How teacher language shapes us—and teaches kids to find their wisest self

“Giving kids, and yourself, language to wrap around the idea that we have an inner leader (our kindest, best self) is transformative.”

Join me as I talk with Lily Howard Scott, a NYC-based parent, educator, and author, who shares insights from her book The Words That Shape Us: The Science-Based Power of Teacher Language.

We’re exploring how our internal self-talk shapes our perceptions of students and ourselves, and how intentional language can transform classroom culture. Lily shares practical strategies for helping students of all ages:

• Notice and separate from their thoughts and feelings (“feelings as visitors”)
• Understand that they are always good inside, even when they make a bad choice
• Access their wisest self to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting automatically

Lily also introduces tools like “outer shells and inner swirls” to help students notice assumptions and guide interactions in more mindful, empowering ways.

Whether you’re looking to improve classroom culture, support student self-reflection, or strengthen your own teacher mindset, this episode offers actionable strategies and inspiring reminders about the words we choose and the impact they have.

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Sponsored by Listenwise and Opportunity Gap

ANGELA: So, Lily, we’re in a time where classroom culture feels more complex than ever. When you use the phrase teacher language, what exactly do you mean? And why do you believe that language is such a vital tool for teachers right now?

LILY: When I say teacher language, I mean the way we talk to kids and the way we talk about kids when they can hear us. Many people have said that the way trusted adults talk to kids becomes the way they talk to themselves. Elementary school teachers and early childhood teachers spend so much time with the kids in their care, and the kids are surrounded by so much language: teacher language, peer language.

Recent research by Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist at Harvard and Northeastern, shows that the words and phrases kids have access to can shape their brains on a cellular level, invite them to create new mental concepts, and transform how they think and feel. Any teacher would probably hope their words matter, but in light of this research, and knowing that kids’ anxiety rates are skyrocketing and perfectionist tendencies are increasing, it’s hopeful to realize that the words we share with kids can matter far more than we realized.

That’s such a nice framing, because often we’re looking at the problems in education or society that kids bring. This idea that our words carry real power is important.

Yes. It’s a practical tool we all have, right on the tip of our tongues, something we bring every day. It can trigger a significant shift in the way kids see themselves and navigate challenges. We may not see that shift immediately, but knowing the possibility is there can be empowering for teachers and caregivers.

Yeah, it is. And that’s how I felt when I was reading your book. Your book is called The Words That Shape Us. It was such a positive read because you weave stories with practical tips and examples of things to say. I want to go through a few examples with you.

One thing you address in the book is how the language teachers use internally shapes our perception of students and ourselves. I’m really big on self-talk, understanding, and being conscious of it. Not everyone has an inner monologue, but the way we speak to ourselves and narrate our circumstances and students impacts a lot. What are your thoughts on that?

First, what a beautiful question, and thank you for noticing this. The book is partly about helping kids express themselves, but a larger part is about how language can nestle within us and transform how we speak to ourselves, whether teacher or student.

One of my biggest hopes for the book is normalizing the idea that all brains—teacher brains, student brains—are busy places. We encounter many thoughts and feelings, some useful and rooted in truth, many not.

Our brains scan for threats and try to make sense of our surroundings, and normalizing that for kids (and ourselves) shows that we have more agency than we might think. I call it an inner voice: the truest, wisest part of you. Some kids call it their wisest self. My third-grade student called it her president decider, the leader of her brain.

Giving kids, and yourself, language to wrap around the idea that we have this inner leader, our kindest, best self—what you’ve called your inner compass—is important. Your president decider or inner voice can push back. For a kid feeling nervous before a math test, that inner voice can gently speak back. Giving words to wrap around that inner agency and loving self-talk is probably my primary goal with this book.

Yeah, it’s such a nice mix because what you’re saying inside comes out. A lot of people don’t realize that if you’ve been thinking unkind, judgmental, or uncompassionate thoughts, it comes out in your words, demeanor, and tone. Self-talk really affects how we treat people and how much enjoyment we get from our day. Reframing our mental narrative can increase joy in our interactions rather than telling ourselves stories that aren’t helpful.

Yes. The mind can be full of trickery. It’s helpful and comforting to remember that and to lean into that kind of agency. Often, on stressed-out days—or when a child struggles—they need positive self-talk the most.

I remember my student Harper, who coined “president decider.” She was a high-achieving, charismatic kid. I assumed her inner life must be easy, but she wrote a poem between her president decider and the pressure she felt to always raise her hand, always show she cares, and always achieve.

It reminded me that everybody benefits from learning to talk to themselves with love, on hard days and easy days. Dysregulated anxiety can appear as a behavior issue, while regulated anxiety may masquerade as high achievement. I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

Let’s talk about specific examples of teacher language that can be useful. In your book, you introduce outer shells and inner swirls as a tool for noticing and interrupting assumptions. Tell us about that.

I love what George Saunders says: we’re all flawed thinking machines, walking around telling incorrect stories about each other. We see someone’s outer shell—their representative self—and think we know them. We assume they’re not trying hard enough or think they are X, Y, Z. But their inner swirls—the part we can’t see—remain a mystery. Sometimes they align with the outer shell, sometimes not.

Giving kids, or adults, words to understand that our outsides don’t always match our insides, and that understanding someone might require thoughtful questioning, can feel like a relief. Comparison is painful, especially with social media.

Kids can map characters’ outer shells and inner swirls. My student Alexis said, “Just because people look calm before a test doesn’t mean they are.” That language helps kids communicate about themselves and challenge assumptions. It’s useful for literacy learning and interpersonal understanding.

I can see referencing that all year long. Introducing it isn’t just a first-month-of-school activity. Even in February or June, kids need it.

Absolutely. Every day, I remind myself that when I tell an incorrect story about someone, I can’t actually see their inner swirls.

Then you can come back to that. For example, the student who was quiet on the rug—her outer shell was quiet, but inside, she had a lot of thinking. In the book, you have examples of student work. I’ll include an image in the blog post so people can see it: a drawing of a person with their outer shell and inner swirls labeled. It was interesting to see what kids put there.

Totally. As a third-grade teacher, I longed for practical resources. At the back of the book, there are templates you can leave for kids, send home for homework, or use for characters or historical figures. I’ve seen Alexander Hamilton outer shell and inner swirl maps—creative ways for kids to understand anyone. You can weave this into any aspect of the curriculum.

Have you seen this done at the secondary level?

I have. At that level, it’s important for the teacher to model vulnerability, showing your own outer shell and inner swirls under a document camera. Parker Palmer says it’s never unprofessional; your selfhood is your most powerful teaching tool. Sharing your truth—without going too deep—models that older students can make their maps lightly or deeply. Normalizing emotional availability is critical. Small group sharing works best for older kids, unlike six-year-olds who eagerly share in front of everyone. Sixteen-year-olds are preoccupied with social belonging, so risk-taking feels harder.

So we have the outer shells and inner swirls. Another thing from the book I loved is how you talk about feelings as visitors. Students learn they are separate from their feelings: this feeling is a visitor, anger is visiting me, sadness is visiting, even joy or contentment. Once they understand that, they can watch and observe their feelings and thoughts. Can you explain more about that and how you teach it?

This visitor language comes from Rumi’s The Guest House: “This being human is a guest house. Every day a new arrival.” With younger kids, we frame it as, “Have you felt a huge swell of frustration? It feels like an alien inhabiting your body.” That feeling is a visitor. It might seem impossible to go away, but it will.

In class, we call feelings visitors. You might create a word bank or reference feelings of characters in books. This helps kids develop emotional granularity while understanding the impermanence of feelings. When a kid feels anger or inadequacy, they can remember, “This feeling is visiting me, but it’s not who I am.” This reinforces inner agency.

How do you teach kids to watch and observe their thoughts?

I model it myself. Parker Palmer emphasizes the importance of selfhood. If we experience something together—like seeing a snow leopard on a field trip—I might say aloud, “A jolt of joy is visiting me. A little worry is visiting me. That thought is visiting me.” The more I model it, the easier it is for kids.

Sometimes kids inhabit a character in a read-aloud, narrating the visitors in that character’s mind. It exercises the muscle of slowing down and naming thoughts without being personal, making it easier to turn the mirror on themselves later.

I also want to talk about parts in the book where you teach students that they are always good inside, even when they make a bad choice. I am delighted to see this in an education book because this worldview helps me be patient, empathetic, and kind to myself and others. We are always good inside. We make bad choices. We have coping mechanisms that are not healthy. We have traumas, triggers, and reactive moments. But we’re still good inside. Dr. Becky Kennedy popularized the Good Inside framework. I would love to hear your thinking on this concept and your experiences introducing it to students.

I’d love to share. But when did you first lean into this idea? Was it a departure from a previously held way of thinking about kids or people?

It was during my deconstruction period because I was raised in a pretty extreme version of fundamentalist Christianity, in which I was taught we are all sinful from birth—even babies are sinful. You have to crush their spirits and teach them to obey. We believed that our human instincts are not to be trusted—they are evil.

I had a lot of unpacking to do over the years, and I became so much more gentle with myself and with others when I started thinking, No, I feel like in my heart I am a good person, and people around me are good. Even people who do really, really bad things—I just don’t choose to see them as inherently bad, but rather as carrying baggage that keeps them from showing up as their highest, wisest self in childhood.

I am very grateful to Dr. Becky Kennedy for popularizing this language. Parents have really internalized it, and it helps them show up for their kids differently.

I also have to credit Dr. Ross Greene, who first introduced this idea to me in his extraordinary book, Lost at School. He transformed the way I think about kids, myself, and other people.

What he says is simple: kids do well if they can. That contrasts with the more popular idea: kids do well if they want to. The latter assumes the child is not trying and motivates us to bribe, punish, or shame them. But Greene says that every person, for the most part, is doing the best they can with the tools and resources they have.

If a child is struggling, it doesn’t mean they’re bad or inherently flawed—it means they have a lagging skill, an unmet need, or an unsolved problem.

I remember teaching in Brooklyn at age 23. Every first grader had to be at the top of the yardstick for the clip chart, and if they made a mistake, I was expected to mark them down in front of everyone. That approach—“kids do well if they want”—was shaming. I realized I was shutting down the kids’ cortex and activating their amygdala, making it impossible for them to learn. I only lasted one year there, but I learned a lot.

Transitioning to the opposite mindset—believing every kid is inherently good—was transformative. If they struggle, it’s a matter of figuring out what’s hard for them and helping them develop skills or tools.

I tell kids, “Every single one of you is good inside, and everyone will struggle at some point this year. And when you do, it might come out as saying something you regret or making a choice you wish you didn’t. But you are always separate from that moment. Your goodness can never go away.”

Holding on to that belief makes it easier to make better choices, be gentler on ourselves, and embrace tools for growth. We do a “hard thing inventory” to identify struggles—executive functioning, transitions, perspective-taking. Separating the hard thing from the child’s goodness makes it easier to see, name, and work on it.

I’ve seen Pre-K students respond beautifully to this. If a classmate is called a bully, they might say, “No, he just made a bad choice.” It’s moving that young kids can be so alert to compassionate language and eager to replace judgment with understanding.

The other day, a group of students were listening to that Taylor Swift song, Miss Americana. There’s a lyric like, “They whisper in the hallway, she’s a bad, bad girl.” And three of them at the same time said, “Nobody’s bad. Nobody’s bad. They made bad choices.” I thought, oh, Lord, we’ve created monsters here! They’re finding this in music! But in a way, I found it so moving that they were so alert to that generalized language and so eager to replace it with something more compassionate.

Years ago, I did prison ministry through my church, first in women’s prisons and eventually in juvenile facilities. And all of them were good people. I feel like I should share that because I know not everyone has this worldview. Some people have been really hurt by others and might think, “There’s no way THEY are a good person. I can’t even listen; this is making me so angry.” That’s valid.

But in my experience, inside, these were people who would have done better if they could. What they seemed to need more than anything else was someone to speak to that goodness inside them. Someone to believe they could do better, that they were worth something more, that there was real potential inside them.

I literally cannot think of any “bad students.” I had students with very difficult behaviors who made harmful choices, but I never taught a bad student. That was true even before I deconstructed my faith. Speaking to the higher, wiser self in young people—those who were incarcerated or in my classroom—has been powerful. I tell them, “I see your goodness. I see your talents, your intellect, your gifts. I can see all of this amazing stuff inside you.”

When children see this about themselves, they want to step into it. They realize these “bad choices” don’t define them. Many kids think, “I’ve done this behavior so many times, this is who I am.” When you say, “Actually, you’re a good kid, I genuinely like you,” it can be transformative. Many of these children have never felt truly liked if they’ve had behavior problems. Feeling liked, seen, and good inside changes how they behave—they see themselves differently. Believing people are inherently good is one of the most powerful shifts I’ve ever experienced.

In the classroom, children absorb what they hear. Imagine a kindergartner who elbows another child. A teacher could say, “You’re unsafe, back of the line.” Or, “You’re always good inside; that wasn’t a good choice. Let’s practice using our words.”

That first instance of language—reminding the child of their inherent goodness—can nestle in their inner life. Later, if a music teacher at the end of the day scolds the child for hurting someone else, the initial message may still repeat in the child’s mind: “Even when I don’t make good choices, I’m good.”

Even if they hear negative language elsewhere, the impact of consistent, compassionate language cannot be underestimated. Words linger and resurface in surprising ways. Teachers have tremendous power in the language they share with students.

Regarding incarcerated women, Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist and primatologist, explains in Behave and Determined that children who experience severe trauma develop overactive amygdalas and inhibited prefrontal cortices. The prefrontal cortex helps you do the hard, right thing—like refraining from punching a coworker.

Studies show that a large percentage of people who commit violent crimes experienced significant childhood adversity. Their brains were at a disadvantage from the start. Children who receive enough food, care, and responsive love develop better impulse control. Crime is often poor impulse control. Locking someone up forever and saying, “This was your choice,” ignores the neurological realities. We ascribe free will in situations where brain development and trauma heavily influence behavior.

I recently created my curriculum, Finding Flow Solutions, for K–12 learners and just completed the Brain Explorers lessons for K-2. It teaches children to manage time, energy, and attention.

We introduce the wise owl as the prefrontal cortex and the working guard dog as the amygdala. Sometimes the overactive guard dog tries to keep you safe—it barks in fear, and the wise owl flies away because it’s scared.

Teaching kids about their brains helps them understand that their choices aren’t just about willpower or self-discipline. When their amygdala overreacts, the rest of the brain shuts down, and decisions are affected. Separating behavior from identity removes stigma, shame, and guilt, which are not effective motivators.

I, first of all, love the wise owl language. Like, that could be just another way to describe your wisest self, right? Or your inner voice, or your president decider. And what a gift to introduce us to somebody who’s nine, right, whose capacity for neuroplasticity is so remarkable, who’s developing thinking patterns that will stay with her for the rest of her life.

In a way, I laugh—why do we all learn this stuff when we’re 42, as we try to make sense of the path past four decades? We can introduce it to kiddos now and weave it right into literacy instruction and empower that kid with metacognition: Oh yeah, this is actually totally normal. I am separate from that thought that makes me want to do X, Y, and Z, or That’s not who I am. What would my wise owl say? 

That, in a way, particularly in this unprecedented moment where AI is about to shift everything, what is school if not a place where we can teach kiddos to be more functional, compassionate, inner- and intra-personally intelligent humans? Given how much else is going to go out the window, it feels like there’s a real opportunity to just give kids this language early.

And anybody can share this language with kiddos—any teacher. It takes about two minutes. Sometimes it’s the smallest choice in the implicit curriculum can actually trigger the greatest shift for that kiddo.

Let’s talk more about this wisest self because this is another concept that I don’t think I have seen in another education book. You can correct me if I’m wrong. I feel like I have read it in lots of personal development spaces and on those types of podcasts, but I’m not really hearing it shared with teachers.

I think it’s super powerful—helping teachers teach students to ask, What can your wisest self say back to the other thoughts and feelings that are visiting? It’s so powerful because it’s a way of teaching students to go beyond just observing the thoughts and feelings, but actually being able to direct and choose which visitors they want to stay, which thoughts and feelings they want to focus on. Say more about the wise self and how that works?

Yeah, it’s funny. I had not actually heard of Richard Schwartz, Internal Family Systems, when I introduced this to a group of third graders nine years ago. Are you familiar with IFS?

A little bit.

It’s a wonderful way of thinking about ourselves, where we each have this kind of core self. It’s like our calm, compassionate, courageous, truest, best self that is the leader of our brain. And then we have these firefighters, these parts of our brains that try to control or perfect. We have these managers, as you said—our brain is always just trying to help us. It’s trying to help us stay safe, but it doesn’t always do that in the most helpful way.

I had not heard of IFS when I introduced this to my third graders. But what I like about IFS is this idea that your core self, or your wisest self, is always really kind with the feeling visitors or thoughts that it encounters. There’s no judgment. All these parts of myself, in their own way, are trying to help me.

But I think saying to a seven-year-old, you know, we all have these brains that can surprise us—a worry will pop up, a pressure or a fear—and what’s really interesting is that we get to, with our wisest self, our truest part of ourselves, choose what we want to amplify, what we want to quiet. Isn’t that cool? Many grownups don’t realize that they have this kind of internal agency.

I remember, Angela, first introducing it to my son when he was four. I called it his inner voice. I said something like, “You know, I know that you want to play this very dangerous game, but the next time you want to play it, listen to that inner voice—that truly is this part of yourself—and I think you’ll know what to do.” Just normalizing that, of course, there’ll be a part of him that wants to go off and do this, but he has some agency there. He looked at me like I was nuts. My words just bounced off him.

A few weeks later, we were reading a book about medieval times. I hadn’t read the book before; I made the mistake of not previewing it. There was a pretty violent part about jousting. He gets really quiet and says, “If I was a horse in medieval times and a knight was poking me with spurs so he could joust and hurt another knight, if I was that horse, I wouldn’t move. I would listen to my inner voice and just eat grass.”

Moments where all of a sudden my throat constricts and my chest feels like it’s unraveling, I realized what he had said: when everything seems like it’s going one way, I actually have another choice. I can listen to this other part of myself or imagine myself as a medieval pacifist horse and do something else. Without those two words, I don’t think he would have come to that conclusion. The language etched grooves through which his thoughts followed.

And I want him, as he is 15, when everybody around him at a party is partaking in some illegal substance, to remember: there’s probably a part of him, a thought or feeling, that wants to join, but he has this inner agency, this inner voice, this wisest self that gets to make a different choice if he wants to.

And I think that’s the gift of wrapping words around this idea of an inner leader: you introduce it to the kiddo young, and hopefully they hold on to that way of thinking for years to come. For me, it’s probably been the most powerful language nugget I’ve shared with kids—they really hold on to it.

Yeah, I think so too. And what I like with the older kids, into upper elementary, middle, and high school, is really thinking about what factors take you away from that. Because, like you mentioned, your highest, wisest self is really kind—kind to yourself and kind to others.

And when I am not kind, it’s usually because I’m hungry, I get angry, I need to eat. I have no more grace for anybody else until I get that physical need met. I’m really tired, haven’t slept in a while, so I’m cranky. That’s another time where my wisest self just takes the backseat because I need to sleep.

Sometimes I’m distracted—scrolling through my phone while someone is trying to get my attention—and I snap at them. That’s not my highest wise self. My highest wise self is really kind and wants to be present with the person. My wisest self wanted to put the phone down and listen, fully present, but I was distracted.

So really illuminating those things for kids, talking about it for myself, modeling it, normalizing it: this is not just you. This is a human experience. We all go through these things. Recognizing that doesn’t make you a bad person.

Even if every time your parent comes in your room and you snap at them, that doesn’t mean you’re a nasty kid or have a bad attitude. What it means is: were you hungry? Tired? Distracted? Fighting with your friend? Mind somewhere else? Something pulling you away so that your highest, wisest self can’t show up.

Our work as humans is to figure out those barriers, become aware of them, communicate about them, and try to do something about it. Often just the communication piece is so powerful: “You know what, can we come back to this in 10 minutes? I need a break. My head hurts. I need to get a drink of water and stare out the window. Let’s regroup.”

If a kid can say that, it can be a completely different ball game. Even if you can’t handle the feeling, just identifying it within yourself, communicating about it, and eventually addressing it—that’s the approach.

I was marveling at you, just listening to you, being like, this is a raw mini workshop. You just listed some lagging skills and unmet needs that get in the way of making a good choice, which is the whole Greene approach. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” we can ask, “What about this is hard for me?”

You were narrating: This was hard for me, I was hungry, this thing happened earlier, I was distracted, I couldn’t be present. That language is normalizing. Different things are hard for different people. What’s hard for you right now? That unlocks a solution.

Telling a kid “keep trying” can be toxic if they’re already trying as hard as they can. Instead, asking what feels hard helps separate the hard thing from the child’s inherent goodness or wisest self.

And with literacy work, Angela, you can weave it right in: this character is making good choices, what is hard for this character? In the back of the book, I have a reading response called “Character Choice Hard Thing.” In a good book, there will be some underlying struggle triggering the character to make a poor choice. Analyzing the character that way helps kids understand others compassionately and also understand themselves.

Oh, wow. My mind is just racing with possibilities—not just thinking about the tie into books and analyzing through fictional characters, but also in social studies, through historical figures. What was hard about their decisions? What made a call difficult? There are so many ways you could explore this, and I love how much it distancing things with fictional characters. You realize it happens to all of us, and we’re not putting anyone on the spotlight—we can analyze the character through a lens that allows discussion without judgment.

Isn’t it funny that the way we talk about characters is usually so judgmental? “What are this character’s traits?” Cruel, lazy… well, okay, we can discuss the character that way. But characters could use a little more from us. Not all of them, of course—there are archetypes—but for older kids, asking, “What was uniquely hard for this character?” can be powerful.

I like kids to coach characters sometimes: “I know you want to do this, I know it’s hard, but listen to your wisest self.” You can do so much with creative drama, narrative pantomime, or guided imagery to help kids practice these skills safely.

That’s a great prompt. Like how would you coach this character in this moment to listen to their wisest self? 

That’s in the back of the book!

Oh, I didn’t see that! Yay. I love that framing—asking “Why is this hard for me?” or “Why is this hard for you?” I can’t think of a better way to put it. It’s so accessible, especially for kids who often just say, “It’s too hard.” Asking what specifically is hard for them right now, and giving examples of things that can be addressed, is such a powerful approach.

Exactly. I struggle with so many hard things every single day, and reflecting this way helps me not show up reactive. Having that perspective is also helpful for teachers to practice self-compassion. We can ask ourselves, “What is it in this moment that made me behave this way with my co-teacher, or with that kid who was pushing every button?”

I think all of us just benefit from more self-awareness. For the most part, our brains are just trying to do what they can to protect us with the skills and tools available.

That’s a good example about teachers losing patience with a student. You can feel guilty afterward, or rationalize it, but I love the idea of looking back and thinking,

“Okay, my highest, wisest self would have been patient and calm. I would have co-regulated with the student. That’s what my wisest self would have done—but I didn’t. So why was that hard for me?”

Maybe you just got a new student that morning, or a bunch of stressful things happened, and you were at your wit’s end.

Then the next step is, “What can I do next time to help myself calm down so I don’t react like that? Because it doesn’t feel good to react that way—and then talk to the kid about it and apologize. For example: “I did not react from my wisest self. I was impatient because I was stressed about other things that had nothing to do with you. I want to do better next time.”

Yes. That’s something I’ve really been working on and have learned from Dr. Ross Greene and Dr. Becky Kennedy—the power of a quick, shame-free apology. Particularly with young kids, when we use an inappropriate tone, it’s scary for them. They often internalize the blame, thinking it’s their fault, which can be dangerous.

A kindergartener hearing, “Hey, I yelled and I’m sorry about that. Counting to four wasn’t your fault. I’ll work on doing better next time,” learns that it wasn’t their fault. We model a shame-free apology and normalize it, showing kids how to take responsibility without guilt. Many teachers feel like they have to be omnipotent and can’t apologize, but a quick, loving apology is one of our most powerful tools.

 

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Yeah. And maybe this is a good mental shift for someone listening to this who has felt that way and felt like,” I can’t apologize because I’m going to lose credibility with students. And no matter how many times people tell me, “No, it gives you more credibility, I just don’t feel that way.”

If you are talking about what happened in your brain and your body, if you talk about what’s going on in your nervous system, your thought process—then you become a relatable human. And it’s not so much like, “Oh, I’m the teacher who could just fly off the handle at any time.” No, I’m a teacher who, when I get overwhelmed, when there’s too many things happening at once, I get frazzled and I snap. That’s one of my things that I am working to do better at. And you can know that about me.

One of the things that really overstimulates me—this is a real example—is people calling my name over and over and over again. I just hate that. I taught elementary, so I had that happen a lot. And I told the kids that, back then, I didn’t have all of this language I have now to understand what was going on. But I told the kids, “When a lot of you are trying to get my attention at one time, I get overwhelmed because I want to help everybody, and there’s not enough of me to go around. So if you can raise your hand and wait until I get to you, it helps me be more calm when I get to you, because I don’t feel like there’s all these people waiting on me. I don’t have to rush, and I don’t get as upset.”

Just saying that periodically—say it at the beginning of the year, say it again a month or two later—reminds them: “Hey, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed today because so many people need my help. If you can wait, that will help me stay calm.” Then they have that same language too, because they also feel under pressure. If there’s a timed test, they know what it feels like to be rushed. They can say, “The timer is stressing me out,” and use that same language.

I think it’s okay—and I’d like to hear your thoughts on this too—but I think it’s okay for teachers not only to be vulnerable with students and model this, but also to ask for student support. Often, we’re taught to center only the needs of the kids, and we forget that teachers are human, too.

Teaching requires much emotional labor, and making that visible for students—being like, “This is really hard to keep all of this running and stay calm with everybody. Here’s what you can do to help me show up as the best version of myself. I want to do things to help you show up as the best version of yourself, too”—is powerful. “So you tell me what you need. Here’s what I need. How can we work together? That’s the basis of a friendship, of a marriage, of a parent/child relationship.”

It’s like, by positively and in a regulated way navigating your own humanity, you are teaching them to navigate their own humanity. If you pretend that you don’t have humanity because you’re just a perfect, calm angel, Mary Poppins type, that doesn’t help them navigate their own humanity.

One thing about this. No one can hear it—and it’s not effective—if it’s done reactively in a dysregulated way. I never got over the magic of a preview. If you get overwhelmed when everyone’s calling your name, saying beforehand, “Did you notice yesterday I got a little frustrated? I did too. I’ve learned we’ve all been talking about our hard things. My hard thing is staying calm when people are calling my name. I’m going to rely on this strategy today. Do you have any ideas for how you can help me with this?”

I remember once a kid said something like, “Oh, I had another teacher who wore a hat. When she wore the hat, people couldn’t walk up to her at that time.”

If it’s introduced almost like before the problem starts, kids don’t feel blamed, and they’re much more willing to collaborate and help solve the problem, even if you’re reflecting on something that happened yesterday. Whereas saying it in the moment—“Hey, remember this”—no one can hear it during dysregulation. There’s just something about the magic of a preview that helps everybody know what to do to make good choices, instead of feeling like you have to reactively fix what’s broken.

 I want to close this out with the takeaway truth. What is something you wish every educator understood about the power of their words shaping the environment around them and their relationship with themselves?

I might end with somebody else’s words. Many people love the book All the Light We Cannot See. I remember one of the final sentences—it’s something like “the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.”

I think the truth I want to leave with teachers is this: we offer language out loud, and maybe, like with my son, it seems like it bounces off the kids. Maybe you see it appear that year, maybe you don’t. But holding onto the faith that just because you can’t measure it, doesn’t mean it won’t trigger a fundamental, beautiful shift.

If you introduce the idea of a wisest self to an eight-year-old, twenty years later that 28-year-old may be in a difficult situation and think, “Okay, there is a part of me that wants to do this, but I am going to listen to my wisest, truest part and do the right but hard thing when nobody else is.”

I love the idea of a “birder mindset”—looking for beauty, noticing flashes of joy. Introduce that to a 10-year-old, and maybe years later they think, “I’m going to turn on my birder mindset and try to find one thing that makes me laugh today,” and their experience improves.

Or introduce the idea, “Kids do well if they can,” and years later that child is a parent, their toddler is driving them insane, and they remember, “If she could do well, she would do well,” and they meet that moment with connection and grace, instead of shame.

The teacher who introduced those words isn’t physically there for those moments, but in a way, they are—the teacher’s contribution crosses space and time. Teachers, remember: just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not doing beautiful things. You offer the words and then let go, but they may etch grooves through which lovely thoughts and actions transpire.

Yeah, I love that. It’s a return to how teaching is about creating the world you want to see. So often we think we’re not doing it, especially within a system with so many constraints. Coming back to the power of our language with kids—it really has a reverberating effect through the whole planet. It really does, because we’re all interconnected.

Oh, what a beautiful place to end. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for having me on. I’ve learned so much from you.