00:01.43 Gary Gray right, we good? 00:03.15 Katie Papesh Yeah, let's do it. 00:04.01 Gary Gray Yeah? Awesome. All right, friends, I am so excited. We finally made it. 00:08.92 Ashlan Okay. 00:08.81 Gary Gray it's but we We had a few emails back and forth, but we finally made it. I am so excited to have two amazing educators with me today. um Ashlyn and Katie. How are you guys doing? 00:20.80 Katie Papesh Good, yeah, we're coming we're coming off the Nick Tear conference, so energized and ready to chat about joy. 00:20.86 Ashlan okay 00:21.87 Gary Gray Yeah. 00:29.68 Gary Gray Amazing, amazing, amazing. And where are you guys located right now? 00:35.25 Katie Papesh I am in Dublin City Schools, which is right outside of Columbus, Ohio, and I'm a fourth grade teacher. 00:42.48 Gary Gray Awesome. 00:44.09 Ashlan I'm a PhD student in teaching and learning at Ohio State, so close to campus right now at home. 00:48.66 Gary Gray I appreciate you guys so much. I really do. 00:50.76 Katie Papesh just 00:51.60 Gary Gray I really do. So I have been doing a little digging. And I heard you've been doing some really amazing work with students. So we have a few questions for you. So the first question is just tell me about how you center Joy in the elementary workshop and what are some highlights from this work that you've been doing with your learners? 01:11.98 Ashlan you want Katie? You want me to go? 01:13.69 Katie Papesh Go ahead. You can start with our story and then I'll ah add on after. 01:17.01 Ashlan Okay. So Katie and I met in a course we took at OSU centered on culturally sustaining pedagogies. um and did some work together in that course just sort of like learning and growing and forming a community with other students in that class. And so um I was looking for a classroom to cite a study um thinking about poetry and how it can support elementary learners to sort of feel joyful and connected. 01:48.67 Ashlan in their literacy learning. I was an elementary teacher before and it was a big part of my own practice. And there's a lot of research around um poetry communities in middle and high school, but not very many in elementary that are sort of sustained over a longer period of time. 02:03.41 Ashlan So Katie was um so kind to let me come visit her beautiful classroom. 02:09.19 Katie Papesh Thank you. 02:09.31 Ashlan And we sort of collaborated on some ways we could foster that joy, bring poetry to students. There was so much joy already happening in Katie's classroom and I just kind of got to witness it, which was awesome. 02:22.10 Gary Gray wow Well, Katie, what do you think? 02:25.99 Katie Papesh Yeah, so at first um Ashlyn and i had planned like when we were thinking about poetry, we're like, let's do like a little poetry tasting and we can pull all of these rich books that, um you know, connect to their interests. Lots of soccer books. Our class last year was super into soccer. So we were pulling all these books and we're like, we're going to do a little tasting sampling that can go around. try out different poetry, engage with it And we can kind of go from there and kind of dig in, maybe find some some anchor texts. 02:57.83 Gary Gray Yes, 03:00.70 Katie Papesh um And it was interesting because i always feel like we learn the most when lessons completely flop versus when they go beautifully as planned. 03:08.84 Gary Gray you do 03:10.48 Ashlan Why? 03:10.55 Katie Papesh And we were so excited about the books that we had chosen. 03:10.82 Ashlan not right 03:13.75 Katie Papesh And um as soon as we start to do the lesson, we're looking around and the kids are just disengaged. Like, They're from top to bottom, their whole body, not at all interested. 03:21.75 Ashlan now. It's not right now. 03:26.25 Katie Papesh um And so we came together and we're just kind of reflecting, like, why do we think that happened? What's next for us? What are the kids telling us and what can we learn from them? um And so it was It was unexpected, 03:41.63 Katie Papesh um but probably i would say maybe the turning point with that class. So we kind of thought a little bit more into it and thought about, okay, what are the ways that we're seeing poetry already happening in our classroom um during their unstructured time and during their play? And one thing that our kids had been doing that um they had made these little guessing games off of slides. 04:03.56 Ashlan Mm-hmm. 04:06.95 Katie Papesh And so they like had these different, usually soccer themed, like guess the player or guess the team, um all of these little kind of guessing games. And so we decided to kind of lean into that and we're like, scrap the tasting. 04:22.76 Katie Papesh Let's lean into what they're already doing. And so we kind of framed it as, did you know these little guessing games? um This is a form of poetry. So we kind of leaned into it and started with that instead. 04:32.41 Gary Gray Mm-hmm. 04:37.12 Katie Papesh um And what we found when we did it that way is that the interest was so much higher and it was joyful and a practice that they were already doing that was part of our, um we used them as like brain breaks for our classroom when we needed a break. 04:51.63 Katie Papesh We would choose one of the kids slides and they would talk us through it and we would play that way. um So we really just leaned into the joy and the play that was already happening. 05:02.19 Katie Papesh and connected the poetry through that, which was so much more powerful than obviously our ideas that we had planned of what we thought was good and just leaning into what was already happening and the joy and play instead. 05:09.07 Gary Gray Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 05:14.91 Gary Gray I love that. ah love It makes me so happy. There's so many things want to ask you, but I know we don't have the time and it's okay. 05:20.59 Ashlan Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 05:21.20 Gary Gray But number one, just the idea of reflection and teachers doing that and understanding that like, it's okay that we go back and redo or revise ourselves. 05:32.03 Gary Gray Like the idea of revising themselves, like teachers are constantly revising over and over again. And that can be hard, right? That can be really, really hard. 05:38.84 Katie Papesh Yes. 05:40.08 Gary Gray Number two is just like understanding how important engagement and interest is with kids and like leaning into that. Like I remember growing up as a kid and not being able to understand poetry the way that I do now when it comes to interest or like my own voice and seeing that you guys are doing that or giving that to kids already. 05:48.77 Katie Papesh Yes. 05:55.12 Ashlan Mm-hmm. 05:57.25 Katie Papesh Yes. 05:57.33 Ashlan Mm-hmm. 05:59.70 Gary Gray Just like, just give me all the vibes, all the vibes. 06:00.99 Ashlan Mm-hmm. 06:03.18 Ashlan visit 06:03.35 Katie Papesh Yeah. 06:03.64 Gary Gray i I appreciate it. 06:04.33 Katie Papesh um 06:04.84 Gary Gray I really appreciate it. 06:05.45 Ashlan Yeah. 06:05.57 Katie Papesh there you are 06:06.12 Gary Gray Yeah, I really appreciate that. 06:06.63 Ashlan I think it's also, think also an important part is that like Katie knows her kids and she gives them space. And so she knew that they had those practices and they had literacy that they were doing with one another. 06:20.71 Ashlan Like I've been in a lot of classrooms where kids don't have that space. And so we wouldn't have known what they were doing with literacy that was fun and joyful and relational, but 06:27.26 Katie Papesh the 06:29.52 Gary Gray I 06:31.25 Ashlan Katie is so like, so powerfully, it's even hard to put into words, like gives students space to form relationships, to use literacy in ways that serves them. It's really incredible. 06:40.98 Gary Gray and love that. And that's a great segue to the second question, which is like, how do you think creating a joyful environment in a classroom contributes to building a strong sense of community among students? 06:51.79 Gary Gray And we know as educators, like that classroom for a lot of students is home base, right? It is where they want to feel the sense of belonging, where they want to feel the friendships, et cetera. 06:57.84 Katie Papesh So, let's see. I think... 07:01.47 Ashlan Thank you. 07:03.87 Gary Gray um talk to Talk to us a little bit about that. 07:08.15 Katie Papesh so let's see i think I think that um this weekend I was at a presentation where they talked about we have to have spaces in our curriculum for the curriculum to breathe and for our students to interact and give spaces for that, which I think is what Ashlyn was talking to earlier. 07:28.59 Katie Papesh Without those pauses and those times for our kids just to organically connect, we can't build anything together. We have to have those spaces to be able to build our curriculum and our um teaching decisions based off of that. 07:42.24 Katie Papesh And giving them spaces just to be joyful. I know um last year in my class, we had a lot of kids that um were learning how to control their anger. 07:52.01 Gary Gray Mm-hmm. 07:54.98 Katie Papesh and Those are their words, not mine. um And that came from actually a collective poem at the end of times that they were proud of. One of my students, Mina, um what she was most proud of from that year was, in her words, learning how to control her anger. 08:12.68 Katie Papesh And in reflection from that collective poem of what what we were most proud of by the end of the year, I don't think that the things that the students named that were important to them could have happened, all that meaningful work and growth that they have had and that they're proud of, I don't think it could have happened without those pauses in the day for them to connect and just to be with each other and to find joy. 08:36.71 Gary Gray Thank you. 08:41.86 Katie Papesh um my kids last year, they were really, really, they loved little crafts. 08:44.46 Ashlan you 08:45.94 Katie Papesh They loved perler beads and creating perler beads together. um They loved creating bracelets and gifting each other friendship bracelets. And so those were the things that were important to them. 08:57.66 Katie Papesh And I think that if we would have had that absent from our classroom and just focused on um pushing them into a curriculum that maybe wasn't made for them and that didn't reflect them and their importance, I don't think that we would have had the same powerful reflection of what they felt like they grew, um the areas that they grew in by the end of the year. 09:10.05 Gary Gray who 09:21.54 Katie Papesh So think you have to start with that joy because we learned from Goldie Muhammad that the criticality, the identity, the skills, the intellect, all of those things are important, but joy is is the foundational component that we need to start with. 09:37.63 Katie Papesh And so I carry Goldie Muhammad with me in my classroom every day. And that's a lesson I really learned from her. 09:44.07 Gary Gray Wow. I'm little speechless. 09:47.76 Ashlan yeah 09:48.10 Gary Gray You said that very well. 09:50.03 Katie Papesh you. Thank you. 09:51.11 Gary Gray a 09:51.64 Ashlan in Katie's classroom i was like oh what do I even say here mm-hmm 09:57.69 Katie Papesh yeah it 09:58.08 Gary Gray you you you You said that so well. I guess i guess one of the things, Ashlyn, I can ask you is like, you know, given the challenges of teaching just in general right now, um how do you personally center joy like in your life and what practices or reflections may help you maintain like a sense of joy amongst, you know, all the things like 10:02.16 Katie Papesh you 10:10.64 Ashlan who 10:16.20 Ashlan eight 10:19.91 Ashlan Yeah. 10:22.69 Gary Gray you're doing your PhD right now. 10:23.16 Ashlan Yeah. 10:23.89 Gary Gray Like that is in itself a whole nother layer, right? 10:24.58 Ashlan Yeah. 10:27.41 Gary Gray What are what are some things you do for for joy 10:27.89 Katie Papesh Queen. Yeah. 10:30.83 Ashlan Yeah, it's hard at times. This semester was one of, the beginning of the semester was one of the hardest points in my life. And not that I didn't have empathy for students before, but it was hard for me to show up in like classroom spaces as both a student and a instructor. And it, you know, made me realize, again, i'm something I knew, but that's good to be reminded of, like, our students have whole lives outside of the classroom. And like, 10:57.03 Gary Gray I 10:57.61 Ashlan We can't ignore that. um So I think a way that I've tried to build my on my students joy and then that also feeds into my own is sort of what Katie said with those pauses. Like we have X, Y, Z to do. Z is not gonna get done. So we're gonna pause, we're gonna center her some joy and then we'll get to X, Y and it is what it is. 11:16.95 Katie Papesh Mm-hmm. 11:17.06 Ashlan And um not all balls that you drop are gonna break, you know, like sometimes it's okay. 11:17.09 Katie Papesh Yeah. 11:22.78 Gary Gray um love that. 11:23.25 Ashlan um Yeah, so I try to do that in my undergraduate classes and my own life. And then I think Katie also referenced this with her students, but i one of the reads on the literature when we were looking at joy that joy is really embodied. 11:37.12 Ashlan And so getting myself back into my body, Katie referenced that her students I did perler beads a lot last year um and sort of crafts and sort of multimodal activities. And that is something that brings joy to myself, too. I'm a knitter. 11:53.80 Ashlan And so like finding time to like make something with my hands, um I don't know, just like centers me again. 11:54.24 Gary Gray I 12:00.12 Ashlan So I think that's an important takeaway for classroom spaces, too. 12:00.73 Katie Papesh Yeah. 12:00.68 Gary Gray ah love that. 12:03.67 Gary Gray I love that. I love that. Kitty, what about you? Joy. 12:07.78 Katie Papesh Yeah, so for me, um being a public school teacher and specifically being an out lesbian public school teacher um in these times can feel really suffocating. 12:22.51 Katie Papesh And um Ashlyn and I are doing a lot of writing right now. And I've been writing about how sometimes just um continuing to show up feels like an act of rebellion in itself. 12:34.19 Katie Papesh And so i think for me, I find joy in finding our collective. I've always been very community oriented, but in the public school system, I feel very ah isolated and I feel very alone. 12:47.05 Katie Papesh And so for me, Ashlyn and I were able to connect again through our culturally sustaining pedagogies class. And through that class, we created our own little collective and We've been meeting now for, Ashlyn hasn't been two years, two and a half years. 13:04.28 Ashlan One time. Five. 13:04.41 Gary Gray Wow. 13:05.45 Katie Papesh That we've been working on our project, yes. um But truly just putting my energy and my focus into a collective where we weren't just learning about humanizing pedagogies, but we were humanizing each other made all the difference for me because it gave me the energy and the light and the grounding that I needed to continue to walk into spaces that I don't feel like I'm maybe be valued or feel like I don't belong. 13:33.07 Katie Papesh um And it allows me to sustain myself so that I can be that sustaining piece for my kids as well and to create this space that they want to come to every day and that I want to come to every day. 13:45.15 Katie Papesh um And so I think for me, it's been finding my collective, continuing to ground myself in my purpose and really centering myself in like and my kids and with people like Ashlyn and our beautiful collective that do the work for our kids as well. 13:45.45 Gary Gray Wow. 14:02.37 Gary Gray wow um Thank you. ah 14:06.48 Ashlan Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 14:07.06 Gary Gray Thank you guys. So what that was so lovely. And I just want to say thank you for continuing the work that you do for children. Educators are some of the most, we are the most important people on the planet. 14:21.21 Katie Papesh that's right yeah we do 14:21.42 Gary Gray We work so hard for children. Right. And people say it all the time, you know, like, They're not technically our children, but we are showing up every single day. 14:35.69 Gary Gray And those kids are looking at us to, you know, to help them tie their shoes, help them learn to read and write, right? 14:40.99 Katie Papesh Yeah. 14:42.61 Gary Gray We're helping them get stuff out of their backpacks. We're doing all the stuff. So I just really appreciate you guys so much for sharing with me today. 14:47.12 Katie Papesh Yeah. 14:51.23 Gary Gray um i wish we had more time, but it's okay. 14:53.09 Katie Papesh I know. 14:53.91 Gary Gray It's okay. I appreciate you guys. So thank you. 14:58.15 Katie Papesh Yeah. 14:59.08 Ashlan Thank you very much. 14:59.10 Katie Papesh Thank you so much, Gary. We appreciate you too. 15:01.10 Gary Gray Yeah. 15:02.70 Ashlan very much 15:02.78 Gary Gray Awesome, awesome, awesome.