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Foreign. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Unlearn 16 classes in session. Guys, I brought you on the road with me. I brought you on the road with me. We're gonna have hot dogs. We're gonna talk about baseball. Could I find a hot dog vendor? No. So what did I do? Well, I did the second best. I got them from Harvey's Canadian, and it's make. They make an excellent hot dog. All right, well, this podcast related to my book. That's not what this book is about. But it's related to probably one of the most pivotal Harvey's Hot Dog moments in my life. And that is when I learned and I started to play baseball. Now, here's the funny part. Please stand by. I have to adjust the camera. Here's the funny part. I think playing baseball was accidental. I grew up in a small town in Mansfield. And in the summer, in the winter, you learned how to ski. And in the summer, everybody played baseball. So that's just what it was, because that's what it was all to do. Cream soda, icy. Amazing. All my sugar for the week. All right, so I learned how to play baseball in this small town. And when I was in this small town, everybody played hardball. Why? Because it was tiny. It was like it was 1100 people. I don't know how many kids. I don't even know where they all came from, to be honest with you. And we all played on the same baseball team. There was something equitable. Equitable about it out of necessity. I didn't even think about that until right this minute. Think about that sentence. There was something about it that was equitable due to necessity. Harvey's does an excellent hot dog. Not sponsored. All right, what does that mean? Well, sometimes changes in society. Actually, I. I kind of think all the time big changes in society happen out of the necessity for that change. Not because anybody was looking for big social advancements or massive changes within the world, but because in that moment, we needed it in that moment. At the end of the day, it couldn't just be an all boys team. Guess why? Because there wasn't enough. They needed the girls to play. It kind of reminds me of the movie League of Their Own because it's based on true story. I mean, I don't think Madonna played in real life, but nonetheless, in League of Their Own, it takes place during World War II, and all of the guys are off at war. They've all been conscripted, so there's no major league baseball. So what? What do they do in order to make money? Well, they create a women's baseball team. And this women's baseball team initially gets made fun of and all of these things, and then it pushes for social change when they start to understand that these women were excellent ball players. But the funny part is it wasn't done to give women a chance. It was done because women were the only people there to be able to fill that slot, to make them money equity out of necessity. So am I comparing my Little League practices and baseball games to League of Their Own? Yeah. Yeah, I am. Without that Little League, we don't get to there. So here's what happened. That was a weird tasting onion ring. All right, Anybody that hates it when people eat and talk at the same time are gonna hate this episode. But I was hungry and it was too windy to go sit by a ball diamond in order to talk to you guys. So I got a hot dog and I sat here instead. All right, so I'm a kid, and I learned how to play baseball. And. And when I'm playing baseball in this small little town, and I, you know, get to get pretty good at it, I realized, A, I'm good at it. B, it's something I want to continue to do when I move. So I played from grades three to grade six in Mansfield. Mansfield, Ontario. For those who are like, oh, my God, there's a Mansfield in my hometown, different Mansfield. And in Mansfield, again, very equitable out of that kind of necessity, because it was a small town. So we played against all these different clubs or, you know, little tiny towns all over the place like Everett and Alliston or whatever. And when I was done and we were going to move, we moved to Oshawa. We moved to Oshawa. I just considered, of course, I would just go to Oshawa and I would play in the same league. Why? Because. Why wouldn't I? Why would I. Because all I noticed all the girls were playing softball, but I'm like, why would I play softball? When I learned how to play hardball, I was a pitcher, I was a catcher. It was a totally different game. And by the by, just on a side note, this whole creating softball for women to play doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me. Number one, look at the size of my hand. Why are you giving me a softball that's 12 inches instead of a hardball? That's just stupid. That's just that in my opinion, that's sexist in and of itself. You give us something that's bigger for us to be able to throw in wheel to make us worse at the sport. It's a conspiracy theory I haven't quite worked out yet. So nonetheless. So that's true. And I come to Oshawa and I'm not going to play softball. So I go to the house league team. Want to play house league before I play house league. Here's the interesting part. I find out there's a rep team. Now, remember, I would have been in grade going into grade seven. So 12 years old. And at 12 years old, girls, you know, tend to be very. They. I mean, you're, you're able to compete with the boys on lots of levels. Not that all, please. There's lots of women I know now who complete with compete with the boys. But at 12 years old, it's you, you. There's still an even playing field. So I hear about this rep team in Oshawa. Legionnaires Legion. So I'm going to go play. I'm going to go try out where this rep team. Only girl, obviously. But in all fairness, I was awesome. I was pitching awesome, throwing guys out at second base, just like straight dingers to the outfield. I was doing fantastically and I kept making it past each thing. And on the very last round or whatever, the coach comes to my mom and says, listen, here's the truth. Joanna is the best player. She should be on the team. However, we travel all the time. We don't have a female coach. We don't have female locker rooms. We don't have female, like, rooms. Like, who's she gonna. If she has to stay by herself in a hotel room that's gonna cost more and, and there's nobody there to, you know, kind of take care of whatever it is that she'd need. Now we can't facilitate it. We don't have the staff to facilitate it. And my mom explains that to me now, you gotta remember, this is like, I don't know what year this was. 86, 87. And my mom kind of goes, I get it. Like, my mom couldn't go with me to all those tournaments. If she could have, that would have been maybe a bit different. I could have got changed in the car. But here's the thing. I was good. I wasn't like, listen, if I was striking people left, right, left, right and center, they would have found the money. But the end of the day, there were enough. I was a better than some of the guys, but not by amount. And there were enough guys. They didn't need me. They didn't need to change. They didn't need to adjust. They didn't need to transform the league in the way that they did it at all. So they say to my mom, we can't take her. We're really sorry, but there's a house league team now. Here's a funny part. We just said okay because in that era, could you imagine saying okay to that kind of garbage now? But in that era, what are you gonna do? What do you. How are you supposed to change it, right? It was already like this huge step that they let me compete. It was always this. It was like this huge step. They said, well, she's good enough, but we just can't take her. Those already felt like monumental steps. So it didn't feel. It didn't. It didn't feel like we could push it any further than we already did. And there was no necessity. They had other guys to fill the spots. It was going to be fine. It's not like the team was going to have a big problem, right? So all of that being true, it's a very interesting way to look back on it. And by the time I go to a house league team, shockingly, when I move to Whitby, nobody wants me. There's softball over there. We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So I go to house league and Whitby in grade nine and they don't. Or right before grade nine and they don't want to take me. And so we have to convince the league that I will try out for house league and if I'm not good enough, they can tell me to piss off. And if I'm good enough, then they can take me again. Baffles my mind. It's a house league team, right? There's still kids picking their nose in right field on teams like this. It wasn't like high elite baseball yet because I was a girl, I needed to try out and I tried out and I was great and I batted fourth and, you know, whatever. All things aside, I had to prove myself. And this is another sort of shaping moment. I think I realized that I had to be better, perform better, act better, do better than guys I was competing against in the exact same sort of level, the exact same league to do the exact same thing. What I know when you read the chapter, if you read the chapter and I talked about how I got my mom to stitch girl across my leg because I had short hair. Nobody could tell I was a girl kicking their ass, which I really wanted them to know. I really that wanted them to know. Now at some point, they start to Chat about it. Is that a girl? Is there a girl back catching? Did a girl just hit a home run? That's kind of the banter. And I kind of like that. Obviously my mom loved it because she was a scorekeeper for all those games. So at some point I just get annoyed that nobody can tell that I'm a girl. Now here's the funny part. I don't know if it was a identity thing as much as it was. You undervalue girls so much that when you find out I'm a girl, I need you to know so you know you are wrong. Your assumptions are wrong, your stereotypes are wrong, your. Your whole line of thought is wrong. So I don't know if those were the baby times when I'm like, I really want to make sure that people know who I am, not just because I need to be right. Like, do you understand the difference? I don't know if I'm explaining it well to understand the difference between wanting to be secure in an identity and who you are and your sex being a part of that, because I don't know if I ever really cared. But I needed them to know because they were undervaluing and under, like sidelining girl after girl after girl. And I needed them to know that I, I might have tricked them with my short haircut. And once you find out, don't just give me accolades, don't just give me respect. Give respect to girls. Stop keeping them out, right? But again, at the time, none of this was conscious. None of it was. I wasn't self aware at 14. I don't even know if I consider myself a feminist at 14. I just knew what I like to do and I wanted to do it. Wanting people to get the hell out of my way who said that I couldn't do it. That's it. But I don't think I had it wrapped in my head about that I shouldn't do it or that I couldn't do it. But then my head goes back to equity out of necessity. And it's the same idea. I mean, going back to the World wars, right? It's the same thing that allowed that, instigated that, that gave the space for women to, to step out of the house into roles of bankers and machinists and welders and builders and, and bankers. And we stepped into these roles and we did them, and we did them incredibly well in a time of necessity. After World War I, we kind of handed it all back and we went back into the kitchen for the most part, after World War II. Women are like, what? Well, if we can do everything, how have you been keeping us out for so long? How have you been telling us what our place is for so long? And again, equity driven by necessity. Same with the right to vote. A lot of people, I know it's turning into a history class, but I can't help myself. I'm a history teacher. Guys, right to vote. You think the right to vote was given to be nice, to be fair, to be equitable. In Canada, women's right to vote was given in order to help Borden, our Prime Minister at the time, pass a conscription law because he promised he wasn't going to conscript anybody. So he wanted to have a referendum. He wanted to have another vote in the Military Service Act. I can't remember. Selective Service Act. And he wanted to have a vote. And what he did is he gave women the right to vote in place of their husband, brother, father. Equity out of necessity. And that was used to manipulate. That was used because if you don't. If you don't conscript, then you're. Then. Then all of your family that you're voting for that is stuck overseas, well, they're never coming home because you're not getting more. More guys to sign up. We're not forcing more guys to sign up. And again, that sort of then translates into a woman's right to. To vote. So all of these moments that we've had in our lives where we think it is about a time, it's a social justice moment. It usually comes down to we give a little bit of equity due to necessity. I'm even going to say that. And this is going to blow people's minds. I'm even going to say that about the Civil War in the United States. Wait for it. I'll bring it back to my book in a second. Guys, just sit down and enjoy it. Think about it. People talk about the Emancipation Proclamation act of 1863. Like Lincoln wanted to free all the slaves. That is not what the Emancipation Proclamation did. The Emancipation Proclamation Act. Ooh, motorcycles. The Emancipation Proclamation act wanted to release. Please stand by beside me as I'm talking in my car. Two very loud motorcycles just want to sit right beside my open window and chat. Now, I could think this is directed toward me, or I could just think that they have absolutely no idea of any space around them and now they're going to pass off. All right. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Nonetheless. Emancipation Proclamation act of 1863. Here's how it works. Oh, that was really cute. I think one guy Was dropping off his friend at his house. Now he's parking his bike. That's what that was. One old guy dropped another gold guy off, like they were riding bikes together and dropped them off. And now he's parking his bike, going inside. That's so nice. Okay, so Emancipation Proclamation act of 1863 doesn't free all the slaves. It frees slaves in areas of rebellion, which means the south, because the south was rebelling as long as they fought for the Union. Take that in for a second. It freed the slaves in areas of rebellion as long as the slave, the freed slave fought for the Union. Equity based on necessity. One of Lincoln's favorite famous lines, and one of the lines that I. I think is probably one of my most used out of historical text is I'd like to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky. Equity based on necessity. Meaning he didn't free all the slaves on the front end. Why? Because there were border states like Maryland who were in Kentucky fighting on the side of the Union. You want proof that that war wasn't initially just designed to fight and eradicate slavery? Understand that Maryland and. And Kentucky, both sl. Fought on the side of the Union. I digress. Necessity. Equity based on necessity. So we go back to my baseball days, right? And over the years, I had to prove myself again and again and again and again to kids that wanted to charge me at home plate and they accidentally tripped over my leg, broke their collarbone. Sometimes karma. Instantaneous. Again and again and again. Guys that pitched a little too hard high on the inside just to test my boundaries again and again and again. And what I think that did for me, again, subconsciously, because I think if anybody had articulated this roadblock, this obstacle, it would have felt insurmountable. Do you know what I mean by that? And I'm going to get to teaching in a second because I think sometimes we tell kids the things they are facing, the things they are up against, and we talk about them so much that we give the obstacle more power than the individual to overcome it. And that can be true in athletics, that can be true in academics. That can be true with learning disabilities or different learning abilities. That can be true in your workplace. That can be true with the money that you make. All of these things are ways of saying there's the obstacle dead ahead, whatever that is. And whether it's because of, you know, discrimination and oppression, whether that's because of stereotype, whether that's an economic barrier, whether that's a socially constructed barrier, whatever the reason is that Thing has a lot of power, and if we give that too much power, we don't even try to climb it. So as a kid, I wasn't aware. I really wasn't. I was aware of the fact that I wanted to play baseball. That's it. I was aware that. And just out of curiosity, side note, these onion rings taste funny. I think I should probably stop eating them. Maybe old grease. But I was aware. I wasn't aware that it was this insurmountable obstacle. I just wanted to play baseball. And I had a mom and I had a dad. My dad also came to every single baseball game. Now, funnily enough, every time I finished a game with my dad, he'd see every game. He'd sit. I'd sit in the car, he'd drive me home. Even if my mom went as well, he'd always give me Wrigley's Peppermint Gum. No, spearmint. What's the green one? So I have a very specific memory receptor for that kind of smell of gum. He usually got me the double pack. And all the way home, he told me all the ways I could have played the game better, which. Hilarious, but nonetheless. So when I was playing baseball, all I could think of was being a good baseball player and playing with the people I was playing with. I didn't think about it being an insurmountable obstacle. My mom never made me feel that way. My dad as hell didn't make me feel that way at all because it was never. He never compared me to a single other person, which was also interesting. He never said, that guy hit better than you, or that guy did something you didn't do, or whatever. You. He. It was always about me. You know, lower your left shoulder when you're hitting, or you pulled your head up off the ball or when you threw, you didn't put your hips. Whatever. Whatever the case may be, he made it very me specifically so when I had these support systems and subtle support systems that didn't highlight the obstacle, just highlighted my capacity and their expectation of me. Guess what? I just continued to play. And then I started thinking about how we have to face. And how kids today in the classroom, whether it be athletics, because I am a coach, or whether it be in the classroom and how kids face obstacle after obstacle. You can't not. Okay, I faced one because of my sex, because I was a girl playing baseball. But you can't not face those obstacles. But if you put so much power in the obstacle itself and it. You make it impenetrable, you make it impossible to overcome. These kids will just put down the bat, put down the ball and go home. Why would they even try? Now, I do think when it comes to the world of academics, kids can face bigger obstacles, let's say, than the levels of sexism I faced within baseball. But let's not undervalue before we get to the academic limitations. Our education system has historically been racist, sexist, classist, right? There are these external factors we call on boys. More girls fit the system more, guys have ADHD more, so we kick them out of class. If you're working a part time job, you get lower marks, but yet you still are putting in the same effort. Nobody's gauging all of those differences, right? So all of those affect a kid before they can even decide, before they can even see, see what their math mark would have been. Right. And then you add on the other layer, the extra obstacle of learning differences because every kid will learn differently. Every kid will have their obstacle. And I think what the education system has done with the best of intent, but I think to a, to a worse end game is they've gotten really good at identifying the obstacle and trying not to make the kid feel bad for having to carry that obstacle with them. Right. Let's say they find out you're dyslexic, okay? I think our educational system's done a lot better at saying and having tests and pointing out, okay, that's your thing, you have that thing. He's going out with his friends some more. But what they also want to point out, they have that thing. But what they, they also want to put out, point out is all these different modifications we can make to curriculum in the classroom to not make you feel bad about your thing, about your limitation. Right. We don't want to make you feel bad about dyslexia. I'm with them. I don't want anybody to feel bad about the things that they need to overcome. Here's my problem. I don't think a lot of educational systems and some of this, well, most of it has nothing to do with the teachers in the classroom. That's due as throwing 35 kids in a public school classroom and expecting them to teach to 10 different IEPs, Individual Education Plans. I think the problem is instead of figuring out ways for them to overcome, we figured out ways to modify the curriculum so they never have to climb the wall at all. There. I have a problem, I have a huge problem with identifying an obstacle and then telling the kid it's impenetrable or the adult or the baseball player there, I have an issue. All these kids have obstacles, I promise you. Some of them are in phys ed, some of them are math, some of them in art, Some of them are music. It doesn't really matter. I am tone deaf. If you put me in a, in a situation singing class, I don't have the chops. Do you understand? I just don't have it. It's something that I don't, I can't hear. Does that mean I shouldn't sing? Maybe not too loudly. I understand that. Does that mean I shouldn't sing? Does that mean that the person that can sing should be undervalued and I should just give it the college try? But in math class, the kid that can just do math, they get the 98. And the kid that doesn't understand it, that can't see it, that can't understand it, that doesn't have that innate capacity and they get a 52. Are they supposed to feel like crap for the rest of their days? Because the kid that doesn't sing, it's like, oh, well, you don't sing. You see my problem? We put all the emphasis on specific aspects of the education system and, and the core courses. English, math, science, maybe history, possibly, right? But if you're good at English, math and science, you can write your own ticket. Everybody thinks you're a genius. We don't care if you can't make a three free throw shot. We don't care if you can't draw a portrait. We don't care if you can't write a composition or sing in key. We don't care about any of those things because we've decided we, that those attributes, that those skills don't have the same value as doing a quadratic equation. I am not here to minimize the value of a quadratic equation. I am here to escalate the value of all those other things I just spoke about. And I'm also here to say that I think students should have to be more holistic learners. How about for a minute, because I get math and I can get my 90 pretty easily. And the kid that's sitting beside me struggling and struggling to get a 52 and feels like garbage about himself, that same kid should sit in a, in a music class with me. And as they belt out perfect, you know, harmonies and I struggle, we can see no one is perfect. Everybody struggles. Everybody has obstacles. It is our job to try to overcome them. And I'll go you one step further, possibly our job in that classroom as teachers and as students to help each other other climb over, to help each other get over the obstacle. Because if we don't do that, if we don't push each other, number one, we only elevate certain types of people in this world. And number one, that's objectively, absolutely wrong. Short sighted, limited, embarrassing. So what we need to do is understand and name what is your obstacle? Music. What is your obstacle? Jim. What is your obstacle? Math. What is your obstacle? Reading. Cool. Let's put them all on the table. Let's tackle them together. Let's understand that the obstacle doesn't get to define you, that the limitation doesn't get to define you. And I'll tell you this, the point about having different learning styles and learning plans within the classroom, the point of having a diversity of thought and teaching styles in the classroom is it should be equity based on necessity. Why? Because what I promise you, if we leave those kids behind and we're seeing this happen in real time right now, if we leave those kids behind, the kids that couldn't get over the obstacle because we didn't identify equity within the classroom in order to reach them and help them, if we don't identify that and we don't help them, the entire society begins to shake. It begins to falter. It is limited. And we lose perspective of genius in those individuals because we never afforded them the opportunity to explore what they are great at. And I promise you, everybody is great at something. We just need to figure out what that is. So open the doors. We need equity. We need it. It is necessary. It is how we build a holistic, strong, powerful society. We don't just ignore the things that we're not good at. We get better at them. I might not ever be a great singer, but damn it, one time in one place, in one song, I will hit that note. Probably by accident, but nonetheless, we need, in the time of need, we need. We, we, we look to equity. And that will bring us to a better end. That will help individuals, but on the whole, it's going to help the team, it's going to help the society, it's going to help us progress faster than we've ever progressed before. There is a goal in the Equity out of necessity. Don't think that diversity and equity are just to be nice. No, no, no, no. Diversity and equity are smart plays out of necessity. You want to know who drops out of school the quickest? Genius. How in the hell is that true? Thank you guys so much for hanging out. Until next time, I will see you next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat channel. Have a great day, guys. Dismissed.