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Class is in session. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Unlearn 16. Class is in session. This is, like, episode. I don't know what that connects. If you've clicked this and you're on this page or you're watching this, this connects to a specific chapter in my book that's coming out on July 1, 2025. So if you're watching it in real time. My book's not out yet, but if you've got the book, welcome. This episode goes with that particular chapter. So today I'm sitting in front of my shoe wall. I know you guys are listening. You're listening to this going, I can't see your shoe. Well, well, get on YouTube. This particular chapter. I talk a little bit at the beginning of the chapter about this pair of Bert and Ernie overalls that I used to have. And A, how much I want them back. That's. That's kind of beside the point. But B, was this moment in my very young life where I didn't want to wear them anymore. I shed the Bert and Ernie. I thought they were a sign of. Of, you know, a baby, a sign of a little kid. And I was, you know, four, and it was time for me to be older, for me to not be wearing overalls with cartoon characters or puppets on the front of it. And I sort of stood my ground and had my mind change my outfit before I, you know, stormed into daycare. So it was a pretty pivotal moment in my life. But the funny part is this, and the parts I want to talk about as I'm sitting in front of this wall of shoe. Wall of shoes. Wall of shoe. Why would I just put that singular? The interesting part is how does what we wear inform our identity? Or pause. How does our identity inform what we wear? And a lot of people will say, clothes don't matter. I've done those videos myself where I'm like, you know, it doesn't matter what you wear. It doesn't. You shouldn't have to abide this kind of dress code in life in order to be seen a specific way. And. And on the whole, I agree to that. I really do. I agree to that. However, I don't know if we can negate the reality that what we wear says something about ourselves. It says something about who we are in that moment, because I think it changes. It says something about how we feel comfortable. It says something about the. The perception of. Of who we are in that minute and how we. We think we appear to other people. Sometimes it says something in opposition to what the People that we're surrounded by. Right. And I think all of that is incredibly important to talk about when it comes to who you are as a person and obviously as a teacher, who you are as a teacher, watching these teeny little humans, whatever age you happen to be teaching or parenting or around these little tiny humans, trying to put on different pieces of who they think they are. I know a lot of the time we want to try to dress those teeny humans. We want to tell them what it is that they should be wearing because of how they're going to perceive, they're going to be perceived. Or we get nervous, and maybe this is the case, too. We get very nervous as adults when these individuals, whether they're preteen or teenagers, start really trying on completely different looks because we feel as though possibly, could they be having an identity crisis. But I've always sat at a very weird middle ground because the things that make us comfortable that we're wearing don't necessarily. Sometimes they do, but don't necessarily speak to who you think I am. Now, buckle in. I'm going to give you a little bit of a philosophy of life right now. Are you ready? I'm not even going to be able to address it to who said it. The name has completely escaped. I want to say maybe Clooney. Not that Clooney. This is a sociologist. The saying goes something like, I'm not who you think I am. I'm not who I think I am. I'm who I think you think I am. Listen, that's a lot to swallow. That's a lot to swallow. It's basically talking about how we don't exist in a bubble. I'm not who I think I am. So I don't exist outside of everything else. I'm not who you think I am. Well, that's because I can't be in your head. I am what I think, what I think you think I am. Meaning we run around this world constantly trying to figure out how other people see us and how other people see us. Admit it or not, guys matters. We are constantly trying to assess, and to no end, we are constantly trying to assess how other people think about us and our. And our clothing. And our clothing is the first step, is the first method, including a haircut to our created perception. And that's a lot. That's a lot of psychology to take in. And I literally, as I'm sitting here, Anna just text me and said it was a guy named Cooley. Not Clooney, Cooley, but nonetheless, the Reason why I'm bringing this up is because identity and your identity and it's so important to establish it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It never has. It doesn't happen in a bubble. It doesn't happen without the interpretation and the expectation and the interactions you have with the world around you. It just happens that way. You know, if you're going to say, I never care what anybody says, you do. And if you truly never care what anybody says, I worry. But if you care only what other people think, I also worry because you're never going to really understand. You're never going to really know what somebody else thinks of you. But the way we dress and the way we present ourselves matters. I think part of education has to be figuring out how young people can embrace who they are in a given time, how they want to present themselves, what they think that says about themselves, what they think that that sort of creates in their own sort of worldview and their identity and their surroundings and how that impacts who they are in the moment and who will they. Who they will be later. So I'm saying all of this because unless we can help in the educational system, and this is the hardest part of the entire thing, it's not the quadratic equation. I understand it's hard, and it seems useless. It's not that the hardest part is trying to free up space for young people to become, to try on different shirts, metaphorically and literally, to wait to see what that interaction, that interplay is going to be. To wait to see how they change because of it. And here's the kicker. I think as a teacher and as a parent, probably to constantly be in conversation about all of those dynamics, to be okay with how you're presenting and what you get from that and why do you like it and all of those kinds of things, because a lot of who we are is driven subconsciously, right? People will say, oh, Joanna, you know, you dress like a. Like a 80s rapper. Of course I do. That's when I grew up. Of course I do. First of all, nobody wants to wear tight pants, please. But second of all, the T shirts I wear have a nostalgia to it. The. The baggy pants, the shoes, the. The varsity jackets that. All of those things that I seem to be drawn to for me at this point has a nostalgia flavor for me. And it makes me feel good, it makes me feel connected, it makes me feel authentic. At 49, funnily enough, I wasn't dressed like that in the 1980s, because in the 1980s, there was something Else that was driving me, right. As a young woman, a young girl in that time, different things would have been driving you. It wouldn't have been a sense of nostalgia. It would be a sense. Sense and. And very much important. A sense of, who are my friends? What are they wearing? I saw a prom picture. Prom. A graduation picture in grade eight. Guys. There was five of my friends in there. We all wore the exact same dress. The exact same dress. And I'm looking, I'm like, it's just a color variant. And I'm like, okay, obviously that was in. And you guys see it. We see it all the time, right? My mom used to say when I would go to high school, joanna, I can't. As you're coming out of your school for me to pick you up, I can't tell the difference. You're all dressed the same. Y' all the same hair, yo. Right? So there's an aspect of that teenage world where conformity is incredibly important. And let me say this, I don't think it's because kids have less of an identity than adults. Because, by the way, there's tons of adults who have absolutely no idea who they are. I think it's because it's in your teen years where the importance of your parents and your family diminishes. It's supposed to, as painful as it is, and the relevance and importance of your peers elevates. And it has to. It has to. Because a healthy identity for an individual is. You need to pull away from your parents. You need to individuate. If you do not individuate, if you do not figure out how to push against such a huge, huge, sociological informative figure, you don't ever get to step into little pieces that are going to make you. You. You will just be a carbon cutter. And what I promise you is eventually you will individuate. It'll happen later. I think for me, it didn't happen when I was in high school. It happened when I came out when I was in my 20s. I never felt the need to pull away. There was never a friction. Because usually there's a friction between parents and kids, right? It's a school thing. It's a friend thing. It's a. Whatever it is, there's a friction and they pull away and they, you know, sneak out of the house and they do all of these things that you think are incredibly dangerous behavior. Which, by the way, kids, they are. Cut it out. But you do all of these things because you have to do big, bombastic, insane, Things in order to make that separation, in order to pull away those bands. And then you look to your friends, and that's why your friends are important. When parents and teachers say your peers matter, of course they do. As they do. While you're an adult, by the way, of course your peers matter. And you don't necessarily want peers that are going to obviously draw you into harm's way. But the funny part is, I think as kids start to pull away and individuate and put on new attire. Is that a teacher's response, A parent's response. Tends to be fear. Tends to be fear that change is never a good thing. That change that they're not figuring out who they are, that they're just mimicking somebody else though they might be. They might be, but it's in that mimicking that they're going to try to figure out who they are and talk to them about it. Don't yell at them about their shoe collection. My mom never yelled at me about my shoe collection. She just told me I couldn't leave all of the pairs of shoes at the front door. Funnily enough, Anna says the same thing. It makes me always fill up this wall. Like, sometimes when I pull a pair off, I don't fill up that hole. It's a problem. So you have these teenagers trying on new ideas of who they want to be, and then they wait to see how they are judged. And I sometimes think, as a teacher, you know, you try to make space for that. You try to not tell them what to wear. Why are you all wearing the same shoes? Why are you, you know, all of that kind of thing, but in actuality, what you should be doing, possibly I don't know the. All the answers. Don't tell that to my students, because I tell them I do. But maybe it's not a matter of having answers. It's a matter of saying and just having conversations about identity as it connects to how you present yourself in the world. Because I don't think you want to take away a kid's agency and choice. I think you want to be able to have a conversation about how it changes, about why it changes, about what they're getting out of it. Maybe I always start. And I usually start being very sort of introspective, right? You. You start with kids and you say, well, these are. This. The. You know, I show them my prom pic, my grad picture, and say, look at this dress that we all wore. That's an interesting conversation. When you talk about fashion over the years, As a history lesson. People think, oh, it's just a history lesson. No, no, no, no. This is brilliant. Because you talk about fashion over the years and it starts kids talking about. Because I guarantee they've replicated it starts kids talking about what they like, why they like it, what when they used to wear it, or that they've started to wear it or whatever the case may be. And then you can lean into, what does that say about you? Why does that matter to you? You know, are you trying to impress somebody you have a crush on? Are you just trying to fit in? Are you just comfortable in those clothes? Are you uncomfortable wearing certain clothes so you avoid it? All of those kinds of conversations become incredibly important. But the only way we get to have them, I think, is by allowing kids to decide when their Bert and Ernie overalls don't work out for them anymore. And I think society gets in their way a lot. I think we really do. And the idea that these kids can really form an individual identity with blinders on, separate from all of the sociological and socialization sort of weight that's been placed on them by their family, by their culture, by their, you know, TV shows, by the media, by their school, by their friends, all of these things that are weighing on them as they're trying to figure it out. And, and we are constantly trying to tell them what they should do and shouldn't do and how they should act and how they should be. And they're just trying to sift through it. So the question isn't, are you going to get rid of all of those influences? Of course you're not. But maybe possibly one of the most important things you can do is talk about them. And it's to talk about who do you want to be, who do you think you are, what do you think people think about you when you walk into the room, you want to have a good conversation, sit some grade nines and have this conversation. Now, you have to make sure it's in a super. For, you know, good group of kids that are going to feel safe answering it. And not every kid's going to feel safe answering it. Some of them are going to be, you know, they're going to take the opportunities to be a smart ass. But if they can sit there and start talking about those things and start individually acknowledging something that they're already thinking and they've never really shared, I think you would be astounded at what kind of strength and confidence and then like revelation that brings to a young adult. And if you start bringing Those revelations to young adults and you start making them understand that what they wear does say something about them. Cool. What do you want it to say? That what they wear is an expression of who they are. And if they want to change it, cool. What are we changing into next? That they should have the confidence or start trying to gain the confidence to have these conversations with each other or even if it's in their own head or with their best friend or whoever they feel good with, have these conversations. Because I think it matters. I really do think it matters. What you wear matters. Not because you have to wear something specific. That's not what I'm saying. Because you also have to understand that the guy wearing or the woman wearing a $3,000 suit shouldn't get your respect, your attention, your subservience any quicker than somebody dressed in baggy jeans and a backwards hat. Because the stereotype of both is problematic and is wasteful and is useless. So if you can start breaking down stereotype or start breaking down the. The ideas that kids have in their head about what that stereotype is, what they think of that kid or that kid or celebrities, you can always start there, right? Something very external. Then you get to have bigger and deeper discussions about who they are and what they want the world to see. And those are important conversations. You know, we constantly we. Your looks don't matter. We'll say that to kids, right? What you look like doesn't matter. Well, saying that to a teenager couldn't be more dismissive of everything they know to be true. And as an adult, your looks, of course, your look matters. Now, here's the key. What you need to talk about and what you need to impress upon them and through example, prove time and time again, is it's not a specific look that matters. It's an authentic look that will matter. That finding out who you are, and more importantly, not who you are, but why you are, and walking in that confidently and still caring about what other people think, because that's just the nature of what humans are. But caring less because you can walk and you can exist in that kind of strength and that kind of idea. When you go from place to place to place. You know, a lot of people on my Tiktoks or Instagram or wherever, they're watching, you know, lots of people will talk about the way that I look and what I wear, a huge percentage of it. Very complimentary. You know, I joke all the time. You can call me whatever you want, just as long as you compliment my hair. Usually very complimentary. I have the other people over here who can't spell things right, who aren't. But the funny part is, make no mistake, they're drawn in by the way I look. So to deny that human reality, to deny that as an idea to our high school students and pretend as though it doesn't matter, pretend as though it's all in their heads and is silly, is absolutely silly. And all you're doing is negating actual thought and emotion that comes from a place of living in this real world. My grandma, love her to death, would always comment, always, how skinny I was, always. And, you know, in this culture, in sort of Canadian culture in this time period, me being whatever my grandma thinks is skinny and tiny. And so it was always a compliment, and I always took it as such, right. Well, to my grandma, I always looked skinny. I never thought for a minute what it would feel like if maybe I put on a couple pounds and my grandma made an other comment, you know, because I've had that pointed out by other people in my world, you know, they'll be like, wow, she really just talks about you being skinny. I'm like, yeah, well, she, you know, she likes the way I look or whatever. That's always. And they're like, but do you think that's made you very much, like, focus on. Well, that's. There's a positive in there. There's a. There's a value in that. And in an opposition, there wouldn't be a value if my body type was different. You know, it's really hard to step outside of that and understand what that would be. But. But funnily enough, if any, you know, buddy out here plays sports. I used to play rugby and I played for, I don't know, five years or so, and I went away from rugby and I came back and I was kind of the size I am now. And I came back and all these women who are, like, jacked, like, you know, just physical specimens of the rugby world, shoulders that go on for days, who looked at me, I swear to God, and this was their face. What happened to you? Why are you so skinny? And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, being skinny here in this group of women, they actually think I was sick. They actually thought something happened whereby I wasn't allowed to go work out at the gym or be physically active. Meanwhile, I just got old and stopped playing sports. And I'm like, really depends on where you are and what the perception is going to be of that and all of that. To deny that that world and grown men and women, you know this, you know that what you wear dictates a lot of the time, the way that you're treated. You know that to be true. I know that to be true. So when teenagers are trying it on, when teenagers are, you know, seeing how they fit in this world and the statement they want to make, I just don't think it's a good idea to negate. Don't deny that the way they look is going to have impact. Talk about, talk about it. That's it. Put it on the table. We spend an awful lot of time, you know, in the teaching world or wherever we happen to be, trying to negate or trying to ignore and push aside conversations that have real incredible value. And I think while kids, especially at that age, are trying to figure out or toe the line of identity confusion and identity formation, we have to have good conversations about how you can form your own identity, that it doesn't need to be put upon you, that you can try it on. And at the same time, we got to have conversations about what character looks like and what being a good person looks like and what making, you know, being. Being safe and being respected and respecting others looks like. You can have all those conversations at the same time while the kid chooses whatever T shirt they're going to wear. And I think this follows through, through so many aspects. And I don't find it necessarily easy. I don't. I don't necessarily find it easy because in my head, you know, there will be, oh, well, I wish they just dress like this. Or what about like this? Or you would look so much. You have all of those preconceptions. And what. Those preconceptions are mine, my biases, my stereotype. That's the unlearning that I need to do. And I think it's also equally important that I have conversations about my bias, about what and why I think the way I do, rather than putting it on a pedestal and assuming this is the way that we should all act and interact with questioning it and let. Letting kids question all of those aspects that I've just discussed. You know, and I, and I understand that these kinds of conversations, somehow to some people, I guess in education, they seem frivolous or they seem, you know, they're not academic, they're not important, they're not this, they're not that. They have no business in a history classroom or a politics classroom or whatever, but in essence, that individual's identity and identities within all of those social sciences, that's the foundation of Everything that happens in this world, who do you want to be? Who do you think people think you are? And how does that inform the next step? I think it's also incredibly important that we allow for and we encourage and we support, no matter how uncomfortable. Change, change in adults, change in our students, in the teens, in our world, is that all of that is going to change. And you as a parent, as an adult, you want to kind of pave a road, right? You want everything perfect. I see a lot of the times, a lot of parents, and I get it, want to make sure that the, you know, the, the yellow brick road is clearly laid out and you know, they defend against, you know, the, the poppies that put them to sleep and the Wicked Witch of the West. But I mean, given the new movie, I'm gonna have to question that entire analogy. In all fairness. The point of the matter is you want to protect them against things that could harm them, things that could make their travels more difficult, when in actuality, first of all, you can't, nobody can protect anybody from hard things in this world. They will happen. The, the key is how do you talk about them when they do if you can't shelter them? And I'm going to go one step further. I don't think you want to shelter them because I think going through hard things, hard things with a classmate, hard things with school, hard things with family, hard things, going through hard things is what makes you learn, is what makes you respect the world around you. It's what makes you understand, you know, important life changing moments. You don't know what good feels like unless you feel bad. It is very Taoist. It's very. You need both the light and the dark because if you don't have both, you can't understand either. So the key isn't negating the bad things. The key is how do we talk about them, how do we face them, how do we overcome them? How do we help you overcome them? What do you need in order to do that? I had a friend I had dinner with a while ago and she had a young kid, I was like three maybe, and we're eating breakfast. It was actually a former student, obviously. I've been a teacher for so long. My students are now like 40, but whatever. So we're having breakfast and she was sitting across from me and her daughter was sitting next to her. And this three year old stood on the chair and was kind of reaching over the chair and, and I instinctually said, oh my God, be careful, be careful, you're gonna Fall. And Jamie goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, Joanna. I don't raise her like that. I said, what the heck do you mean you don't raise her like that? I go, she's gonna fall. She goes, I know. She goes, okay, but I was watching her. She goes, I. If I think she's in a dangerous position, I like to say to her, I know some of you are going to be like, oh, it's so New Agey, but think about it for a second and apply it just outside of this one thing. She says when she's doing something that may be dangerous to her, I ask her, I watch. Takes a lot of focus. And then I ask, do you feel safe? And sometimes this little three year old says, I'm fine. She goes about her day, could she fall? Absolutely. Do I try to catch her? Sure. Sometimes. Does she get a scratched knee? Of course. Other times she'll say, I don't. Can you help me? And it was this lesson. Sometimes I'm so taken aback by things that I don't know and people teach me. And it was this lesson not just of little kids standing on the edge of the chair teetering, you know, but it's this lesson of how do we empower the next generation to do things maybe that are scary emotionally or physically or mentally. Encourage them to do it. Understand that if you fall, that's okay. Put a band aid on it, metaphorically or literally, you'll move on and feel comfortable enough that if they're in a position where they feel too much fear, they are willing and capable of asking for help from the people around them that they trust. I was guys, it was like I learned a world philosophy over bacon and eggs. And she never fell. And eventually she sat down on her own. And I thought, that's a real skill. That's a powerful lesson. And as a teacher, you know, clothing is this symbolic idea of how to teach that. But everything that we should want to teach that next generation isn't so much about do it my way because my way is best. Although I am prone to want to do that. It's do things that scare you. Try them. If you get to a point where you're too afraid, ask people around you that you trust for help. And I'm just going to wait until you need me. But if you need to fall first, then I'll help you get up afterwards. I don't know how you make that an ethos of a school or of an educational philosophy, but I swear to God, that's what it should be. That's what it should be. We should, you know, stop with the bubble wrapping and the protecting and the shielding and the umbrella. Start with knowing that you are strong, you are powerful, you are brave. Give it a go. And when you need me, I'll be right behind you. And on that note, guys, thank you so much for hanging out with me. Go check out my book coming out on July 1, 2025. You can get it on unlearn16.com and this will go with a chapter in the that will come with this cute little QR code, so you'll be able to place them together, watch them back to back. Thank you so much for hanging out with me, guys. And until next time, I'll see you on the same bat time, same bat channel. Dismissed.