Heart and School Podcast
God's heart. Your school.
Educators and friends, Gina, Nicky, and Laura, share inspiration, practical tips and laughs to encourage you in your calling as a Catholic School educator. Come to have your cup filled with reminders of God’s love for you and your school!
Heart and School Podcast
Introductory Mini-Episode
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In this introductory mini-episode of the Heart and School podcast, hosts Nicky, Laura, and Gina share their backgrounds in Catholic education and their vision for the podcast. The episode highlights the significance of Catholic education and sets the stage for future content.
Welcome to the Heart in School Podcast, where we take time in the middle of our busy educator schedules to consider God's heart for each one of us in our schools. It's a place where you can find inspiration, practical tips, and hopefully a few laughs to encourage you in your calling as a Catholic school educator. My name is Gina, and each week I am joined by my educator friends Nikki and Laura. We can't wait to journey with you as we allow the Lord to fill our cups and remind us of the sacredness of our work in his schools. Hello, friends. Hi there. Welcome to the Heart and School Podcast. We are firing up a little mini episode here just to do a little introduction of ourselves as hosts and to share a little bit about what our hopes are for what's to come in our podcast. So I guess first, just wanted to share that this podcast is born out of our mutual love for Catholic schools and our work in them and our hope and desire to encourage and build up other teachers in this important call that we have from God to love and serve and help young kids grow in faith. So we just wanted to start by introducing ourselves a little bit so you know who it is that is going to be on this journey with you. Uh, we'll go from there. I guess I can start unless any of you are chomping at the bit. Take it away, Gina. My name is Gina. I am a mother and an educator in Appleton, Wisconsin. I currently a campus minister at a middle school. And uh our school is a system, a pre-K-12 system, and I do a little bit on the system-wide level for spiritual um nourishment of teachers. And I've been enjoying this aspect of being in schools very much. Prior to that, I spent 10 years at home with my own children, being a mom to seven kiddos. And uh prior to that, I was a middle school teacher for seven years teaching science and religion. So that's that's my quick quick and dirty. Thanks, Gina. Do you have to pick a number? Do I have to pick? Oh, yeah, we were gonna do a little look I I will, Nikki. I'll I'll pick a number when you go. Or you can pick a number and then uh you can pick my number.
SPEAKER_01Okay, great. All right, you pick number 14.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so I have this little never have I ever teacher edition, and I'm gonna I have I have a list and we're just gonna pick numbers randomly. So my number says, Have I ever had a student throw up on me? The answer is no. I have had children of my own children throw up on me, but I've never had a student actually throw up on me. Thanks be to God. Have either of you? No, not that I remember. I feel like if that happened, I blocked it out for sure. But Nikki, maybe that's a good segue into your experience.
SPEAKER_01All over my shoes. On the way to see Beauty and the Beast, which I'm pretty sure you directed. All the elementary school teachers are like, yep, mm-hmm, me too.
SPEAKER_02So Nikki's an elementary teacher if you didn't figure that out yet.
SPEAKER_01I can introduce myself. I'm Nikki. I live in Madison, Wisconsin. I have been an elementary school teacher in the Catholic setting for about like 14 years. I also took a little break in that to stay home with my kids for five years. And now I'm just happily living the third grade teacher life.
SPEAKER_02Nice. Pick a number. No, you pick it for me. Oh, I'm I get to well, but I already can see the question. So Laura, you pick. You pick your number. Two numbers? Laura, you can pick Nikki's number. I'm really good at getting a few. For Nikki, I pick, I pick 16. Nikki, have you ever seen a student eat a booger? I'm not kidding.
SPEAKER_01That's the question. Every day regularly, some like it's aggressive.
SPEAKER_02Aggressive nose picking.
SPEAKER_01Like it's like they're making a meal of it and it's horrifying. Again, the younger you get, the more you see that.
SPEAKER_00Although that happens in middle school sometimes too.
SPEAKER_01Oh, bro. That's when it gets actually probably ickier when you're like, hmm, no, thank you.
SPEAKER_02I was just at a cottage with my family, like my siblings and my parents this past weekend. And my sister was talking about how she actually saw an adult eating boogers as she was driving in the car. And I was like, what is it? Do they taste good? Like what? I don't know. I don't get it. We don't need to discuss this. I saw it. Well, yes, we are. Sorry. We're getting on a tangent here. So Laura. Great.
unknownThank you.
SPEAKER_02Save us from this, Laura.
SPEAKER_00Please. My name is Laura. I live in Detroit, Michigan. And uh I served in Catholic schools for 19 years. I was a middle school teacher. I was a pre-K through eighth grade uh principal and then served in diocesan leadership for uh for a handful of years as well. So I uh presently serve um as a missionary with a Catholic organization that serves the church in a multitude of different ways, but super excited to be with my friends from 20 plus years ago. We all met uh serving at Camp Gray in Wisconsin as counselors. So uh very excited to be together to share uh just some time with each of you, um, talking about our ministry in Catholic schools. And um, we definitely don't have all the answers, but we do look forward to sharing uh the joys, some of the struggles, funny stories and encouragement from our time in Catholic schools. Um it's a beautiful vocation, and we're excited to journey with you.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Oh yeah. Nikki, you can pick Laura. Oh no. Oh, she's go ahead, Nikki. No, no, no, no. Nikki, pick her number.
SPEAKER_01No, four felt good.
SPEAKER_02Four felt good. Okay, here we go. Laura, have you ever graded assignments without really checking them?
SPEAKER_00I actually the first thing you came to mind. No, no, that'll tell a different story. Yeah. So so there was a there was a time the the most freeing experience I think I had was realizing I didn't have to grade everything. And I just sort of recycled a pile of assignments that my my students had uh had turned in that was you know not worth uh not worth assessing their work and wasn't a regular thing, but it was very freeing. So I have graded things for completion. So graded without checking. Yeah, yes. Tell me a teacher who hasn't.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I forgot about these, better recycle them.
SPEAKER_02I was really hoping that one of you would pick 15. So I'm gonna just ask it anyways. Have you ever found a live animal in a student's backpack or locker?
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, no.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, no, you does like an old moldy sandwich count? Um, I have not ever found a live animal, but I I'm I like I saw this on a list of teacher never have ever. So I'm like, somebody must have at some point found a live animal if it's on this list. Like there somebody smuggled for show and tell their pet from Horror. No thanks. So yeah, we're um excited to share some of our experiences and just some funny stories and inspirational content, as Laura said, with our listeners. I actually um looked up recently how many Catholic educators there are in the world. Because I was just like, I don't even I don't even have perspective on how many people are doing this important work. And it's over 5 million people in the world are doing this work and serving over 50 million students pre-K through 12 Catholic schools around the world. So it's a big work, it's an important work that God is calling us to to pass along his love and faith to children all around the world. And we want to just encourage other educators in this important work.
SPEAKER_00So you're not alone. You got you got millions of other fellow Catholic educators. So that's exciting.
SPEAKER_01Each week, if you tune in, you can expect to hear inspiring stories, practical tips, spiritual takeaways, and in future episodes, guests sharing their experiences in Catholic education. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And just so you know what to expect, it'll be about 25 minutes long. We know educators have a lot on their plates, and we're hoping that it'll be just the right amount of time to encourage you each week. Uh, maybe you can listen to it on your way tour from school or on a walk at lunchtime during a prep period, something easy to listen to. So we look forward so much to taking this journey with you, and we'll see you a week from now. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. If you enjoyed it, would you share it with a friend or two and leave us a review? We also invite you to follow the Heart and School Instagram page for more encouragement and practical tips for your Catholic educator journey. We are praying for you and your schools. See you next week.