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Adult ADHD ADD Tips and Support
ADHD, Creative Minds & The Antidote to School Trauma: Revolutionizing Education with Demetrius Fuller
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Adult ADHD ADD Tips and Support Podcast - A Podcast for Neurodivergent Creatives. ADHD, Creative Minds & The Antidote to School Trauma: Revolutionizing Education with Demetrius Fuller. This podcast is an audio companion to the book "The Drummer and the...
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Hey everyone, just one quick note off the top. I know we have quite a few new listeners to this podcast over the past few months. Over the years, we've put together a host of worksheets and support PDFs on all kinds of themes related to ADHD, such as tracking, wellness planning, overcoming, analysis, paralysis, and we've put all these together on one page for you to download completely free. So if you're interested, you can go to Drummer in the Great Mountain.com.
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Toolkit and I'll leave that link in the episode Description.
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Welcome to the Drummer and the Great Mountain, a podcast where we share effective tips and practices for working with adults. Add ADHD in a natural, effective way without the use of medications each episode Join me your host Batman Saram, along with the author of the Drummer and the Great Mountain, Michael Joseph Ferguson. Join Michael and myself in an interactive discussion of sharing our stories as we journey together in transforming what can be the gift of being what we call hunter types. This podcast is intended to be your audio companion to the book written by Michael who joins me each episode where we both will strive to foster dialogue, give you our personal insights insights and share both of our experiences on this similar path that we are all on. Our intention and hope is that along with the book, this podcast gives you an additional perspective as you listen to us. Delve deeper into each chapter of the book to give you even more tools to go along with what it is that you are reading. Visit us at drummerandthegreatmountain.com to purchase the book and look for more tools, tips and updates as well as giving us feedback on this podcast. Join our growing global community of creative types, entrepreneurs and out of the box thinkers on our shared journey. Welcome to the Drummer and the Great Mountain podcast.
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A
Welcome everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I'm your host Michael Joseph Ferguson. I hope you're all doing really well. To wrap up our 10 year anniversary interview series, we are joined by education pioneer and art teacher Demetrius Fuller. Demetrius is such a clear example of how our wiring can lead us to groundbreaking insights. He has developed a learning framework called the Homies based on the studio Habits of Mind which is now being integrated into public schools. It's a protocol that empowers both children and adults to understand how to learn. In this episode we landed on something very powerful that often doesn't get discussed in relation to adult adhd. How our primarily neurotypical focused education system can create lasting shame and self judgment for people who are wired differently that is Neurodivergent adhd Hunter types and this highlights the importance for a learning framework like Demetrius has developed, underscoring the necessity to evolve our education system to embrace many different neurotypes, removing the shame and supporting greater empowerment. And I predict that you will have a few major aha moments listening to this episode okay, just one quick announcement. Our annual Life Visioning Workshop is happening and it's coming up the third week of of January and there's a reason why we're telling you this early. So every year we have done this workshop probably for the last 10 years now and I regularly get emails from participants sharing what they accomplished based on attending this workshop. It is such a good way to set your trajectory for the year and we've added the option to give this workshop as a gift. So although this workshop is is ADHD friendly, it is open to anyone and this is such a meaningful gift. This can really shift the trajectory of someone's year. So I can't imagine a more meaningful gift. And I'm not just saying that because we run the workshop. I've watched this workshop really help people because we often don't take the time to do this, to sit down and say what is my vision for the upcoming year? So we'll be covering how to create an inspired vision for your life. We'll be identifying together as a group goals in key areas of your life like health, work, relationships, creativity, and we'll create a short term goals list based on that and then we'll make sure that the actions leading up to those goals are doable. You can actually make those goals happen. And then we talk about how to approach your goals and action items on a day to day basis. It's fun and you get to connect with people from all over the world, especially those listening to this podcast. And we'd love to have you you join us. So if you're interested, go to drummerinthegreatmountain.comworkshop for all the details, including how to give this as a gift. Demetrius Fuller is an artist, educator and creative thinker who has spent more than two decades helping people understand how their minds work. After 20 years teaching art and leading district arts programming, he now serves as an Assistant Principal in the Greater Boston area where he blends creativity, cognition and school leadership. He is the creator of the Homies, a comprehensive learning framework based on a set of characters that make the thinking process visible across all subjects. His work has appeared in Studio Thinking from the Start, Designing Democratic Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, and the Efficacious Educator Podcast. He is currently developing the Homie Handbook, a comprehensive instruction manual on how to implement the homies framework in educational institutions. Demetrius, welcome.
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Thank you. So happy to be here.
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All right, so I want to start with hearing a bit about your background, both professionally and also your connection with neurodiversity.
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Sure.
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I think I'm one of those people who found out when he was an adult that that ADHD thing that I had been hearing about all my life was describing me. And so when I heard that, it wasn't just, you know, the idea of the child bouncing off the walls, but it could, you know, present as spacing out.
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Hyper focus at times.
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And one big thing that really made me see myself was the idea of time blindness. So there was a few things, and I kind of learned, to be honest. You were part of that. When I first started figuring out that I was, in fact, what they call adh, your podcast was a big part of sort of framing that for me and framing it in a way that made it feel that I could own it. The hunter type idea. You know, as a child, I was active. I'm told that I was very active. I would like to take risks. I remember doing. Doing a little game down the street from where I lived in Somerville, where I would wait for cars to come, and I would run and try to run right in front of them so that. So that I could make it. So that's the kind of child I was. I would climb to the top of all the trees and structures. I had that in me from an early age.
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A
You had the adventure gene.
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C
Exactly, exactly. And then I got into art. I was really inspired by my father, who was an artist himself and a poet and a teacher. And I think when I started getting into my teens is really when I decided that that was the lane that I wanted to be in. And then I went to art school, and from there, I realized I really loved teaching kids, and so I became an art teacher.
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A
I know there's a lot of art teachers and teachers that listen to this podcast, and there's been a lot of revelations that I've come to as a coach, working with all of you of the understanding of both the strengths and challenges, but I want to lead with the strengths. So before we talk about what you're doing now as an art teacher, what did you bring to the table that you feel like the wiring helped you with?
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C
Yeah, well, I think my brain makes lots of connections, you know, so if we were teaching something, I don't know, just thinking of an example, learning about Cubism and Picasso, you Know, we came up the idea of having, like, a fractured mirror and drawing what we see through that mirror. It came up with the brave one, which was the brave artist, you know, a character who had a song and a backstory. So I think it was like. Because our brains like to make lots of connections, I think that helps us to bring things to life. And so whatever we're teaching, we can bring all these modes. We can do music, we can do songs. We can connect it to science. And so I was all over the place as an art teacher, but I think that the kids really enjoyed that, and I think it brought things to life.
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A
Yeah. And it clearly fed into the framework you've developed. Education in general tends to be very. Pack it in. Here's the same thing that we're going to pack into all the kids. And because every kid is different, I'm guessing as an art teacher, you were able to connect in with parts of them that they didn't have access to in other classes because they were kind of just. It was all getting packed in.
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C
What.
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Can you think of any examples of kids that you worked with where you're like, oh, I see that. That kid just totally lit up because of. And maybe in a way that they didn't.
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Otherwise, I just remember. So I'll even bring it back to all the way. At the beginning, when I interviewed for this job in 1999, I had interviewed in two other places and was on the fence about them. But when I came into my particular school, first of all, the art room was beautiful. There was these four giant skylights, and I could just tell that the school in the district valued the arts. And after the interview, the principal took me on a little tour of the school. And there was this. In this display case. It was sort of this rundown little display of these little clay figures. They were made out of cubes, and they were kind of like little plasticine robots.
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That a student had made. But the teacher said, you know, we have a lot of behavior challenges with this child, and he's not. He's having a hard time connecting with the teacher. And this is the kind of kid that we need you to connect with. He was one of those students that came alive in art class. Maybe because we were more interactive. They had. They were able to be creative. They were able to come up with their own ways of doing things. I also just encourage, encouraged, and valued what he did at home because he had a sketchbook and he was working on these things on his own. And I felt like, you know, the Art room, we called it the Magical world of Art was a place where he felt valued and I became his mentor. And so we would meet every week and we'd have lunch and we'd do some art projects while we ate lunch. And I felt like that was an example of a student who had a lot to offer but maybe wasn't connecting in the other classes.
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A
What's the through line there? Where, when, when you worked with someone like that, how did you see that shift their scholastic, Possibly how they've performed scholastically, but also just their self esteem.
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C
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the key. If they can find anything that they can get in the flow with and get in the zone with, they could. You know, they get to know that feeling and they can find that feeling in other subjects and they feel like they have something of value to offer. That school is for them, it's an in, it's a way to connect to the other subjects.
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A
What were the challenges that you ran into that you found like, oh, I need to adapt. I need to develop some skills and techniques to manage the overwhelm or whatever it was. Like, what were the kinds of things that would come up where you were like, whoa, okay, I know art, I can do this, but this other stuff is really challenging right now.
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C
Well, I think one of the first things, even before I became a full time teacher, I remember we were working.
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At a program, a new program in Baltimore, Baltimore City.
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With third graders. And it was this new program called Super Kids. And they were trying to raise students reading scores over the summer because they have that summer loss, I think they call it, where it's, you know, when they're not reading over the summer, then they come back in fourth grade and it's like they end up starting behind where they left. And.
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So there were two parts of it. There was the reading teachers, but there was also the enrichment teachers. And so myself and two other guys from my teaching course, my grad teaching course at Maryland Institute College of Art, we were the enrichment department basically. And we wanted to make it as engaging as we could. We wanted to help them their reading. So we helped them make a story about a fictional character. We kind of scaffolded it with pages and questions, and each page had a different question to help them develop their story about this fictional character. But what we found early on was, you know, those first couple days they'd come in and if they messed up even a little in their drawing, they would get really frustrated and they would, they would basically say, I can't do it. And they would shut down. You know, after that happens, it's harder to get them back. So we wanted to preempt that. So we came up with the character, the brave artist, and the brave artist. And so basically, the brave artist does the thing that we're trying to preempt, which is the brave artist starts drawing, and he crumples up his paper. He says, I can't do it. I messed up. And he throws his paper across the room, and we tell them the story, and they'd laugh at it. You know, it's kind of like a trickster tale of what not to do. And so then we would get going, and we'd say, okay, are you guys ready? We're gonna be brave artists. Because at the end of the brave artist story, he finally makes a little. A little Drawing a little line. And he looks up and he says, is that okay? I said, yeah, keep going. Doesn't matter if you mess up. You turn it into something else. And he says, okay. And little by little, he starts drawing his picture. And eventually, he comes up with his first drawing, which is not perfect, but it's. It's the drawing, and he's very proud of it. And so there's this moment at the end of that story where they're raising him on their shoulders, and they sing the song. And that's where we came up with the song. Behold the brave artist. We tell that story. We came up with the award.
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And anyone who makes a mistake but keeps going, we would say, oh, so and so made a mistake, and they turned it into something else. So it's almost like we're honoring mistakes.
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That really helped. And so that preempted a lot of that negative self talk that we would see. And so we were leveraging character. We were leveraging song. We were leveraging humor, you know, and we were leveraging just leaning into it, Leaning into that moment that we all have where we're like, I messed up. I can't do it.
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A
As I hear that, I'm thinking, wow, that's something. Led to that. Like, part of their education led to them feeling like that's not how kids normally are when they're kind of just expressed. They learned over time to pull back and go, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. And so to.
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C
To re.
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To clear that out, clear that trauma out, which is. I see in adult constantly. We're all. I see it. I see it with myself all the time, and I can trace it back, and I don't want to blame any institutions. It has to do with a collective way that we found instruction versus education. I like the term instructions from the word instructari, which I think is Latin, meaning to pack it in. Whereas education comes from the word educari, which means to lead out. And that what you're doing is education.
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C
Yeah, man, we're trying to lead them out. I love that. I love that idea. Right? It's the. Oh, I love that. Even the idea of like the divergent thinking, you know, it's like the hands going, spreading out versus everything narrowing in, you know. And what you said about, you know, it's almost like we've just given folks the assumption that there's one correct way of doing things. And so it's almost like if they feel that they haven't hit on that one correct way of doing things, they have that negative voice in their head. Like, that's not right. You messed up.
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A
That's it. And it's a kind of trauma. It's a kind of trauma that I see in almost all my coaching clients. It's rare. Like, if I see like, people come up, if they were young enough, they went to like Montessori and something like that, where they had a little bit of that softer, more neurodivergent, friendly education early on. They. They're different. They're like, they have a different set of. Their self esteem is stronger. They have a sense of self worth. And then to move into the world to be effective in whatever you're doing, you have to have self confidence. Given we both had, you know, education that was similar. Right. What did you. How are, how do you deal with that? And how have you dealt with that particular challenge as a teacher? Do you find that you have that. Oh, I blew it. I didn't do it perfect, so I blew it. Like, talk a little bit about that because I think that could be really helpful to other. Especially to other teachers who are listening in the audience.
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C
Yeah, I mean, I will say, I mean, there was something about being an art teacher, at least in my school, where I don't know if it was that administration didn't quite know what they were looking for, what I was supposed to be doing.
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Or they felt intimidated by the art, you know, by the subject of art. But, you know, I remember for many years them just saying, you're doing really well, you're doing really well. And it was almost like I didn't have that microscope over me, that critical voice, that critical eye on me. As much as maybe a teacher in Another subject. And so I just took that and ran and just experimented in my lessons. And I just would connect math and science. You know, when we'd learn, when we were drawing dinosaurs, we'd learn all about dinosaurs and we would draw their habitats and we would draw, you know, the predators. And it was just almost like I could follow my own curiosity and bring the kids with me, which I think was super inspiring because the teachers could see that I was excited. And the other thing is that we taught in a four day cycle. So each class, even each, you know, lesson of a unit, I could iterate. And so I could try it once and then I would just, okay, something didn't go well on that time, try it again the next day, and I could try it four days. And of course, I did that over the years. And so I had the luxury, I think, of being able to experiment, of being a brave one, of being able to sketch this stuff out in real time without people being like, oh, oh, oh, it's not perfect, you know, that's going to mess up the test scores. And so I think that the homies grew out of that experimental kind of laboratory environment that I created and that my school allowed me to create. And so I think that's how the homies came to be. That's how a lot of my best lessons came to be.
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A
Yeah. And it sounds like you. The thing that really strikes me is that you were alive. Like, you were alive, you were showing up for the job and you were, you were connected to yourself and you weren't going through just reading off of the curricula and saying, okay, I'm just gonna, I've gotta check this box. I gotta check that. You sound like you came in to the class and you were fired up.
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C
I was fired up. Yes, exactly. And I think it was contagious. Yes. And I know that's in, that's in the students, you know that. Like, you know, that's why I like teaching especially. These were the younger kids. That's in them. You can see that in them. You can see the critical layer on top of it, but you can see that excitement. So it's like one fired up person recognized another fired up person.
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A
That's it. That's it. And I think about that a lot with our coaching because it's a live life coaching. And I think of the alive as being the life force, like to help people reconnect to their life force. Because that's the thing, right? Like, if you can give that to your kid and you can't do that by not being alive yourself. It doesn't work.
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C
Yes, yes, exactly. And that's why I say, and you alluded to it earlier, the homies are secretly for the grownups. Because the grownups have to find a way to find that aliveness, that excitement themselves.
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A
All right, so I'm gonna switch it around a little bit. Cause I wanted to talk about your current role, but I wanted. Let's go to the homies first, because it seems like the homies really want to be shared, and I can feel the energy of them.
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C
They do.
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A
Because there's such. When you first shared them with me, I think the first time, like, oh, that's okay. Interesting. And then once we started, really, because I've worked with you for a bit, I'm like, oh, wow. This is. This is the antidote to what we just talked about. A lot of the shame and guilt that people who are neurodivergent, growing up in a more structured learning system have to shed later. And I don't think many of us realize the depth of the trauma that we went through because we feel like, well, everyone else is. I guess this is the right way to do it, because everyone else is. All the adults are saying, this is the way to do it, and this is how we're going to survive in the world. So I guess I'm the broken one instead of questioning maybe the educational system itself is not fully functional. And I think I know teachers talk about that. I mean, it's constantly talked about how to make it more alive and connected. But you, my friend, have worked out a framework that actually addresses this in a way that I've never seen before. So I would love to hear about. Talk a little bit about the homies. And basically, what I'm hearing that you've developed is an entire learning framework to help kids utilize their innate skills, understand how their brains work, how their minds function, so that they can approach the learning process from a different angle. And the last conversation we had, you said, there's too much what in the educational system instead of the how.
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C
Absolutely. So the homies are a set of eight characters that personify eight habits of mind.
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That successful writers, musicians, scientists, mathematicians, dancers. What have you employ in order to be successful in their careers? So after I had the brave one, I then heard about the studio Habits of Mind. So the studio Habits of mind were created by Project Zero at Harvard, and their book Studio Thinking.
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Came out, I think I wanted to say, around 2007. But they sort of codified the habits of mind that are used in the arts. And the idea that, yes, we are doing different things and different subjects, but underneath it all, we are noticing. We are noticing deeply. We are looking at things that other people don't notice. And so there was eight of those. So I kind of modeled the homies after the studio habits of mine. However, me being me. And this is, I think, where the ADHD helped me. I really was interested in all the subjects and other habits of mind art. Costa and Benakalik, I believe, came up with this with the habits of mind framework in the 90s. And, you know, for years, other educators, theorists have. Have talked about habits of mind or habits of thought that they were called previously. And so I looked at all those different frameworks and I overlaid them, which I really like to do. Oh, these are the habits of mind type things in math. They have the standards of mathematical practice, which are actually national, part of the national curriculum. I map those onto the. Onto the homies. I sort of mapped them all, sandwiched them on top and fit them into. And that's how I really created the multidisciplinary homies. And I think that we need to show students these habits, A, because these students have them innate in their core already, and B, as inspiration, so that students can really see even beyond the walls of the school, that folks in all professions show up. Like you said, they show up alive to their work and are inspired. So I'll just go through just a few of the homies just to give you an idea of what I mean. The brave woman grew out of the brave artist. And that is the one. The brave artist is okay with mistakes. They sketch it out in any medium because any. A person in any subject needs to be able to basically whiteboard their idea without self editing. So the idea of sketching out your story without being too precious with it, you know, sketching out your mathematical ideas before you get too far down the pipe and start editing yourself too much. It happens in any subject. So that's. The brave one is going with your mistakes. You work with your mistakes. And so they all have chance. And so the brave one chant is, behold the brave one. Yes. And as you do, yes, you feel it. You feel it in your body and you clench your fist. You say, yes. Another homie is the stellar storyteller. So that has a little rap. Once upon a time, there was a stellar storyteller told a story with their work. What a Stella girl of fella. Why is it a rap? Because rap is a form of storytelling that I wanted to elevate Right. And it's a way. So the stellar storyteller has two aspects. It's you use your work, whatever, whatever you're doing, whatever subject, you use your work to get your point across, to tell the story that you're trying to say. It doesn't need to be a fictional story. You're just trying to express yourself through your work. But then the other, the other side of the stellar storytellers, you can explain your work in art class that was you put your artwork up on the wall and you would give an artist statement. And by the way, the seller storyteller is a really important homie where I teach because a lot of our students, almost actually a majority of our students are language learners of some level. And we're really trying to get their language, you know, improved and get them the self confidence and the skills to express themselves, you know, to try to fix that power imbalance between the students and families on one hand and the schools and the administration on the other hand. Just in terms of social capital. Just trying to get that. I say we're trying to raise our replacements. And one way to do that is to get them to be stellar storytellers. Let's see. Another homie is captain of the clouds. Use your imagination.
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If you go to the website meetthehomies.com you can see all of these homies and you can see, you can listen to the chants and you can see their, their faces and their key threes. But the captain of the clouds is so important. It's the power of visualization. By the way, that power of visualization. Another teacher added that part as he was teaching the homies, which to the chant, which I think is awesome. Yeah. Because the homies are alive so they can keep, you know, it's sort of like taking input from my school and from others. It's the power of being able to picture things in your mind and the idea that that can be practiced and worked on. And it's not just this airy fairy skill from art class. Oh, wow, you have such a good imagination. You're such a good artist. It's the idea that, you know, if we can picture what ifs in our mind, that's sometimes the way a scientist works. They imagine, well, what if this happened? You know, we can sort of take what's in front of us and manipulate it in our mind and that's something we can practice. And I've read that the parts of our brain that we use when we imagine are actually the same parts of our brain that we use when we remember. So getting better at remembering because I think we all used to be, humans used to be much better at remembering even before writing. And it's a muscle, it's something that can be worked on. And so anyway, it's the idea that you can get better at imagining and remembering and that it's really, really important. It's a hack for all the subjects. So the homies are the brave one. You learn from your attempts, the stellar storyteller. You express yourself through your work. The captain of the clouds. You visualize in your mind the eagle eye detective looking so closely. Eagle eyed detective searching for clues. That's the idea that you look really closely at things. Especially like if you're a mathematician, you're going to notice things very deeply, maybe more deeply than someone who hasn't seen that nuance before. And so as an, it reminds me in art, in art we do something called blind contour drawing. Normally when we look at something, say that I, you know, I want to draw a hand, I'll just try to draw five fingers really quickly, right? I know it has fingers, I might even remember that it has fingernails and then it has knuckles and wrinkly looking things. But that's a different way, it's using different part of my brain than if I really zoom in little by little and look at every little detail of my hand and my fingers as if I'm an ant. Because I can't, I don't remember all those details. I don't know all those details. And there's nothing replacing getting that microscope. And one way to really do that, to not allow your brain to shift into that other mode, the L mode, the left mode, just slowly look and draw without looking at your paper. So you already know that it's going to come out looking like spaghetti. So you've already said to yourself, all right, I'm not trying to make something look beautiful. I'm really trying to notice as much as I can. And so the eagle eye detective tries to get people out of that left mode, that naming mode, and into the looking mode. Yeah, there's the great book, I think you and I have talked about that.
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A
Book, Drawing from the Right side of the Brain.
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C
Exactly. Drawing on the Right side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. And also there's two sides to this. There's the eagle eye, but then there's the detective piece, which is like you're looking at the clues and you're trying to figure out a works meaning. So, and that's a big part of A lot of. A lot of subjects. You know, you're looking for text details to try to figure out the theme. You know, you're looking for numbers in the word problem to try, you know, and wording in the word problem to try to figure out what it's about. So that's the eagle eye detective. Moving right along, we have Inventor Innovator Eureka. And when you say Eureka, you hold your finger up. But when you say Inventor Innovator, you take your two fingers and you touch them together as if saying you're making a connection. And if a student makes a connection. Oh, the two sides. Let's, like, they might connect it to math. Oh, you can look at things from two different sides. Oh, remember, we learned about, I don't know, area and perimeter in math. So in other words, if they're connecting it to a random, completely different subject that they've learned, that's their brain wanting to make the connections. But if the teacher's like, very good, let's keep going. Come on, let's focus. Then you're. You're not incentivizing what the brain wants to do, which is to make those novel connections. And so, you know, and. And the great thing about the Inventor Innovator is you can keep it moving. Like, yes, as. As you said, there's a lot of content that we have to get through. There's a lot. But you can keep it moving to that student who may not even be following all the directions, but if he's making a novel connection, you can say, you just earned an Inventor Innovator badge. They get the badge, and there it is. But that's a way to. Or divergent thinking. Then we have inspector, reflector, inspect and reflect. Oh, and that's the. You take the time to look at your work and yourself. That's the, you know, the ability to look back at what you've done with a new eye and treat that as not of evidence that you did something wrong. But that is just part of the process, the editing, the revising, but it's also looking at yourself in a new way. And then let's see what else we got, Captain. Oh, we got. The maven wants to know more about the world. And that is the idea of, like, there's people who are switched on and fired up about this. These subjects in real life all the time. And maybe sometimes by the time it gets to the schools, we've sort of started just teaching, like, one little subset of the subject, and that becomes what we teach in school. But really, this stuff is alive. And, and the other idea is, like, kids nerd out about things all the time. They may have passions that they're. They know a lot about. They may know a lot about dinosaurs or a lot about bugs, so they may know a lot about Minecraft. And we have to sort of. We have to tell them that it's. Let them know that it's okay, that we value that they're excited about something, even if it's not something that we're teaching in school. And I feel like if we give them permission to have that, that passion about anything, there may be more likely to have a passion about what we're teaching them in school.
- [34:53]
A
And I want to, I want to highlight that one because the Maven, as you mentioned it to me, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, because I've been supporting you with the Homie Handbook, I fully related with the maven because the maven is like, you just go really deep into a subject. Like, you don't just kind of stand on the surface. I know many of you listening, know this feeling. Feeling. But you know, Cuesta will tell me all the time. She's like, oh, no. Like, I'm so combustible. Like, I will just go down the rabbit hole, and I don't want to just learn a little bit. I want to know every single thing there is to know about that subject.
- [35:26]
C
Yes.
- [35:27]
A
Until I can feel like, okay. And there's, there's that point where you go, okay, I think I got to the place I needed to get to. And I think that's a very common neurodivergent, both challenge, but also a gift. And so I love the fact that you put that into the framework, because I don't think that's ever really talked about that very specific habit that is necessary for people who are very accomplished in a specific field need that aspect of their psyche.
- [35:58]
C
It has to be something that's on purpose, you know, like, it's the way I feel about adhd. It has to be something that's on purpose, you know, yes, there may be a point where you're losing track of other things, but maybe that's necessary sometimes, even though schools might tell us it's not. Maybe the idea of, like, you forget everything else is the only way that you're able to get deeper than everyone else got.
- [36:19]
A
That's right.
- [36:20]
C
And you know, and it has to be a way. It's that hunter. It's right. That's what a hunter would do.
- [36:25]
A
That's right. Tracking. It's like the tracking of an animal. Yeah, it's a really whether. No matter how you feel about that act like all of our ancestors, you wouldn't be here had your ancestors not had that skill finely honed. You would not be a human being in this particular century had your ancestors not had that tracking ability. And I think it's the. Even over hunting. I think it's the tracking piece.
- [36:50]
C
Yes. That.
- [36:51]
A
That is so hardwired into us that led to possibly our modern alphabets and all that, because they think that they see that there's. There's a. Their postulate that, that when hunters would track animal tracks, those animal tracks then became symbols. And that process, that, that was sort of the, the process by which we started to, to interpret language. Because if you think about your ability to stare at a bunch of symbols on a page and to be able to interpret that and create an image in your mind is similar to what a hunter would have to do when they're tracking an animal. They actually, they don't just see the footprints, they see the animal. And that process gave them a connection into that whole world of that animal. But I digress. Please.
- [37:40]
C
Oh, my gosh. No. That's such a homie. That's. If that's a digression, that's a very homie digression. No, absolutely. And think about how much you had to be an eagle eye detective in becoming an expert on tracking. And you know, you're zooming in in a way that no one else is zooming in and you're noticing details, which is the idea that in some way the other homies are utilized in becoming a maven. Like if you become an expert at something, you're utilizing the other homies as well. Yes. So they all connect. We, we talk a lot about the homie. Homie combos, we call them. Let's do the triple practice. Okay. Sorry, I get too excited. Okay, so the triple. So the triple practicer is like the. We will rock you beat. You know, I don't know if you can hear it on the microphone, but. So you do that and then you go the triple triple practicer. The triple practicer. Triple triple practicer. Practice, practice, practice. And the idea is we, we use certain role models to tell us about that. Kobe Bryant is a really good example because he's really good about talking about his own childhood and how he, he actually combined the captain of the clouds and the triple practicer where he would picture himself scoring 100 points in a game, but like point by points. And he would practice and Practice and practice and practice. He would make like 100 shots a day as, like a kid. So he was obviously like this next level. They call it the mamba mentality. He was this next level practicer. And it's just the idea that it works, but you have to put in the work. Yeah. And then focus, ignoring distractions. And I think the triple practicer is one of those. When I see students of mine school who maybe, you know, have ADHD or, you know, feel, I recognize one of my own. Sometimes rewarding that triple practice or that delayed gratification, it helps them get over the hump and helps them focus, ignoring distractions. So once. So there's eight homies, and then they're all part of what we call the whole me. And there's a whole song. It's called the Whole Me. The Whole me rap. It says, the brave one teaches you to try your best. And if you make a mistake, which is obvious, you just go with it because it's part of the process. And the cost of the loss is that you make more progress. And then it just goes on and it mentions the whole me. And it ends with the course. One by one, you earn the badges. One by one, you earn the cards. Collect all eight, and pretty soon you are the whole me.
- [40:12]
A
That's outstanding. They have a sense that they're being held by. There's a framework. They're not just kind of out on their own. There's a. There's a structure to it, but within the structure, there's all these different aspects of them that they can express.
- [40:25]
C
Yes.
- [40:25]
A
In that framework. Okay, so let's talk about how this is being integrated into the school system. Talk a little bit about your current job and how that came about, because I know a bit about the backstory and how. How do you see it being implemented as you continue on? How do you take the. The successes that you've had with it at your current school and expand it out?
- [40:51]
C
Absolutely. So I mentioned the Psi Institute for Leadership. That was my first step in bringing the homies out of the art room and bringing them to all the subjects. Also. Part of that was I started meeting with my principal, and we called it the meeting of the minds. And we would basically talk about all things homie, but we would also just kind of give ourselves permission to philosophize, which is very rare when in this, you know, age of feeling really busy and really crunched for time. And I do not think that the homies ever would have gotten out of the art room if we hadn't had those conversations. And then after, let's see, this was two years ago, this gentleman named Eitan who does these giant consultancies, he's huge. He teaches at mit, he does these giant consultancies with big world organizations like NATO and opec. And he agreed, partnering with Linda Nathan, who started the Peron Sizer Institute and who basically has become, you know, my inspiration for doing a lot of this work.
- [41:52]
For somehow Linda met Aton and they said, what if we did what you do, Eitan, with Aton, OPEC and all these giant corporations, sort of trying to get corporations to think outside the box. What if we did that with teachers? And so she called a group of us and I think there's about 20 of us to this two day event at MIT, which never had a name. So we ended up just calling it the thing. And so we wrote up this proposal for a homie coach. So in schools they have what's, you know, they have teachers, but they also have coaches who are not quite admins, but they're leaders who teach other teachers and they don't teach full time, but they know a lot about the frameworks that we have an English language arts coach, we have a math coach, we have a multilingual coach. And so we advocated, we pitched this new job that had never been created before and has never been created since called the homie integration coach. And so for a year and so we ended up getting it and the district said, all right, we'll give it a try. We've heard good things about the homies. And that became my full time gig was to go and do what I had started to do when I had the student teacher and go in and teach the homies to the, to the students and the teachers and to really dive into curriculum materials and try to overlay it onto the existing curricula. Because that's the secret sauce of the homies. It doesn't need a school to have an alternative structure. Schools can keep their own traditional structure. But what it does is it overlays this another level, this hidden layer of habits of mind. As you said, the how it gives students and teachers an engaging how for how to make all of this curriculum come alive while not making students feel like they have to check out or they have to leave their real selves at the door. And so if you overlay this homies on top of existing structures, I think it's been a recipe for success. And so that's what we've been doing. And then out of the blue, my principal Actually went to the middle school. He got asked to go become the principal at the middle school. And then my current assistant principal.
- [44:04]
He became the principal. And so the assistant principal job was open in my school and I did a lot of thinking about it and I was. Was nervous about it, particularly, you know, knowing my profile, knowing the way my brain worked, knowing that it was an administrative job. But I applied for the job and I got it. And so that's what I've been doing for the last two years is being an assistant principal.
- [44:28]
A
Okay, so you've developed this successful program. You've been integrating it into, into your school at like the ground level from 1 through 4, grades 1 through 4. What is the vision moving forward with developing the Homey Handbook and how that can then be utilized as a tool for other schools to adopt?
- [44:51]
C
Yeah, absolutely. So the Homey Handbook will basically be a one stop shop, documenting all of the homies. It will tell you why the homies are important. It will tell you about each homie and how to teach it to your students. And then it will tell you how we integrated it into our school, the home. This is meant to be that how. Remember we talked about the miss. The missing pieces, the how. How to make this. So we have the what? We have all this curriculum. How do you make this come alive? How do you make it exciting for students and for teachers? And the homies try to overlay on top of that, that curriculum to make things come alive for students and educators.
- [45:37]
A
Fantastic. Every time we talk about this, I'm just fired up. I'm like, this is what's needed. Like this. When I see coaching clients come through and I see what they've been challenged by. If they could just get this kind of protocol at a young age. Oh my gosh, it handles so many things without even going into. Into. Okay, well, this person's adhd. So they got to. It takes all of that shame out and just says, okay, wait a minute. There's a whole other way we can be doing this. And what I'm excited about is it overlays on top of traditional school system. It doesn't require them to just revamp everything. So such an honor to speak to you, Demetrius. Thank you so much for joining us. Tell everyone about how they can stay in touch with you and connecting with the homies.
- [46:24]
C
Yeah, absolutely. They can visit our website, which is meetthehomies.com and there is a space where they can sign up for our mailing list right on the website. And in that website you can see all the homies, you can see their chance. And also you will see the micro challenges that you can try with your students, with any young people in your life, or as we say, secretly for the grownups. You can try them yourself.
- [46:50]
A
Fantastic. Thank you Demetrius. Such an honor to speak to you today. Thanks for joining us.
- [46:55]
C
Thank you so much for having me.
- [46:57]
A
Okay, that's it. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Demetrius. If you'd like to learn more about what he's up to, you can go to meetthehomies.com and join his email list so you can stay up to date on what he's up to. And as a reminder, our annual Life Visioning Online Workshop is happening third week of January. If you'd like to join us or give this as a gift to someone for the holidays, you can go to drummerinthegreatmountain.comworkshop and until next time, be well.
- [47:35]
C
Thanks for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about the book the Drummer of and the Great Mountain, visit Drummer and the Great Mountain.com to join us on social media, click the links at the top of the homepage. Help us spread the word. We're a small press and reviews really help. If you've been enjoying the podcast or the book, consider writing a review on itunes, Amazon, Goodreads, or your podcast app. If you're new to the podcast and want to quickly get up to speed on the concepts we discuss, check out our free 5 day mini course. Visit drummerandthegreatmountain.com Minicourse if there's a topic you'd like us to cover on future episodes, we'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email@infodrummaandthegreatmountain.com.