The Importance of Values in Education and Learning

When you listen to this episode you may get a bit of a sense of deja vu - way back in 2020, listener Kelly reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to do an episode on parental burnout, which she was struggling to navigate at the time. We ended up interviewing Dr. Moira Mikolajczak, one of the world's experts on parental burnout.   After the conversation Dr. Mikolajczak expressed to me how much her heart went out to Kelly, who was navigating what seemed like an individual-level problem when it was actually very much our society's failure to support her that created the problem. Having explored the connection between race and parenting in a series of episodes the previous year, ideas were definitely percolating for me about how societal issues show up in our families which is, of course, a massive theme in my book.   So it was so amazing to see Kelly recently in a much better place, reflecting on the connections between her school-based learning and her burnout, and how she's taking steps to help her child learn lessons she thinks are truly important, like how to:

• Think critically about messages she receives from other people;
• See multiple people's needs in an interaction, and find ways to meet both of their needs;
• Learn about the world immediately around her (which often involves Kelly backing off and not doing anything, rather than stepping in to teach a lesson).

  Kelly's children are certainly learning profound lessons in this process - but so is Kelly. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone so delighted to say that she's thrown out a puzzle book that still had three un-done puzzles in that she didn't want to do, having (finally) learned that it's OK not to finish every single thing you start. Because not being able to do that can lead to burnout.  

Learning Membership

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