Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning

Seth Fleischauer (00:01.058)
Hello everyone and welcome to Make It Mindful, insights for global learning, the podcast for globally minded educators seeking thoughtful conversations about how education can attack. See, it happens.

Chris Balme (00:12.506)
Thank you, editor.

Seth Fleischauer (00:14.318)
The podcast for globally minded educators seeking thoughtful conversations about how education can adapt to an ever changing world. I'm Seth Fleishauer, former classroom teacher turned founder of an international learning company specializing in the teaching of global learning. Together we explore the interconnectedness of people, cultures, and systems and how these relationships shape transformative ideas in education. Each episode features educational change makers,

whose insights lead to practical solutions and lasting impact. Brought to you as always by Banyan Global Learning. Let's make it mindful. Today's guest is Chris Balm, like lip balm, leader, author, and speaker, and founder of Hakuba International School. Did I say that right? Cool. Yeah, pronouncing Japanese super easy. I should have known it was correct. But, and the Millennium School in San Francisco. Welcome, Chris. Thank you so much for being here.

Chris Balme (00:59.812)
Yes.

Chris Balme (01:06.17)
He

Chris Balme (01:11.386)
Thanks Seth for having me, delighted to be here.

Seth Fleischauer (01:13.87)
When we met a few weeks months ago, I'm not sure time is weird but when we met we talked a lot about middle school because that is like the zone that you've really focused in on here and I forget exactly how you put it but you know, it was essentially like we're doing this wrong. that's what our conversation is gonna be about today. Like how can we redesign middle school to align with adolescent needs?

Chris Balme (01:32.73)
You

Seth Fleischauer (01:40.302)
Middle school is often an isolating and stressful time for students because traditional school structures don't align with the adolescent development. So how can we rethink middle school to foster engagement, social connection, and real world learning? That is what we're going to talk about here today. But first, could you please give a little bit of background? Like how did you end up becoming the person that you are founding these different schools? One in San Francisco, one in Japan. Tell us a story. How did that happen?

Chris Balme (02:08.14)
Yeah, that's a long and winding road. I'll try to make it brief. I think the natural starting place would be as a middle schooler. I was a kind of nerdy, lost, confused middle schooler, had moved around a lot, felt like I always must have missed the day where people explained how to make friends, how to be part of this. And yeah, yeah, yeah. And the weirdest thing in a way is that as much as I was

Seth Fleischauer (02:25.598)
Ugh. God. Same same here. Spider-Man meme right now.

Chris Balme (02:35.246)
miserable in those years, I also thought it was normal, almost like I was having the correct middle school experience. The prediction was true. And I never really questioned that until years later. I left the K-12 system, walked out of the door of high school, thought, I will never set foot in a school again. All done. Which is a dangerous thing to ever tell the universe. And fast forward a few years and I started to wonder, does middle school actually have to suck? Is it meant to be traumatic?

Seth Fleischauer (02:54.83)
You

Chris Balme (03:03.02)
Is that just kind of developmentally what we have to go through? And, you know, long story short, through my own research and then teaching came to a pretty strong conclusion that it does not have to suck and that the way we've designed middle school really works against what middle schoolers need, how their brains are changing, what they're naturally driven to do. And we don't have to make it so painful. You know, it might still be awkward at times because anytime you're changing that fast, it's going to be awkward.

Seth Fleischauer (03:25.635)
Hmm.

Chris Balme (03:31.78)
but it does not have to be traumatic. It doesn't have to be a time when kids check out of school and start deciding that they don't care anymore. I guess lots I could say, I don't want to talk too long, but my path has been all focused on that, in different roles, starting a nonprofit and then with these two schools to make it better.

Seth Fleischauer (03:45.731)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (03:51.416)
Well, I think middle school doesn't have to suck will be the title of this episode. And that's what I'm going with. So, yeah, so let's unpack that. Right. So you were talking about how it doesn't align with their needs as traditionally designed. So like, what are the what are the ways in which we're getting this wrong? What is it that middle schoolers need that we're not giving them?

Chris Balme (03:54.234)
Get the t-shirt now.

Chris Balme (04:13.978)
So from all the different research and all the different work I've done, and this is what went into my first book, I think there are three core drives for middle schoolers. And unfortunately, I think traditional middle schools don't do a good job with any of them. So I'll quickly go through those and we'll see what we can cook up. The first one is about authentic identity. Who am I really? And that requires some social safety so you can take a risk and figure out who you actually are, which, PS, is where your strengths are, where your bigger contributions to the world are.

Seth Fleischauer (04:26.294)
No.

Chris Balme (04:43.776)
Second one is it's the time to figure out how to be among others. It's the most socially motivated time in our whole lives. I can say more about why. And that's probably the biggest mistake that traditional middle schools make is they don't have enough social time. So they're fighting that, telling kids to stop passing notes, stop talking, almost like stop collaborating when their kids are really drawn to do the things that will be helpful to them later in life, which is figure out how to be among your peers.

And the third one is that it's a time when kids are opening to a bigger world and they want to see what matters in the real world and feel like what they're doing is of contribution, that it has some relevance. So if middle school feels like it's kind of a childcare game just to keep you occupied, give you some worksheets, they're not gonna love that.

Seth Fleischauer (05:30.636)
Well, if we, if we learned one thing about the pandemic, it's that the primary purpose of education is childcare so that capitalism can thrive. I, I half joke, but, I mean, my goodness, right? Like we need to put kids somewhere so we can have jobs, but as long as they're going there, let's make it good. Right. Like, so, so I want to, I want to.

Chris Balme (05:39.148)
Amen.

Chris Balme (05:51.458)
Yeah, we can make it good. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (05:56.814)
Push back a little bit on this first piece, you talk about authentic identity. I am 45 and I'm still working on that, right? So like, what do you mean? Like, I can't imagine that that's being delivered to any sort of fidelity to anyone, right? Like that's, mean, that is a lifelong pursuit, right? So what do you mean of authentic identity? Who am I really? it just like, like you said, the opening up to the bigger world, how to be amongst, it's just the beginning of that or is it more than that?

Chris Balme (06:03.374)
Yeah.

Chris Balme (06:13.284)
Yeah.

Chris Balme (06:16.824)
Yeah.

Chris Balme (06:26.862)
Well, I'll first say just to be kind of provocative that maybe it's because middle schools have failed us so badly that we're all stuck in adolescence forever. That could be going on. But also I'm right there with you. right there with you. You know, I think that what's notable about middle school is that this cycle that we go through of seeking belonging, trying to learn how to be good and recognize for that, and then trying to be ourselves, that's a cycle we go through throughout our lives again and again.

Seth Fleischauer (06:33.134)
Okay, all right. Yeah, okay. I'll take the point.

Chris Balme (06:56.068)
But middle school is really the first time that it happens because it's the first time we have the brain hardware to understand that we are in a social landscape at all times. We're being judged, grouped, included, excluded. All of our choices have social consequence. And if a middle school is not a safe place where you could quickly get bullied, teased or worse, then you're not going to risk trying to figure out what you really love. It's much safer to copy someone else.

And that's what psychologists call creating a false self. It's kind of a fragile self. If it goes well, it's not like you figured out who you are forever, but you start to orient toward how can I have the confidence and skills to bring my true self, as much as I know it in this moment, out into this social space around me. And you could have a great middle school journey and then freshman year of high school, you go back to, shoot, do I belong? I don't know if I can be myself.

Seth Fleischauer (07:28.227)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (07:53.24)
Hmm.

Chris Balme (07:54.862)
But each cycle you go through later and then maybe going to college, getting your first job, gets easier if you start learning how to be yourself in a space like that. I think that's where your real power comes from.

Seth Fleischauer (08:05.006)
Hmm. All right. So let's let's talk about a safe space to explore one's own identity because something that I've you know, I live in Portland, Oregon, right? It's a it's an you live in San Francisco area. These are very liberal places that have taken like a certain approach to child rearing to education where like safe spaces are like hugely important, right?

I like the idea of a brave space as opposed to a safe space, right? Because one of the things I worry about within the creation of safe spaces everywhere is the skill of resilience, right? Like how do we get through hard times if we, if there are kid gloves in every single experience that we have.

I don't know exactly where the balance is between like the traumatic middle school experience that you and I had and like one that where we've just mowed down all of the challenges that are in front of people so that they can just coast through childhood and then when they get to adulthood, they all of a sudden are met with a lot of anxiety and uncertainty because they don't understand how to navigate challenging situations. so, so where

Where does your safe space live on that spectrum of like, we need resiliency, but we don't want to traumatize them.

Chris Balme (09:23.32)
Yeah. I love what you just said. And actually the way we define advisory work, which is kind of the ground zero for this is a safe and brave space to make sense of life together. So I'm right there with you. I safety is not the end goal. It's a means to an ends. If we feel safe, we can relax and take a risk. And that might be for a middle schooler opening up about something like super stressed about this test coming up or.

Seth Fleischauer (09:33.358)
Hmm. Hmm.

Chris Balme (09:51.81)
I have a crush, I don't know what to do about it, or whatever that's really stirring them up inside, could they actually have a space, say in an advisory among peers, where they could bring that troubling thought outside and realize, I'm actually not the only one, which is often a shocking thing to realize. You have this feeling that we know as adults is so common, but you really think you might be the only one. And when you're stuck in that,

it's hard to proceed, it's hard to focus in class, it's hard to be yourself. So I'm with you in the safe and brave space and I think there's an interesting opportunity in American middle schools that most of them have advisory in the schedule, but most of them don't know what to do with it. And people are very honest about that usually, like, yeah, we just do homework or, you know, that kind of thing. That could be the space.

Seth Fleischauer (10:41.206)
Yeah. Okay, so that's one how. You know, I'm just thinking about my 12-year-old girl who, like, you know, just comes home with most of what she tells me has nothing to do with what any teacher did that day. You know? Right? Like, it's all about, like, you know, how to be among your peers navigating this space where there's, a crew of six of them and at least two of them are in a fight at any given time.

Chris Balme (10:55.214)
Yeah, it's not the most important thing. I hate to say it.

Seth Fleischauer (11:09.288)
How do you navigate that space of belonging or not? And I see how advisory can be a space where you can tackle that kind of thing. I'm wondering if there's like a larger level like up here where we can address these things culturally where it's not just about advisory, it's about creating a culture of like mutual support and authenticity and

curiosity, which are kind of, know, that authentic identity that how to be among your peers that opening up to a bigger world, right? Like, like, how do how do we build that kind of culture at the Millennium School or at your school in Japan?

Chris Balme (11:54.306)
Yeah, I think you nailed it. And those ingredients you described are just what I think kids need. They need an, I think you could sum that up by saying they need weird adults, you know, weird meaning like honest, like I can be imperfect.

Seth Fleischauer (12:03.296)
Yeah, guess that is unusual.

Chris Balme (12:12.226)
It's unusual, but you know, it's also it's usual and unusual because you think typical middle school, like which teacher is given the most permission to be weird? And it's the art teacher often. And it's not surprising that that's often the person that kids spill their hearts to and feel the most relaxed around. That person has cultural permission to be themselves. Everybody else is wearing the mask. So I think the simple thing to do culturally, this takes a lot of leadership and.

Seth Fleischauer (12:23.383)
Eh.

Seth Fleischauer (12:27.736)
Huh. Interesting.

Seth Fleischauer (12:33.804)
You

Chris Balme (12:39.584)
it's vulnerable is to take off some of those masks that we wear and focus less on being an instructor who's worried about content and more on being a facilitator who's worried about conditions.

Seth Fleischauer (12:52.884)
and who through removing the mask is able to connect authentically versus exist within this power dynamic of teacher and student.

Chris Balme (13:04.024)
Yeah, yeah, because they need, you know, it's a misconception that middle schoolers only care about their peers. They do care tremendously about their peers, but they still need adult models. And because they're in the individuation process, which is developmentally normal, they're pushing back from parents. They've already received such a mega download of how to be a human from your parents. And they're looking for other adults to model that.

Seth Fleischauer (13:15.362)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (13:30.178)
Hmm.

Chris Balme (13:30.274)
If those adults are kind of stiff masked, you know, right at the front of the classroom delivering content, there's not a lot to connect with. But when it's someone you could talk to or who facilitates a great conversation or share something that they're struggling with, along with the tools of how they're managing it, that's an adult they can really gain something from.

Seth Fleischauer (13:49.656)
Okay, so I want to unpack this issue of finding weird slash authentic teachers within the context of your international work in both San Francisco and Japan. I recently read Shogun, which is the best book. It is like 1500 pages that is essentially like a cultural immersion story of a Westerner who lands in like 1600s Japan and like

through the course of every interaction just becomes more and more accustomed to and integrated into traditional Japanese culture. And in the process, you as a reader also become integrated into the culture, right? Like it's fascinating. One of the like tenets of like Feudal Japan is that like you do not speak of yourself, right? Like they talk about like these things that are buried seven layers deep.

Right? So there's this true thing at the heart of something. And then there's like seven layers that it goes through of like, you know, just social norms, basically, like these different things that you have to do in order to save enough face or like play the game. And then you express the thing. And the beauty of the book is that you have access to all of that internal dialogue. So you know what people actually think. But you are.

but you also see how that translates into like almost the opposite thing in actual expression, right? And Americans, we have our challenges with like knowing who we are, but like expression isn't necessarily a challenge of ours, right? Like once we know who we are, we can be fairly forceful about who that is. Whereas in East Asian cultures, if I can generalize here because of the work that we've done in Taiwan,

there is, more, attention paid to what others need from us versus what we are trying to put out about ourselves. And there can be some, you might call it in the Western lens, lack of authenticity there, because what I need is less important than what the collective needs. And I'm wondering, therefore, how does this authenticity piece play out?

Seth Fleischauer (16:11.234)
differently in Japan versus the US or does it?

Chris Balme (16:15.884)
It's such an interesting question and I don't feel like I have a definitive answer by any means. I'm still just so profoundly ignorant. Every time I go to Japan, I just feel like the grace of the people there to, you know, look past my many mistakes is pretty amazing. So I'll say all those caveats. But I do think that you have a point there. And I hosted this conversation between American and Japanese SEL educators and

That's kind of where it landed as well, that in some ways we have opposite problems. This is a generalization to a fault, but the American teacher at one point was saying, it's hard to get my kids to shut up sometimes. And the Japanese teacher was like, it's hard to get my kids to talk. So there is truth to that. I will say, the more time I spend in Japan and still, again, feeling like a total ignoramus, I think that...

Seth Fleischauer (16:55.859)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Chris Balme (17:10.67)
maybe the same amount of communication happens. It's just not happening in the ways that I'm accustomed to as an American. A lot of the times it's what's not said or ways that the conversations are set up that I, in my ignorance, just totally glance past that have tremendous meaning and communicate lots of details and I'm just not hearing it. I feel...

Seth Fleischauer (17:15.566)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (17:21.55)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (17:27.948)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (17:33.366)
Yeah

Chris Balme (17:35.744)
often so dumb when I'm there. I also feel excited because I learn a lot, but it's a very different style of communication for sure.

Seth Fleischauer (17:43.65)
Yeah, like I when I first started working in Taiwan, like, you know, people would come up to me and they'd give me like three just, you know, effusively praising compliments. And then they would kind of dance around this like one thing almost, but then give me three more compliments. And in all of my Americanism, I'm like, look at the six compliments I got. That was amazing. And then, you know,

Chris Balme (18:01.209)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (18:05.394)
Meanwhile, they came to like harshly criticize me for that like thing they almost said in the middle, you know.

Chris Balme (18:08.301)
Ha ha ha

Chris Balme (18:13.078)
I get that. Yeah, it's really different. I do feel, and this was a question I held, I first got invited to go to Japan seven years ago to give a workshop for educators. And I felt really unsure of whether anything that I understood would be useful outside of my context. And I guess I'm starting to feel a little more confident that the developmental drivers that are kind of at the foundation of everything, I believe around middle school, that about.

it being a quest for identity and for connection and for contribution. I think that those are neurologically driven. So I don't want to sound like more of an expert than I am interculturally, but I think that they're more of the same than not in other cultures. But the expression of those needs could look totally different.

Seth Fleischauer (19:00.974)
Okay, so let's break this down. So we kind of talked about the why here, right? Like what we're trying to do. We're speaking to this need for identity connection and contribution. So what does the model look like? How do you do that in a school?

Chris Balme (19:17.304)
Yeah, you know, to sum it up, we could say a lot about this, but we need to get out of their way a lot of the time, because these are developmental drives, meaning that kids are driven to act on them. We don't have to instigate it or incentivize it. They want to be social. They want to experiment and figure out what their identity is. And they want to feel like they're getting introduced to the bigger world and what they do matters. So.

If we listen to them, a lot of it is just that. Could we listen to them and allow them to have major voice in how the school is shaped? I think if we do that, then a few structures are likely to emerge, which would be, you know, less memorization lecture style academics, more projects, projects that let you work with other peers, projects that get you out in the world or what you're doing has to matter or it's not worth doing.

And then, I mentioned earlier, just way more social time. They are so good at learning social rules at this age, and that's so useful for the rest of their life. So we really shortcut or we kind of handcuff them if they don't have social time, or if it's compressed into, you know, 28 minutes for lunch. And then of course, that's going to be a crazy chaotic scene because they're trying to do like eight hours of social work in 28 minutes. So.

Those are a few of the starting points. I can say more.

Seth Fleischauer (20:44.014)
So, so if these things emerge less memorization, more projects that let you work with your peers, getting out in the world, and I do want to unpack that bit in a second, way more social time. Who, who does, what adult does that make? Right? Like, like if that's what we are giving them in their educational experience, what are they going to be good at? Ideally,

Chris Balme (21:03.171)
you

Seth Fleischauer (21:10.902)
measurable skills because that's how a lot of schools like get their funding or tell their story, right? Like it's, can't just be qualitative, right? We want to be able to say like, if we do this, they will get this. So what is the this that they will get from that?

Chris Balme (21:24.91)
Yeah. I mean, I think that those social time and those other pieces, like a sense of agency are conditions for healthy development. So you would notice healthy development, for example, if this is a kid who has an ability to bring something out from themselves that is not necessarily the popular opinion, to be able to debate that respectfully, to offer innovative, unusual

you know, left turn ideas. I think you'd see it in higher emotional and social intelligence, which, you know, I know that's been become a little controversial recently, but there is actually such a body of research behind that, that shows that you could have very high cognitive intelligence and not be very developed socially or emotionally. And that's going to cause huge obstacles and you won't achieve your potential.

I think it's been measured in terms of happiness as an adult and also in terms of income as an adult. So you need to develop the social and emotional side. It is measurable. And this is probably, again, I think the best time in life, early adolescence, to develop social skills. Not the only time, plenty of important things happen at other stages, but this is when the brain growth is happening at its highest, the highest pace it'll have for the rest of your life. And it's especially about becoming a social brain.

So those would be a few of the outcomes I'd expect to see.

Seth Fleischauer (22:49.198)
Yeah. So I love this idea of, you know, not the popular opinion, left-turn ideas outside the box. It does sound very American, right? So like within an East Asian culture, you know, that is anti-collectivist, right? Like sticking out and the work that we do with Beining Global Learning, that is, that's a value add, right? Like we, understand that like they're getting the traditional Taiwanese education from

Chris Balme (22:58.904)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (23:18.018)
the teachers who are traditionally Taiwanese and that from us, they're getting a Western way of thinking that has to do with being able to express original ideas in their own words. Is that like an explicit part of what you do in Japan? is it like, is that spoken of the fact that this is a Western way of thinking that you're bringing to them and just like they're steeped in Japanese thinking because they're raised there and then they're just given this extra tool? Is that the idea?

Chris Balme (23:47.236)
To some extent, and I'll say also the school is an international school. So it's about 40, 45 % Japanese, but it's kids from all over. And I really hold that question of like, is that a Western idea? Obviously it's easier to notice its expression here, perhaps. But I don't think there's anything that goes against a collectivist culture about being an authentic person who's able to honestly share your thoughts.

Seth Fleischauer (23:50.699)
Okay.

Chris Balme (24:15.182)
In the US, we have other factors that make it hyper individualistic. So we're trying to be authentically ourselves and we're in these kind of atomized communities often. And the individualism is reinforced by how our economy works and lots of other things. But I think it's possible to be communal and have people able to authentically speak their truth.

Seth Fleischauer (24:30.819)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (24:39.448)
definitely able, we got to teach them, right? Cause it's not something that just is kind of going to just bubble up from, the culture, I think. at least that's been the case in, in, my experience. what about like the relationship between these schools? Right? So you've got these two schools that you've worked with. Is there, is there an official like partnership between them? Do you facilitate it? Like, is that part of the real world part where you're connecting students to each other?

Chris Balme (24:41.817)
Yeah.

Chris Balme (25:07.628)
Not directly, but they're clearly inspired by the same sources. We've drawn a lot on Montessori traditions, drawn on all kinds of interesting neuroscience and adolescent psychology. So I don't think that either of those schools are doing something that's never been done before. It's more that we're combining things in a different way. For example, Millennium School is smack in the middle of San Francisco in a super urban environment.

Hakuba International School is in the Japanese Alps in a village of 8,000 people, which is probably the population of just a few blocks around Millennium. And so we spend way more time outdoors. We've got five weeks of outdoor expeditions and we study nature and use it much more centrally as a classroom because that's where we are and we couldn't possibly pass that up.

Seth Fleischauer (25:54.35)
That's the environment. Yeah, so that is a great segue into this real world learning, right? So when you're talking about applying their learning to the real world, having projects that have real world application, real world viability, you're talking about literally leaving the classroom and going outside and doing what exactly?

Chris Balme (26:17.902)
I mean, I think the essence is that school often feels to kids like it's a prison. I I've heard that more than a few times from students, you know, over the years, because you're not allowed to leave and you're not given a lot of choice. So the essence of it is more choice and kids will definitely choose to go out into the world because it's interesting and they're smart enough to get that, that that's where so much of the vitality is.

Seth Fleischauer (26:32.92)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (26:41.55)
Yeah.

Chris Balme (26:47.382)
So if we, again, just listening to them and responding as facilitators more than instructors, it would happen naturally, I believe. So to be more specific, mean, some of the things that have emerged from that, apprenticeships, I think, are one of the classics. Like, in a way, this is like the most ancient form of education. Someone with skills, someone who wants those skills, you know, go work together. It's not just talking about it, but actually do things together.

Seth Fleischauer (27:02.616)
Mmm.

Chris Balme (27:15.514)
And before I started these schools, I started a nonprofit called Spark that just was entirely focused on apprenticeships for middle schoolers and created, I think it's created more than 17,000 so far. So it's in every possible job you can imagine and probably some of you would never have thought of. And it works. It makes kids more motivated because that motivation is just waiting to come out when they feel like there's relevance and they're connecting this and they're not just again, stuck with worksheets in school.

Seth Fleischauer (27:24.878)
Wow, dude, yes.

Chris Balme (27:45.388)
So say apprenticeships are one of the best expressions. But it's lots of other things, you know, at Millennium and Hakuba, there's a weekly expedition and often you go in your advisory group. So it's a cluster of peers that you know really well. You have different jobs, you're managing navigation, safety, budget, and you're out there because there's too much good learning around school to possibly ignore that. So I know I'm glossing over a lot of

complicated logistics that go into all this. We can talk about that. But the essence is, yeah, insurance. There are so many resources out there and kids want them. So that tells us what our marching orders are, so to speak.

Seth Fleischauer (28:12.91)
Insurance, yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (28:27.086)
So, you know, of distilling this down, a lot of people listening to this might not have the flexibility to fully execute on this vision. For that person who's trying to take a step in the direction of making school more meaningful for middle schoolers, like what kind of advice do you have for people? There's not a lot of flexibility, but what are some baby steps?

Chris Balme (28:55.514)
You know, I always tell parents of sixth graders, know, maybe you've been coming into school to volunteer in elementary school or you've aspired to that. Now the tables have turned in middle school, your kid probably doesn't want you in the classroom or at some point they won't, but instead can you be a bridge to the world and either get us out of school or find amazing people. You might be an amazing person for someone else's kid and bring the real world into a classroom.

Seth Fleischauer (29:08.694)
Yeah.

Chris Balme (29:23.258)
So I think that's the easiest step is to say, you know, it makes a huge difference. Let's imagine you just did like a biology project and you've got to know your teacher and you, you're a student, you kind of know what they like. You can kind of manipulate them and you're, you know, writing a paper for your teacher, whatever. But if you imagine at the ends, you know, instead of just your teacher seeing it, you've got a professional in the fields, maybe a biotech person or a biologist who's going to come talk a little bit about what they do and read your work and.

talk to you about it. When kids have that real world elements, they are so much more motivated. And the feedback they receive means so much more because they know there's objectivity to it. So those would be the starting points, I think.

Seth Fleischauer (30:04.087)
Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. And this is where, you know, distance learning comes in as a real leveler of opportunity, because, know, there could be a kid based in San Francisco is going to have, you know, his pick of who he'd like to work with. what kind of apprenticeship he'd like to have, because there's 8,000 people within a square block. It's going to be very different for the kid in Hakuba who's, who doesn't have, you know, it only has a village of 8,000, right? and, distance learning can be that.

that opportunity for students to connect with new people, fresh ideas, undiscovered places. You said bring the world to the classroom. That's how I do that. That's how we do that is through tech.

Chris Balme (30:43.862)
Awesome. I love that. Yeah, I think it works. And that's one of the beautiful outcomes of such a difficult time with the pandemic that we're all just better at that now because we had to be.

Seth Fleischauer (30:51.726)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (30:55.094)
Yeah, the biggest barrier to people engaging with our content pre-pandemic was just teachers knowing what Zoom was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly. Well, Chris, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your insight into, especially this global piece. Obviously, I see a lot of my own experience in what you've done to be able to kind of

Chris Balme (31:03.8)
Yeah, for better or worse, we all know what Zoom is now.

Seth Fleischauer (31:24.482)
bridge the different cultures that that insecurity of like going into another culture and being like, is what I know valuable here and then like, sort of slowly and with curiosity and respect for the local culture figuring out how to like, connect the dots right in a in a way that like that like allows you to recognize these like, universal things about childhood development like it's, it's awesome. It's, yeah, I love love the work that you're doing.

Chris Balme (31:32.217)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (31:53.952)
I really appreciate you being here. there anywhere on the internet that you would like our listeners to find your work?

Chris Balme (32:01.752)
Yeah, thank you. And thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun to talk about this and any chance I get to try to help people think differently about what it is to raise or teach an adolescent. I love, because I think we can do so much better by them, you know, full circle. doesn't have to suck. This could be a time of life where you really step into your full potential. So much more is in my book, Finding the Magic in Middle School. And then I write a newsletter called Growing Wiser and post on

Seth Fleischauer (32:17.902)
Yeah.

Chris Balme (32:30.616)
Instagram and other places.

Seth Fleischauer (32:32.576)
Awesome. Well, I will be sure to include those in the show notes for our listeners. For our listeners, if you'd like to support the podcast, please do follow us, tell a friend, leave a review or a rating. Thank you as always to my editor, Lucas Salazar, and my advisor, Deirdre Marlowe. And remember that if we want to bring positive change to education, we must first make it mindful. See you next time.