School Without Suffering

Laura: Today’s conversation is with Carli Saber. Early in her career, Carli was a Montessori teacher. During her time in the classroom she observed the clear abilities of her children as well as the limiting beliefs holding them back. Carli now works as a PSYCH-K Facilitator, helping parents and children to shift stress, anxiety, limiting beliefs, and lack of confidence due to learning difficulties to help clear the path to their full potential.

This conversation invites all of us to think deeply about how school-related anxiety can develop at an early age and persist into adulthood and what we can do to support the learners in our lives, including ourselves.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Carli, and I hope you enjoy listening

Laura: So you and I got connected in a Facebook group where I had put up a post asking people, if you identify with having struggled emotionally, with school exams at any point in your life, or school in general, would you be interested in sharing your story on our podcast? And if you would, please get in touch? And so you did, you sent me a message. And you said how the post had really resonated with you from your own experiences in school. And also, how many of the clients and teens that you work with today really stood out to you when you read your this post. And so I'd love to just open by giving you the space to tell us more about the experiences that have brought you to the podcast today.

Carli: So thank you so much. So I started my career, going to university, I did education in psychology. And I love learning about psychology, I'm still obsessed with the brain and all aspects of it, except to being a psychologist, it just didn't resonate, because I didn't really understand or feel that I could support people just talking one on one, like, I didn't really feel like that's going to really fix problems. And I thought, why not be a teacher because then we can set children up for success, and they don't need to go to a psychologist. And then I went into a mainstream school. And I was like, Ah, this is why all these children need a psychologist. And I was just observing how things were run. And I started looking into the history of school. And it didn't really resonate with supporting human development, which is how I found Montessori. And I love her. I love Maria Montessori if you don't know her, she's a philosopher. She speaks all about how children develop, develop how humans develop, and she basically created schools to support that. So that is how I started and I just observed children. Even in the school system, while I was a Montessori teacher, I just saw that a lot of children had all this anxiety, or this lack of competence, and all this needs to perform. And this is because it's very much in our society, you know, there's a competition, it's all about success. But when you drop that away, human beings, they love to work anyway, they love to socialize anyway, they love to connect anyway. So there was all of this pressure that was just made up, and all of these experiences that were just kind of not needing to be there, that was creating all this lack of confidence. So I have seen that I see this with all my clients, I see it with parents, there's all this anxiety that is happening all the time. And yeah, I just kept on observing it. So that is where I started, I started by just observing this lack of competence. And this last a lack of anxiety that you know, is real to the person who's sitting in it, but someone observing it, it's not really important because in the end of the day, like you can catch up any academic issues or if you don't know your time tables, at the end of the day, it's not really gonna matter when you're an adult, a fully formed adult in society, loving what you do and supporting what you do. But those experiences of not feeling good enough and not being good enough. They those are those beliefs that you continue to have and then they are they can show up in adulthood. 

Laura: So much of what you just said about what you saw in the mainstream schools, and how, you know, it seems like Montessori which I will have you describe more for our listeners who don't know about it, but this educational model That was is really designed to help solve for a lot of the problems that we see in mainstream education wasn't solving the problems, we were still see, we're still seeing a lot of the same issues with anxiety, living, limiting beliefs, stress. Because that is it comes so much from our culture, and how even even with an educational model that is designed to naturally follow students or children's development, there's so much in how we as a society have structured things that make it really difficult for kids to escape. Can you tell us about how anxiety, stress and limiting beliefs can get in the way of any of us at any age, reaching our full potential. And then talk a little bit about how you saw those things being exacerbated in the classroom?

Carli: Sure. So firstly, it's about knowing the anxiety and understanding what happens before the age of around seven, or sixish, we take on all those societal pressures, if we have them in our society, like you were just saying, and or we might have them genetically, we've just taken them on. And so if your family has gone through a lot of stress, we might still be holding that gene in our body, even if we're living in an extremely safe environment. So what happens is, we might not even be aware of why we have this anxious feeling, we might have just absorbed it. And what that meant is children that I observed, and parents in any specific situation, if it's with relationship beliefs, money, beliefs, learning beliefs, intelligent beliefs, something will happen that triggers this fight flight, anxious response. And then people would go into either flee, I don't want to do this shut down, you know, or fight get defensive. So I would see this with children all the time, you know, I'd sit down to have this like, beautiful lesson, and they would just completely shut off or they would get angry or defensive. And not always and it would come in different ways with a lot of avoidance, but I was observing this bigger picture of oh, that child is having a fight flight response to this subject. So and when you're doing like, you know, when you're in a fight with your your friend or you're in a fight with someone, or you're observing a fight, there's no point rationally rationalizing or trying to support that person in that time because not you know, you're in fight flight, you're not thinking or hearing you have to come back into a calm space to have a discussion and find a compromise. And that's the same with learning. So when a child comes to a situation and their first response is, I'm bad at this, this is I'm not good at this. I have to be really good at this or I'm gonna fail and I'm not Got a bit and all this overwhelm, they're already in this fight flight, which is blocking their ability to learn it. And our brain picks things up and observe things and connects things together. So if a child has had a situation in preschool in kindy, every single time they go to school, they can be easily triggered again and again. And our brain associates things. So if you're anxious with working on something, and then you're sitting with a friend who's talking to you, that connects to the anxiety of friends at school, so it can really spread quite widely and become become big and become really intense.

Laura: What I always tell parents and what I also always teach our students, and I'm sure this is something you talk about with your clients, too, is exactly what you just said about the associations our brain makes being where that anxiety comes from. So in the moment, we may be freaking out about a late math assignment or something like that. But what our brain is actually reacting to, and and we talk to our students about their amygdala, and hippocampus and all that stuff. And so what we explain is, your hippocampus has all of these memories stored. And this, this math assignment has, has made one pop up in your brain and that from maybe a very long time ago, or maybe several times in your, in your history with school, math assignments being late, have been stressful for some reason. And so your brain has learned that when this comes up, you're in a dangerous situation. And it needs to tell the amygdala to sound the alarm. And now your amygdala sounding the alarm. And now your brain and body are going crazy. And it feels impossible to focus on anything. So that's that's what's happening. Just like you said, it's not the you're actually in danger. So then, then the question is, what do we do about it? And so that's where, you know, we'll work with the students on strategies. And like you said, there's a million ways to learn to overcome this reaction that is inbuilt in our brain. And I love how you said at the beginning, too, it's there to keep us safe. It actually does amazing things. It can make us run way faster than we otherwise could to escape danger. It's what keeps us safe. And it's so it's actually something that to be valued. We don't need to hate this part of ourself. It's there. It does make things difficult sometimes. So we need to learn to work with it. But it is normal. What, if anything, did you see in the school environment that was exacerbating the student's anxiety or limiting beliefs or just stress response that was hindering them from Learning. And if nothing if nothing was going so far as to exacerbate it, then what did you see in the environment that wasn't helping?

Carli: So I think I, I'm very sensitive to more that on this scene and unheard things that are happening. So the children would come we would do lesson, then another lesson, then break, then another lesson, then another lesson. And on paper, observing it look really fine. But you have a whole lot of children who have all different ages and stages. So a group of those children weren't actually learning much, because they already knew it, a group of those children were so lost and had no idea what was really happening. And then a group maybe in between where it was on their level. But then the children who had finished in a moment, they needed something to do so then they had finished, the children who needed hours and hours of time, that one hour went really quickly the other children are talking so they're getting distracted, and also drawing. So you know, how can you focus when all these other children are talking and drawing and then just shave off the sheet of unfinished work was, you know, going into their workbooks glued into their workbooks, and it just didn't. So I was seeing a group of children, it being an a waste of time, and thinking, Oh, this is so easy, I don't need to be smart. I mean, I'm so smart, I don't need to be pushed. So this is what they were psychologically being told, a group of children being like, Oh, I can't finish on time, I can't focus, you know, and, you know, maybe the middle group, and that was completely, obviously always changing. I also saw how in a mainstream school it was very much like, if you do this, you get a sticker. If you do this, you get this. And like, I remember children looking at me and doing things in front of me, to, to get validation to get stickers to make me feel that they are really good as a child or student. Psychologically, it can be so harming to children. And they're physically saying, get through this to get a sticker. But what they're psychologically saying is, do this to make me happy, because well, it's all the world's all about making other people happy. So that was in a mainstream bowl, in a Montessori school, and this is why I absolutely loved it is it spoke all about the psychological impact you have as a teacher as a guide, you're not even a teacher, you're a guide because children learn anyway, you don't need to teach them you show them and they do it independently. They are with a group, a whole group of children of different ages and stages. And that that culture is created to not you know, not have any of those mainstream meaning beliefs that I spoke about, because it's not about any external rewards. It's all about like supporting them to be independent. But what I saw is that it was still a Montessori school was still in the realms of that curriculum requirements of the state. And therefore that culture was creeping in. And the more I had to put it in, the more that culture became more mainstream it because it's set up to be easy to do that. And the more I had to do that and fight against this Montessori system, and the more stressful I became stressed, I became, the more I was not the supportive, best person that I could be with my children. So it's like, the teacher has to be the best and less anxious, the children will pick that up. But these things that are created can be very stressful. The teacher, the teacher is just like, I need a ticket off the parent, the child receives that energy when they have to do this thing. And then I was seeing that in my school and my system to the extent that I got so anxious. And it was awful for me that I had to leave. And I only left when I found psych K.

Laura: Often when we have conversations about how do we how do we solve these problems, a lot of those conversations can get focused on instructional model, of which Montessori is one. And we just need to find the right instructional model. And if we do things like Montessori does, and follow the natural development of the child and individualized learning and get rid of, you know, like staunch grade levels where students have to move through at a certain time, then we'll be okay. And what we're hearing from your experience is, yeah, those models are great. They can do they have great potential maybe, but on the ground, this is what's happening, we still live in the society in which we live in which success is measured by money in which you have to make money to survive and to be and then beyond surviving to do well. And those are all messages that we get from the moment we enter the, you know, the world. And so we know that as a teacher, you're living that this is your job, you have expectations from your bosses, which go all the way up to the state government level, telling you what you need to achieve. You're trying to do the best thing you can by kids, you're also trying to meet the expectations of your job so you can make the paycheck that you need to live so that you can do well in your career. So that because you have all of the same pressures that we're talking about. The school system puts on kids, you went through the school system, you have a job, like we're all the same, right? So there's no we focus on this instructional model we focus on, like the idea of teachers and teachers have to do this, and teachers have to do that. But we're all people living with the existing power structures that guide our lives. And so we can change things like the instructional model, but we can still see these problems. Because they're bigger than just the classroom. They're bigger than just the teacher. They're bigger than just an individual student. 

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Laura: Okay, we're talking about all these problems that school is causing our students, but we're sitting here as functional adults, we're doing fine. Why are we saying this is such a big, such a big issue? Like what is actually the big deal?

Carli: Well, I mean, it is the big deal, like we are fine, but we're in a situation where mental health is one of the biggest issues in the world. You know, it's like an it's a huge epidemic. It's like suicidal, right? It's like teen teen angst, is the biggest issue going on in society. And if that is like, technology, pressure, like there's something that we're doing, that's not working because our nervous systems cannot handle that. And you spend a lot of time at school, you spend a lot of time learning how to be a functional person in, in the community. That's what you know, school is about and if it's not really giving you and setting you up for those successful experiences to be happy and joyful when you leave school. Then what is the point? And really, for me, it's like what is the point because yes, I'm working with so many Parents and so many clients if they had, if it's, you know, their relationships and their lack of ability to connect with others because of their insecurities, and all that them stem from this repetitive, repetitive experience that they probably would have experienced from the culture of school. Not probably, because there's so many ways, but you're spending so much time at school, so you would have had many memories. So yeah, like, I see it for more than mental health realm. And like, Yeah, we all were fine. But why do we, why did we all have to go through these like awful experiences to be happy, when we could have had all these ways to be set up to be happy and know that we're happy?

Laura: It's like, okay, yes, some of us are fine. But we're fine, in spite of the experiences we had growing up being educated by this system that is teaching us in a lot of cases, unhealthy habits, unhealthy beliefs. And then a lot of us are not fine, even if we seem like it on the surface. I'd love to hear if you can share any, any success stories or any anything that any stories of people learning how to respond to their anxiety and limiting beliefs in a more healthy way. What are you seeing from clients when they come to you and then what are you seeing from them? Once they learn these techniques that we're talking about? We would love to see students leaving school with these skills.

Carli: I actually work with one child in particular who really had a lot of anxiety around school. And, and I was working with them one week, and then the next week, I was like, What are we going to work on? And he was just talking and speaking and telling me all these things. I was like, shocked at that. I'm like God, like, and then I looked back at our old Sitecore session, and it was all about like, I'm safe to tell the truth. I'm safe to speak my, my feelings. And we did To all these beliefs around speaking your truth, which is like, it shocked me, because I saw him the next, you know, the next week, and I didn't remember what we went through. And then I was like, Oh, my goodness, like, this child has completely changed. So just setting him up to express himself through the subconscious believes that maybe he took on if it was preschool, or that he had taken on from family members that you're allowed to get your needs met at school, were helping him and I saw that I saw that change, like he just became so much more talkative as I Oh, is he like more connected to me. So I, that your beliefs and your, your actions. Once you shift and change them, hopefully, they'll set you up for success wherever you are. So I've seen that in a lot of children that I've worked with, and adults that I've worked with, that I will always make sure that I see a parent before I see children, because parents project a lot of our own fears and anxiety or their own, you know, experiences from school or life onto their children. And as soon as that they let go of the stress, they'll be saying, you know, I've just been working with you. I haven't even you haven't even worked with my child. But then I everyone's coming and telling me, my child so happy now. And then they're realizing that it had nothing the child wasn't the problem. It was them and the stress that they had that they were then projecting onto the child.

Laura: Yeah. I think in a lot of cases, we think we've made it out fine. But we have all these beliefs about school, that we don't even realize maybe how they're affecting us. And then when we become parents, we project those ideas and those influence how our kids do in school. There are a lot of things that we can do as individuals, to learn about what's going on with ourselves, subconsciously, and train ourselves to think the ways that we need to think and feel the ways that we need to feel and do the things that we need to do to get to where we want to go. And that's hugely, hugely important. And there are lots of places that we, we the collective we have of the planet come together, as individuals to do something bigger, like, educate our youth, like we come together as people, as individuals to build school systems to create school environments, to set goals and to try to achieve them together. And if we can keep in mind, top of mind, when we're doing those things, collectively, what we've learned about our own selves, where did these like? And start to think about? Where did these beliefs come from? What can we do to make it easier for our for the next generation to not learn those beliefs? What are we currently doing that makes it harder for them to unlearn those beliefs? Or what are we doing that are teaching that or re teaching these beliefs over and over again, if we can keep those things top of mind, then we can also do work collectively, to help make a huge difference in each other's lives. And I think that's true, whether we are the most Yeah, talking about adults, we can make this easier on ourselves, we can also make it easier on the kids who are coming up. So in that spirit, I love to ask you, so when you bring yourself to this collective work what's that top of mind for you?

Carli: So the two things is like as a parent, yes, it's going to take time to unschool yourself and integrate these new ideas. But if you keep on really understanding them and teachers and parents, then the more that we understand it, the more were telling and sharing those lessons with with children. And as you said, it changes culture. So if parents and teachers and children Like we love learning, learning is about doing X, Y and Zed and bringing more this love instead of competition. That is when it slowly changes is that and that's when the children see. So what I would love to see in schools and out of schools and what I'm already seeing is children kind of acknowledge and understand education in a way that brings them love and joy. You know, we love learning, we love making things better the world is the way it is because of the human brain, always trying to think of new things to develop, we love you know, having listening to podcasts, understanding how we can be better do better. So just instilling that more in our children, we probably are, if that's naturally in us, but letting go of that, we need to read we need to write, we need to hit this milestone, and we need to get these grades and really just letting it go and allowing, you know more more of that, like developmental flow in a way, you know, that's balanced and respectful. So that's what I would love to see that whole different culture shift and change. As well as the site key element of it, which is this anxiety, people really working on their own beliefs that their limitations, their understanding, and, you know, some teachers have had some educators have had some of my talks, and they say, Ah, I know all of that. But then I've observed them, and they, they're not integrating it. And they obviously haven't integrated it because they still haven't really, they just want to make those children feel better, or, you know, they haven't really had their own experiences to then integrate and share it naturally with the child. So really, for adults to be doing work, if it's subconscious work, meditation, understanding, you know, their triggers their limits, and how they can best serve himself, because then they know how to serve and support their children. And the last thing is, is for children to get those skills, they are never, they are never never too young, the conversations that children can have, you know, I've spoken to two children who had a fight over a rope remote, but it is never about the remote and one child who was like six or nearly seven, they're like, Well, I just really feel unheard. Like a seven year old saying I just feel unheard, it's like, so amazing that they have been in a situation where they're really get gotten the space to reflect and go what's deeper here. Yeah, and when when children start doing that, it is incredible. And, and just that notion is like you can overcome your anxiety, it is a part of our brain. And it's always going to happen. We can't get, you know, anxiety and stress and any emotion away. We don't live in a utopia. But we can overcome it, we can observe it and go, Oh, I'm feeling anxious about this, oh, I'm feeling stressed about this. Oh, I'm feeling annoyed about this, what is really here? And what do I need to shift and change, because as soon as they know that they can do it. They can just implement that in every subject. If it's educational, if it's a fight in the classroom, if it's a fight in the playground, if they're a homeschooler. And they you know, going out and wanting to do things in society, if it's a learning, difficulty or disability. Once you kind of bring this acceptance to yourself and you know yourself and you know, you can overcome your anxiety, then, you know, you're going to live, you're going to live obviously better, because instead of being like this is only me, I am stuck and bound by my issues. You kind of are empowered to know that there's ways to come out of those dark holes. 

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If you’d like to learn more about Carli’s work or get in touch, find her on Instagram at carli.saber, that’s (C-A-R-L-I-dot-S-A-B-E-R). You can also find links to her free tools, including a talk on homeschooling in the show notes for this episode.

Next episode, you’ll hear from a current high school student, 16 year old Avery Wooldridge, who shares her perspective on going through school with anxiety and depression. If you’ve ever wished you could understand more about what the students in your life may be experiencing, you won’t want to miss it.