A Human Who Teaches: Burnout, Flow, and the Whole Teacher with Angela Watson ~ 1408

Angela Watson: How can we center what makes us human? How can we center finding these peak human experiences like the flow state, managing our time and energy and attention alongside of our students, because those are things that they’re grappling with as well.

And so really looking at things from a very holistic perspective. We’ve always talked about the whole child. Rarely do we talk about the whole teacher. And so that combination of personal and professional development is the sweet spot for me. That’s what I’m really passionate about. They are not machines. We are not there to fill them up with information. Teaching is about so much more than that, and the resistance in the form of individual teachers’ everyday practice is what is shaping the future of education.

It is the individual teacher who says, “I’m not going to do that to my kids.” Not necessarily in a defiant way, but in a way that says, “I’m not going to internalize that pressure and then put that same pressure back on them. I am a human, and so are they, and I respect that above all, even in a system that doesn’t seem to prioritize it.”

Tim Villegas: Hey, friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive, real conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about the whole teacher. We talk all the time about the whole child. We almost never talk about the adult in front of the room, or adults really, if you’re a co-teacher.

My guest is Angela Watson. Angela is a national board-certified teacher with a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, and more than 25 years as a classroom teacher and instructional coach.

Fun fact: she started teaching in Maryland in Prince George’s County. She started her website in 2003 as a young teacher. Today, it’s called Truth for Teachers, and it reaches more than eight million educators a year. She has written six books, including Awakened: Change Your Mindset to Transform Your Teaching, and she hosts the Truth for Teachers podcast. Her 40 Hour Teacher Workweek program has been used by more than 65,000 educators. We talk about teacher burnout and why Angela says it’s a systemic problem, not a personal failing.

We talk about what self-care looks like when it’s turned into one more demand, and we talk about her Finding Flow curriculum, which helps students understand how their brains focus and why. Listen for what Angela says about students who learn differently. She says, “A scripted, standardized classroom treats difference as something to accommodate instead of something you build in from the start.”

That’s the inclusion question in one sentence, and it’s the thread running through this whole season. Stick around after the interview because we are playing Awake Among the Stars, our micro role-playing game adapted from Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada. Link to the original game is in the show notes. Before we meet our guest, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K-12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place. As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just-right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps.

Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive.

All right, after a quick break, it’s time to Think Inclusive with Angela Watson.

Catch you on the other side.

Angela Watson, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Angela Watson: Hi. Thanks so much for having me, Tim.

Tim Villegas: I’m really excited about this conversation, partially because I’m feeling a little stressed. And we’re recording this at the end of August, so it’ll probably come out in the fall sometime. So most likely educators are listening and feeling the pressure of everything that comes with being an educator, being a teacher.

And so first, our audience may not know who you are. So for everyone who doesn’t know about Truth for Teachers or how you got started in this work, I’d love it if you could just fill us in on all of that, if that’s possible.

Angela Watson: Sure. So I think of myself as being a teacher advocate, and I try to talk about the things that I know teachers are thinking and feeling.

I try to amplify that, in ways that maybe aren’t possible for people who are tied to a school system and don’t feel like they can speak freely. So that’s where the name Truth for Teachers came from, is that we’re gonna speak really honestly about the realities of teaching, about what’s working, what’s not working, and so on.

My path to get here really happened very organically. I was a classroom teacher for 11 years. Actually, I started in Maryland, as a matter of fact, in Prince George’s County. Yep.

Tim Villegas: Nice. Yes.

Angela Watson: Yeah. And then I taught in Miami. I taught in Fort Lauderdale as well. And then I became an instructional coach working in all five boroughs of New York City.

So I’ve been doing instructional coaching and professional development facilitation since that time. And when I was a young teacher, I was sharing ideas on message boards because that’s what we had. And eventually that grew into a website, which grew into books, and everything really evolved from there.

So the problem that I was interested in solving in the very beginning was classroom management, because there was not a lot out there at that time. We basically had Harry Wong’s First Day of School, and that was about it.

Tim Villegas: Yep. Yep.

Angela Watson: So I’m like, okay, but how do you actually get 30 seven-year-olds to line up?

Like, how does that work, though? So I was really focused on the practical stuff, and like, how do we streamline our transitions and things like that. So I started with classroom management and then moved into the mindset piece because I realized that you could have all the right strategies, but if what you believe about yourself or your students is inaccurate, if it’s from a deficit mindset, if you believe it’s not possible, these kids couldn’t possibly or I could never, then that’s gonna really limit you and hold you back.

So I really started getting into the mindset piece, and then from there, I started getting more into productivity, and that’s where the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek evolved. So really focusing on how do we stay organized, what really matters, what’s really moving the needle for kids that we wanna give 100% of our energy to, and what is busywork, what’s unnecessary, what can we streamline?

And that really brings us up to where we’re at now, which is focusing much more on centering human flourishing and learning. So students and teachers, how can we co-thrive together? How can we center what makes us human? How can we center finding these peak human experiences like the flow state, managing our time and energy and attention alongside of our students, because those are things that they’re grappling with as well.

And so really looking at things from a very holistic perspective. We’ve always talked about the whole child. Rarely do we talk about the whole teacher. And so that combination of personal and professional development is the sweet spot for me. That’s what I’m really passionate about.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, I love this. I love the focus on supporting the teacher.

I think there’s a lot of energy focused on making a classroom environment welcoming, making a classroom environment work for all learners. And maybe not as much of a focus on how do we build up the educator that’s actually serving the students. And so I really love this focus on mindset, because I think this is where MCIE and Truth for Teachers, Angela Watson, we are very much aligned. I think our audience knows too, the mindset is such a huge part of what we do and what’s possible for how to change things for the better, for not only students, but also for educators.

And that’s something that we talk about all the time, if you believe that your students can, they will, as opposed to if you believe that your students can’t, then they won’t, right?

Angela Watson: That’s right.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. We focus a lot on supporting educators with including learners with disabilities.

And so I’m just wondering if there’s any overlap in your work with that, maybe working with special education teachers or special education administrators. Just wondering where that lands with you.

Angela Watson: So the neurodivergent piece is something that has really been at the forefront of my practice.

I am a generalist. I always taught general education and work primarily with general education. And of course, that means that you’re still needing to support students who learn differently, but it’s not seen as the primary aspect of your job. It’s seen as something additional that you’re going to do.

And what I have noticed is that in the quest to standardize teaching, to teacher-proof teaching, to make it very scripted, to make it very, you can’t use your own resources, you need to be doing this exact thing at nine thirteen in the morning, that it is these students who learn differently and think differently who are the first ones to snap in that kind of environment.

Because what happens is this very prescripted way of teaching treats difference as something that has to be accommodated rather than something that could just be built in. We know that what’s good for students who learn differently, for neurodivergent kids, is typically good for all kids.

It’s best practice for everyone. But we’re treating it as something that is additional on, and something that is an add-on that becomes one more thing that the teacher then has to do rather than saying, “Okay, so how do we design learning? How do we design school in a way that actually supports a wide range of learning styles and personalities and preferences?”

Because I think that’s the way that most teachers want to teach and feel instinctively that they should be teaching, and instead they’re being told that this has to be an accommodation, a deviation from the norm. And I think that whole framing is problematic, and it’s how we’ve gotten to this position now where teachers are so burned out from all of the different needs that students are coming to the classroom with.

It’s always been on teachers to just figure it out, right? Like, make it work. Figure it out somehow. You don’t have the resources and support that you need, but you’ll make it work, and I think we’re hitting a breaking point with that in the profession right now. And my hope is that as we get new neuroscience, as the science of learning develops, we understand more about how the human brain works, that we’ll start to incorporate that a bit more.

For example, we know that bell-to-bell learning or bell-to-bell classroom instruction is not best practice. There is no research to support working a human for 90 minutes straight with no breaks and then immediately going right into the next lesson and making sure that every single moment is a learning moment.

You need to have time to move. You need to get up and get water. You need to talk. And yet teachers are pressured to cram as much as possible into the day, despite the research not showing that. So my hope is that we’ll start to see the research come more to the forefront, and that’s a big part of what I try to do through the podcast, is surface these best practices and make them accessible in a way that we can bring them into schools to translate that theory into practice so that students who learn differently can be more centered rather than something that we have to work around.

Tim Villegas: Tell me more about this, the student engagement curriculum that you have. It’s findingflowsolutions.com, and it’s helping kids recognize maybe how they learn a little bit better, how to get into these flow states. ’Cause what I’m hearing is, it’s the way that we’ve set up school.

It was about, quote-unquote, productivity, how to make really productive, kids turn into productive adults and then into the workplace or whatever. But you are absolutely right. No one is productive when it’s bell to bell. And I think educators are really trying to figure out, “How do I keep my students engaged?”

And it doesn’t diminish the learning. It’s actually, it actually enhances the learning.

Angela Watson: That’s right.

Tim Villegas: So could you talk to us a little about that?

Angela Watson: Yeah. So this piece, that this is actually enhancing the learning, is super important. And that can be a tough sell when we are told that we need to do more drill and kill, we need to do more test prep practice.

But again, if we go back to the learning research, we know that students cannot concentrate for six hours a day. Adults can’t even concentrate for six hours a day. If you look at the average office worker’s productivity, there’s lots of downtime in there. There’s lots of email and scrolling TikTok and the water cooler breaks and the long lunch breaks.

We need downtime as adults. And I think figuring out what the human brain requires in order to work its best is really fascinating, and it’s something that I encourage teachers to bring their students in alongside. And that’s really what Finding Flow does, is it helps students understand how their brains work.

So for example, a lot of teenagers are shamed for their phone addiction, or how much screen time they’re getting. And meanwhile, they look around at the adults and they’re like, “But this is exactly what all the adults in my life are also doing.”

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Angela Watson: So can we just be real about that and just say, yeah, like these devices, it’s something that all of us have to actively work at throughout our entire lifetimes to decide when we want to be on a screen and when we don’t.

And what are we losing when we’re on a screen? What are we gaining when we’re on a screen? So learning how to manage your time, your energy, your focused attention, learning when are the best times for you to concentrate, what are the factors that enable you to concentrate better? Do you work better for long periods of time and then a longer break, or short periods of time and a short break?

Do you work better lying down, standing up, mixing it up? How about when you’re walking? Sometimes ideating and thinking over problems, it doesn’t work very well when you’re sitting at a desk with a pencil in your hand or a keyboard in front of you. What if you go for a walk? Learning how to approach productivity as a lifelong experiment is something that I think is really exciting, because then we’re positioning ourselves as learners alongside of our students instead of handing the solutions to them.

And what it enables kids to do is to figure out their own toolbox of strategies that they can reach for, because all of us have to push ourselves to get started. All of us wake up in the morning sometimes and are just like, “I don’t wanna do this.” We have tasks on our to-do list, we’re not into it, and yet somehow those things usually get done.

How? What are we doing? Sometimes we’re moving things around on a to-do list. Sometimes we’re white-knuckling it through. Sometimes we’re easing into it. We’re finding the quickest, shortest step and getting started there. These are all strategies that we’re using as adults that kids need to have modeled for them.

To realize that we don’t just wake up and bounce out of bed and can’t wait to go grade 500 papers, like it’s the most exciting thing ever for us. That’s not the case. We’re using these motivation strategies, and so helping kids figure it out allows them to develop their own toolbox so that when they’re not motivated or not focused, they can identify exactly what’s going on, what the block is, and what strategies can help them get back in.

And in this way, the teacher no longer has to be the apathetic student whisperer and figure out what is going on with each and every kid. We want kids to be able to figure it out for themselves, to say, “Hey, I woke up this morning and I’m tired. I’m distracted because something happened last night that I’m still thinking about.

“I’m also in the middle of this new level on a video game. I can’t wait to get back home after school and get back on it. And so that’s making this seem not very motivating to me right now. I’m not really interested in it.” And so being able to name that, to say there’s nothing wrong with you for feeling that way, that everyone else in this room also has things like that, that they’re distracted by and that they’re thinking about.

So how do we work with that? What is the best approach for you? And helping students to figure out different strategies that they can use to get their work done in a way that works with their brain rather than against it.

Tim Villegas: Oh man, I have a lot of things. Let me write them here. That was a lot. No, it’s okay. It’s okay. Let me see if I can unpack some of this. What I’m hearing you say, let’s go with this one first, what I’m hearing you say is that it’s not about educators knowing the ins and outs and motivations of each of their individual students, and what am I gonna do or say to manipulate them into doing work, right?

It’s about a couple things: research-based, evidence-based instructional practices that actually work for student engagement, right? That work for all learners. And actually understanding themselves enough to model regulation and productivity for their students, because sometimes their students don’t actually know how to manage their own energy, right? Am I hitting it at all?

Angela Watson: Yes, yes. That’s exactly right.

Tim Villegas: All right.

Angela Watson: It’s coming alongside students, treating it as a lifelong experiment that you’re both in, and helping students to understand, because as you mentioned, if the teacher has to develop a relationship with each and every student and figure out what is going on with them that day, that is not possible.

And I wish that we could name that more in education, because we’ve been talking about relationships now for, 10, 15 years, and I’m talking to high school teachers who are like, “Hey, I have 200 kids. So I don’t remember who had a sibling who was in whatever kind of situation. I pay attention to the big red flags.

“If someone is unhoused overnight, okay, I’m dialed into that. I can’t possibly know all of these kids to that level.” And so what if instead of pushing that responsibility on the teacher, we equipped students with the tools to identify what’s going on, to be able to share about it honestly, and to be able to find their own strategies to be able to manage it with the teacher’s support, instead of it being all on the teacher to notice it, to figure it out, and to provide the intervention.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, and it parallels this idea of creating a safe space in order for the students to feel like they can do that in the first place. And so I guess I’m imagining people listening to this and going, “Angela preached. This is amazing. I love this. But how am I supposed to do this?

“How am I supposed to model this when I feel like I have so many constraints on how I can teach in a particular classroom or a particular school?”

Angela Watson: Yes, and that is 100% the number one barrier right there, is that there’s no time for anything extra. So two things that I would say to that. Number one is that is what the Finding Flow Solutions curriculum does because it’s mini units.

These lessons take 10 to 15 minutes, and the slideshow’s already done, the student journal is done. So it’s something that if you have… And it’s K-12 too, so there’s different time constraints at different levels. Often elementary teachers find it easier to fit it in there. But if you have any kind of homeroom or study hall period, anything like that, advisory period, that is sometimes where these things can kinda fit in.

So you can explicitly teach it to students, and I think that’s really valuable because then you have a shared vocabulary around what’s happening. The second thing that you can do, which is less time-intensive, is just making some of this thinking visible. So you can say to students, “We’re supposed to be doing X, Y, and Z science lab experiment today.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not feeling great at the moment, and my energy levels aren’t as high as they need to be. And I’m distracted because I have this email that I suddenly got and I have to respond to. So this is what I’m gonna do. I need to take five minutes for myself. I’m gonna have you all work on this for five minutes, and then we’re gonna come back in.”

So you’re naming the fact that you don’t show up at 100% focused all the time, ’cause your students have already noticed that. They’re aware. It’s just, often we try to pretend, or we act like it’s okay for us and it’s not okay for them. In fact, I would argue it’s okay for everybody. It is okay for everyone to not be at 100% every moment of every day.

I think that’s reality. So being able to talk about it, to model it, to say, “Hey, we’ve got 10 minutes at the end of class here, and I was planning to have us go through and do another practice activity, but I can see from your facial expressions and your body language, your brains are so full right now, so I don’t think you’re gonna be able to absorb any more.

“I think our time might be better spent with this or this. What do you think?” And tossing that ball back to students. That’s something that just takes a few seconds, and a lot of times they’re the decisions that you’re making as an educator anyway. You’re always looking at the clock and deciding, “Okay, one more problem or not?

“Should I take a follow-up question or not?” Make that thinking visible to students, because then they learn how to monitor their own focus level. When you notice that they’re not focused, instead of treating it as a behavioral issue, it is an issue of cognitive load. It’s like, “Okay, you’re not focused because of, it could be this, or this.

“I want you to get into your toolbox and think about what kinds of strategies would help you here.” And being able to pivot in the moment and say, “Okay, this is not the day. We just had a fire drill or something like that. My students are not gonna be able to focus on this as well as I would’ve liked them to.”

If I can move things around, I will. If I can’t because I don’t have that kind of freedom over it, then fine, we’ll do it. But I’m going to work with the situation rather than against it. I’m being evaluated as if my students show up at 100% every single day, and they don’t. And the more that we try to fit reality into these unrealistic expectations, the more frustrated we’re gonna be.

So just because that’s something that is expected from you does not mean it’s something you have to internalize. It’s something that you can comply with. It’s something that you can give lip service to. It’s something that you can do on the surface. It’s something you can document, but you don’t have to internalize these expectations that you know are unrealistic for students.

And that is one way that you can really center humanity in the classroom, recognizing the humanity of your students. They are not machines. We are not there to fill them up with information. Teaching is about so much more than that, and the resistance in the form of individual teachers’ everyday practice is what is shaping the future of education.

It is the individual teacher who says, “I’m not going to do that to my kids.” Not necessarily in a defiant way, but in a way that says, “I’m not going to internalize that pressure and then put that same pressure back on them. I am a human, and so are they, and I respect that above all, even in a system that doesn’t seem to prioritize it.”

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

I’m thinking of my experience as a student and remembering educators doing exactly what you described. “I’m not 100% today. I am not feeling it.” And the relief that comes from hearing another person say that, because that is also how the student feels a lot of times. And I’ll just, I’ll expand that to just professional roles.

I think that the best… This is Tim’s opinion, okay? This is not an official MCIE stance or anything. But in my opinion, I love those moments where leaders just completely shed any sort of sense of, “I know what I’m doing. I have it all together.” Because who has it all together, really? Whenever you actually have a real conversation with someone, they’re like, “Man, I am just, barely treading water here.”

Angela Watson: Yes.

Tim Villegas: So let’s give each other a little bit of grace and just understand where everyone is. That brings me relief whenever I have a conversation with someone, and so just imagine what that would do for our students.

After the break, what teachers can do outside the classroom and why Angela thinks a 25-minute bike ride can count.

Let me take a minute to tell you about our other sponsor, Inclusive Schooling. Here is something we hear from educators all over the country: “We believe in inclusion, but what about students with challenging behavior? How do we include those learners, and how do we support everybody else in the room when so much of the day is going to behavior?”

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I’m wondering. There are things that teachers can do in the classroom, to push back on this idea of their students performing lockstep into all of these expectations, right? But what can educators do outside of the classroom to prepare themselves to show up for their students fully energized and rested and ready to go?

Angela Watson: It’s tricky because I feel like we’re leading into, like, self-care here and restorative practices and ways to create work-life balance and all that kind of thing. And unfortunately, that has turned, over the course of the nearly 30 years that I’ve been in education from something that was not really spoken about or prioritized, to something that was a big trend, I would say 2016, ’17, ’18, to now has become yet another demand on teachers. Where on top of everything else, you’re supposed to also be prioritizing your own mental health. You’re supposed to be getting therapy. You should be working out. You need to be getting fresh air.

Are you eating healthy? Are your meals prepped for the week? ’Cause we’re not gonna be eating those frozen meals the teachers were bringing to school in the ’90s. What are we doing here? So it becomes like one more thing that teachers have to do, and they’re exhausted. And for a lot of teachers, particularly if they have children or if they have elderly parents or family members they’re caring for, they can easily lose sight of who they are and what they even need to be restored because they never have the time to do it.

So if you were to give them a whole weekend just for themselves, they literally would not know what to do with themselves because it’s just always, “I have five spare minutes, I’m gonna grade some papers,” or, “I’m gonna do something for someone else,” or, “I’m just gonna lay here and scroll because I need the downtime.”

And so actually carving out time for something restorative is really challenging. So I just wanna name that above all that like, this is a systemic issue. It is an institutional issue. This is not an individual issue. If you are not feeling like you have time for yourself, it is not because you’re not making time for it.

It’s because the system is built upon the unpaid labor of teachers. The entire way we do school would collapse if teachers all stuck to their contract hours, and that has been the case for decades. This is not a new thing, but it’s, I think the demands are increasing in ways that are tricky because it looks like some things are getting easier, but we’re never really taking anything off teachers’ plates.

So without going too far down that rabbit hole, ’cause that’s a whole nother topic, to answer your question about what can they do, I would think about it in terms of what makes you feel like you? What are the practices that you need in order to feel most like yourself?

So for me, one of the easiest things to do is riding my bike. I got an e-bike because, I don’t wanna struggle. I feel like life is already hard enough, and I’m not trying to struggle going up these big hills where I live. So I got an e-bike, right? So I’m pedaling, it’s exercise, but nothing too crazy.

And so I might go for like a 25-minute bike ride and feel the sun on my face, feel the wind on my face, listen to a podcast, listen to some music, not have anyone calling my name or needing anything from me. It’s like literally 20, 25 minutes and I’m back home and I feel like myself again. It can be something as simple as that.

You don’t need to do all of the things. But try to carve out some time where you do something that really moves the needle for you, some hobby, some type of movement, hanging out with someone that you really love. Look for those ways that remind you, you are more than just your job. You are not a teacher, you are a human who teaches, in the words of Shamari Reid.

You are a person first. And remembering that, even if it’s difficult to put into practice, I think is really powerful. Even just the mindset shift of remembering, “I am not a teacher, I am a human who teaches,” puts things into perspective when it feels like I can’t possibly relax. I can’t possibly do something for myself because I have all these other demands on me.

Yes, but as a human, I need certain things in order to thrive. I want to flourish. I want to do more than just survive. I want to do more than just get through the day. And thinking about yourself and valuing yourself in that way creates this ripple effect where you extend that same perspective to other people, too.

And it just creates this more compassionate way of being in which you start to recognize how fragile we all are, like how we’re all just basically a bunch of five-year-olds walking around in adults’ bodies. No one really knows what they’re doing. Like you said, no one really has it all together.

We’re all still reactive in certain ways, like little kids. You start to see that the human condition is a fragile one. And there’s something really beautiful about that because when you respect the way that we are as beings, it helps you to internally resist this mindset that we can perform as machines, that the goal is efficiency, that the goal is to continue to maximize output, to really squeeze the most out of everything and continually getting better until we have 100% scores on every single stance.

When you think about who humans are at their core, there’s a beauty in the flaws, and I find that really comforting when I see standards that are impossible to live up to.

Tim Villegas: A couple things are in my brain right now. Let’s ask the meditation thing first. Is meditation, contemplation, reflection something that… I know you have lots of things that you talk about on your podcast, but is that something that you would recommend, if it is life-giving? Obviously you don’t want to tell people to do something they don’t wanna actually do. But how much experience do you have with walking teachers through some of those practices?

Angela Watson: Yeah. I think meditation has this reputation of being something that you do on a mountaintop in the Himalayas or something.

And I go to a yoga studio in Queens, in New York, and it’s at the corner of Queens Boulevard, and one of my teachers always says, “Anybody can meditate on a mountaintop.

“Can you meditate on the corner of Queens Boulevard? Where there’s sirens, there’s horns honking, you can hear people yelling on the street. Can you do it there? That’s the real work.” And I think that’s really cool to think about, that it doesn’t have to look one sort of way. It doesn’t mean clearing your head entirely.

Meditation is difficult for me, because my brain is always going. I always have a million ideas, and it’s hard for me to turn my brain off. But I have found moving meditation helps, so qi gong is really great. Tai chi is great. There’s a community of elders in my community who do tai chi down at the park every morning.

And I love that. I participate whenever I possibly can, because then, you’re social. You’re with people. You don’t have to be alone. You don’t have to be silent. You don’t have to be still if that doesn’t suit you. Sound baths are another great way. So this is gongs and crystal bowls, those sorts of things.

It’s a way to instead of guiding your nervous system to relax and your mind to quiet, instead of using words, it’s sounds. So you’re relaxed and you’re listening to these very calming, healing sounds. So I’ve really gotten into both attending and also giving these sound practices. So meditation can look lots of different ways.

And I think the key for teachers, whenever I’m talking to teachers about this, is really nervous system. Because often, even in the summertime, teachers can’t totally relax. It takes weeks to decompress because you have just been on fight or flight for so long. You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and you can never fully shift from that fight or flight state, that sympathetic nervous state into the parasympathetic, which is your rest and digest, the calm mode.

We’re just constantly on edge just because of the world we live in and the demands of the profession. And so having practices that help you shift into that parasympathetic state, whether it be yoga, whether it be meditation, whether it be just spending time out in nature. A hike can be a meditative practice.

I do forest bathing, which is where I guide teachers in standing in stillness in the forest. It’s like a 10-minute practice, and it can be life-changing because normally when we’re outside, we’re going somewhere. We’re like in a hurry. There’s a destination. Let me get my heart rate up.

I got one hour, let’s go. Just standing in a forest and just observing things like touching the moss, noticing a bug that’s crawling on a log. Who has time for that? And so 10 minutes of just being mindful can really calm your nervous system. So that, I think, is the key piece for teachers is like look for something that resets the nervous system and gets you out of that fight or flight.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. I love all those suggestions. I’m curious how you came to be so interested and also such a resource for educators about this kind of thing, self-care, pushing back on burnout and all that stuff. What was your journey like to this being the thing that you’re so passionate about?

Angela Watson: It started with yoga, which I started in 2017 because I had back pain. That’s all I wanna do is just stretch. And then I was like, “Oh, oh, there’s a lot here. Okay, this was not what I thought it was.” Apparently, there’s many different types of yoga, and the type where you’re sweating and twisting yourself into a pretzel is just one kind.

There’s lots of different things you can do here. And huh, I’m actually getting mental benefits. This is teaching me to tune into my body. I’m walking around with my shoulders up to my ears, and yoga is teaching me constantly roll the shoulders back and down, like noticing the stress and tension in your body. And I was like, huh, there’s a lot here. And it really just developed very organically from that. One thing just led to the next in realizing how powerful these practices are. And I didn’t think I was the type of person who did any of these things. I don’t know what I thought those people were.

I don’t know. I’m an East Coast person. I’m based in New York City. I just… I don’t know. It seemed like something that was for a different type of person than I was. But I have found my own path. I’ve found my own practice, and sharing these things with teachers, particularly at retreats, is so powerful because it’s a chance for them to step back and have someone else take care of them for once, to plan things for them, organize for them, clean up for them, and create these kinds of experiences in very low pressure, where they don’t have to perform. They don’t have to know anything. They can just show up and just be and just experience. It can be really transformative because once you start doing it, you realize, oh, this is actually simpler than I thought.

It doesn’t require being on the mountaintop. I can actually do this at home.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, I totally forgot until you just said that. I wanted to ask you about the adult summer camp. I probably should provide a little context. I was actually scrolling in prep for our interview and noticed that you had an adult summer camp, I think it was the end of June or something like that, June, July.

And you were inviting people to just come and just be, and I think that you were leading some activities. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Angela Watson: Yeah. Yeah, so I did a teacher retreat in Pennsylvania in June, in North Carolina near Asheville in July, and then the summer camp for grownups actually is Labor Day weekend.

Tim Villegas: Oh, okay.

Angela Watson: So it’s coming up, yeah. So I just wanted some time for playfulness, for some lightness. I feel like the world is very heavy right now. People are carrying a lot. It’s very stressful just to open up social media and see about the latest tragedy that’s happening in the world.

I think people need a chance to, again, reconnect with that childlike part of them that could find joy and awe and wonder. Those are such peak human experiences, when sometimes you’re, I don’t know, walking to your car or whatever, and you look up and the sunset is incredible, or the moon is peeking through the clouds, and you’re like, “Wow, look at that.”

And you remember, “I’m so tiny. My problems are so temporary. Everything that I’m thinking and worrying about is so little.” It’s such a little thing, but it is a peak human experience. And that’s why we enjoy being around little kids, right? ’Cause everything is new, brand new to them.

A two-year-old has that moment 50 times a day. And so when you’re around them, you see the world through their eyes. But I believe we all still have that inside of ourselves. There’s so much joy and wonder and awe to have in just the littlest, tiny things, the smallest things.

I saw a bee on a flower the other day that was, like, taking a nap. I didn’t know, but they do actually take naps on flower petals. It was on its side curled up. And I just looked at it, you know, for 20 seconds. It was 20 seconds out of my day. I’m like, “What is that bee doing?” The bee was taking a nap, and that sent me down this whole rabbit hole about learning about the habits of bees.

There’s so many cool things to explore in the world, and having that childlike sense of awe and wonder, I think it just makes you remember your humanity. It makes you remember just the joy of being alive, and it makes you remember what else is possible outside of the daily grind of get up, go to work, and come home.

And so a retreat is really a chance to step back from that and remember that inner child, something that the younger version of you would’ve loved, like sitting around a campfire with friends and roasting marshmallows. So let’s do that. Let’s do that right now. Let’s do that as adults.

Tim Villegas: If anyone’s listening or watching and thinking, “Wow, I really wanna go to a retreat. I wanna go to this summer camp,” or, “I want to be involved with whatever Angela is doing,” how can people find out more about you and the experiences that you offer?

Angela Watson: So my website is truthforteachers.com, and then I also have a website that has all the retreats on it. And I’ll send you the link to that, too. I have actually just finalized all my 2027 dates, so we’re gonna be doing one in Sedona in March. We’re gonna be doing a readers’ retreat to talk about books in the wintertime in February in Pennsylvania.

I did that last February. It was magical. There was a foot of snow on the ground, and we did the forest bathing in the snow. It was unbelievable. And then I’ll have some teacher retreats in the summer, and then I always do something in the fall as well, ’cause fall is just a great time to get away.

Yeah, I would love to have folks come. You can come solo, come with your people, whatever you wanna do. But it’s a great time. I always try to pick places that are affordable. I try to be very mindful of the budget teachers are working with. And I don’t think you should have to spend $5,000 and go to Bali in order to get a retreat.

I think this should be something that is accessible to as many people as possible, and learn restorative practices you can continue at home, things that you can keep doing on a daily basis. So it’s not like this one-time getaway, but “Okay, now I’ve experienced some different things.

“What have I just done that I might like to bring back into my regular life?” And that, to me, is what’s really exciting, is to see teachers take these practices back home.

Tim Villegas: Amazing. Amazing. Thanks for being here. Before we go into the next segment, is there anything else that you’d like for our listeners and watchers of the podcast to take away from our conversation?

Angela Watson: I think the most important thing that I want to make sure everyone who’s listening to this remembers is that the stress that they’re feeling is not an individual failing. It’s what we were talking about earlier. These are systemic institutional issues, not just in schools, but just in general with the way that our society is operating these days.

It is incredibly stressful just to do basic tasks now. And so if you are feeling burnt out or exhausted or hopeless, know you are not alone, and it’s not just you. And I think the light at the end of the tunnel is good people. Good people give me so much hope. There’s so many good, smart people in the world who are doing good work, including the folks listening to this podcast.

It’s so encouraging to me to talk to you, Tim, and to talk to other educators who are thoughtful and conscious and mindful and aware of what’s happening. We are not alone in this. Sometimes it can be so isolating in a classroom, or you’re at home and you’re just staring at a screen, and you can feel very isolated, but know you’re not alone and that we are in this together, and find the people who also share the same values that you do so that you can encourage each other, so you can have some good times together, so that you can restore, so you can play, so that you can remember who you are as a person, and always come back to that, remembering that you are a human first above all.

And that, I believe, is the thing that will sustain us, is coming back to the humanity of ourselves and our students.

Tim Villegas: Thanks so much, Angela. This has been a fascinating and really life-giving conversation, so I appreciate you.

Angela Watson: I’m so happy to hear that. Life-giving, I love it. Yes. That’s what I want.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Okay, I’m gonna set this up.

This is a new segment that we’re rolling out for this season.

Angela Watson: Okay, cool.

Tim Villegas: And it’s a micro RPG. Do you play any RPGs, like tabletop role-playing games, Dungeons and Dragons, any of that?

Angela Watson: My game is Stardew Valley. That’s my favorite.

Tim Villegas: My oldest loves Stardew Valley. I know what it is, but I have not played it.

Angela Watson: It’s lovely. It’s so relaxing.

Tim Villegas: That’s what I hear. It’s like a cozy game, right? My friend, I’ll just shout him out, Josh Watkins, he’s an animator, creative guy, and he loves D&D, and he’s like, “Hey, Tim, do you wanna do some D&D, some role-playing stuff?” And I was like, “Ah, I’ve never done it before. I don’t know.” And I’ve done a few things with him, and I’m like, man, this is so much fun. And it takes me back to the idea of being a kid, right? And just making things up.

Angela Watson: Yes.

Tim Villegas: And for no reason, just because. And so what I am attempting to do is have a space at the end of our conversation where we just, we create a story together. And there’s no we’re gonna do this thing and it’s gonna be like this insightful… It just is what it is, and we’re just gonna have fun. And so I modified the mechanic of this micro RPG. It’s adapted from Alone Among the Stars, which is meant to be a solo journaling type of thing, and I’ve modified it so that we can do a back-and-forth type of thing.

So this is called Awake Among the Stars, and you need a six-sided die, which I think you said you have, and a pack of cards. So if you wanna take that pack of cards out and shuffle it up so that it’s ready to go. And then I’ll give you an idea of what’s happening.

I’m just gonna be the narrator to our story and give you some instructions, but mostly we’re just creating a story together. And then it’ll just last 10 minutes, and then we’ll be done. Okay, this is how we’re gonna start. I’d like for you to close your eyes.

And then I’m gonna count down from three, and then you’ll open them. And then I will start the narration. So here we go. Three, two, one. You wake up gasping, cold, and floating in a dim metal room. Your head is pounding, and your memory is syrup. You’ve got classic hibernation sickness. A soft chime goes off in the room, and a calm voice, your spaceship’s computer, says, “Good morning.

“You have been asleep for a very long time. We are in orbit above an uncharted planet. Also, a minor note, our teleporter is running low on reserve power. Please explore responsibly.” And through the porthole of the ship you look, and you see a vast planet that is just spinning beneath you. And so first things first on this adventure, roll the die, and I will tell you who your character is.

Angela Watson: Okay, I rolled a three.

Tim Villegas: Okay. You are Bolt, and you are a robot. I’m just gonna read what I have. You’re a painfully literal maintenance robot who apparently just happened to get swept up on the ship and is the only one there. Okay. So interestingly enough, right?

And so now, as the robot, you are going to roll the die one more time and figure out what planet you’re going to explore.

Angela Watson: Okay. Two.

Tim Villegas: Two. Okay. You are going to the Ash World. And so imagine, as you look out on this planet, the surface of the planet is just covered in this snow-like substance, but it’s ash.

There’s plants and trees, but they’re not green, they’re brown. And there are old ruins everywhere. So a city used to be there, but it’s no longer there, and you’re not even sure what’s happening. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna teleport you to that planet.

So three, two, one. A light envelops you, and you are now teleported to the planet, and you look around, and you’re in this, what looks like a town square, but there’s no one around. Maybe there’s a fountain in front of you. Again, the sky is reddish, because of the ash that’s falling down around the sun.

It’s not really too hot, but it’s not really too cold. And there’s just ash all around you. You have the brown trees and the brown shrubs and everything around. What you have with you is a backpack, and in the backpack is a scanner. So, when you pull the scanner out, you can point it at things and figure out what they are.

You have other things in the backpack, but you don’t know what they are ’cause you haven’t looked in there yet. So here’s what we’re gonna do. I want you to take three cards and put them right in front of you face down.

Angela Watson: Okay.

Tim Villegas: Okay? And so you’re… The question is, do you want to stay where you are and wait?

Do you want to explore, or do you want to just go back to the ship, you’re done?

Angela Watson: Do I choose or pick a card?

Tim Villegas: It’s up to you. It’s up to you.

Angela Watson: I wanna explore.

Tim Villegas: You wanna explore. Okay. So pick a card and flip it over. And tell me what it is.

Angela Watson: It is a four of spades.

Tim Villegas: Four of spades. Okay. Here we go.

Okay, so you’re standing in the middle of this, like kind of town square in front of a fountain. There’s no water in the fountain, it’s just dry. And all of a sudden you feel a strong wind blow by, and the wind is getting a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger, and the ash is like coming up and flying in front of your face.

And as you hear the wind, you know how you can listen to the wind, you actually hear music. So you hear a chord playing this beautiful kind of symphony of wind and music and chords all around you. And then you start to say something. What do you say when you are hearing this musical wind?

Angela Watson: Like, “Who’s there? Who do I hear? Anybody there?”

Tim Villegas: And as you are saying these words, you feel your words actually start to come out in song and harmonize with this beautiful sound of wind. And what do you wanna do?

Angela Watson: Go toward the music. I keep hearing…

Tim Villegas: Okay. So which way… If you look around, where is the music coming from?

Angela Watson: It’s coming from my left.

Tim Villegas: From your left, okay. So you start headed to your left, and you hear the music, and it’s actually getting louder and louder. So you’re stepping through this ash, and in front of you is a cathedral-type building.

Not exactly sure if it’s a church, not exactly sure if it’s a school. Don’t know what it is. It looks really old. And you get up to the door, and you hear that the music is coming from behind the door. What do you do?

Angela Watson: Knock on the door?

Tim Villegas: You knock on the door. Yeah, okay, great. You knock on the door and somebody says, “Who’s there?”

Angela Watson: And I’m Bolt, right?

Tim Villegas: You’re Bolt, yeah.

Angela Watson: Okay. I’m gonna say, “I’m Bolt.”

Tim Villegas: Who’s Bolt?

Angela Watson: I came on a spaceship, and I just landed here.

Tim Villegas: What do you want?

Angela Watson: I just heard the music and I wanted to see where it was coming from.

Tim Villegas: Oh, you heard our music. Oh, okay. Okay. Do you wanna come in?

Angela Watson: I do. I wanna sing with you.

Tim Villegas: Okay. All right. So you open the door, and standing in front of you is this cloaked figure. You don’t really see his face. You assume that it’s a he, but it could be anything really. Could be a she or anything. And the inside is like a church with pews and places to sit. And up on the stage are lots of different beings, and they’re all singing. And when you look at the cathedral, the windows are completely blown out, so it’s just completely…

The wind is going in and out and in and out of this cathedral, and you hear and you see the beings on the stage, and they’re singing this beautiful music. And what do you do?

Angela Watson: Walk toward them.

Tim Villegas: Okay. And the being that lets you in, let’s call him Melod.ie. Melod.ie comes and says, “Bolt, come and sing with us. We’re singing, we’re improvising a song.” So come on stage, and Bolt comes on stage, and then what do you do?

Angela Watson: I feel like I wanna dance. Are they moving? If they’re moving, I’m gonna move with them.

Tim Villegas: They are moving. They’re swaying back and forth, actually, like this.

Angela Watson: Yeah, left, back and forth. I’m gonna start swaying with them.

Tim Villegas: They’re swaying back and forth. Okay. All right. And then all of a sudden the music and the sound and the wind keep getting louder and louder, and all of a sudden it comes to this big crescendo, and then silence. And Melod.ie says, “That was fun, right?”

Angela Watson: Yeah, it was incredible.

Tim Villegas: All right, in your earpiece you hear Cora, your ship computer, saying, “Bolt, we only have time for one more thing. We’re about to run out of power, and I’m not gonna be able to get you back, so flip over one more card and we’ll do one more thing.”

Angela Watson: Okay. An ace of diamonds.

Tim Villegas: Ace of diamonds. Okay, so it’s silent in the cathedral. You have all of these creatures on stage with you. You just finished singing this beautiful song, and then all of a sudden you see from outside of the cathedral, a million different creatures coming up to the cathedral, peeking in through the windows, peeking through the doorways, wondering what in the world did we just experience?

This beautiful sound and wind and just joyfulness in such a dark and gloomy place. And so as you are seeing everyone come in and figuring out what’s happening, Cora says, “It’s time to go back to the ship, Bolt.” Three, two, one, light envelops you again, and now you are in the ship, a little dusty, but feeling really like you experienced something really beautiful, right?

Just something really magical on this planet. So since you were the first person to go to this planet, you get to name the planet. So what would you like to name the planet?

Angela Watson: Oh, wow. Oh, man, I’m completely drawing a blank on everything. I’m thinking something about, like, songs and…

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Angela Watson: Did you already say somebody was named Melody?

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Angela Watson: That was one of the creatures, right?

Tim Villegas: Yeah, the creature that let you in.

Angela Watson: Let’s name it after that creature then.

Tim Villegas: Melody.

Angela Watson: Melody, yeah.

Tim Villegas: I love it. Okay, so we have the planet Melody, beautiful, and then you open up your ship’s log, and you are going to write an entry in the log, and you have to put one sentence of what you will remember about Melody. So what’s the one thing that you’ll remember about Melody?

Angela Watson: There were such beautiful spirits, creatures, energy there, even in this desolate place that seemed like its best days were behind it. It was crumbling, but they still found beauty and joy together, and made something unforgettable from it.

Tim Villegas: Amazing. Cora says, “Bolt, that’s it. It’s time to go back to sleep and go on to our next planet.” Thanks for playing.

Angela Watson: That’s a wild journey there, Tim. I like it. How much of that did you make up on the spot, and how much was…

Tim Villegas: Almost all of it.

Angela Watson: Okay. All right, you got some good storytelling capabilities there.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. This is new for me, so I try to get better every single time. And yeah, it’s fun, right? It’s fun. And I know we’re being a little meta right now, but it stretches me, because this is so much not what I do day to day. I don’t actually tell stories. You can be a storyteller and tell other people’s stories, right? Or your own story. But making up something completely different, I don’t know, it could go anywhere, and that is challenging for me. It’s not that it’s not fun. It’s fun, but it’s a challenge. And so it’s been really fun, ’cause I think this is the sixth or seventh time that I’ve done this, and it’s really interesting just how different it is every single time.

I’m really trying to listen to you and trying to make it so that it’s a good story, and then also it’s okay that we don’t know what to call the planet. And then it’s, “Oh yeah, we’ll just call it Melody.” And that’s fine, ’cause there’s no rules. So anyways, it’s a lot of fun, and thank you for doing that with me.

Angela Watson: Yeah. Something with no rules is very welcomed. I think in both of our work, there’s a lot of structure to it. There’s a lot of rights and wrongs and things that have to be done, and just seeing where things lead, adding in that element of luck or chance with the cards and die, and then vibing off of each other too and building off of each other’s answers. It’s a really cool, intuitive way of doing things that I’ve not tried before, so thank you for introducing me to that.

Tim Villegas: You are very welcome. You’re very welcome. Angela Watson, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast.

We really appreciate your time.

Angela Watson: Thank you for having me.

Tim Villegas: That was Angela Watson. Here is what I’m taking with me. Angela said a high school teacher with two hundred students cannot know every learner at the level we keep asking for. So instead of putting all of that on the teacher, give students the tools to name what’s going on with their focus and pick a strategy that helps.

And then there’s her point about cognitive load. When a student isn’t focused, it’s not always a behavior issue. Maybe there was a fire drill. Maybe their brain is full. That shift alone changes how you respond. One practical step for educators, once this week, make your thinking visible.

Tell your students where your energy is that day, or say out loud, “I can see your brains are full. Should we do one more problem or try something else?” And let them answer. It takes a few seconds, and it teaches them to notice their own focus. Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools.

Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. If you have something to share, please email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. Now, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education.

Writing help from Claude, editing by Rey, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich, with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Awake Among the Stars is adapted from Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada.

You can find the original role-playing game at the link in our show notes. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Inclusive Schooling. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and inclusiveschooling.com/mcie-behavior. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive inclusion crew. Want to help us keep moving the needle for inclusion?

Head to mcie.org and click the donate button. Give 25, 55, 100, or even 1,000. It helps us keep partnering with school districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work. Find us on the socials almost everywhere at Think Inclusive. Thanks for hanging out. And remember, inclusion always works.