Dan Tricarico—The Zen Teacher

[00:01] Justin Baeder:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Baeder. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:14] Dan Tricarico:

I'm your host, Justin Baeder, and I'm honored to be joined today by Dan Tricarico. Dan is a high school English teacher and an advocate for supporting teachers amidst the kind of crazy changes we've seen in our profession in the past few years. And Dan is the author of The Zen Teacher, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:32] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:35] Dan Tricarico:

Dan, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:37] Dan Tricarico:

Thank you, Justin, and thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[00:40] Dan Tricarico:

Absolutely. Fabulous to speak with you today. And I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about why you wrote the book. What need did you see in the profession for the ideas that you're sharing in The Zen Teacher?

[00:53] Dan Tricarico:

Well that's a great question and I think that's exactly it is I did see a need and I saw the need in me first and so I confess that some of the impulse was fairly selfish at first that you know things had become very kind of crazy in the education field and we were being asked to do more and more and more with less support and less money and class sizes were just going off the charts. I'm currently rocking just about 40 in every class so I have close to 200 students And I just didn't see a lot of support for teachers. I didn't see a lot of people taking care of teachers. I saw a lot of teachers burning out and melting down, great teachers, teachers I really respected. And many of them just walked away, left the profession. And I said, I have 10 more years.

[01:41]

I can't do this. And I probably don't know what other kind of marketable skills I have to transfer to some other kind of career. And I'm 52 now, and I thought, well, I'm not going to go back to school to be a doctor or a lawyer. So I thought, I have to find some way to maintain my sanity and get through the craziness that I'm seeing. And I was a drama major, actually, and spent some time pursuing acting. And I remembered back how in the drama classes, they focused on how actors should have what they called a relaxed preparedness, meaning you were relaxed, but you were ready to go.

[02:18]

That you were calm, you were peaceful, but you were ready to perform. And I thought, gosh, that's what teachers need. And so I have always been interested in Eastern philosophy and Zen and just really gravitated towards those concepts of just letting things be how they are and not always feeling like you had to fix them and just learning to kind of surf what life gave you. So from a personal standpoint, I started a blog called The Zen Teacher just really as a reminder to myself on how to use those techniques of mindfulness and meditation, relaxation, breathing techniques, just to mellow out and simmer down so I could find peace. And I hoped, of course, that as I wrote the blog and I promoted it via Twitter, I hoped, of course, that it would resonate with other teachers. And what I realized is that it kind of did, and I was hearing great responses back.

[03:13]

And I've always loved to write, and I thought, well, gosh, this might make a good book, too. So I was kind of writing the book concurrently with the blog, and I kind of knew that Dave Burgess of Teach Like a Pirate fame was publishing educational books, and I said, well, when I'm done with this, would you mind taking a look? And he said, no, I wouldn't mind. And so when I finished, I sent it to him, and a little while later, I heard from him, and he said, yeah, let's do this. And so I have to say that the response has been amazing. And I underestimated the need and I underestimated how hungry teachers seem to be for somebody saying, you don't have to do it all, that you do deserve peace and that I'm here to take care of you.

[03:57]

And I think that's something that we just haven't seen a lot of, to be honest.

[04:02] Dan Tricarico:

Absolutely. And I think the the permission that we we lack often is permission from ourselves to really take care of ourselves. And I think especially classroom teachers see themselves as in a very student oriented role there for the students. And we kind of put ourselves in the backseat and don't don't really prioritize that. Our own well-being. And one of my previous guests on Principal Center Radio, Ian Vickers in New Zealand, has been traveling around his country promoting teacher well-being, things like getting people to drink more water and just take care of themselves a little bit.

[04:38]

So I think there's a growing recognition that the stress of the profession is a real issue and is, you know, not necessarily something that's inevitable, that burnout is not inevitable. And I wonder if you could shed some light for us on what some of the unique aspects of a kind of Zen approach would include.

[04:58] Dan Tricarico:

Sure. And I think, you know, one of the misconceptions is that anything that's going to make you that's going to change you in a positive way has to be difficult. And and I know that, you know, you mentioned Ian Vickers being interested in teacher well-being and drinking more water. And and, you know, I am not one of these people who's going to run to the gym. You know, that just has never been my thing. But the the.

[05:25]

Focusing on your health is obviously very important, but in terms of what I offer and what I suggest and the techniques that I found here that have been working for me is it's much, much more simple than people think. We don't need another thing to do. We don't need something else on our plate. It's things like...

[05:45]

being still and finding places for silence. And, you know, everything that there's really just the antithesis of what our society is doing right now with all of the go, go, go mentality, all of the devices, every, you know, you have to be connected and plugged in everywhere you go. And we are, sort of, you know, entering into this addiction to pace and haste and speed. And I'm just saying, time out, wait a second. We don't have to sign up for that. We don't have to agree to that.

[06:16]

We can take time for us, as you said, and it's a very good point. We lack permission from ourselves to take care of ourselves. And, um, one of the uh the metaphors that i use in the book that we've all heard before is that metaphor being on the plane and the flight attendant talking about the oxygen mask falling and you have to put your mask on first before you can put anybody else's mask on you have to help yourself first or you're not going to be in any position to help others and as you said teachers are so focused on helping others and so nurturing and and you know god loved them that's such an amazing thing and why i'd love to be a teacher But we have been doing that for so long that we're tired and we're worn out. And when things don't change and you continue that way, you do get burnt out. And so just the mindfulness of taking the moment as it comes and being in the moment, very simple concepts, almost deceptively simple, just breathing.

[07:14]

And everybody says, well, I do breathe. Well, not exactly. I tell my students when they come up to me and they're all... freaking out about something, their assignments late or something, I say, wait a second, just take a breath.

[07:25]

And they go, and I say, that's a gasp, not a breath. It's different. And, and I think teachers need to know that. And they, I see a lot of gasping in other classrooms and they need to breathe. They need to slow down. They need to relax and just say, you know what?

[07:40]

It's going to be okay. And if everything doesn't get done, the world will still spin.

[07:46] Dan Tricarico:

Well, I wonder if you could give us a few examples of maybe tools or practices that people can use on demand and then maybe talk about some habits that we can kind of install on a daily basis to set ourselves up for greater success and less stress.

[08:03] Dan Tricarico:

Sure. And I think one that I mentioned that that's super easy to implement immediately is the breathing technique of just, you know, I do it a lot. In fact, I did it, to be honest with you, with with my nerves, a little bit of being on such an impressive broadcast. I spent five minutes before we connected here just breathing. Some people call it meditation, and it can be that. But if that's not your thing, just saying sitting there and doing three slow breaths and letting thoughts come.

[08:38]

And if they come, let them float right out the other side of your mind and don't focus on them and don't attach to them. I think a lot of people think that if you meditate, you can't have any thoughts. And that's not true. I used to think that in the beginning when I was trying to meditate, I thought, oh, I'm thinking I'm distracted. I'm not focused. Boy, I suck at meditation.

[08:56]

And part of it is you can't judge yourself. You know, it's not going to be perfect. But part of it is knowing thoughts are going to come and just let them come. One analogy I heard is if you go up to the side of a stream, the stream goes by, but that doesn't mean you need to jump up into your waist in it. You can just let it go by and watch it go by. So just breathing, three slow breaths, kind of feeling the stress, flow out of your body on the exhalation as if there's just water flowing out of your body was an image I remember from my acting class days, and that has always served me well.

[09:31]

I think another thing that I really have been trying to preach is about what I'm calling your Zen practice. And for purists, the Zen practice was sitting meditation called Zazen. But What I am kind of modifying it to include is anything that gives you that sense of flow, anything that helps you lose your sense of time that you love, that attaches to your passions, that is balancing with whatever it is you're offering your profession. For some people it's writing, for some people it's hiking, for some people it's gardening, for some people it's quilting. Whatever you do as a hobby or as a passion, that you can really try to spend more time doing and be in that happy place that works for you, I think is something that teachers don't take enough time to do. And then the other part of that is I believe in what I call intentional and radical self-care.

[10:24]

And the radical part, as you said, is we have to give our self permission and we don't do that. So that is pretty radical. But it also has to be intentional. And what I mean by that is nobody's going to give it to you. you have to go out and carve out the time. And it's very hard in the pace that society goes today to carve out that time.

[10:43]

And I know in my family, the kitchen calendar runs everything. If it's not on the kitchen calendar, it doesn't happen. So I highly recommend going to your calendar, whether it's on your phone or your iPad or the refrigerator, wherever it is, and blocking out that time intentionally. I'm doing some one-on-one coaching right now with a teacher who's feeling a little bit of burnout. The very first suggestion I said was, go to your calendar, block out some time because nobody's going to give it to you. I said, once we do that, we can talk about what you're going to fill it with that is passionate for you and rejuvenating for you and reinvigorating for you, that's going to maybe help with these feelings of burnout.

[11:26]

So the breathing, the giving yourself permission for self-care, and then to make sure that you take steps to carve it out are three things people can do right now to create a little more peace for themselves.

[11:37] Dan Tricarico:

Fabulous. And I think with techniques like the breathing, you know, we don't necessarily need to have free time because, I mean, I think time is always the big one, you know, and I think that's one thing that Ian Vickers has run into with trying to get teachers to drink more water is if you drink more water, then you also will need some free time later in the day. And, you know, I think it's, you know, that combination of being intentional with the time that you do have some control over, but also having some some tools at your disposal to, you know, to kind of deal with things in the moment and and take care of yourself. Obviously, we can see the benefits of taking better care of ourselves and having strategies and having practices in place to kind of better manage our stress and our well-being. How does some of that reach students? How do the benefits of that trickle down and impact students?

[12:28] Dan Tricarico:

Well, I think that one of, you know, it's again with Zenith, sometimes the most obvious thing is the most profound. And I think that what we hope to see and what we would see for teachers who are following these techniques and following these concepts and implementing them in the classroom is if the teacher is happy and peaceful, the students are going to be more happy and peaceful. And if the teacher is wound up and stressed out and upset and then the students are going to feed off of that. They're going to sense that. Just like in parenting, your kids know when you're upset and that affects their disposition as well. And again, I've seen lots of teachers on my campus, on other campuses who are just so stressed out and wound up and frustrated with various things that are going on in the education machine, and I have seen the results of that in their students.

[13:20]

So, whether it's this approach or not, if the teachers find a way to reclaim some sense of serenity, of peace in the classroom, their students are definitely going to benefit too, because they are the leaders in the classroom, the lead learners. And it is a contagious thing. As a drama major and acting student, I always say that teaching reminds me a great deal of acting, and I always say I do five shows a day. And there is nothing like live theater for that exchange of electricity between the performer and the audience, and that's in some ways what you have set up in the classroom. and so there definitely is an electricity that goes back and forth and i just want that electricity to be positive and i want people who who get into this profession who got into it because they love what is happening here and they love to help students they love to help people i just want them to continue to be able to do that um from from a place of positivity and and satisfaction and fulfillment

[14:23]

And I, I've seen where we're, we're kind of getting away from that. And so I'm hoping that some of the concepts in the Zen teacher book and on the blog really can resonate with them and that they can take some, some really practical techniques away. Cause I know a lot of times people think, well, you know, it's, it's associated with religion or it's associated with this touchy feely foo foo stuff that that's not my thing. And I think if you look at the book and you know, um, I've done some Zen teacher workshops and if you, if you were in the, in, you know, attending those that you see that it can be very practical. It can be very down to earth and it's something that anybody can do regardless of what, um, walk of life you're coming from.

[15:01] Dan Tricarico:

Well, it almost seems like that idea of, um, you know, what's good for teachers is good for students, um, is, is also true kind of, kind of in the, the converse as, as we've seen, uh, high stakes testing, um, impact teachers and their job security as far as test scores being a part of evaluations. And we've seen that stress get passed on to students. I'll hear stories about students now being kind of driven to tears by assessments that really are supposed to help their education and not cause them stress. But I think the reality is we do pass on a lot of what we're feeling to our students. They do pick it up. I know that's certainly true as a you know, manifests itself in kind of how we work with the young people that we work with, whether they're our own kids or our students.

[15:53]

And I think this is a tremendous opportunity to kind of reverse the pattern that we've seen in the last couple of years with adults passing on adult stress to kids and instead pass on the kind of calmness and kind of centeredness and just kind of groundedness You know, and, you know, I'm not a Zen practitioner by any means, but I can definitely see the value of, you know, just having those areas of your, you know, yourself and of your the way you feel and the way you approach the day, more the way you want them and less subject to just whatever's happening around you. I like the stream passing by and not necessarily having to get in the stream. That's great.

[16:31] Dan Tricarico:

Yeah. And the more I talk about this and the more I do this, and again, so simple, so obvious, the more I absolutely realize that it's about compassion and it's about kindness. And I've I've started saying kindness is everything. And that's become kind of my mantra. And if you're dealing with the administration or you're dealing with the district and you have that empathy, you have that compassion and say, well, gee, I'm not a fan of testing or I'm not a fan of this or that. But you say, I am a fan of my students and I'm going to give kindness and give grace to the administrators who maybe are not doing what I want.

[17:10]

I'm going to give grace to my students who aren't doing what I want. I'm going to be an example of that kindness. You just help yourself. It just comes back to you, which is amazing. Again, I think one of the places where this does take some courage is the types of choices that I'm suggesting go very much against what we're seeing in society and what we're seeing in education. The other funny thing is, as I wrote the book, I told Dave when I was writing it, I said, I'm really concerned because I want it to be focused, but it seems to be about being a teacher and what you do in your personal life.

[17:46]

And then after discussion, we agreed very hard to separate the two and that you do need a balance and that you need to be calm in your personal life as well as your professional life. So there is a nice mixture and it blends together. And I've been hearing that that really works for teachers.

[18:02] Dan Tricarico:

So the book from Dave Burgess Consulting is The Zen Teacher, Creating Focus, Simplicity, and Tranquility in the Classroom. Dan, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[18:14] Justin Baeder:

Thank you. I had a blast, Justin. I appreciate it. And now, Justin Baeder on high-performance instructional leadership.

[18:21] Dan Tricarico:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Dan? I think we have to look at this at a number of different levels. First, there is the level of practices that Dan shared with us, things like breathing, things like getting enough rest and taking care of ourselves that you might have also heard me talk about with Ian Vickers in his interview that make a difference in teachers' individual lives on a day-to-day basis. But I think as leaders, we've also gotta look at the organizational conditions that contribute to teacher stress. And if we are working in a system where there are 40 students per class and teachers have five or six classes per day, we know that that is going to add up. So I wanna challenge us as a profession to really look at the conditions that are causing teacher stress and not just try to treat it as a symptom.

[19:09]

And I think we need to be especially careful not to talk out of both sides of our mouth on this issue. And if you've heard my friend Larry Ferlazzo's criticisms of the idea of grit for students, that we should just teach students to be more tolerant of really unacceptable conditions in their lives, when instead we really need to be working to improve those conditions so that students have the resources they need to learn and have the foundation they need for success. And I think within a school context, the same is true for teachers. I mean, I want you to get Dan's book and provide it to your teachers. I want you to take that advice. I want teachers to take that advice.

[19:44]

But I don't want you to do all of that in order to pile more on teachers, to stress teachers out more. We want to build people's capacity. We want to make them more able to handle the stress that they're dealing with, but not so that we can just give them more. So I think we have to work on both sides of the equation. We have to find ways to reduce the stress that's bearing on teachers, and we also have to find ways to help them manage the stress that they do have. If you'd like access to our full program on instructional leadership and organizational management, check out the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network at principalscenter.com slash leadership.

[20:21] Announcer:

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