SEL in EDU
Real stories. Practical insights. Everyday Social Emotional Learning (SEL).
SEL in EDU
092: The Psychological Safety Gradient with Chase Mielke
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A single hand raised can fool us into thinking a class feels safe, while most students are silently calculating the social cost of being wrong. We sit down with award-winning educator and burnout expert Chase Mielke to make psychological safety practical through a Goldilocks Gradient lens: low, mid, and high-risk moments that shape student participation, academic risk-taking, and real engagement.
We talk through why “one student in the spotlight” instantly creates a high-gradient situation, even when the question is simple. Then we map out how to sequence learning so students warm up before you ask for courage: quick partner exchanges, brief opinion prompts, and fast confidence checks that serve as formative assessments. We also get honest about the harm of cold calling when it spikes threat responses, and how “lukewarm calls” preserve rigor while protecting dignity.
The conversation moves beyond talk into the environment itself. Classroom layout, teacher movement, lighting, and visual cues can quietly broadcast safety or threat. Chase shares ways to use anchor spots in the room, class agreements, and displays that celebrate progress and courage so students see mistakes as part of learning. If you’re building SEL, classroom culture, and equitable participation, these strategies are designed to be usable tomorrow.
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EPISODE RESOURCES:
Connect with Chase via his website, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Purchase Chase's book and read his articles.
Season Kickoff And Big Question
SPEAKER_00Welcome to season five of SEL in EDU. This is a space for educators who believe social emotional learning isn't an add-on. It's part of how we teach, lead, and show up every day. I'm Dr. Krista Lay, and in each episode, we'll explore real stories, practical strategies, and the human side of learning that helps schools grow with intention. What actually makes a classroom feel safe enough for students to think out loud? In this episode, we welcome back award-winning educator and burnout expert Chase Mielke to explore psychological safety through a practical Goldilocks gradient lens. We unpack how small shifts from hair chairs to room setup to the way we cold call can dramatically influence risk-taking, engagement, and learning. Along the way, Chase shares concrete strategies for easing students from low-risk participation to high courage moments, reflects on mistakes that reshape his teaching, and even reveals how classroom layout can quietly signal safety or threat. If you've ever wondered why students hesitate to raise their hands or how to stretch them without boiling the pot, this conversation will give you actionable tools that you can use tomorrow. All right, SEL and EDU family, we are back again and we have Chase with us. Chase, it's been two years since you've been on the SEL and EDU podcast. Welcome back.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. It's crazy to think that was two years ago. It does feel like just a month ago, we were nerding out together, having laughs together. I was geeked to get a chance to be back on.
SPEAKER_00That was one of the podcasts I laughed the most. We had Ming Shelby on. Yep. And we brought it back.
SPEAKER_01But I remember having a blast just like being nerds together, exploring things, laughing together.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna get a chance to see her in person. She is keynoting the Pennsylvania ASCD LCA edge conference. So she's coming out to stay with me for a little bit and then we're heading over together.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we would be those students who the seating chart was arranged specifically for us to be separated. That's how it would go.
Why Safety Needs A Gradient
SPEAKER_00I think we need to wrap back around again and have both of you on at the same time and not wait two years. I'm in. So what made me reach out to you again is that I read the ASCD educational leadership and I follow you on social media and all the work that you're doing. I think last time we talked about teacher burnout, the newest article, it's been a couple of weeks or a couple of months now. It was around psychological safety and a Goldilocks metaphor, and you have strategies in there, really actionable things. So I wanted to know if you'd be willing to dive into that a little bit to help out some classroom teachers, because I know this is really important for me as a student.
SPEAKER_01For sure. It's been an interesting pivot within my focus. I still do a ton of work around burnout, but really trying to broaden up looking at positive emotions, not just as an antidote to, but also how do we use them instructionally? How do we intentionally build in positive emotions, just as we would a questioning technique or scaffolding a lesson? Safety is absolutely one of those emotions we need in all learning contexts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, and what hooked me is that for a while I was hearing people talk about emotional safety and psychological safety and intertwine them, but I did a little bit of a deep dive and how they're different. You talk about, and I agree, the psychological safety allowing students to take risks, but you have to feel emotionally safe to do that. So I'm curious what led you to align that with Goldilocks? What was your thinking of that article?
SPEAKER_01Shout out to my editor, Sarah McKibben, who really put that language into it because I've always viewed it as these different levels. Gradient is the terminology. I was introduced as terminology like years ago by some mentors through quantum learning. It was a game changer for me as a teacher, especially an early career teacher, of taking psychological safety from this like nebulous idea to, oh, there are almost phases. There are elements of how do we assess the safety level and then strategies to move them up towards more safety, more risk, more effort, more visible learning that we can actually assess of what's happening with our brains and thinking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I like that you use gradient because I think in the past I've leaned on a continuum. Gradient allows you to navigate where you're at and take a next step.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00So I'm gonna read a quote that you had in the article. You wrote, When I lead workshops, after teachers discuss ideas in groups or pairs, I typically prompt, raise your hand if you came up with an idea. And usually 90% do. And then I say, keep your hand up if you are willing to share. Which one of those people were you as a learner?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's one of my favorite moments whenever I'm working with teachers. We want students to volunteer and share more thoughts. But then we as adults have that moment of like, I don't want to share in front of my peers. Student depends on what year you met me. If it was high school, my hand would have been up, but it would have been a very non-serious answer just to create some mischief. If it were earlier, it probably would have felt a little bit more open. Had moments where I felt like I could share thoughts, but I also had moments where I didn't. So it'd be a split bag. But if you got me my mischief mode, I'd have no issue throwing a hand over.
SPEAKER_00I can't see you being mischievous. Oh, yeah. That part got me thinking for myself, like, would it be around the content or topic, something I felt comfortable in? I felt that I had a skill set in, or would it be my relationship with the teacher where I knew that they weren't going to just leave me and go off? It felt like there were so many dynamics at play.
Low Mid High Risk Explained
SPEAKER_01The feeling of safety can shift in an instant. It can shift from everyone's vibe and having a great time, feeling safe. And then the teacher snaps at one student for asking a question after they've already answered it. And now all of a sudden we're right back to square one. Or you can think of your typical adolescents, like they're bantering, it's all good, they're willing to share, but then their crushes in the room, and it changes their willingness to take that risk. And I think that's why I like that terminology of gradient, because it represents a steepness of like the higher gradient, the farther I'm gonna fall if I make a mistake or I get ridiculed or criticized or say the wrong thing. So it's important to have that context in mind that it can really shift within a moment.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned three gradients of the goal. Would you be willing to talk about each of those?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. So here's how I was first taught this concept of gradient and then made some nuances based off my experience. You could probably do more divisions, but I like to go organize it into low, mid, and high gradient. Let's start there, like the most high gradient situations, meaning there's a lot at stake. There's a lot of social risk. This would be anything that's performance, meaning most of the attention is on just one person. Oftentimes, this content is around either things that I are opinion-based, like there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer, but I'm sharing and expressing a viewpoint, or high on Bloom's taxonomy or something that involves a lot of higher order thinking skills, creating, coming up with new ideas. I would also categorize high gradient as anything that's lengthy. So, like longer than two minutes of the spotlight on me. What's interesting about high gradient is if any one of those elements is present, it's automatically high gradient. And so if we think about the typical moment in a classroom where the teacher is sharing some thoughts and then they go to look for students to raise a hand, like who knows the answer to number three? The moment we are expecting one student to share in front of everyone, it is automatically high gradient. That was a game changer for me. Like, oh, that's why when I ask for hands, no one raises a hand. I know they know the answer, but because all the spotlight is on one, it's instantly high gradient, meaning more risk. It's gonna require a lot more safety to take that risk. Medium gradient is kind of in between. On the other end of the gradient, low gradient would be there's no eye contact. Like I'm not looking at anyone. It is often factual, like lower level thinking of I'm just doing some basic recall, I'm reviewing some content, I'm familiar with it. And it's also typically brief, like one to 10 seconds or so. Hey, real quickly, look at your partner's paper, see what they have for number two, and then look right back up here. We've had a moment of exchange. We've had some sharing. I've had to reveal some of my thinking to a partner, but no one's looking at me. We're not making eye contact, I'm not being called on. This is slowly easing us into that sense of safety. Medium or mid would be kind of a middle ground. There might be some eye contact. I might be sharing opinions, but it's kind of like safe opinion, like agree, disagree with a statement. It's still potentially familiar content. The length could be like 30 seconds, couple minutes. This would be the classic pair share of like have a quick 30-second conversation with someone next to you. What are two things you remember from our reading yesterday? It's real brief. We're in pairs, we're out in front of the entire group, and that eases us in.
SPEAKER_00I really like levels the medium and the high because I also think it increases engagement when teachers put out a blanket statement or a question and you have five kids raise their hand and everybody else just kind of sits.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Turn and talk and have a chance to connect with somebody else and bounce some ideas before there's a share allowed, I think is powerful. And I think back to my early years as a teacher, now turn and talk. Yeah. But I didn't like just calling on a couple kids. So I would say, don't raise your hands, but everybody just kind of say something out loud if you have an idea. Yeah. So I think I was like a low point, low in the medium. And this would have really helped me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think that was a big challenge. Uh, probably everyone who's ever been in front of a classroom has had that moment where you come in, you've talked about Craigulung, got your lesson plan, your objectives, and then you ask that first question and no one answers, and you're like, oh crap, what do I do? And this was that way of like, oh, there are little maneuvers I can make to ease them towards more of that risk. I'm not just relying on one or two kids who are going to raise their hand all the time. It gives both a need and some strategies of how do we facilitate that.
Moving Students Up The Gradient
SPEAKER_00When you're working with teachers, how do you help them do the dual role of teaching and trying to assess where their students are at?
SPEAKER_01I think a lot of initial coaching work is around just first observing what do we notice. I'm a big believer in videotaping little chunks and then being able to reflect. When we're in our own head, we can fall into these traps. Like I'm so engaged with what I'm explaining, or I'm thinking of my next question. I see a few kids raise their hand and think, oh, we're good. It's psychologically safe. When I look back, I'm like, oh, it's just the same two kids over and over again. So I think just making awareness of how much are we seeing a lot of students interacting, how much is that a part of our classroom? And then from there, I think it's scheduling it in just like any instructional strategy. If we want people to get better at questioning techniques, we might have them script a question where it's like, okay, at this point in the lesson, I want you to ask this exact question. I think it's the same way with these gradient moves. Like, okay, after I give about five minutes of an explanation, I'm gonna pause and have students do a quick thumbometer, thumb up. I'm really confident to move forward, middle. I need some more examples down. I need you to explain that in different words. Now I'm doing a quick assessment. I'm seeing how comfortable they are. Like, we schedule that in, like an instructional strategy. That's typically where I begin.
SPEAKER_00There's two pieces that really resonated with me. The awareness piece. You mentioned the videotaping, and I was even thinking a really trusted friend that could sit in the room and give you a little bit of that. Because it's scary, especially in the beginning, as a newer teacher, to open up your classroom. You know, it's hard to let somebody else in. But I knew I needed that feedback. The video part is so important too. If we want to get better at our craft and our profession, what are little things we can tweak? Being willing to do that self-analysis is hard and important.
SPEAKER_02And it's so terrifying.
SPEAKER_01No one loves watching themselves on video. I hate hearing my voice on video. There are other ways you can use this actually assess your students. Give them a statement. I feel safe sharing my thoughts in this class. Scale a one to five. How strongly do you agree? And then you ask a follow-up. What's one thing I can do better as a teacher to help you feel safe? Safety is subjective. Even if we think it's okay, it's always good to take those checks. If you're not comfortable videotaping yourself, there are other ways to collect that data, and your students are one of the best sources.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think too, there's a little bit of courage on our end. And I know that for me, when I'm collecting feedback, I need to wait a day or two because I just put my whole heart and soul. I know it wasn't perfect, but I'm not ready to actually read it. So I need to be in an emotionally regulated place where I'm like, yeah, I'm ready to take this feedback, where they're at, and what feels good for them in the process.
How To Measure Classroom Safety
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's why I always did feedback Friday. I would ask them on Friday. I wouldn't look at it until like Sunday, maybe Monday morning. So I'm regulated. And then I made more time to make sure I had processed it and I practiced not getting all defensive before. I shared it with them of like, here's what I found. So it's hard when you're in the thick of the emotion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you did bring up the other piece that I really love as well, because I work on my own questioning techniques as a facilitator. And to your point, sometimes I look back and I'm like, I probably was giving them lower level questions. Didn't give them a chance as a community of learners to build psychological safety. And how could I be more mindful? How I was consciously building that into the learning.
SPEAKER_01It's a skill set that takes awareness, exposure to new ideas, testing those. We have to model it ourselves, take risks with our instruction. We have to take risks with trying a new questioning technique, or like maybe I don't like using parachairs because it's so hard to get their attention back, but I need to grow that skill and try it. In creating safety, we have to also take those risks and promote it.
SPEAKER_00I'm telling the students, I'm trying to build something here and I'm part of this. Yeah. And some skills are going to work and some aren't. I think that one of the pieces, too, when we're looking at the psychological safety and stretching and growing our students, is that there are times when it's going to be uncomfortable. Or how do you work with educators to help notice the difference between a productive stretch and struggle and growth and an unproductive one and balance that?
Cold Calls Versus Lukewarm Calls
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's kind of tricky to do when you're in a class of 30 kids because they're all going to have varying levels. Again, that's why I go back to if you can collect data from students, like see how they're feeling with things, that's probably your best insight. Gradient has been really helpful for me because I know now it's habituated that I'm always going to start with low gradient interactions first. So if you try to go too high gradient too early, it's going to really put people in a psychologically unsafe experience. And then no one says anything. You're asking people to shout out in front of everyone else good morning, even though that's familiar, like they don't want to do this. And so now they're just grumpy and they're not going to. It's those sorts of things where sometimes we push people way too deep or we cold call on a student. That moment, even if they answer it correctly, their heart rate, their sympathetic nervous system just went haywire, or they don't even remember what they said. They practically blacked out. And the only thing they remember is this class is terrifying. Easing the low gradient first. And then once that becomes comfortable, the medium or mid-gradient, then I know it's time for high gradient.
SPEAKER_00I love that you brought up that adult model because I don't think I've thought about why. And I understand too, maybe it's being a secondary person because you're a high school. I feel like my elementary friends can do that, and the little kids will play along and they're excited and they love their teacher. The high school kids would have looked at me like, what if they don't know? I was listening into a keynote and they had us get up and find somebody you don't know. And like, oh my God. I don't like having to search for somebody. You find somebody two people over. I have a direction to go. Starting off with those lower level quiets, I call them like low courage, low risk. Yeah. But I was in a session once and someone was like, okay, well, let's just share something with this person that you would never share with somebody else. And I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_02Lead with your deep dark secrets. That's uh team building.
SPEAKER_00No, thank you. I love again just thinking about that this happens with us and we have these same responses.
SPEAKER_01It's this concept of gradient adaptable to so many contexts. If I'm building professional development for educators, adults, like I am intentionally building in super low gradient experiences within the first five minutes because I know by the end of the training, I want to get them to some more high gradient, reflective, like share some struggles, but I'm not going there early on. So it can be as simple as I put up a statistic, but the percentage number isn't shown yet. Hey, make a quick prediction with someone next to you. Take 10 seconds. What do you predict that number is? It's very low interaction, and then they're right back and we're building that in. I also think this is a great lens to look at not just a lesson, but entire units or entire concepts or phases. Prime example for me was I really learned to apply this in teaching public speaking. I had to teach public speaking to ninth and tenth graders. The way I was taught as a high schooler was my teacher, Mr. Wording, would tell us on Monday what our topic was, and he would tell us we're gonna speak on Friday. And that was it. We just had to figure it out, and it was terrifying. My armpits sweat, and I don't remember anything. And so I was like, that model doesn't work. So if I at the end on Friday need them to stand and deliver content, what am I doing on Monday? Is it a quick, hey, 30-second recap of your weekend? Give them a couple sentences. What did you do this weekend with the thought in mind that they're going to be sharing later? And then what does it look like to get towards mid-grade and by Wednesday? We can plan out lessons in all of our instruction along this lens.
SPEAKER_00As I'm hearing you talk, it's all reminding me to think about equity and response, introverts versus extroverts. Yeah. The people who thrive on that versus people who aren't there yet in front of people. Let's go, oh crap.
SPEAKER_02It's psychologically safe here.
SPEAKER_00It reminds me of have you heard that you're supposed to cook crabs and lobsters in cooler water and you slowly turn up the temperature.
SPEAKER_01Turn up the boil.
SPEAKER_00Otherwise, they try to jump out.
SPEAKER_02It's a great analogy.
SPEAKER_00We're slowly turning up the temperature without having them jump out of the pot.
SPEAKER_01So that's a great analogy because that's sometimes how it feels when you get thrown into a boiling pot because someone cold called you in the middle of an experience.
SPEAKER_00Just another piece, and this is the part that I mentioned to you earlier. I was facilitating a session with a large group of people, and they had gotten into a lineup without talking, and it was all good. The first person, it was a low-level question. I'm like, oh, can you just tell me your name and when your birth date is? The person had a stutter not knowing that they were going to be called on, even though it was something they knew. But the fact that we had 75 people, I felt horrible. And it has led me to never cold calling on people or at least letting people know, hey, do you mind if I I just heard you say something really great? Do you mind sharing that with the group? Or I would go over to that person and say, just to give you a heads up, I'm hoping that you'll share just your name and your birth date once we get ready. Have you had any of those experiences facilitating something where you're like, oh, that didn't quite go the way I thought, but here's another way that I could do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's so relatable. Even though you would assume, like, oh yeah, that's just their name and birthday. It's high gradient because they're doing it in front of everyone. I remember calling on a student, this was years ago, super bright student, sharing a thought, and she did brilliantly. Like she had a great insight, it moved conversation along. And then after class, she came up to me and she's like, You can't call on me. And I was like, Well, I kind of did. Tell me more. She's like, No, I have immense social anxiety on the surface, I would have never known. But now hearing it, I'm like, I did just kind of she's smart, she's bright, she can hang. I called on her without thinking about all of the other things that factor into safety. That has been a big moment of, okay, I don't do cold calls, I do lukewarm calls. Take 30 seconds, chat with the person next to you. At the end of this conversation, you're gonna summarize what your partner said. Jot it down on a sheet of paper, swap it with a partner, and then I can collect them randomly so names aren't being used. There are lots of little maneuvers. We still get the effect of carrying on conversation, assessing learning in the moment without making it super high gradient.
SPEAKER_00I do want to point out that she felt comfortable and safe enough with you to come back and have that relation. I love that piece too, because sometimes that feedback can be hard because that's never our intention. But the fact that she felt comfortable enough to say, I'm still kind of worked up about that. And I just wanted to let you know shows the safety we had with you.
SPEAKER_01I haven't really thought through that in that context or that lens. My brain then goes to like, how many people didn't feel safe enough to share? How do we assess safety? How do we uh get some data around how people are actually feeling because what they show isn't always how they feel.
Room Layout That Signals Safety
SPEAKER_00I also have social anxiety. Like I'd rather really just jump into something and get to somebody. I'm okay to sit and talk to somebody, but when I think about psychological safety, for me, it also means where I sit in the room. My English teacher, who I had for two classes in my senior year, put us into rows. And I sat in the very front seat in the middle. He stood right up against my chair. And all I kept thinking is, I need to move. I need to eat in a back corner or on an aisle so I can look at other people and I have physical space. When you think about psychological safety for you or other people, what have you noticed beyond being able to respond in a classroom and share thoughts?
SPEAKER_01We could go super deep, super nerdy around the big focus of my work with ASCD. I have a new book coming out later this year called Effective Teaching, which is really looking at emotions, like how do we facilitate them? One of the big realizations for me is emotions, feeling safe, feeling a sense of belonging, feeling curiosity. They're constructed from three things. It's constructed by what's happening in our body. Sometimes we underestimate that element. Like if I'm tired, it's gonna look a little different than if I'm well rested. First period is gonna have a different emotional context than sixth period. The second kind of a factor or element is environment. And that's what you're speaking to. Like context shapes our emotional state. And context can be grouping size, it can be location in a room, it can be lighting in a room, it can be music. All those environmental factors are informing us. And then the last one is thought. I can introduce a thought or a thinking pattern that might facilitate an emotion. The shift in environment is super important. If you are in the middle of the room, which is why most teachers in professional development sit way in the back, they don't want to be up front because that is a different sense of risk. It's important to recognize how even our environmental space can be sending subtle or direct messages of safety risk or not.
SPEAKER_00Well, it has me thinking, even for myself and how I set up my classroom, it was a U shape, but it was a double U. So I could have space in the middle, they had space, and it was only two people deep. You were ELA teacher, right?
SPEAKER_01In communications.
SPEAKER_00What did your environment look like to foster psychological safety?
SPEAKER_01I'm so excited. This is so fun. I love this traditionally, you would have six rows of students facing forward. I split that in half so there was a lane, and then I turned all the desks so they were facing the center of the room. So you had on each side three and three kind of facing towards each other. That allowed me to be in the middle of the room as a teacher to indicate to students ahead of time that we are about to do discussion. Front of the room, I'm direct instruction. They don't have to worry that I'm gonna call on them. But as soon as I move into that middle lane, I'm giving an environmental cue that we're about to have conversations. So they're already priming and preparing themselves. If I go all the way to the back of the room, I had a little stool I would sit at, and that would be more of like heart space. We're not talking content, we're just talking human sort of stuff. So those different anchor locations. And then that setup also allowed me to do quick pairings. So if I wanted students to group up like speed dating style, front rows would slide together, middle row would turn around and they're instantly paired up where they're not at the center of the room.
SPEAKER_00These are all fantastic. And I never thought about specific cues in the room, letting kids know that because that's a way for them to know we're shifting a little bit and this is what's coming up next.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. I remember the teacher would be all jovial from the front of the room, and then they would snap and like this is some split personality stuff going on, versus if we're gonna have a corrective conversation, I'm gonna move to where our class agreements are posted and I move slowly. So you have a time to mentally prepare that we're about to have a correction. Once that's over, I can go back to instruction mode, giving those environmental indicators.
SPEAKER_00I love that. And you mentioned having images. If you'd be willing to share them, I'd love to put them as links.
SPEAKER_01I'll put up both the straight format I had and the little maneuvers I would do, I'll share those images with you.
Visual Cues For Courage Belonging
SPEAKER_00So that also has me thinking with the environment, stay there a minute because I think all of it matters. For me, purples and blues are super important and help calm me. Big poster that was a lighthouse that was purple and blues, and it was in the back of the room up near the top, not really for kids, but for me. Did you have visual cues? I've also heard of teachers who are like, what inspires you? And every kid would get a note card or a piece of paper and have a picture that they could put up around the room so they had a visual anchor. Were there any other tips and tricks around environmental visual cues that can help move students from still working on regulation to feeling that they can be a truly active, present participant?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there are a couple that come to mind. First, I think it's interesting to flip the idea of whatever we display is setting a message of what's important. If you post progress pieces, you can Google drafts of great writers, like how it started off terrible and all the edits they made and show that progression. So students see these people we consider to be masters sucked at one point that took risks and kept growing. If I really value safety, maybe I have a courage board. I'm gonna notice as a teacher moments of courage in the classroom. I'm gonna notice something as simple as like someone called me out when I misspelled the word. And I'm gonna note that I'm gonna put it on our courage board because whatever we are praising gets promoted. If I want that sort of safety. In terms of belonging, my students painted a giant circle in the back of our classroom and it said the sky is the limit. And then every student that went through class, they would put their handprint on the wall to create these sun rays. Over the decade plus, it just filled the room with all these kids' hand prints as this visual image. I've seen many teachers do similar things where students leave a relic of them as individuals as part of this mural. I think those are also little signals of we care about you as people, not just your grades. We care about your growth and the risks you take, not just the results of those risks.
SPEAKER_00You remind me that when I go into schools, I'm always taking pictures of what I see. Like you said, who and what is valued and how that makes me feel and what assumptions I make. I remember being in a high school teacher's classroom, and every student got a feather at the beginning of the year. They wrote what their year goal was. She created these two beautiful wings on her wall. So students could stand up. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Those pictures are all over social media. It's brilliant.
SPEAKER_00This is amazing. Now, why didn't I have all these great ideas? The handprints and the feathers. I love other people's ideas better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's work. I think that's also important to note. Like empower students to do some of these things, like you generate the idea and then get some task force together to make it happen. There are so many brilliant ideas of subtle environmental cues that give uniqueness to the experience as well as bringing students together. I love all the ideas out there.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for sharing all of them. I didn't even know we'd get into that environmental piece. Do you have a couple more minutes?
SPEAKER_02I'm ready to stay nerdy.
SPEAKER_00So we're gonna switch a little bit. We're gonna mix up nerdy and not because when I was on your podcast, happy hour, right? Educator happy hour with you and Ming, you started asking me this question. Yeah, yeah, I do have a list of questions for you. Some are related to education and some are not.
SPEAKER_01Love it.
Rapid-Fire Questions And Teaching Values
SPEAKER_00Okay, and in light of psychological safety, you can pass. Okay. Because I'm gonna fully admit, some of these I pulled from Chat GPT. This is not a fair this or that, because you can have both. I felt like I was pushing too much into the extremes. But I did try to find ones we could work with. Would you rather have a lesson that went perfectly as planned or a lesson that fell apart but changed how you teach?
SPEAKER_01Changed how I teach. I can keep going. I can I think so. I think it kind of depends. If I'm having a crap tacular week, I would love a lesson to go perfectly on a Friday at the end. So environment and context matters, but I think generally the hardest moments I've had teaching the biggest failures have totally accelerated my growth, the successes. They're affirming those emotions matter, but I really think learning from mistakes and the tweaking and the figuring out, like, oh, how can I do this differently is so much more rewarding long term.
SPEAKER_00What is the most underrated school supply?
SPEAKER_01I don't know if people would underrate it. I was gonna say really effective whiteboard cleaners. Like just to be able to wipe it clean so that there's not marks. I was gonna say expo markers because that's my go-to. But for the most smart boards now, you can just click a button and it's done. So maybe functioning Wi-Fi.
SPEAKER_00Well, my first years doing professional learning, I was in somebody else's classroom and I had the teachers up at the board writing, the whole board was covered in ideas, and then we realized they weren't expo markers. So we got it off, but it took a while.
SPEAKER_02I was like sweating and now you'll check every time it fell apart.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you'll check every time students feeling comfortable enough to participate or challenged enough to grow.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna say comfortable enough to participate because I don't think you can really challenge them to grow until they're comfortable to at least try. It's like cart before the horse sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00I was going back and forth on that one too, because I tried to answer these myself and I'm like, yeah, I think that's a good idea.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because when I hear that second one, that speaks to me more of that high gradient of like, I'm just gonna push them, throw them in the pool, and figure it out. Sometimes that works for some students, but there are casualties along the way.
SPEAKER_00And thank goodness the pool's not boiling. The crabs and the lobsters. Would you prefer a road trip or a flight?
SPEAKER_01Road trip all day.
SPEAKER_00Would you prefer to slow down the learning to deepen it or maintain momentum to sustain engagement?
SPEAKER_01Modern attention spans require pacing. You're not doing deep learning if you're not paying attention. That's step one of being able to form memories. So I would love to go deeper, but erring on the side of probably gonna have to keep it flowing with engagement. Now I think there are ways to marry the two, but that's a different podcast.
SPEAKER_00And that's where some of these I'm like, oh that's fun we can get Ming on for. That'd be fun. Two more questions. Yeah, bell ringers or exit tickets.
SPEAKER_01Bell ringers. In part because I am so engaged. I think the bell ringers set so much tone that how you start a lesson is really gonna trickle down to the rest of the learning.
SPEAKER_00A classroom full of curious questions or a classroom full of courageous answers.
SPEAKER_01I think we learn more through questions than answers. I think there's more academic humility that goes into great questions. I'm gonna be pondering that one.
SPEAKER_00That's why I ended with that one because I'm still thinking over myself. I'm like, oh, that really came through for me. Yeah. Now I did throw out two-thirds of them, but I'm like, I kind of like these.
SPEAKER_01Some of the values, like, we don't have to take it as is. We can pull the pieces that work for us. Love it.
Where To Find Chase And Closing
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for being back on. And with your new book coming out, please come back and I would love to.
SPEAKER_01It's at some point later in 2026, it's gonna be out. I'm writing about it pretty regularly for educational leadership, my newsletter, and all the social media. So if people like this topic and these ideas, that's a space to find it. As I try to wait for it to actually be published.
SPEAKER_00I've never published a book, but I have lots of friends who it's a journey. So kudos on you for doing that. It's like birthing children times three.
SPEAKER_01Very high gradient, too, of your ideas are out there. People are gonna see them and they're gonna challenge them.
SPEAKER_00So for everybody who's listening, if they want to learn more about burnout, psychological safety, how emotions influence learning, if they're looking for keynotes or sustained learning, what are the best ways to reach out to you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, depending on what you're looking for, you know, starting point is just Google Chase Milky. I mean, I have chasemilky.com, which can direct you towards books. It can direct you towards like speaking if you're looking for keynotes, professional development. And then on the social medias, just Chase Milky, you can find me, posting about things regularly. My newsletter weekly is where I'm sending out all sorts of content and ideas, YouTube videos, etc. So that's probably like the best single source of learning about my work.
SPEAKER_00I need to sign up for that. Let's do it. I'll put all of those links in there. Thank you so much for sharing time. This was so much fun, and I loved where we started off and where we ended up coming back again.
SPEAKER_01Likewise.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so appreciate you. Good luck with everything. And I can't wait to tell Ming that oh, you know what? Can I take a picture of our I'm gonna send it to her and be like, I just took a picture of Chase and I on the screen because I'm gonna send it off to Ming and be like, look who I got on before you. So again, thank you so much. Thank you, listeners, for spending your time with us. Take care, everyone. Thank you for being part of the SEL in EVU family. As you move into the rest of your day, I invite you to notice one small way social emotional learning showed up in your thinking, your relationships, or your work. Until next time, take care of yourself and keep making space for meaningful connected learning.
