In this episode, we dive into the power of human connection and how it can be the key to overcoming teacher burnout and truly connecting with your students. Teaching isn’t just about imparting knowledge; it’s about building relationships, fostering empathy, and bringing your authentic self into the classroom. We get to chat with Jared Scott, who will guide us in exploring how embracing our humanity not only helps us stay resilient in the face of challenges but also creates a supportive environment where students can thrive. Jared Scott's motivational movement began at the young age of 15, marking the start of an impactful career dedicated to inspiring resilience and hope. Today, Jared is known as an award winning speaker that creates legacies and movements wherever he goes. He is also a proud husband and father, an author, and a counselor.

Jared’s aspiration to become a public speaker started when he was 15 with a mental health crisis in his hometown when there were 12 attempted suicides and four teens committed suicide, in a single year, two of them being friends of his. Deeply Affected by this tragedy, Jared wrote and performed a song in local schools, aiming to offer hope and connection to those feeling isolated.

Guided by the experienced speaker and former Globetrotter, Melvin Adams, Jared has since earned a degree in Behavioral Health Sciences and gone one to work with over 1,000 schools through the Culture Shift Tour.

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[0:00] So often we forget about the power that human connection has and how it can truly be the key to overcoming our teacher burnout or connecting with our students. This shouldn't come as a shock to any educator who's in the classroom, but teaching is not just about imparting knowledge. It's about building relationships, about fostering empathy, about bringing our authentic selves into the classroom. room. That's why I'm super excited to, in today's episode, talk with Jared Scott, who's going to guide us in exploring how embracing our humanity not only helps us stay resilient in the face of challenges, but it also creates this supportive environment where our students can thrive. Jared Scott is a motivational speaker. His movement began at the young age of 15, marking the start of an impactful career dedicated to inspiring resilience and hope. Today, Jared is known as an award-winning speaker that creates legacies and movements wherever he goes. He is also a proud husband, father, author, and counselor.

[1:01] You ever just get to hear somebody who you know just gets it, but they're speaking such inspirational words, like the words you can tell that they needed to hear and that maybe you needed to hear as well? This is definitely one of those conversations. We talk about Jared's past and how he kind of weaves that into his work, how to connect with teenagers and ways to not only improve your own resilience, but create a supportive community in doing so as well. So let's not waste any time and let's get into it.

[1:40] I'm super excited to be here with Jared Scott today. Hi, Jared. Hey, and are you? Good. I'm super excited to be talking with you today. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about you, who you are, what you do, what your expertise is in with education. Yes, ma'am. So my name is Jared Scott. I'm a public speaker. I've been a public speaker since I was 15 years old. So I started this as a high school student. I was just a kid speaking to kids. I lost a friend to suicide when I was in high school and my town didn't really know how to handle that. We didn't have a lot of mental health resources. So it turned into like an epidemic. In one school year, we had 12 students attempt to take their life. And at the time, honestly, I was a shy kid. I wrote my emotions into music. That's what I did. I didn't talk to people about how I was feeling. I just put it into songs. So I wrote a song for my friend that passed away, and I asked the school if I could sing the song. And that was courageous for me as the shy kid, but I just didn't see anybody else speaking up. So I decided to do it.

[2:40] And after I did that, I mean, kids lined up to come tell me their stories. And that's kind of when it clicked for me that if one person can have the courage and the confidence to stand up first and face fear, then other people will feel safe enough to follow. And it's like a chain reaction. Right. And so I just fell in love with that. I was like, I'm just going to go around the country. I'm going to be honest about my feelings, especially as a male. Right. Especially where I grew up. It was like, boys, don't cry like that was Texas. Texas, you know, boys don't cry, rub some dirt on it, just do it. You know, so we did and we suppressed our emotions. It became depression. So I was like, you know what, if I go and I start talking about my feelings, maybe other kids will feel safe enough to do the same thing. And then fast forward 14 years later, here I am 28, about to be 29. I've been in a thousand plus schools, created a program called the culture shift program that basically passes the torch to other kids everywhere I go and tells them like, Hey, look, it's your voice. That's going going to change this school. You know, I empower them to create movements based on the pressures that they're dealing with, the challenges that they're dealing with. They come up with solutions and then they present those to the school. The school gets on board and we present it to the parents and the community. And then we create a big movement and we, we, we shift school culture from the ground up, from the inside out. And so that's, that's what I've been doing the past 14 years.

[3:56] Yeah. You know, you mentioned that you had a friend that committed suicide and I've never ever talked about this on the podcast, but when I was 16 years old, one of my best friends committed suicide too. And I think that was a big, that was a big turning point for me. Like I wanted to make a difference and I wanted to show up in a way that helped support anybody who was dealing with mental health. And, and over time, that kind of, it's interesting that storyline is very similar to kind of what I dealt with because then I ended up working with, you know, teenagers during when when I was a teenager, and then moving into teaching, it just naturally fell into, let me worry about mental health for students, but also for teachers as well. So I think that what you are doing is so needed, and it's just one of those things that's.

[4:47] That's not talked about enough and supported enough. And I love that you say, you know, from the inside out, because I talk about, you know, changing the culture of a school from the inside out as well. So lots of, lots of similarities there, lots of really cool stuff. That's the only way it works. That's the only way that it works long-term. I've been around long enough to see it tried a lot of different ways from the top down, you know, administration down, and you're only going to help so many kids. A lot of them are not going to buy in. Yeah. Yeah. And, and at the same time, like you see a lot of people who will, you know, try to change things politically from the outside in, and that doesn't work. Like it, it puts more stress and pressure. Yes, I agree.

[5:33] So, you know, you talk a lot about, you know, helping teenagers and things like that. I think one of the reasons that teachers can become burned out or have been burned out in the last several years is that mental health epidemic that's happening with our teenagers, with our students. But also, we're getting this gap in between teachers and students where we're We're not really making that connection where we're not getting through to them. And I know that you talk about how to do that, like effective ways of getting our message across to teens. What are some of those ways that we can start to kind of shift and bridge that gap?

[6:14] So when I first started speaking in schools, I noticed how hard it was to gain respect from the audience. I was young, so I was a kid. So they looked at me just like another kid. And then the adults looked at me as like a kid, meaning I didn't have experience. So like, what's this kid going to teach me? Right. So I realized over time that in order to gain respect from an audience, I had to be more than vulnerable. I had to be honest, even about my flaws, even about my inexperience. You know, I had to I had to be very vulnerable. And that's what won them over. And so when I look up the definition of respect, it means to admire somebody for their qualities, their characteristics, for their achievements, for who they are. So I was like, oh, you have to know somebody in order to respect somebody. That's not how I was taught respect. I was taught you respect somebody just simply because they are older than you. Yeah. Like period, you know? Yeah. And I think that's how the adults in my life looked at respect. Like even if I didn't know them, they're like, you should respect me because you're a kid and I'm an adult, period. And so when I realized that that was the definition of respect, I was like, oh, it's stranger danger. That's what I'm dealing with. Like they don't know me. So when I I walk into this building, I am a threat.

[7:20] Yeah. I literally, that's why the new kid gets picked on, you know, it's because we don't know how to talk about our feelings. So we go poke at them to see how they're going to react. We see their reaction and all of a sudden we're not so scared of them anymore because there's less uncertainty, which brings the fear. And so that's why we pick on the new kid. I was like, oh, this all makes sense. I'm a new kid. I'm walking up. I'm on stage. Like, who is this guy? But once I start talking about my feelings, my emotions and how I'm dealing with life, I would win them over every time.

[7:46] And so there's a lot of adults that are trying to get kids to tell them the truth, but the kids don't know the truth about the adults. And I'm not saying for adults to go air out all their dirty laundry and give all their problems to the kids, but you have to be vulnerable to a point that you are seen as at least a human being. And I mean that because you go out in public when you're a teacher to Walmart or just to eat in a restaurant, you see your students look at their face. I mean, they're just mind blown that you even shop, that you even eat, you know, because they they only see you as that perfect professional that you pretend to be. Right. But we expect them to be honest and open and vulnerable and come to us when they have problems or feelings and emotions. But to them, we're stranger. That equals danger. That's a threat. And they're going to avoid that at all costs. Right. So after my programs, when I'm honest and vulnerable, kids line up to talk to me. And every time the staff's like, how did you get them to open up to you? It's like, did you see how honest and vulnerable I was in front of them? You know, they feel safe. And we as human beings, we relate to each other through feelings.

[8:48] Our circumstances are always going to be different. I don't know what you're going home to, what you're going through. I don't have your family, your friends, your siblings. I don't have your traumatic experiences. And I could put myself in your shoes to try to shift my perspective and have empathy for you. But I can't put myself in your head. I don't have your brain, you know, so I don't have your worldview, your perspective of life. It's unique to you. You have your own personal reality based on your personality, the way you think, the way you act, the way you feel. Right. So the closest thing that we could use, the best thing that we could use to really connect with each other is if you told me how it feels to be you and I tell you how it feels to be me and we relate to each other through those mutual feelings. So when I'm talking to adults, it's like if they don't know how you feel.

[9:32] Because a lot of adults are like, I told them what I went through when I was a kid. I told them that I dealt with bullying and this and this and that. It's like, all right, cool. Like, but how did it make you feel? Yeah, the truth isn't just what you're going through, what you've gone through. The truth is how you're feeling and how you're dealing with it. So if you're not talking about your feelings, you're not fully connecting with the people around you. And we know this to be true because that's why we can sit in a room full of hundreds of people and still feel alone.

[9:56] That's how we can be on a planet with billions of people and still feel alone because we're We're actually alone in our feelings. Nobody knows how we feel. There's so many people on this planet. You should actually never feel alone, right? But why do you feel alone? Well, because people don't know how you feel. I used to sit in the back of the class. I didn't talk to anybody about my feelings. Everybody knew I came from a split parent home. Everybody saw my parents fighting at baseball games. Like my parents were always arguing. They couldn't get along. They couldn't even go to the games together. If one came, the other one would leave. Everybody in my small town knew this, but they didn't know how I felt. I had friends that came from split-parent homes. I could have told them how I felt, but I didn't. So it felt like it was only happening to me. Right. And if you don't tell anybody how you feel about anything, life will feel like it is only happening to you. Right. Yeah. And just listening to all of that, I think about the times that I really connected with my students. And it was. It was through feelings. But when you're going through a lot at a, at a specific time, it can be hard to even name your feelings. Like when I went to therapy, I can remember like my therapist asking me questions and I like literally could not think of the words that described how I was feeling. I just knew it was a lot. It felt, you know, like, and so sometimes I think we take for granted that we can kind of create these, um.