Episode 22- Exquisite Compassion with Father Greg Boyle Artwork

Experience Matters with Steve Shapiro

If you ask someone about the most powerful learning experience of their youth, few people will mention a lecture, a textbook reading, or a test. Nearly all will identify an EXPERIENCE; that is because experiential learning is the most profound and lasting form of learning. So if experience matters, how do we offer it to students in our schools? This podcast invites folks to share the learning experience that most deeply impacted their lives, and each episode includes provocations about how we can bring those types of experiences into the mainstream of American schools. Experience Matters is about harnessing the power of experiential learning to transform public education

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Experience Matters with Steve Shapiro

Episode 22- Exquisite Compassion with Father Greg Boyle

October 08, 2023 • Steve Shapiro

Exquisite Compassion with Father Greg Boyle

Father Greg Boyle has spent most of his adult years helping transform the lives of former gang members at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. In this conversation he applies his many lessons learned to how we can increase joy and reduce loneliness in schools through kinship, mercy, and meaning.

We cover a lot of territory, including:

2:21 Greg’s childhood on Norton Avenue

4:23 How Bolivia turned Greg inside out

9:00 How Homeboy Industries came to be

12:26 Building a powerful culture

16:50 A powerful message from a Homie to teachers

19:02 The cultural problem in American schools (the power of relationships)

21:23 The powerful story of Lencho and true belonging

25:30 Exquisite compassion and merciful community

30:09 How Father Greg’s school addressed the most difficult students

31:02 Steve seeks counsel on the youth mental health crisis

33:13 The recipe for sadness and the recipe for joy and wholeness

36:57 How schools are rising to meet the challenge

40:06 Father Greg tells a story you won’t want to miss

Learn more about Father Greg and Homeboy Industries

Homeboy Industries’ powerful 30-year anniversary short video

Father Greg’s commencement address at Pepperdine University

Mike Wallace’s 1992 60 Minutes story on Father Greg