30 kids throughout the week and we go walk in the dark, no flashlight, no nothing, and all you can hear is just like the swishing of their their pants and their snow coats. Cause you tell them before you go, you say, hey, if we're quiet enough we might hear something like a deer. And these kids have never been out, so they're like like a deer, I'm like maybe, and so they're really quiet, and so we're walking and I'd like to take him to this place called Raven Lake and it's a frozen lake that we can walk out on, and so I take them there and I go. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to spread out and you're going to take five minutes and you're not going to talk. You can lay down, you can close your eyes, you can look up at the stars, it's up to you. But we're not going to talk for five minutes. And so they do.
Speaker 1:And they come back this one time and this girl, joyce, was like, can we do that again? Which I'd never been asked. And so I looked around. The kids are all nodding their heads. I'm like sure, go lay out on the ice. And so they all lay down.
Speaker 1:Five minutes later they come back and now they're arguing of who gets to lead the line back. Pretty big, powerful moment for a kid in the dark right. So they're arguing and as we start to walk, joyce grabs on my jacket and pulls me and I go, what's up? And she goes Mr Reich, thank you so much. I didn't know what silence was before today. That was really cool.
Speaker 1:And then we left and then I went back to my bunk and I wrote down Joyce really liked the quiet. I think that was the memory I wrote down. In hindsight, what I use this story for is to teach people like the powerful potential of a moment, like I have no idea how that moment's going to resonate with Joyce years from now, but I know it's going to Like I can picture her telling that story to her own kids someday, or going back home and telling her parents over the dinner table, like that is a moment that you can feel the neuron connections being made in that kid's head. And as a teacher and as someone who works with kids, you are making all these decisions so quickly all the time that I think we lose those smaller moments that are going to resonate years down the line, because we're usually looking for what is the immediate outcome of this lesson to show learning, when in fact, like there's these little steps along the way that might matter just way down the line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's beautiful. Shocking that she had never heard like been in that kind of quiet before. But that's so true.
Speaker 1:Like the world is noisy especially kid life.
Speaker 2:You know, you're always like I feel like kids are just running around, always like afraid of boredom, almost where it's like I have got to be playing in a video game, I've got to be talking to a friend, I've got to be doing something we could talk about that for hours.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, go into that a little bit. What are you seeing? Because I feel like sometimes we're like why can't you just sit still, and why can't you just listen, and why can't you, why can't you? And it's just like I've got a lot of stuff going on here and the habit and practice of being still is something we all struggle with, and so, yeah, go into that a little bit.
Speaker 1:We do this with my own kids too. They'll say things like we're bored and I go okay, and then I go about my business because I know that something's going to come out of the board. And what's the worst thing that's going to happen? Take a nap. When you give kids time to be creative, they will be creative. We still have my kids are in middle school and late elementary we have like a whole crafting closet, basically, and it gets used fairly often because they'll default to creating things when they know there's nothing else to do. Oh, I can't watch TV, I can't use a tablet, it's too cold to go outside, what can I do? And then there's this period of like, almost like a ringing in your ears, where you are struggling with I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do, and then things start to awaken. There's like this weird period of time where you really do feel like nothing's going to come of it, and if you can get kids to push past that, then they'll be okay.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of that deals with like creative assignments too, kind of like you talked about, where you're like okay, you're going to do this assignment. It does have a lot of creative choice. You need to do it now. And then kids are like but I don't, I don't have any idea right now. And then you you as a teacher are panicked because if kids don't come up with an idea, then you need more time and you don't have more time because you have more curriculum to cover. So I always in my classroom I build in days of plan of just like thinking okay, let's, how are we going to do a new way of thinking today, we're going to put on some music and you're going to draw and just be thinking about that assignment that's up on the board and we're just going to draw for a little bit and then kids will. They'll be like I thought of this idea, do you think it could work? Maybe Write it down. We'll see in a couple days. So I think allowing people to be bored is pretty crucial.
Speaker 2:I love that. Isn't there some quote like boredom is the mother of invention, or something like that? I think that that's very, very true, and I see that in my kids too.
Speaker 2:Sometimes as parents, we feel like, oh no, they're bored, I need to provide, I need to entertain them a little bit, and I have found great solace and peace in the frank that they're like when they come to me and they say that they're bored, I say your boredom, your boredom is not my emergency. And it's just like congratulations, we've reached a new, a new frontier for you. I'm so excited to see what you're about to create and what you're about to do. And then, yeah, you just like let them go. And then 10 minutes later, they have an epic fort upstairs and like this you know very deep plot, like creative game, that's going on. They've invited half the neighborhood over. Like it's just like, yeah, and then that builds self-confidence and self-worth, because they're like I didn't need an adult to come. Like coach me through soccer practice. And like tell me what to do. And there's, there are a lot of research that goes, goes. That's going on right now. The Let Grow have you heard of let grow?
Speaker 2:We had their founder, lenore Skanezion, last year. And just like the ability to just to create space for a child to completely self-direct when they're in a classroom all day long and things are pretty managed Like the part of their brain. That is like I decide I choose. I can like figure this out. Like it, it it gets weak over time, right, and so to just provide kids that platform to just like figure it out. You know, boredom's not afraid. Nothing to be afraid of.
Speaker 1:Right, and aside from like entertaining yourself too, isn't that creative space figuring out who you are as a person, right? So, like my, kids are completely different when they are, when they are given time to do things, they they used to just do the same thing because they're sisters, and so they would color or paint or whatever it may be, and now they go in different directions. One kid, if there's nothing to do, will go to music, the other will go to practicing stuff for cheer, and that they're just defaulting to what they think their strengths are and the things that they love to do. And I think that's important too is you can give. If you are a parent that's giving all these different options for kids to choose from, you're not really providing them an opportunity to self-discover who they are.
Speaker 2:Have you heard of a book, the Self-Driven Child, by Ned Johnson and Will?
Speaker 1:E Stixford, it sounds familiar.
Speaker 2:We've had them on before. And Ned tells a story about he coaches like high performing academic kids to get better ACT and SAT scores. But they come to him like really anxious and like his whole, his whole vibe, is like why does this matter to you, you know? Like how can you care about this more, instead of like really this is your parents goal and pressure on you like your life's gonna work out and like you can you need to relax, kind of what we were talking about before, like it's the fear and the anxiety that's disconnecting your brain from its ability to perform and to learn.
Speaker 2:But he tells a story about he was seeing this girl and he was just like what do you like? And she was like 15 or 16. She's like I don't know. I've been jumping through other people's hoops my entire life and I literally don't know who I am. Like if we're not careful, careful, we are going to overschedule and over like control these kids so much that they really will look back on their childhood and just shrug their shoulders. That like who they are and what they want to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yep, I felt that too. So I grew up in a very small town and I'd never been on an interstate or driven on one until I came to college here in Minneapolis, and something that shocked me about the metro area is how overscheduled kids are, particularly with sports, like there's not just one soccer team, right Like where I grew up. It's like you want to play soccer, here it is, this is the one you can do, and here it's like you like playing soccer. Well, there's school soccer, there's club soccer, there's competitive travel soccer Some kids are a part of all three and it's like if you like soccer, that's great, but also there is literally no room then for you to do other stuff.
Speaker 1:And that made me nervous as an educator. And this was like when I first started. Homework was still really big. We sent home daily homework because we were told to, because it would prepare kids better for high school. I since have a different philosophy of what homework is used for, but kids wouldn't even have time to do that. Like we're reading a book you need to read 10 pages at home. I don't have time. I just don't have time. I'm doing, my parents are driving me here and there and so you know you start to get worried for kids, like when will you find a new connection with someone outside of soccer? When will you do anything? I don't know.
Speaker 2:We talked about that for a while and then their entire identity is built up around soccer and turns out like there aren't a lot of like dads and professionals that are just like professional soccer player is a very, very small percentage of people. You know there are other meaningful aspects of life and if you don't take time to develop those, then people kind of get like I did really competitive gymnastics when I was little and as soon as I wasn't a gymnast anymore, I'm like that was the thing, that was who I was, yeah Right, Like that was my identity. And then you kind of have these like little meta crisis.
Speaker 1:College athletes go through that. That's a huge thing with college athletes is they get done. And then if they're particularly in a sport too that's hard to do, like that club sport or still be at a level of competition, then they really start to. They don't know where to put that energy.
Speaker 1:It's like I never had another outlet. So now, now what I'm kind of going through, that now I've been a runner for my entire life and now I've got my knees hurt so I can't do it anymore. So where does that, where does that go?
Speaker 2:I'll figure it out. Well, maybe this author thing will work out for you. You can have a new identity. Yeah, maybe Teacher, not just runner.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Tell me a little bit about your philosophy on homework. That was interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when I started so I started teaching in 2009, there was an emphasis in my district that every class should have homework and it should be at least 10 minutes per class. That was like the standard and I didn't know any different. So I was just like, yeah, homework equates to practice. Practice is better, so therefore they should practice right, and that does work in some subjects better than others.
Speaker 1:So sometimes I would just create assignments that had little to no value to what we're doing in class, like we might be, you know, doing a writing, a personal narrative, but I'm going to have you work on spelling with words that don't really deal with what we're doing. Like it was just to fill the need of what I was told. And then you know, as you learn more about kids, you'd start to see that that's not really paying off in any tangible way other than like route memorization. And so as I got older in my profession, philosophies changed. So then our building went to a no homework policy you can't send homework home and that was weird because it was only like maybe six years after I had started. So it felt very much like my philosophy of education was getting flipped out, like I didn't even have a firm foundation of what I thought my own philosophy was.
Speaker 1:You know, you definitely saw the pressure drop for a while. But then, you know, at the same time and this is kind of related our building went to standard-based grading, so there's no longer A, B, C, D, F, and a lot of teachers were excited about that because we knew that a B doesn't give you a full representation of what the kid knows.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:We found it extremely difficult, and part of it, I think, was due to the rollout. We were told like a month before the school year and then we just implemented it. So there was a lot of parent pushback because parents didn't have an easy understanding of how that would translate to high school grades or how high school would translate to college. But you watched kids like not have any more accountability because they're like there's no grades, so like I can't fail, so it doesn't matter. So then you went right back to okay, well, now we need homework that you have to do in order to take the test, and if you don't do the homework, then you can't do the test. Like it just was like getting all mixed and it was really hard to like figure out what is best for kids in that moment. It was very confusing and so I guess my current stance on homework is I think it is better for certain subjects.
Speaker 1:I think kids should read every day. Is that homework, I don't know, but I think kids should read every day outside of school. It should be choice reading and reading that's like you know at your level but also pushes you a little bit more. I think that's crucial. Based on my own kids. I think math practice is important too. I think some kids do need the repetition and I don't have a good formula for who needs it. I just know that my kids need it, and so I you know that just goes back to every kid is different and need it, and so I you know that just goes back to every kid is different. And so having having a policy of like we all do homework or we all don't, it's, it's just hard and that's a lot of pressure on the teacher.
Speaker 1:It's like if I have 30 different kids in a room and I know you need practice, but you don't do I make everybody do it, even for the kid who does it.
Speaker 2:So and that takes time. We have schools around around here where the parents set the homework level. It's like my kids go to the school and they are no homework kids and I am low homework kids and I am a high homework kid and it's a family decision, so the teacher provides those options. I think that's an interesting approach to it. We don't have any grades at all, but we give the kids their mastery-based data.
Speaker 2:There's no person that's like. You have like a four out of five on this skill, like evaluating them, you have demonstrated mastery in this concept, and then they're like trying to beat their grade level. So there is accountability, but we try really hard to make it so it's the student that's owning the goal and every, every goal that's set. They also have to set a purpose. So they're digging into like why mastering third grade math is important to me.
Speaker 2:So when you just take grades away or take home school away or homework away, you do create this kind of void of like well why, you know I was running from something and now it's like nothing's chasing me, so I'm just going to stand still. You have to give them something to run towards, right, something they care about, a, a purpose, a greater understanding, that buy-in you were talking about earlier. Okay, so last few things here. I feel like you. I would love for my kids to be in a class with you because I feel like you have a magical way of like reaching that kid who is struggling or disengaged. And I'm just wondering if you have, like some quick take-home tips for listeners. Like what are your if you have a kid who's just like not into it, or like behavior is off, or anything like what are the questions you ask yourself? I love how curious you are as, like an observer of young humans, like take me through that thought process and like your strategies in that situation.
Speaker 1:Sure. So I'll use an example of a recent interaction I had with a kid a couple years ago. Came mid-year, so already you know that's a disadvantage. Right Coming into new routines, new people, that's difficult and she didn't want to do anything. Also, language was a small barrier. She could speak Spanish and English, but Spanish was way stronger her home language.
Speaker 1:And when I have students like that who just refuse to do work something that I think new teachers especially do is they just like want to sit next to that kid and just keep talking and just keep trying. And we need to do this now and if I can get them to do a little bit, that means they'll do more the next day. But that's, I don't think, the case at all. I think if you spend more time doing things that are not academic and building trust that's the first step of a foundation is you need trust. And so with this new kid she was from California. All we did was talk about California for a long time, and I mean like weeks, and that kid didn't produce anything. But I also wasn't asking. So this kid would come to class, sit down, I would start the lesson, and then you know she would want to do her own thing and I had structure. So I'm like hey, if you don't want to do the work, that's fine. But we also can't like disrupt other people. So you can sit there, you listen to music, that's fine, but we're not going to disrupt.
Speaker 1:And it took a long time, but because I was invested in just talking to this kid, eventually I was able to learn enough to be like hey, you're from the Valley in California, Do you know? There's a book about the Valley? I don't read nonfiction books. No, this is like a story of murder. Are you interested in that? Yeah, I am interested in that. I'm like great. So she's reading a book from the Valley about murder, while the rest of my class is reading a nonfiction book.
Speaker 1:Does this matter? She's doing work now and so you play the long game, you. So you play the long game. You have to play the long game. There's no short-term fix. It's you have to be thinking about. Sometimes you even think about the next grade, like, especially if a kid is going through like evaluation services, because you know there's a need but you don't know what it is. It's like well, I'm not going to try and make a kid who can barely write a paragraph, write an. So what can I do now that's more beneficial to that kid, All right. Well, let's talk about whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:So I guess, in summary, you need to play the long game and it's okay to play the long game.
Speaker 2:I love that. That is so power. Well, because you feel this fear, right Like you can't like you try to play the long big game, but then as adults, or like you know, we help people run micro schools, micro school guides. They, there's this pressure where it's like, hey, it's been three weeks, where are the results? Or you know where are we academically?
Speaker 2:And so it's like saying like, oh, we're playing the long game with that. There's a tension, right. But like if you can really speak to that and really lean into that idea and help parents see that, like if you're, if, especially kids. We get a lot of kids who have been push, push, push. They're super highly anxious, maybe they've gotten great grades but they actually have a ton of learning gaps and like they don't care, they will do nothing unless, like you're using fear to push them.
Speaker 2:And Prenda tries to be kind of this, like platform of like personal learning, like personal purpose and intrinsic motivation and things like that. And we just see kids come in and they were doing great in their traditional classroom and then they just like plateau and they just do nothing. The parents are like it's not working. I'm like, well, what do you mean by work? What is what is working? Look like to you, because to me this child's going through a really deep, a deep phase of like learning and like healing, about like them being okay and like just like them feeling getting the their feet on the ground again yeah learning that it's okay to make mistakes and to not be perfect, and to play and to be a child yeah, and things like that.
Speaker 2:So like that to me is working. And then like the academic results, like you're saying, like the long game will come. But it's so hard to trust that long game in the moment unless you're able to tell a different story, like in that moment of like what you are seeing right, which sounds like you're. This is what you're doing with kids.
Speaker 1:It's beautiful yeah, and every kid is so different and that's the hardest part too is you can't you have your teacher tools, and then a new kid will walk in and you suddenly realize, oh, I need new tools, like the ones that don't. And so that can be frustrating too. Is you have multiple kids who are struggling to even want to be at school, like that's even a hard place to start. Yeah, I can. It can just take a lot of time, especially when it can be overwhelming to, when you have multiple kids in the same room who are like that Cause, then you feel you start to question your own profession. Then too, like am I making the right choices? What am I not doing that could be better for these kids to engage?
Speaker 2:I don't know. Love it. Okay, my main take home here is just that I mean so many things, but something you said early on in the conversation. You said what am I going to do to get these kids to like, want to be with me? Which is a very curious question and a lot of it's a question that a lot of adults, especially in the education world, never ask. Right, it's like we show up, we think we're the tallest person in the room, we're the adult and here's what you will do and like. The question of like, how can I make you or encourage you or invite you into wanting to be here is not something that's on our radar, but when we lean into curiosity and observe them, like as a human that has this very like. I call it, you call it long game. I've used the term like long harvest before, like we're planting seeds now and we're all stressed about no, they're both good.
Speaker 2:Just like the seeds are not coming. There's no sprouts. I'm like, yeah, this seed takes 60 to 90 days to sprout. Like we're going to continue to nourish the seed, you know like, and like we have faith and trust that, like, that seed is in there, there's power in that seed, there's purpose in that seed and that if we create the right environment of empathy and compassion all the things that you've taught us today that that seed will grow. And I just think that, like, I just want to like take all of like your, your frame, like your lens on how you seem kids. I want to like bottle it and like clone that it's just like so, so good.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much for coming on the Kindle podcast. Tell us how people can find more about your work.
Speaker 1:Sure, uh well, if you can spell Eicheldinger, you can find me anywhere, because there's not a lot of Eicheldingers in the world. So I can't pop up anywhere. So if you want to learn more about my books, matteicheldingercom has them all. They're everywhere Books are sold. If you want to find the stories I tell, I'm on Facebook, instagram and TikTok under the handle at matteeicheldinger and I'd love to tell you a story. Come on down. Hopefully you leave feeling better about the world than when you came.
Speaker 2:I love that. And our final wrap-up question. We ask this to every single one of our guests.
Speaker 1:Who is?
Speaker 2:someone in your life that has kindled your love of learning, your curiosity, your passion, or, like your belief in yourself? Who is that person that you look back on and just think like, oh, that person has seen me, maybe as a child, maybe more recently.
Speaker 1:I think my wife, my partner, has seen me go through this long journey of being an author and she knows me more intimately than anyone else and she is kind of the only person I see right now, because I'm at home and being an author is kind of a lonely profession, and so we were on a date night the other night, which is as rare when you're raising kids you don't get them that often and I said something that I am learning to love more about you the more time we spend together is the depth that we get to know each other, and I know that's a very common phrase in marriage. You learn that like oh, you always learn something new, and that's true, but it's not just learning something, it's just learning like the depth that comes with it. And so my wife knows me so well that when she looks at me in the eye she goes do you need like an hour to go? Right, are you feeling inspired right now?
Speaker 1:No, one knows me that way, so you know that's. That's someone I really look to as this adventure continues.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thanks for sharing, all right. Well, thank you so much for coming on, and we'll talk to you again soon, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:Sounds good.
Speaker 2:The Kindled podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the ideas we talk about here on the Kindled podcast. Don't forget to follow us on social media at PrendaLearn, and if you'd like more information about starting a micro school, just go to Prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling.
