If you've been dealing with the idea that students now-a-days are completely apathetic, you are certainly not alone. It seems like in recent years, students' disengagement has increased. However, it's important to realize that it's not just about them, but it's about us as well.

In this episode, we are diving into one of the questions from The Resilient Teacher Community members, who asked, "How do you not burnout when students appear to be apathetic about learning & don’t put effort into their work?" We'll dive into this idea of student engagement - or lack thereof, with special guest, Danielle Nuhfer. Danielle is a former public school teacher turned coach and the author of The Path of the Mindful Teacher and founder of Teaching Well. She's spent the last 20+ years navigating the ebbs and flows of the current school system, while helping clients prioritize their own well-being so that they can be their best selves inside and outside their classrooms and schools.

We are going to talk about the common misconceptions around student disengagement, and she will share her unique TLC approach – a strategy that empowers us to understand and reshape our interactions with students.

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Hi, Danielle. I am so excited to have you on the Resilient Teacher podcast.

Oh, thank you for having me here.

Yes. So I thought it would be a really great opportunity to talk with you really quick because I had one of the podcast listeners send in a question, and I was like, you know, who might could have helped me answer that question is Danielle. So one of the biggest struggles that I've seen in classrooms across the United States, and I've heard from many listeners of this podcast and online, is that students appear to be apathetic about learning and that they don't put any effort into their work. Is this something that maybe you can talk a little bit about and help us kind of come up with a solution for this?

Yeah. So I'm not going to solve all your problems in this short little podcast, of course, but I can give teachers a little food for thought about how to maybe expand our thinking about apathy in the classroom and what it's looking like. And I think the biggest thing that I would say right off the bat is, as a former 20 year educator, I think one of the hardest things I was doing was taking things personally. It's very easy to take this behavior personally because we give so much to these kids, and we want them to be as invested in these things that we're teaching them, and invested right then and there. Right. We want them to light up the way that we do, and sometimes they do, but right now, sometimes they don't. Right. I just want to put that out there, that it's not you, and that might not make anything feel better, but I just like to say that off the top when I'm thinking of this idea of apathy.

So, a strategy that I'm trying to bring to people that I work with, teachers and school leaders, is this TLC approach about tracing your tendencies, leaning into your scripts, learning your scripts, and then creating moments for compassion and calm. So this first thing is, trace your tendencies. We're seeing this apathy, and it's causing us to feel stress, right. It's causing us to feel a certain kind of way, and I just want you to pay attention to that. Like, when does it happen? Is it a certain student? Is it a certain class? Is it a certain time of day? Is it a certain time of year? So, trace your tendencies, because sometimes it's the time of school year that causes kids to be more apathetic or us to even notice it more. Maybe they're always being that way, but we're not feeling it, and we want them to not be down to where we're at. Right. That would be one thing, is to just really trace what's going on there.

And once we realize, okay, this is the thing that's really grinding my gears, this apathy idea. And this is when I feel it, I want to challenge everybody, and not that teachers need more of a challenge. So maybe I should use a different word, challenge, isn't it? But just maybe bring curiosity to this idea. Bring some curiosity and try to learn about your scripts around this. This apathy. Can we make it bigger than just the thing we're seeing is apathetic? Can we say, like, are there other things here? Is there a seating arrangement? That's a problem. Where's this kid coming from after or before the class that he is now in front of me with? Is there more here? So our script is that they're being apathetic, but can we broaden it to say, is there something more?

Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Because if you think about it, we have students that come in our classroom every day, and the way that you said that was awesome, that it really may just be us noticing it, and they've been like that all year long, but now you're like, this kid's being apathetic, and we're starting to get stressed about that. And so that script or that automatic reaction that we're having is coming into play. So I really like the way that you kind of phrase that as a script.

Yeah. And that's what I like to say. And that means it's not set in stone, but it's something that we should be aware of. It's a script. It's a running through our head. This kid always does this. So when we catch ourselves saying, this kid is always apathetic, we need to pause and be like, oh, is that true? Is he like that in other classes? So when we start into that all or none thinking, that's when we are probably in our script mode. So that's, again, another place to trace your tendency.

So, leading into that script, allowing there to be a broader perspective. And then the c part that I really try to impact to teachers because we can flip our script and all that, but the c part is to create opportunities for calm. Create those opportunities for calm. Because this kid, and I'm saying, this kid, you know what I mean? It's going to show up in a multitude of different ways depending on the year, so it's going to show up again. So if we dissect this moment of apathy and we're like, okay, maybe there's more to it. We then need to find an opportunity. We need to create opportunities for calm for us. So what do we do once we dissect this, we know it's going to happen again.

We have to have something to support us in that moment so that we don't fly off the handle, take things personally, react instead of respond. What are some tools that we can bring into our classrooms? What are some tools we can bring into our days that are going to support us when we have this thing that is going to kind of trigger us? I hate to use that word, but just, like, grind our gears. But however you want to say it, we need to have those opportunities for calm. So some things that have worked with the people I work with are honestly, like, putting your hand right here. I know it's a podcast, but right on your heart, right on your chest, right on your shoulder, and just being like, it's okay, you don't have to say it out loud, but just like a comfort for us in the moment. There's also touching your desk or something, like, something that is in the room. Just having that sort of comfort, putting something in the back of your room that says, it could be something silly, but you could put breathe, but you could have something silly, like, I don't know, like a silly message that you. Oh, I did something with a group recently, and we did a mountain meditation, and I had them think about, okay, could I put a picture of a mountain in the back of my room to look at, to ground myself? So, visual reminders for ourselves and also some sort of sensory reminders for ourselves to just really take care of ourselves in that moment.

Because, again, we have to remind ourselves that this is not personal. It's not. And that is hopefully a little bit helpful. What are your thoughts there?

No, I think you hit the nail on the head there. We do take it personally when we've created these engaging lessons or we've put in the work and we're just met with these students who are basically like critics and they aren't as engaged as we want them to be. We take it as a hit to I'm doing all that I can and that script that they are being apathetic, that triggers our stress response. We've talked about here on the podcast how, like, automating often reduces stress. But I think it's in those automated reactions that we have that often kind of continue or exacerbate our stress. And so I really love your acronym, TLC, for remembering this and for almost creating, like, a method to help teachers become more self aware, because those tendencies that we have to automatically take things personally. And the script that all kids are apathetic isn't really making an impact. Right.

It's not fixing the problem. It's just creating more negative experiences for us when we don't reflect in that way when we're not self aware. And so I think utilizing this TLC framework is really helping us to take action against this. However, I do know that at least one teacher out there is like, what are my. Like, how do I figure this out? Can you share a little bit about how they might do this and maybe your experience in the classroom? What were some of your tendencies? What were some of your scripts?

Well, I think one of the biggest, my personal script that I always use is one where I always take it personally that a student would walk in late to my classroom, and I taught high school English, and I would always go to the door and open the door and say, hey, Mr. So and so, thanks so much for joining us. And have this sarcastic, like, as soon as he walked in, never give a moment's thought that there was something else going on, except I felt like he was late because it was about me. It was really about me. And I had to really disentangle that. And what sometimes happens is that teachers will say, well, then what do you do? Do you just let him off the hook? And I'm like, no, he still was late. He was still late. But I didn't need to confront him.

I didn't need to be sarcastic. I didn't need to have this standoff in front of the classroom. So what I started to do, my creating opportunities for calm, was once I disentangled this and realized there was a lot more going on in his life, and he was probably talking to his girlfriend, and it wasn't about me. And yes, this is a perfect opportunity for me to talk about expectations in the classroom and all those things, but I would always put the tardy slip on his desk and just say, write down what happened. So it didn't need to be a confrontation. And I still turned in the tardy slips, or I looked at it, and I was like, oh, okay, I get it. Or it will allow me to have a conversation, a follow up conversation later on with him that wasn't confrontational. So just that one little piece.

He still got whatever punishment, you know what I mean? He still had the repercussions of being tardy, but it was just a way for me to take the personal component out of it. And that didn't mean that I didn't get annoyed. It didn't mean I didn't get frustrated, but I didn't feel so energetically charged. Every time he came in late, it was no longer about me. It was just like, okay, all right, we're going to move on, and you're going to take your seat. So there's not a perfect science to it, but that's just one from my own personal journey that always sticks with me.

Yeah, I think one of my tendencies was probably wanting to do it all. And my script was probably like, if I didn't, then I wasn't a good teacher. I think a lot of teachers can probably empathize with that train of thought, even when it comes down to those apathetic students. If I had students who weren't engaged, I might would have thought I was doing something wrong. Like I wasn't doing enough, even though I was planning for hours and hours. Amen. Again, just taking it personally. So, okay, all right.

We have teachers. We now are like, okay, we're figuring out our tendencies. We're learning our scripts. What are some of the challenges that you see most often when teachers start to implement this TLC method?

Yeah, I think it's the biggest thing that I see, and I think this is just natural teacher tendency is to think, oh, I shouldn't feel that way, or, why did I? We then beat ourselves up for having the script that we didn't realize we have, but now we realize we have, and we're like, oh, I've ruined children. We have these things like, oh, now I've ruined. How many kids have I? Because I've thought about that. I'm like, oh, my goodness. In my 20 years of teaching, how many kids have I just owe some amends to with just my temper or just, like, flying off the handle? But then I forget how many kids I probably positively impacted, too. We have that negativity bias. So I want to just say, go into this work gently and with curiosity. And the first step I would just take is take a day or even a half a day, and just write down when you're feeling like some sort of maybe heightened emotion and maybe even a positive emotion and write it down.

I call it, like a mind body journal. When do you feel that way and what's causing it? And that's a really good way to just start to track how you're feeling from day to day, because again, we can get to the end of our day and think that all was horrible. Like, every single moment was just awash. But it's not true. It's not true. And the more we can write those things down over time, I think you start to see trends and you start to see, you know what, there is a lot of good in what I'm doing. And the kids have a lot of stuff going on right now. There is no doubt.

And we cannot in any way, shape, or form fix all of the things that they are bringing into our classrooms. But we have to be gentle with ourselves, and we have to meet them where they are and meet ourselves where we are.

You said that, and it was really interesting to me because I thought about, you said, keeping a log. Well, when I was going through my toughest burnout stage, I was going through a divorce. So I went to a therapist, and the therapist told me, was asking me questions. I told her I kept a planner. She's like, in your planner, I want you to break apart your day into chunks. And instead of looking at the whole day as a terrible day, because that was something I said all the time, I'm like, it was an awful day. She's like, well, what made it awful? All of it. The whole day was awful.

But once I started breaking it apart into chunks and really looking at almost, like, the data, like how we do for our students, I was able to see my whole day wasn't bad. Actually, my morning was pretty good. Then sometime around lunch, it got kind of iffy. And then in the late afternoon, it was great. But then at night, the kids were crazy. So obviously that part was bad. And I was reflecting at the end of my day, when really, you have to look at the whole and calling that all or nothing, thinking that you were talking about. But then later on, I actually went into noticing those trends and then noticing when I was drinking enough water, when I was eating, if I wasn't eating, what time of the month was it? That sort of thing to really recognize, hey, my life really isn't all bad.

It's like, just little pieces.

And so that's really cool that you even kind of mentioned that, because that was something that really helped me, too.

Definitely.

You mentioned you have a book. Can you talk a little bit about the book and what it has in it? Because I know that it will really support a lot of teachers who are looking to be a little bit more mindful and have those better interactions throughout their days as well.

Yeah. So the book I wrote, I wrote in 2018, after battling, I guess, going through two bouts of teacher burnout and coming out the other side of it. It's called the path of the mindful teacher. And what I found through going through those two bouts of burnout was that they were caused by completely different things. And the first bout was really about my personal life was kind of a mess, and I was also a very new teacher, and I found some really great coping tools to work on those things. And then when I encountered the next bout of burnout about ten years later, it was because I still didn't know how to have boundaries at school. I still didn't know how to put those things into practice. So it looked like I had everything going right, which is why they were asking me to do so much stuff, but I didn't know how to say no.

So you can relate to that. I'm sure so many of us can relate to that, because it's like the people who look like they have it together, they're like, here, have more. And you're like, sure. So I almost didn't go back to school one year, and I just almost hid under a rock and to let them find me. And what I did was I went on a sabbatical. I went on an educational sabbatical and really just dove into the practices that were helping me were a lot of mindfulness stuff, but I really wanted to know how to bring that to my classroom because it was helping me outside of school. But I needed to have it all day. I needed to bring the stuff to my practice, to my classroom, to that big game of, like, that's where I'm getting tripped up the most.

Not when I'm quiet in my house, not when I'm going to a yoga class. That's great. All that's great. But then how do I then transfer it into what I'm actually up against in school? So that's what the book is about. It's about, really a ten step path that I share with teachers. And basically, it's about, really, the grain of it that I get to is that we need to figure out the things that we can control and go in on those, and not that we don't care about the other things, but really bringing that mindful awareness to the things that we can control and letting the other stuff go, that's where we're going to be our best teacher selves. So I would really love anybody that wants to check it out, please check it out. It is relevant, and even more so than I realized in 2018.

Yeah. So I'll definitely be putting that in the show notes, the link to grab that book, because I really think it's so powerful, it's so empowering when we know that we're not alone, when we know that other teachers have felt the way that we have felt and they come out on the other side of that. I think for a long time, nobody shared that. Nobody was sharing that, number one, that they were going through it or that they came out the other side. And so I think your book does just that, especially because you experienced it even before the pandemic. Because even now, I think lots of people think, oh, well, it's just because of the pandemic. But this has been happening for a long time. I think teachers have been experiencing this for longer than we've just been sharing.

So, yeah, we'll be putting that in the show notes for teachers to go and check it out. But before I let you go, is there anything that maybe you want to leave teachers with? Any advice, maybe about burnout or scripts or any of that?

I think that the biggest thing I just want to leave teachers with is that you are in this profession because you deeply care for your kids. And I want to encourage all of the teachers listening to know that when they care for themselves, they are showing that care for their kids. And we have got to do that. We have to help each other remember that it's not just like a hokey woo woo thing. It's legitimate, and it is something that these kids need to see. And sometimes that might mean leaving our job or changing jobs or changing schools because it's not the right fit. Nobody's saying you need to stay in a place that's like, toxic for yourself. So I'm certainly not saying that.

But when we start to take those steps to care for ourselves and really own our own stuff, I think that sometimes things do start to transform for.

Yeah, absolutely. I just, I want to thank you, Danielle, for being a part of the podcast and know sharing your insights with the podcast community. For anybody who wants to learn more from you, maybe find your book, your website. Can you share a little bit about where they can find you?

Sure. So I'd love to. If this resonated with you as a listener, please feel free to reach out to me. You can find all the programming that I do at Teachingwell life, but if you are one that are like, I need to talk to you. I want to bring this to the teachers that I work with or have some sort of know. You really felt called to do this work with me? Please reach out, Danielle at Teachingwell Life or schedule a call with forward slash call and we can get on the phone and I bring this work to schools. So I would love the opportunity to talk with you and we can say how can we bring this to the other teachers that you work with. Even so please check out my book but also if you want to do a call, Danielle, I'm sorry, Teachingwell Life call and I also have if anybody wants just like a collection of resources that you can print out for your class, it's Teachingwell lifebundle and that will give you different things.

You can hang up in your classroom, different quick tips on a 40 hours work week, lots of different things that are going to definitely help your well being.

Absolutely. So we will definitely put those in the show notes as well for everybody to go and check out. Thank you again, Danielle for being here on the podcast. It was a pleasure talking with you today.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. I look forward to talking with you soon.