Middle School Life
Welcome to Middle School Life, where innovation meets education! Join us as we explore the latest trends, share inspiring ideas, and discuss strategies to create an enriching middle school experience for all.
In each episode, your hosts, Assistant Principal Victoria Hammond and middle school teacher Dr. Jennifer Erdmann, will bring their wealth of knowledge and passion for education to the forefront.
Middle School Life
Navigating Discipline: Balancing Empathy and Control in Middle School Classrooms
Ever grappled with the unruly classroom? Lost sleep over how to manage disruptive behavior? As educators, we've all been there. Join Victoria Hammond and Dr. Jennifer Erdmann as we dissect the problems and potential solutions surrounding discipline in middle school education. We pull back the veil on the myriad sources of disruptive behavior, from unstable home environments to peer pressure and academic frustration.
Navigating the waters of discipline often feels like a high-pressure balancing act, especially when a student with a known history of issues enters the classroom. How do we provide necessary support to such a student without detracting from the learning experience of the other 25 students? It's a tough question, but together, we'll explore the challenges, nuances and strategies involved. From the importance of clear communication and revisiting expectations, to the role of parents and the necessity of having systems in place, no stone is left unturned.
But discipline is not just about rules and consequences. We believe in the power of empathy and compassion. The final segment of our discussion shines a spotlight on the role of these attributes in decreasing discipline issues. From teaching these values to students, to fostering them among educators, we understand that empathy and compassion can be game-changers in the classroom. Join us in this collaborative journey as we strive to create more supportive and understanding learning environments for our students. Share your thoughts, strategies, and experiences on our social media pages. Together, we can make our classrooms not just places of learning, but spaces of emotional growth and understanding.
Welcome to Middle School Life, the podcast where teachers and administrators can exchange ideas and learn from one another. Your hosts, assistant Principal Victoria Hammond and Middle School teacher Dr Jennifer Erdman, helped to bridge the gap between educators and administrators, discussing ways to create a more productive, efficient and welcoming environment. Join us as we work to inspire change in middle school education. Let's get started.
Speaker 2:Hello listeners and welcome back to another episode of Middle School Life, the podcast where we explore various aspects of middle school education. Today, Jen and I are going to discuss one of middle school's greatest conflicts discipline.
Speaker 3:Could be the most important in middle school, I think, and teacher perspective Most controversial, yes, most talked about.
Speaker 2:Most needed for improvement in the ways we think about it.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely For sure. I think we have very various perspectives on that. This is why we have decided to break this topic up into probably four right now, where we've got them planned for four different episodes related to discipline. I think today we'll just kind of lay that groundwork for it. In the next episode or two, we will have a guest on the show that will Woo-hoo Start and she's amazing, and we'll be able to add to that, especially when it comes to like the social, emotional component and things that we can work on from. Basically, that's going to be kind of like from the students perspective than I would think. Or you know, this is going to be today's laying the groundwork from teacher perspective for me and you're the administrator perspective and how we can kind of maybe come to some common ground on this, because I do think this is probably the word Controversial, Yep, but it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not challenging. It's definitely the most challenging aspect because it's trying to find the happy medium balance between the I feel like the SEL aspect of it versus the accountability piece. And how do we, how do we hold them accountable? But also by making like logical consequences. And then how do we get parents involved when we have parents who are challenging to get a hold of? And how do we, you know, ignite the team to come together and problem solve around a student that maybe doesn't have the best, maybe record?
Speaker 2:of environment and right of environment in that background, and then they the the pieces to make the right decisions, or the adults who have cared about them before, who have, who have raised them to respect educators and education, or who have instilled in them any type of values of you know respect, or have they instilled in them that you know you don't ever let anybody disrespect you and it doesn't matter who they are Like.
Speaker 2:How are we going to to build those pieces? So I think today, when we're talking about discipline, it's going to be really interesting just to kind of hear each other's perspectives, because I once was in the classroom, so I definitely understand that teacher perspective but also kind of laying it out there from an administrator perspective. What are some of those things? When you're looking at progressive discipline and when you're looking at a student code of conduct that's given to you by the district, how are we able to tackle those together? And, I think, clear communication and revisiting the expectations, not just for the students but also for the educators. Hey, if, if I'm the assistant principal and you're sending a kid to the office, what are those? What are those steps to lead there? And that the teachers feel like oh, I know that if I do this, then my admin is going to do this in return, and so, therefore, I feel like heard and valued and I'm part of the process, and that we're all working towards some collective good.
Speaker 3:Right, but the last episode, if you didn't listen to it, we discussed school climate and culture and I took on the school climate piece and one of my key factors in that school climate piece was school safety. But I incorporated discipline into that and I because I think discipline is is really the foundation of of any school. If it's functioning well, then you have strong, consistent discipline policies that everybody knows. But some of the common discipline challenges that we as teachers face every day include disruptive behavior and that could be talking over the teacher, out of turn, defiance or non-compliance, tardiness, cheating, disrespect, and these problems can can stem from various sources.
Speaker 3:Again, we talked about the unstable home environments peer pressure, academic frustration I think is a big one in disengagement.
Speaker 3:When you know I think I just saw the other day that I can't remember it was a high number, maybe 50, 60%, and I'll look up this up and get a solid percentage but it was an incredibly sad statistic, incredibly high statistic, that so many of our students are about four years behind on reading level. So if I'm in a sixth grade classroom, many of those students in that classroom are reading on a second grade level, yet we are pushing them and demanding that they reach sixth grade benchmarks. So how can they not be frustrated? And we all see these, you see those academic frustrations every day. But the challenge I think is for teachers is trying to differentiate between is that student willfully disobeying, or are they a student who just needs some more support? And I think that that's where we, as teachers and administrators, need to figure that out, do a better job of that and got this question. I think that this discipline, honestly the discipline issue does create the widest gap between teachers and administrators. I really believe that.
Speaker 2:I agree with that and, piggybacking off of what you just said about that engagement piece and the students with those academic deficits the biggest problems I see when we go into classrooms or when we have students who are being disruptive. If you really can get down to the root cause of the problem, I would like to say that in my experience, I would say probably 80% of the time are better. It is the students frustrated. They don't understand, so they're acting out so that they don't have to look like they don't know something. They don't like, to look inadequate or they're not engaged in the classwork. So how, also as educators, can we educate those or can we engage those kids and get them focused on the learning and making them feel like they have a responsibility to their peers and in that team?
Speaker 2:Because one of the things we've been working on one of our schools focuses this year is like Kagan strategies and probably thinking like how does this relate to discipline with the strategies we're using in the classrooms, when it brings in each piece of the strata, each piece of the cake and, depending on what you're doing, every student has a role that they have to fulfill in their team in order to complete whatever that mission is, whatever that objective is, for that one standard, but when every single one of those kids is held responsible.
Speaker 2:So, for example, if we all have to start writing down on a piece of paper in a circle but person C can't go until person B is engaged in that work, you're getting everybody like, oh, I can't let my team down.
Speaker 2:And a lot of the times when those kids are engaged and they're part of that team and they don't want to let their peers down, it can help with some of those disruptive behaviors when you're engaging them in that work and when you're pairing them with teams intentionally, where you have students at the same table with students who are lower, and you have some that are higher and some that are high medium and some that are high low or medium low, so that you can get them all together and they can kind of build off of each other and kind of nudge each other in the right direction. And it also helps to reduce some of that frustration, because when you can get those students working with each other where they don't feel that's the thin line, where they don't feel inferior, but they feel like, oh, I have to do something and this person can help me. It can really make a great change.
Speaker 3:It can, and unfortunately I've also seen it backfire in a classroom because we've had students that are such behavioral challenges and you've tried everything that you know and they turn that classroom upside down.
Speaker 3:So I mean I love that, it really is and as a teacher and I think that this is where teachers get frustrated with the whole administrative process of discipline is when you've got 25, 28 kids, whatever you have, and you have one or two in your classroom that absolutely can completely ruin that learning environment, but you've got all those other kids looking at you Like why can't you?
Speaker 3:just do something. That is the hardest thing to accept and deal with as a teacher that I feel, that I hope administrators never forget what it's like to have that feeling of failure, like you're failing these kids, you know, and I. That's the hardest part for me is when I've, like I said, when I've got all these, these other kids looking at me like why can't you just do something? And a lot of times you can't.
Speaker 2:What is there?
Speaker 1:to do.
Speaker 3:What is there to do when you try?
Speaker 2:everything else.
Speaker 1:Where are we going? Where are we?
Speaker 2:going to move this student.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I feel like, in those instances, when you have those students that are to that degree that you're taking hours and hours of learning from students over time, you're taking periods of learning from students what is that next level, what can we do? If we're going to do a behavior plan, if we're going to do an FBA, if we're going to have a success plan, if we have that student paired up with a mentor, what is what can be that in real time steps we can take so that those students aren't learning? And if it wasn't an instance where it was occasional disruption, like you might right now have some discipline IA's that could come, hey, remove them, reteach, remodel the expectation, try to have them reenter the classrooms. But when you don't have maybe that, the amount of staff that maybe you need to go in and do that, or people who can go in and reteach, remodel those expectations, it can really steal from learning.
Speaker 2:And I think that finding something like that is probably the what you just expressed. I guarantee you that our thousands of listeners right now are thinking that that's it, like you just hit the nail on the head, like they feel like that feeling of failure and that feeling of frustration. And what can we do to make that better? Because we also don't want to give up on that kid, because we don't know what the root cause of that problem is, but we also don't want to steal from the other 24 kids in the classroom either.
Speaker 3:Right, and a lot of times I feel teachers are not equipped to discover or uncover I should say uncover the root cause of that student's problem. You know, because guidance may not know everything about that, about that student, and a lot of times I'm not sure we get all the information that we need to better help them. And we all want to help those, every student. But I think the frustration comes with, you know, one or two students in a classroom. That can absolutely destroy the learning environment and the focus then becomes on how to help those one or two kids rather than making sure the other 25 kids are getting what they need.
Speaker 3:And that's that's frustration for me and that's that's so hard to admit. But you just don't have, I don't have the tools sometimes to deal with a lot of this, and I know I can't be the only one thinking that as a teacher. But I think we need more training on that, I think we need more support, and I know from I mean, I'm not an administrator but I can only imagine the frustration they must feel having the teacher go to them yet again on a particular student like, well, this is what he did today. And administrators have to feel the same same frustration.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I, I definitely. Everything you just said really resonates with me and in a lot of pieces that I'm just sitting here thinking about is how can we put systems in place where we can streamline the communication when we have students come in, when we have students come in who we know have been in maybe previous physical altercations, like other things like that, how do we communicate? Hey, these are the things that might happen without tainting, like, the perspective of that student when they enter the classroom. So where's the fine line with how much should we share and how much should we maybe not share to give the kid a fresh start, when you think of it kind of from that perspective? But my other thing is how do we, as administrators, when the teachers come to us frustrated and absolutely running out of options that are in their toolbox, how do we find the tools to put into their toolbox so that they then can continue to help that student but also help the other 25 students? Or what are those systems that are in place that can help provide breaks, maybe for that student from the environment or provide in an ideal world, in an ideal system, when I'm thinking about it would be if we had people who could go in and sit with that student and kind of like redirect them and then model those expectations and show them how we learn in class and try to keep them in that classroom, because a lot of the times there's work avoidance and they're trying to escape because they don't want to do the work, they can't master that standard. They feel so frustrated, like what can I do to get out of this class? And how could we, how do we use our resources to maybe try to keep them in that class but provide them with the insistence they, the assistance they need.
Speaker 2:And the thing is is in public education there's not a lot of time, the funding and the staff to have somebody who can go sit with the five kids per period that need to have that one-on-one support. And it might not be every period, every day that they need that support, but when it's needed, if there's a way to have somebody to go in that classroom, sit with them, work with them and then, if it still isn't working out, quietly remove them so that the class can go on and the other students can continue to learn, and Take that kid out and maybe try to see, hey, what was going on, like why is this happening? And I think that the biggest issue we have in public education is that the underfunding and being understaffed and then losing other allocations because, oh well, these num, these numbers don't quite fit. How can we Provide more? How can we give them more?
Speaker 2:And then at what point does it become a an issue of how do we get these parents more involved so that they could come in? How about we invite the parent into the classroom to come sit with the student and witness the behaviors and see if they can come up with A solution? But I will say, sometimes, when I'm dealing with some of those students, the parents are just at fresh, just as Frustrated, and they're exhibiting some of those same behaviors at home. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 3:I've talked to parents this. You know the school year and let them know what's happening, and they say exactly that. Well, doing the same thing at home, and a lot of it is. Middle school is a unique age too, and if you don't understand the middle school brain, I that can be a source of frustration. For teachers too is under state. First of all, understanding that they're in middle school, they're going to test boundaries, and that is separate from cursing at teachers and absolutely disrespect. So it's, it's tough, but I think that because this is such a big issue I you know discipline issues, it's affecting teacher retention.
Speaker 2:You know and one of the main causes.
Speaker 3:I think so, and so you. It's, it's Discipline. Is this is causing this revolving door?
Speaker 3:cyclical completely cyclical because you've got students misbehaving, not much is being done a lot of the times, or at least not what we feel should be done, which leads to teacher frustration, burnout, teachers leaving, then you get maybe the less than qualified teachers to fill that space. Then, without classroom management, students are gonna misbehave in classrooms that don't have strong classroom management. So it's, it's a constant thing and it's got something's got to get done, and I think that I Think teachers, I do think we need more training, and I think that the Administrative red tape that we have to go through just to write a discipline referral needs to stop. I think what's happening is that process is so long that Teachers just give up and they don't want to do it. They'd read they don't have the time to call All XYZ, a number of parents, and so they just stop doing it and therefore the behaviors continue.
Speaker 2:I definitely see that and one of my talking points that I wanted to bring up today was totally understanding, from the teacher perspective, the time being an issue.
Speaker 2:The Calling parents and maybe having parents that maybe aren't as receptive to what you have to say, or having parents that maybe come back and even to me, like sending an email, can be sufficient sometimes.
Speaker 2:But it's the fact of sometimes if there's a referral that maybe lands, like in in my school, it would most likely lean in admin, admin's hands and I call and I talk to a parent about this referral, because now I'm calling the parents talks to about it and they have no idea what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:It's hard for me, like, if I get a chance to talk to the teacher before I call the parent, I can get more of a perspective and a point of view from them.
Speaker 2:But if the referral just states Johnny, through a pencil, it's hard for me to then talk to the parent and tell them hey, this is the consequence I'm giving, like this is what happened in class when I'm not the one who was in class, and I will tell you that every time I've called a parent and the teacher has already spoken to them, the parents like yes, so and so let me know, thanks for reaching out. Like. Whatever that consequence is, we understand and it goes a lot smoother if the parents are Hearing it from the horse's mouth, because sometimes we just don't have the whole picture and then it gets. It can cause more miscommunication between the parent and the administrator and then it turns into this like the cycle of like having to hold on, let me call the teacher, then I'll call you back, and then it takes up all of this extra time when we aren't able to get that full picture.
Speaker 3:Right, and I'm totally on board with that. But my point is obviously, parents need to be notified, without a doubt. Um, but how many times do we need to call the parent on that same issue? So, for me, if and I I Like to think I have decent classroom management, yeah, I've seen it. Above decent, I would say if I call a parent, fine, but and I've never really been one to write too many referrals, but if I write it that that referral better stick absolutely.
Speaker 3:Um, but I also don't think I need to call the parent for three, four times for the same issue that their student is doing before I write the referral. It's like, as a parent, when we discipline our own kids, am I going to keep, okay? Well, this is the third time. You've done it. Now You're gonna be grounded. No, you, here's your warning. You do it again. Now it's a referral. I just think that we're giving too many chances. You know it for the same thing, right, you know, be it horse. How many times do we have to tell kids stop horseplay, stop running in the cafeteria, stop, stop, stop. Before it becomes? You didn't listen the last time. Now you've got a lunch detention. You didn't listen the next time. Now You've got after-school detention. Right, you know. Now you're at IS. I saw that and I'm a.
Speaker 2:I agree with you on that piece. I feel like sometimes the referral is a lot of times like a piece of paper. So I understand the like, oh, if it's like you get one chance and then it's. This is a little bit to me. When you're in the middle school age and they're trying to like learn those expectations, and I'm just in my head thinking of the throwing pencils scenario they throw the pencil one time.
Speaker 2:I feel like it should be a conference with a student, one-on-one, without like embarrassing them from the peers, but talking the one-on-one, hey, we don't do that in here. Oh, what like? Is there anything going on? Do we need to talk about anything? Most likely like no, like I'm sorry, it won't happen again. They come back in, hypothetically, in a model world, second time they do it. You call home a lot of the times. If you can do that with the student present, it kind of makes a larger impact if you have a supportive parent on board and then Document that so that we know, hey, we talked to the parent and then if it happens again, it should be a lunch detention, it should be an after-school detention. But I I feel like in order to have those things, it doesn't necessarily have to be a referral. I think there are consequences and that we should reteach and remodel those explanations and I think one of those things, one of the things I want to talk about today, was like setting Expectations and even if you're just talking about maybe like a PBIS framework, if you have like three major goals Throwing a pencil, I'm sure out of whatever your PBIS goals are, you could set it to one Like, hey, you need to be accountable that you threw that pencil and we're going to revisit that expectation. And I feel like, as administrators, if we can find a way to find some maybe Quick behavior videos, behavior reflections where we can take those kids out of class the third, fourth time they do them, or when they're in that lunch detention, hey, I want you to watch this video and then I, before you're going to be able to go back to class, I want you to reflect on why that didn't meet these expectations and how you're going to do better next time.
Speaker 2:Because I think something that I think in the beginning of the year we start out strong within it starts to like, as the year goes on, diminish is the piece where we're Retaching them, those expectations, and how a lot of the times we just expect them to know better, and I think some of the times they certainly do know better, but some of them need that Retich, remodel explanation. Like, maybe we show example non examples on the news of what it's like to be a responsible citizen or whatever that Expectation is. But how are we remodeling and retaching that expectation? And I'm not saying we do it 500 times, but maybe after each time you have a consequence. Or even if you have a discipline referral, if you have a referral, okay, you have a referral, you're coming to the principal's office, you have ISS If he has that from throwing the pencil, if you just give him ISS and he sits in ISS for one day and he does all of his work and he goes back to class but he doesn't do any type of reflection, any type of apology to the teacher, any type of replacement behavior or learn what he should have done.
Speaker 2:Instead. That behavior is just gonna continue. Writing or referral does not solve anything. It's a documentation piece, just like I feel all of the other consequences should be documented in some way so that we can say here are the things we're trying, here are the things that working, here's the things that aren't working. So what can we try next?
Speaker 3:Right, and I do think the referral should, for the minor things should take a while to get. You should take a while to get to that stage. But that's also saying they still should have consequences along the way, correct?
Speaker 1:100%, you know for larger things.
Speaker 3:I think cheating is a big one obviously in fighting and horseplay than done referral. But the little you're trying to correct a behavior, find the replacement behavior for that and then use PBIS strategies. If they didn't throw a pencil in class that day, make sure you acknowledge hey, thanks for not throwing your pencil in class or whatever it is, but acknowledge that they're at least trying. Thank you for trying to sit in your seat the whole time. Thank you for whatever.
Speaker 3:And you know, so you can. That is also important to find that positive with them too.
Speaker 2:And, on that note, I love that you said that as like a verbal positive praise, because a lot of schools have token economies or they have PBIS, reward points and I think it's very important to know that, like PBIS and positive behaviors, interventions isn't all about the point system or the token economy, it's about the verbal positive praise and it's also about, you know, praising the kids who are doing right every day and those, really, in my opinion, the points in the token economy. For me, the should be for the kids who are consistently coming in, the students who are going above and beyond to be, you know, exemplary citizens. That's where that should come in. But otherwise, like, the students should have that. But hey, you did not talk over me one time during my lesson today, like it could be something at the end of the lesson. I really appreciate that. That made my job so much easier. And a lot of the times I feel like there's someone else who, like I shouldn't have to explain myself to kids and I'm not telling you you have to, but I'm I'm saying a lot of the times when you can tell them hey, thanks for doing this, this is how it impacted me. Or if you have some type of logical consequences where I have.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's say, for example, I had a student who was goofing off because the horse playing and grabbed a girl's water bottle and it fell on the cement and it dented her water bottle. She worked really hard to earn the money to buy this. It was like a Stanley cup you know those are all the buzz and she worked really hard to earn the money to buy that cup and she was really upset and so when she originally told him about it, he was like okay, so like who cares? And he went back to class. So when this student told me about it, I was like, okay, let's see how we can solve this problem. I bet you that he doesn't really understand. You know how much this meant her because this was one of his friends. So I called him down so that he could hear from her perspective. Hey, this is how it made me feel when you did that to my water bottle and I worked really hard to earn that money and I'm really upset that you did that.
Speaker 2:And then this kid was he kind of got it Like before he it was all happened so quick and it's during passing and he wasn't really understanding like what he did or that it was a big deal. But after he heard that explanation he was like, oh true, like. And then so I'm like okay, well, what are you? How are you going to fix it? Like, what is that next piece? And so in this example, he's going to buy her a new water bottle, like and I know we can't enforce that upon all children, but if we can have them when they're in a calm state, I'm not saying right after like a heavy disagreement or a fight, but if we can have the students like, talk to one another and tell each other about how each other feel and I think that might feed into our next guest speaker might be able to tell us a little bit more about that that we can really help them find empathy.
Speaker 3:And that's what these kids are missing.
Speaker 2:When they find that empathy and when they understand from other people's perspectives and they can put themselves in other people's shoes. I guarantee you that the discipline and a lot of ways can decrease when you can be more empathetic and compassionate. And I feel like there was this gap during the pandemic where people didn't have to be around a lot of other people and in my opinion and I don't have any statistics on this, just my opinion I feel like that empathy and compassion maybe decreased some, and I think it's.
Speaker 3:it is our responsibilities to try to help build those social emotional skills within our middle school students so that we can help build them up to be responsible, caring, empathetic adults, and that is one of the pieces that is missing is and again it's a time issue, but we all need, again, it goes back to maybe some training on the entire staff on how to lead these students to be empathetic. You know, are we, as adults, showing empathy towards each other? Are we, as adults, showing empathy towards all students? Are we modeling that ourselves?
Speaker 2:100%.
Speaker 3:Discipline is such a multifaceted issue and obviously we're not going to solve it today, but I think that we are laying some some groundwork for future discussions and I do think that, with our guest speaker, that will add some color to this issue and how we as teachers and administrators can can best help these students thrive in a classroom. And because, with going back to when we were talking about at the beginning of the podcast today, talking about those one or two kids that are in per class that are absolutely disrupting the entire, turning the entire classroom upside down Well, that we're not going to prove test scores, you know our achievement scores are going to suffer. I mean, again, it's part of that whole hamster wheel thing that, unless we, we've got to figure things out quickly. So but it's it's. It's all related to discipline, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:I 100% agree, but I just truly believe that having the conversations and bringing administrators and teachers together and collaborating and thinking of next steps and speaking from with people with different perspectives is how we start to create change, cause no single person can do it alone. We have to have each other and we have to build upon one another and we have to build understanding and compassion and empathy with one another so that we can do what is best for kids, because, at the end of the day, I don't think you could find me anybody in education who doesn't actually believe in their core that kids matter and what we're doing is to make them better.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I mean, we wouldn't do this. It's not like we don't do it for the pay, that's for sure, but we do it for the love of these kids and, again, that's why it's so hard and it goes straight to our hearts and it sometimes is incredibly heartbreaking when we can't fix our classrooms, you know, because it does lead to bigger things and bigger issues if we don't control what's happening a little bit better. And it gets back to teachers and administrators having those those somewhat probably oftentimes difficult conversations about what can be done without blame and that has to be without blame and judgment. We need to have those conversations. You know, if I go to my administrator, I would hope that they're hearing me and at the same time, I want to be able to be in a place where I also hear them on solutions to address these issues in the classroom.
Speaker 2:Snaps to that. Thank you, guys.
Speaker 3:so much for listening we want to thank our listeners again for all the support, but for this one. I would also like to see if we can generate some more discussion on on our social media pages, on our Facebook or Instagram, and we'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas and chime in on. You know what? What? What is working in your classroom? Share your classroom management strategies, share your discipline thoughts, Share your administrator, what works with you when you talk to teachers, teachers, what's working in your classrooms? And maybe we can just start trying new things and just keep these conversations going, because there's got to be a solution out there.
Speaker 2:There has to be a way. Where there's a will, there's a way, absolutely. Thank you guys so much. Please engage in our social media, ask questions, make statements, send a nice little gift, whatever floats your boat, until next time listeners spend middle school life the podcast.
