Dr. Heather Michel:
When I think back on that time, the challenges were real, like any first year teacher. When you’re a teacher, you are planning for a six-hour presentation on a daily basis. And that first year in the classroom, there’s no way to get through that except to double down and move through it.
And so, for that first year, what it meant for me staying late 5:00, 6:00, 7:00 at night in the classroom, grabbing a Tex-Mex burrito on the way home, shoring up at my kitchen table and pouring my heart in those lessons. Everything that I had learned that day, trying to implement it the next day.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was Heather Michel giving the closing keynote at the 2025 Deeper Learning Conference. In this episode, I talked to Heather about her own difficult experience with school as a kid, her career as a teacher, and the strategies that she’s developed to help teachers take care of themselves. It was such a pleasure to talk to Heather, and I’m excited to share our conversation with you. Let’s get into it. Welcome, Dr. Heather Michel. I want to just get started by asking you, when you think about your experience of education as a kid, what comes to mind?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I did not have a good educational experience, especially in my primary years. I really struggled. And when I talk about this publicly, I talk about three things that really stand out to me in terms of grades, kindergarten to about sixth grade. I was raised by a single mom who was a registered nurse, and she worked the 3:00 to 11:00 shift. And it was just my twin sister and I.
For that part of my life, we were largely left to our own devices. There’s no homework happening. There’s no, “Oh, did you get enough to eat? Go to bed a certain time.” All of those things we were left to determine at a very early age. And my mom would call and check in on us at 4:00 and she had two rules, always stay together and come in before the street lights came on.
I mean, it was the ’80s, it was a different time. Kids were out in the streets riding bikes with no helmets. That just was what we were doing. There were definitely some positive things, but the education part was hard because I didn’t have that family support. We grew up pretty poor, but we went to school at a pretty affluent school in Olympia, Washington on the west side.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. Public?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Public. Garfield Elementary. We stood out, I think because we were poor. We didn’t have the Nikes. We didn’t have the Cabbage Patch dolls. We didn’t have what everybody else had. And we were twins and we were brown. Growing up in Olympia, Washington in the ’80s, there were not a lot of people that looked like my sister and I.
And so, because we stood out, I think we were targeted, so significantly bullied by two girls probably up until the fourth grade. That really impacted me academically. And it got so bad that my third grade teacher Mrs. O’Keefe, I remember her advocating for me in so many different ways, but she ultimately decided that I should repeat the third-grade and my sister should be promoted to the fourth. You have twins, you know what that would be like.
That was a pivotal moment in my childhood where actually my grandparents swooped in, like grandparents can and my grandma tutored me for that entire summer. And we switched schools, which made a huge difference. Because we went to a school that was more in line with our socioeconomic status and just our community. Everybody was dealing with the things that I was dealing with. I didn’t feel like such an outsider.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. And when you say our community, you’re saying nobody really looked like you. What was your community in Olympia?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I think the socioeconomic, that was the biggest thing for me, because we were really struggling. And so, we went to a school that was the rough elementary school. I want to say it was Lincoln Elementary. And those kids were rough. They were like us. They were unattended for several hours in the afternoon and they were riding their bikes. And I remember there just being a lot more behavior problems. But I didn’t feel like an outsider. I felt like I hung out with my friends after school and I was fourth, fifth, sixth grade. You grew up a little bit.
And that little push that our grandparents gave, both my sister and I really helped us because when I went to that new school, I didn’t feel like I didn’t know anything. I felt like, oh, I am actually, I know my time staples because my grandma literally drilled that into me.
And so, there were little things like that that put me a little bit ahead. It was a different community. And I had this one girlfriend that she just read all the time. And because she was reading, I just started reading more. I don’t know, things like that that weren’t happening previous to that time in my life.

Alec Patton:
And when did the bullying start with these two girls?

Dr. Heather Michel:
That was kindergarten. I literally remember their names. I remember the first day of kindergarten when they showed up. I don’t want to say that I feel bad outing them or whatever, but I remember the first day of kindergarten and one of them showed up and she threw a royal tantrum because she had brought this life-sized doll into the kindergarten classroom, when the kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Swan was like, “You can’t bring this doll.” And she just lost her marbles. She was just relentless, her and this other girl were just relentless.
And then we had to walk by one of their houses on the way to school. And one of the parents, I think she took pity on us. And so, she was trying to force a relationship between her daughter and us, and then that just made it worse.

Alec Patton:
That’s heavy. I’m struck that you said there were more behavioral problems at this other school that was possibly called Lincoln because consistent bullying from kindergarten through fourth grade strikes me as a behavioral problem.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. The first teacher I told was my third grade teacher, Mrs. O’Keefe. And I think I told her because I could tell that she cared. I was always getting pulled for remedial reading classes. I was just not reading. And I remember any little thing I did, she just tried to showcase it. She would just like, “Oh, my god, this is amazing what Heather is doing or whatever.”
And I didn’t see it that way because I felt so bad about myself, I think. But I think I was able to express it to her. And she was the first one I think that I felt like was willing to listen. I remember I went up to her, I was like, “Mrs. O’Keefe, I need to tell you something.” I just told her, I was like, “This has been happening. This is for a long time.”
And she kept the girl in me after school that day. And I mean, she didn’t yell at her, but she just reamed her out for being a mean girl basically. And I remember I walked home that day. I just remember the sun shining, which never happens in Olympia, and just this huge thing getting lifted off of me.

Alec Patton:
Did it get any better though?

Dr. Heather Michel:
It did get a little bit better. I mean, they stopped bugging me, but we ended up moving to that different school. But it’s interesting because I had Mrs. O’Keefe’s husband in high school for chemistry. I looked her up afterwards. I wanted to connect with her, but it wasn’t Facebook or Instagram land and I couldn’t find her.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. Did you ever see those girls again?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yes. Oh, my gosh. They ended up going to our high school and they ended up being super lame. And I actually felt bad for … I mean, I remember I took driver’s ed with one of them and she sat behind me and she was so just this very small, underdeveloped person. And she was just bitter and struggling making friends. You know high school’s hard and felt bad. And then the other one, they both ended up going to our school, but I don’t know, they seemed less significant obviously.

Alec Patton:
Their powers had diminished.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Their powers had diminished. Yeah.

Alec Patton:
So, it sounds like that school shift was a real turning point.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. That was a real turning point. School was always hard for me. It was always hard for me. In any education I’ve been, I’ve always had a double down, but I really had some significant teacher starting with Mrs. O’Keefe that really saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. And I mean, I can name a whole bunch of teachers.

Alec Patton:
Shut them out, shut them out. When else are you going to do it?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Mrs. Minton, Mrs. Carpenter, Mrs. Underwood, Mr. Bassett, Mr. Dingerson. I just learned so many lessons, both good and negative. I talked to my kids a lot about that because they struggle with teachers sometimes too. And I’ve gotten my biggest compliments from teachers and then also like, man, why did you do that? That really hurt. But those are lessons that I took into me when I became my own teacher. And those are things that as my kids struggled with some of the teachers they’ve had, I talked to them about that.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. What was another moment that was really pivotal in a positive way for you with a teacher?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Another great thing that happened is I was a Rotary foreign exchange student, and I had taken two years of French and I wanted to travel to France, but for whatever reason, rotary scholarships, they’re very limited to France. And so, I ended up spending a year in Argentina as a 15, 16-year-old junior year of high school.

Alec Patton:
Interesting choice for a French speaker.

Dr. Heather Michel:
It was. I didn’t know-

Alec Patton:
Did you speak any Spanish?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Okay. So, I took two years of French and the year I went to Argentina, I was like, well, I got to get some Spanish in me. So, then I took a semester of Spanish. The Spanish teacher. His name was Mr. Cool. No, Señor Cool is what he went by. Had an amazing transformative experience that you can only have when you do something like that. And I remember sending him letters and talking about what it was like for me to speak Spanish and how I was doing, and just writing him letters, telling him about my experience.
And because of those letters, the high school that I went to gave me credit, more credit than I actually deserve for that experience because I needed credit to graduate. And so, they basically comped me like my English credits because of the letters that I wrote to him, because he another person that advocated for me. So, it was just things like that.

Alec Patton:
At that point, were you thinking, well, teaching?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I never thought I was going to be a teacher. Never in a million years. I went to Fairhaven College, which is a small liberal arts school. And again, at Fairhaven, we weren’t given grades, we were given written evaluations. It was pretty non-traditional. And you got to design your own concentration, your own scope of what you were going to study, and you had to propose it and it got passed and all these things.
But one of the critical parts of my college years, there was just a really strong focus on critical race theory and marginalized communities and social justice movements and immigration history, and just the other communities that have been othered in our history.
I mean, when I look back on it, they basically weaponized me. When I graduated, I was like, “I’m going to join a social movement. Where can I have the biggest impact?” Having my own personal experiences, my own experiences being othered and really wanting to make the biggest impact. But I didn’t have any experience with students. I mean, I had been a camp counselor at the YMCA for during the summer, and I did enjoy that.

Alec Patton:
Why do you think you got that drive? Because I think a lot of people go to college and read a people’s history of the United States and-

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah, exactly.

Alec Patton:
… then they go and they get a corporate job and they continue with their lives. I’m not trying to be unfair to anybody, but plenty of people have the experience of thinking about injustice in a new way and it doesn’t particularly shift their trajectory once they graduate. What lit it for you?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I have a really hard time, half-assing things. I picked something and I’m all in. And I’ve learned that if I don’t dial it back, I will not be sustainable. But as an idealistic 22-year-old, I’m like, yeah, I’m doing this. I remember thinking about it and talking to my best friend and I was like, “I could either be a lawyer or I could be a teacher.”
And I remember she had heard about Teach for America, and she’s like, “You should try this for two years and to see if you like it, see what happens.” And I remember having the YMCA that I worked at, I mean, it wasn’t a huge pivotal experience, but it was in the Black neighborhood of Seattle actually. And I thought about the impact you can have with kids and how you can see it right away. When you’re working with kids, their joy is right there, their engagement, their interaction. Everything is just so authentic and raw. And something about that really drew me in that limited experience that I had.

Alec Patton:
What was your theory of change? Because I’m hearing I want to transform the world and make it more just.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yes.

Alec Patton:
And I’m going to go be a teacher, and there was a result of me teaching blank. What was that?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I mean, I stayed in first and second grade my entire career. And I think that I really attached social justice to teaching kids how to read because I knew what it was not to know how to read because I knew really well what that was like not to know how to read. I knew really well what was that like. And I really attributed if I can teach, if get these kids the grade level and teach them how to read, that can change their life. And if I can put them in a position to be successful in education, then that can change your life because that’s what it did for me. That’s my experience.

Alec Patton:
And so, you moved from Washington state to Houston?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yes.

Alec Patton:
I’m guessing you didn’t know a lot of people in Houston.

Dr. Heather Michel:
No, I did not.

Alec Patton:
You’re doing Teach for America. I feel like that’s the part of the Teach for America concept. Not trying to be mean to Teach for America, but the idea of if you take a young idealistic person and they don’t have any friends, what else are they going to do?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I wasn’t the typical Teach for America candidate. I wasn’t. I went to Fairhaven College. I didn’t graduate from Ivy League school. I didn’t have privileged parents. And I was 25. So, I had graduated. I had spent some time doing volunteer work in Mexico City. I came back and worked at a migrant community health center trying to figure out my way.
I don’t know, I didn’t really feel like I connected with any of my Teach for America counterparts. In fact, the only person that I was really good friends with was an older man, Keith Martin. We ended up working at the same school, and he was older too, and he had a kid, so we just hung out together. So, yeah, I didn’t really make a lot of friends, but I think it was part of my coping mechanism to be totally honest.
So, that first year was really hard. And it’s 2001. I’m working at Clemente Martinez Elementary School. The principal was a very hard-nosed woman, had a reputation in the district. Houston’s a big district, but I would say her name and I’d be like, “Oh, okay, you got her.” And I think Teach for America placed there because she couldn’t keep teachers there.
So, it was at a school where kids weren’t allowed to have recess. There was playground equipment outside, never saw kids outside. She was just a total hard nose. And I remember just staying long hours at school and then going home and staying long hours at home, pouring into teacher’s editions. There wasn’t TPT. People didn’t go to the internet in 2001 to plan their lessons. It was just what we were given in the classroom and my own instincts and my own experience that really got me through that year.
But I made it through and I fell in love with the kids and teaching. But being at that school made me think if this is what education is about. I don’t know if I can do this. This is really hard. In hindsight, what was happening in Houston was no child left behind. And I didn’t understand it until later, but I think Houston Unified School District was the poster child for that initiative and objective in a lot of ways.
So, there’s all this political stuff happening around teaching kids how to read that I didn’t understand at all. And I’m a new teacher who doesn’t even understand anything about the science of reading because I wasn’t given any prepper. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.

Alec Patton:
Was there a point when you were like, “Okay, I’m done. This isn’t for me.”

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. So, I did my two years there and then I had always dreamed of going to graduate school in California because a lot of the scholars that we read at my college came from UCLA and Berkeley. And part of the myth around Teach for America is that, oh my gosh, you’ve done Teach for America. You’re this privileged person. You can get into any school, graduate school. They love Teach for America people.
So, I did my two-year stint and I was like, “I want to be in education, but maybe teaching isn’t for me. Let me go to grad school.” So, from there, I moved in with my grandma who lived in San Diego because I was like, let me get residency. I’ll work for a year, apply to these schools, and then I’ll go to grad school and see where this takes me. I still want to be in education.

Alec Patton:
So, you came to San Diego for that UC hookup basically?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Basically, yeah. I was like, “I’m only going to be here for a year.” My grandma, she was like, “Yeah, come live with me.” So, I was living with her. I got a job at 6 to 6 school program and I applied to Berkeley and UCLA and I did not get into either one of them. And I was like, “Okay, well, I have a teaching credential from Texas. It has reciprocity in California. Well, I figure out what I’m doing. Let me get my teaching credential.”
And at that time, this is 2003, I feel like we’re in a recession. It’s just really hard to get a job anyway. I went to so many job interviews and I finally got that job, a credential teacher at a 6 to 6 program. And same thing when I got my teaching credential, I went on, I want to say 11 interviews. And I couldn’t get entry, I couldn’t get access to principals. That’s not how you did it. You submitted your resume. I was like, let me just go and talk to someone.
And so, I was working to get getting set up in Chula Vista. It was my last stop when I was down there and I was like, let me just drop my resume off at this school, see if I can talk to the principal by chance. And as it would have it, he was available. I talked to him and I was so desperate. I had looked at their website.
On the website, it was like, “Our students will change the world.” And I was like, “If there’s one thing, I believe this is what I believe.” And I was just like, “Look, this is what I want to do. This is why I want to be a teacher.” And he smiled and said, “Okay, we’ll hire you.” The school year started Monday. I got hired on a Friday and I started Monday, but I was used to the rollercoaster status.

Alec Patton:
And what was different about that from teaching in Houston, what jumped out at you?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Oh, my gosh, it was night and day. It was night and day. Because I felt like I had found my home. That charter school was really focused on, well, social justice. It was really focused on the mantra our students will change the world. That was a whole part of it is really focused on do whatever you want to get your students where they need to be, whatever you want to do, any project, what can we do for you? What can we buy you? How many books do you need? What kind of support can we give you?
Our principal did this thing where he came into the classroom and he had this interactive notebook where he would come in and just do some “wonderings” and then you would respond back to the wonderings.

Alec Patton:
In his notebook or?

Dr. Heather Michel:
It was a notebook that everyone had in their classroom. So, he would come in, write in the notebook.

Alec Patton:
Oh, got it.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Date it, and then I would respond back in the same fashion. I really appreciated that and I would literally type mine up, cut and paste it and put it in the journal. I had so much to say about what was happening for me. So, it felt really good to be in that place. And I really enjoyed the creative. For me, teaching is performative art. For me, teaching is a creative form in its highest for me.
When you’re creating something and designing something for your students, that part I really leaned into. I really enjoy that part. And so, I was staying super late thinking about my students all the time. I’d be out and about thinking about projects, collecting supplies. You know how we do. So, yeah, it was night and day.

Alec Patton:
So, that all sounds great. But I know the story ends with you leaving and really focusing on teacher self-care. So, what was the other side of the story at this point?

Dr. Heather Michel:
So, one great thing about the school that I was working at is it really had this culture around community, one, and two, higher education, like getting your master’s, getting doctorate. I want to say there were probably five people getting their doctorate while they were teaching at that school. It was just really part of the culture. And that’s a personal dream I’ve had forever. So, I got my master’s in reading from Point Loma, and then I went for my doctorate. I ended up marrying someone that worked there. We got married in 2009. So, I had been working there for five years.
That was the same year that from 2003 to 2009 were probably my best years teaching. All the stuff that I said that was super amazing was happening. But then there was a period of my career where I felt like I was able to have those boundaries. I didn’t stay late. I was like, “Okay, I can do this. This is fine.” But I got married, became a stepmom. I was in a full-time doctorate program.

Alec Patton:
Where were you going for your doctorate?

Dr. Heather Michel:
UCSC.

Alec Patton:
Got it.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Four-year program. And was still maintaining the same expectations I had around social justice and my students. Even though my personal life was blowing up, I still was like, “I’m 110%. Well, obviously you can’t do 110% in all areas of your life. You can’t even do a 100%.” But no one was really telling me.
At that time and teaching, and even now, no one was processing all of those things with me. No one was giving me permission and it wasn’t really part of the culture for me to be reflective about what was changing in my life. I was just like, okay, well, I just got to work harder. I just got to do more. I just got to work harder. And then I started feeling exhausted and burnt out and resentful.

Alec Patton:
How did that show up for you? How did you know it was happening? When did you become aware of it?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I just lost my mojo. I would show up and behaviors just started becoming an issue in my classroom when they never had before. I wasn’t really present in any part of my life, none of it was present. I just was like from this place to this place to that place. I started feeling less gracious towards the community and the parents. I was like, “Why do I have to do everything?” I mean honestly, that’s where it was. I’m buying all these supplies. I’m doing all this stuff. I just started feeling less gracious. Less forgivable.

Alec Patton:
That’s a great point that I feel like resentment is such a burnout warning sign in a way that I don’t think we necessarily recognize.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. Absolutely. Shame also is there, a lot of shame, a lot of disappointment. When you start out as someone that wants to join a social movement and then they get to a point where they can’t do it anymore, there’s some real heaviness to that, some real heaviness. Part of who I was, was that whole 11 years, this is what I do. I’m about social justice. This is how I enact this. This is my identity.

Alec Patton:
And why did you feel like you weren’t enacting that? Because you were still doing all the things, even if you were struggling?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Because I wasn’t happy. As soon as things started going wrong in my classroom because my heart wasn’t in it, I think, and because I just didn’t have the energy for it, then your class crumbles because the kids can sense that and then it’s like you’re not really having an impact or you’re not having the impact that you once had.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. I think it can be a little bit questionable to talk about vibes, but I think vibes are incredibly important in teaching.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Oh, absolutely. Yes.

Alec Patton:
And the amount of background work and presence that it takes for a teacher to maintain a good vibe in a classroom is so much. And when that starts slipping, I mean, I’ve experienced it as a teacher, I’ve experienced it when I’ve walked into other people’s classrooms. I’ve had that experience where I’ve been like, I was in your classroom two months ago and it did not feel like this, that when it starts slipping, it slips fast.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. And I was trying to go back and do some of the things that I used to do that really just brought me so much joy. And even doing them in a burnout state, I was like, “It’s not landing right because the kids know. They already know.”

Alec Patton:
Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting, I mean, burnout’s tough anywhere, but it’s like whatever you’re going through is amplified throughout the classroom.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Alec Patton:
So, you’re raising a kid, you’re doing a PhD, I mean, you’re Dr. Heather Michel, so that worked out.

Dr. Heather Michel:
That worked out. Yeah. I got pregnant, had one kid during this whole time. I have to tell you though, my husband, I mean obviously, he’s my ride or die through this whole situation.

Alec Patton:
Were you pregnant when you were still in the process of getting your PhD?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. I took a year off. I had to take a year off. Another saving grace is my advisor in the doctorate program was also pregnant. And being pregnant in academia is a whole other situation. But she really helped me because I mean we were doing it together. And she’s like, “Just take the year off. It’ll help because you can collect your data during that year.” And it ultimately did help me out.

Alec Patton:
Did you take a year off from teaching as well?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I mean, I took maternity leave.

Alec Patton:
That’s [inaudible 00:25:44] that way.

Dr. Heather Michel:
I mean, I don’t know how I did it. I mean, I just know that it happened and I’m in a better place for it. But the thing is, I mean you asked me about wellness and then a focus on teachers of color specifically. It’s interesting because all these little things started to connect, and that’s really what helped me contextualize my own experience honestly. I started teaching in 2001. I left in 2014, and it literally took me five years to figure out what the heck happened.
And I went into an instructional coach position at the district. And it was really interesting to go from a charter school to a public school and really be given a lot of expertise status because, well, I had my doctorate, but also because I had worked at this charter school. And I was really tasked with supporting common core implementation, which is something that we had done at the charter school five years ago.
But all of a sudden, I was someone that knew more than most people at the district level knew about the common core and the teachers and just things that were given at the charter, like collaboration and projects and people just weren’t doing that. So, I was processing why I left the profession at the same time that people were coming to me for advice and model lessons and all these things. And so, I was like, “Oh, maybe I do have something to offer here to this space. Maybe it’s not all bad.”
But the thing that came out in my doctorate, because my research was on the first five years and the experiences, sense of efficacy and commitment teachers have to the profession, because I was really fascinated with that statistic that 45% of the teachers leave the profession within their first five years. And because I did Teach for America and because those first two years were so hard for me, they’re hard for all teachers really.
So, anyway, that’s what I really focused my research on. And because I was based in Southern California, six out of 10 of my participants were bilingual educators. These six teachers stood out on every variable that I was studying for like efficacy, commitment, sense of purpose. They were off the charts. They were amazing. They had very clear reasons why they were in the profession.
I’m in the profession because I want to be the teacher that I didn’t have. I want to be in the profession because I want to be the teacher that I did have. I want to make a difference in my community. I want to show my community that they can do this. I want to uplift my culture and my language.
And they have really strong efficacy because being bilingual educators, when you teach someone how to speak Spanish, you can take full responsibility for that. I did that. They speak all that cute little bilingualism that they have. That’s on me. I did that. They really had this really strong efficacy. All the things I was majoring, they stood out. And so, that’s like planting a seed. I reported it on my research, but it wasn’t like, “Oh, teachers of color, let me take a deeper look.”

Alec Patton:
And those bilingual educators were all teachers of color?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. All teachers of color. Different Latin American countries, primarily Mexico. But Chula Vista has like 50% of their schools of bilingual, 50-50 immersion or 90-10. And I was an instructional coach at a 50-50 dual immersion school. So, that was happening 2014. So, I did that. It’s like 2018. I get a job at USD as a professor. I start doing a little bit of consulting on the side. And then COVID happens, all my consulting shut down.
And then we had a real awakening, I mean the whole country had a real awakening around racial justice and issues around race. And so, I started revisiting teachers of color and their experience. And I started going back to the research that really supported my initial dissertation, but with the lens of teachers of color. And I started learning about their experience and what was that like. And I started learning about the retention rate.
So, 65% of teachers of color lead the profession within their first five years. And I was just like, “What are we doing?” And because I had moved into higher ed, I was like, why isn’t anyone talking about this? I’m at USD, which is a prestigious university in San Diego. It’s so expensive to go here. We’re graduating people. They’re in debt. They have a credential. We’re going to put them in schools in San Diego County. They’re not going to be able to afford to live here. It just was so many things against them. And I just started feeling really like, what is higher ed doing? We’re not doing this right. We’re not doing this right for anyone.
So, that was happening. At the same time. My house was going through a mental health crisis. My kids, especially my oldest daughter, she was a junior in high school. And mental health has always been a thing for me. I had these different skills and because my daughter was going through it, I was like, we’re doing this together.
And I started getting really clinical because of my doctoral research. And I was like, we’re going to start doing graphs. We’re going to start color coding stuff. We’re going to start trying out these different strategies. Got out my cognitive therapy book. I was like, we did all the questionnaires and stuff, because those things that are important to take stock of because when you’re feeling low and depressed like that, even when you begin to feel better, you don’t even recognize it because they’re little small increments.
And so, that’s what we started taking stock of. What was really reinforced in that family study is that it’s really the small things you do on a daily basis that make the big impact. Like writing in your journal for five minutes or breath work, taking a walk around the block or just little things. And I was like, “Wow, I felt better.”

Alec Patton:
All right. I want to dial these in. Let’s get into these daily practices. So, talk me through how you do these things in your day.

Dr. Heather Michel:
I champion five things. When I do wellness retreats, I talk about five things. I talk about breath work, reflection or journaling, affirmations, the think big start small strategy. It’s a strategy I created. And then movement. So, for me, the thing that I always do no matter what is movement. It just releases the stress in a way that it’s really dialed in for me.

Alec Patton:
What do you do? What’s your movement?

Dr. Heather Michel:
The thing is I talk about in terms of movement, because you say exercise and everyone’s like, “Oh, my god, she wants us to go to the gym.” But that’s not necessarily what it has to be. Movement really is movement, like yoga, stretching. It can be light. It can be heavy. For me, because I’ve done it for so long, I’m really into heavy lifting to be honest.

Alec Patton:
Do you lift once a day or?

Dr. Heather Michel:
I try to get four workouts in for heavy lifting.

Alec Patton:
A week?

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. And then I try to do three things of cardio. Breath work is amazing because it’s accessible to everyone. Literally you’re breathing anyway. Let’s just bring a little intention into it.

Alec Patton:
Is there a routine you recommend for getting started?

Dr. Heather Michel:
The way I really talk to teachers about getting started is first I talk about it in five-minute increments. You have five minutes for yourself. You give six plus hours to your students, you give a whole bunch of hours to your family, if that’s the life you have, you deserve five minutes. Five minutes.
And so, I talked to them about the natural transitions that happen during the day. When you wake up in the morning, prioritizing yourself for five minutes. When you transition, maybe during lunch, but also when you transition from your day to your night, five minutes before you go home, two minutes of breath work, setting a timer. I’m big on timers because it allows people that structure and just that focus for five minutes.

Alec Patton:
Okay. So, let’s say I’m in my office, I’m teaching. I’ve decided I’ve got five minutes, might be pushing it, but I got two minutes. I don’t want to do anything that makes me look weird because I’m in the public space. I don’t want you to explain to my students. If somebody walks in, like set my two-minute timer. What do I do then?

Dr. Heather Michel:
If I were you, I would do breath work. I would turn off all the lights. I would go into the most comfortable chair that I had, or I would go into the library if you have a library in your classroom or some comfy space. And I would just close my eyes and do deep breathing for two minutes.

Alec Patton:
No breath counting, nothing funky. Just literally just focus on it.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Just literally breathing deeply and try to get as deep as you can and really just focus on your body and relaxing in that one moment of mindfulness. In the workshop I’m doing this afternoon, I set the timer for five minutes and it feels like so long. Five minutes of breath work. I guarantee the first time, if you’ve never done breath work and you sit down, it’s going to feel like, “Oh, my god, this is forever and it’s just five minutes.” But it has this transformative impact on you that I think cannot be taken for granted. And I think if you give it that intention, you will see the results.

Alec Patton:
We’ve talked to some movement, we’ve talked breath work. Journaling.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. So, journaling, again, I’ve created a couple of different journals. I have them Spanish and English. They have templates. It’s just five minutes to process your feelings. I think one of the major injustices that is happening in education, and you touched on it, is that we don’t give teachers permission to have emotions and be emotional when teaching and learning is profoundly emotional, profoundly. All you have to do is go into a first grade classroom and watch a struggling reader read and they’re crying their eyes out.
It’s emotional. Learning is emotional, teaching is emotional, but there’s literally no place for teachers to put that emotion or deal with that emotion or you mentioned later vibe is so important. And when you’re dealing with something disruptive in your classroom, it gets in the way of your vibe. And it’s not supposed to affect you. You’re just supposed to be magically okay, whether you’ve just been cussed out by a student, which I have been. And you’re just supposed to return to your students like butterflies, hearts and stars. That’s just not how real life is.
And we don’t give teachers permission or space to process what they’re dealing with. That’s why when you talk to teachers about teaching, they can talk about it forever because there’s no place to process.
Okay. Having said that, journaling is a great way to process and transition. And again, putting on my teacher hat, what I’ve created are these scaffolds for people to process what’s happening and also their identity and the emotions they’re having and how they’re showing up. It does wonders for just that emotionality piece, but also if you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxiety, depression, which a lot of us are, writing your feelings down and having the paper be the sounding board is great.

Alec Patton:
So, literally as simple as just writing what I’m feeling right now at the top of a page and then just letting it all out.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Just letting it all out. And oftentimes, it’s easy to be a teacher and get into that negative self-talk like, “Oh, this sucks, I suck. What am I doing? Do I belong here? Am I the one that’s supposed to be doing this? Whose idea was this?” And if you get in that internal negative thought pattern and you don’t get those ideas down, it just sits and festers.
So, getting those ideas down for me, I know first of all, it lets me fact-check them like, “Wait a second. That’s not even what really actually happened.” What you say to yourself isn’t actually true once you get it down and you can look at it a little bit, get some distance from it.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. I mean, I didn’t call it journaling, and there’s probably, I think there’s interesting gendered reasons that I didn’t see it that way. But I would sit down and I would write in my notebook, and particularly if something really tanked in class, I would write about it for a paragraph. And more often than not, the second paragraph would start, “Oh, I totally see what I should have done was,” and it was like I wouldn’t have got there without that. But it was so easy when I wrote it down to see it, it’s profound.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. I think it’s really powerful.

Alec Patton:
And that also that negative self-talk, I think transitions us nicely to affirmations.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yes. And right now, affirmations are having a moment, but there’s a lot more behind it than just having a positive thought and putting it on a sticky on a fridge. I like to conceptualize it as this. It is socially acceptable to go to the gym and work on your body. Affirmations are way for you to work on your mindset and what’s happening in your mind. That can be really concrete.
It’s one thing to get it on the paper, but it’s even more powerful if we insert some positive thoughts into those places where the negative thoughts once were. And having affirmations that are designed specifically for teachers, picking a couple of them that really resonate, and then meditating on them, putting them in the place where your eyes are going to land naturally, like on your computer screen, in the mirror, in the bathroom, on the dashboard of car, or what I used to do, my practice is just writing them down three times, writing them, writing them, writing them, writing them.

Alec Patton:
It’s like Bart Simpson, like I will not-

Dr. Heather Michel:
Yeah. Standards, except the standards are positive. In doing that, it really does impact your mindset and you begin to see those things manifested in your life. And I think one of the exercises I do with affirmations is I’ll just have them laid out everywhere and I’ll have teachers look over them and then they just pick the one that resonates the most with them, and it’s usually the one that they have the most pain around.
So, for me, the one that says, I belong here because I felt like I haven’t belonged in so many spaces. And so, it’s just a way for people to, whatever you’re drawn to in those phrases is usually what you need to work on. And so, putting that in your life in an intentional way, like, I belong here. I am revolutionary. I am whatever it is. Bringing a little bit more intention than just the sticky on the fridge, but really thinking about manifesting those things in your life.

Alec Patton:
All right. We’ve had movement, we’ve had breath work, we’ve had journaling, we’ve had affirmations. And there’s one more.

Dr. Heather Michel:
The think big, start small strategy.

Alec Patton:
Yes.

Dr. Heather Michel:
So, this is the idea that teaching is so overwhelming, especially if you bring a lens of innovation or especially if you bring a lens of social justice that we are often in survival mode. That’s our default. But when you’re in survival mode, your brain does not have the capacity to dream. You can’t engage the part of your brain that is the dreaming part when you are stressed out as we are in education and in society, honestly.
And so, the think big start small playbook and exercise is really around dreaming. And the dreaming can be for your students. It could be opening a new school. It could be starting a small group for girls. It could be wanting to go on vacation. It could be a personal art, professionally related dream, but giving people time to dream and manifest the things they want in their lives, like think big, but then start small.
So, what can you do in five-minute increments on a daily basis to move forward in that dream? Because I think that looking back on the literature on communities of color and this whole idea of we’re not here to survive. We’re here to live our life to our fullest, and we can’t do that unless we’re given space and time to dream. That’s what our ancestors did to get to where we are right now.
So, being intentional about giving teachers time to do that, and especially for themselves, if you want to do something in your life, if you want to buy your own house, if you want to open your own small business on the side, all of that is going to serve your sustainability in the profession. And so, let’s give you time to do that, and then let’s give you time to make it into increments. And again, that five minutes, if you spend five minutes on that one thing every day for a week, you’ll be in a better place than you were when you started on Monday.
And just the small acts, a lot of it is the psychology of motivation. Even doing something for two minutes, as long as you’re moving in that direction, all of a sudden you feel out more peace around whatever it is that you’re … It’s not like, oh, teaching is keeping me from doing what I want. No, I did some of it. I did it for five minutes yesterday. It doesn’t have to be you against the teaching profession. It can be together moving forward.

Alec Patton:
I think that was a perfect spot to end it. Dr. Heather Michel, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. I’m very excited for the keynote.

Dr. Heather Michel:
Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted by me, Alec Patton, with editing by [inaudible 00:42:19] Moreno. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. Huge thanks to Heather Michel for this conversation. You can find resources for journaling, affirmations, and a body scan in the show notes, along with information about Heather’s work and the Deeper Learning Conference. Thanks for listening.