Apple Podcasts

SoundCloud

Spotify

Episode Summary

Education goes beyond the classroom and takes a field trip with #TeacherTok on social media. Popular TikTok account @when_nerds_teach—hosted by middle-school life science and geography teacher and influencer Dr. Not Gonna Say—offers expertise, resources, tips, and a healthy dose of humor for educators, all while respecting the students they collectively serve. Host Dr. Melinda Lewis reunites with longtime school friend Dr. Not Gonna Say to discuss the path to teaching, best practices to reach students in the classroom, and pragmatic techniques for connecting with teachers on social media.

Featured Guest Dr. Not Gonna Say (Educator and @when_nerds_teach TikTok influencer)

Host and Producer Melinda Lewis, PhD (Director of Strategy)

Dean Paula Marantz Cohen, PhD

Executive Producer Erica Levi Zelinger (Director, Marketing & Media)

Producer Brian Kantorek (Associate Director, Marketing & Media)

Research and Script Melinda Lewis, PhD

Audio Engineering and Editing Brian Kantorek

Original Theme Music Brian Kantorek

Production Assistance Noah Levine

Social Media Outreach Ka’Neisha Davis

Graphic Design Estelle Guillot

Logo Design Michal Anderson

Additional Voiceover Malia Lewis

Recorded February 28, 2024 through virtual conferencing. Pop, the Question is a production of Marketing & Media in Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University. The views expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of Drexel University or Pennoni Honors College.

To learn more, visit tiktok.com/@when_nerds_teach.

Copyright © 2024 Drexel University

TRANSCRIPT

Audio:

You get a car! You get a car!

Pop, the Question!

Whatever. It's all the same thing. We're all artists, we're all misunderstood.

Melinda Lewis:

Welcome to Pop, the Question, a podcast that exists at the intersection of pop culture and academia. We sit down and talk about our favorite stuff through the lenses of what we do and who we are. From Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University, Dr. Melinda Lewis here. I'm your host.

I'm here with Dr. Dr. Not Gonna Say, TikTok's very own @when_nerds_teach who has become a firm foundation of teachertok with at this point 118,000 followers. And she's my very good friend. And we're going to talk about teaching, social media, and everything in between.

Audio:

(singing).

Melinda Lewis:

Hi, Dr. Not Gonna Say.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Hey, Dr. Lewis.

Audio:

(singing)

Melinda Lewis:

How long have you been teaching?

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

This is my 15th year.

Melinda Lewis:

I know that your mom's a teacher.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yeah.

Melinda Lewis:

Was it just to be more like your mom?

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

100%. You have met my mom.

Melinda Lewis:

Which, in fairness, who wouldn't want to be your mom?

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Let me tell you, I'm going to go back to how I started, but also let me say that when people meet me now, some of them have worked with my mom, which does not work in my favor because I have to tell them that I'm not her and to really lower their expectations. Because you know my mom, she's like an angel.

Melinda Lewis:

She's the best.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

And I'm like, "I got a little too much truck driver in me. I need you to temper what you're thinking."

Anyhow, yeah, so I actually went into special education first because that's what she taught, and I worked on the other side of the state and then I came back to Western PA, back to my house.

Audio:

So curriculum's on the desk and do you have any questions?

Yeah. When's lunch?

The children just had their lunch. Is there anything else you need?

I'm a teacher. All I need are minds for molding.

All right then. Well, thanks again. You saved the day.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I knew I wanted to be a teacher from my sixth grade teacher. She also ended up being one of my college professors in my doctoral program, and she was amazing. You knew that she cared about you, yet her expectations were really high so we felt loved and we learned a lot. After that, I was like, "I'm going to be a teacher. Hands down, I'm going to do it."

So I've taught so many different things. I've done gen ed. I was a math coach at one point, but now I'm in middle school and I just feel like how have I not been here this whole time? I used to be elementary and this age group is just, they're great.

Melinda Lewis:

I think it's really fascinating that when you realize you wanted to be a teacher is around the same age that you're teaching today.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I know.

Melinda Lewis:

Yeah. So it's like a true full circle moment. But I also remember you saying when you started teaching middle school, like, "I finally feel like I have clicked with the people that I should be with" because, one, I think they're so cool and also we're into a lot of the same things.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Do you know I run Anime Club?

Melinda Lewis:

Yeah.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

And I don't know if you know that, but you should.

Melinda Lewis:

I do.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

And I'm their queen and that's great. But sadly for them, I'm also a teacher, so I'm trying to... Here's the thing about middle school, if I can get them to find their group... I don't know how you and I found our group.

Melinda Lewis:

Oh, I glommed onto your group, so whatever.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yeah, that's fine. You were an update. If I can get these kids to find their group before they go to the high school, it's so much easier for them. So with Anime Club, my goal was to bring them all together and intermingle them, but also now I try to make them interact with people they haven't met before. They hate me for that, so I just stepped back. I was like, "Well, I can't make this a life lesson for you. I guess we can just do something else."

Audio:

Now it's time for the highlight of the day. Star history teacher Ashley Ferguson has been running up them test scores over at Vince Corporal High.

Okay.

Confederate forces fired first. Can anyone tell me where this battle took place?

Now look at this. She looks left, then right, looks past the students with their arms up in the air. Spots Max near the back, sees that even though his hand isn't up, he's engaged.

Max?

It was Fort Sumter?

That's right.

Oh, come on. See what she did there? She's bringing the introvert into the discussion, y'all. That's a teacher of the year play right there.

That's right, Boyd. The confidence gained by Max by answering that question correctly will enhance his performance throughout the rest of the year.

No doubt.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yeah. Middle schoolers are just great and they're funny and they're smart and they're creative and they kind of still want to be kids, but also want to be more grown up and they're not sure what to do with that. And their body is jutting out and growing in different ways.

But overall, once they know that you like them, you can almost teach them anything. So I also know that it's easy for me to be like, "Teaching's great. It's the easiest thing I've ever done. I don't know anyone who complains." Now teaching is actually really hard and I've almost quit many times. It can be really rough, but I've just found my spot, and middle school science and social studies is it.

Melinda Lewis:

You and I had a different kind of experience than a lot of people, and I don't know how this operates in middle school today, where we had a very insular group, but also we floated between a lot of different spaces. Never in the cool kid space, necessarily.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

No.

Melinda Lewis:

We would always be fluttering about or we had different inserts into different groups.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

And it really came from extracurriculars. I mean, so much of it came from interest-based groupings and I just feel like kids don't have that as much anymore. And the fact that they have social media where it's coming in from all directions and then you don't feel like you have anywhere to be safe, that's horrifying to me because, I mean, growing up I didn't know what anyone was doing.

Melinda Lewis:

No, I didn't know either.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I found out after high school where I was like, "People did that?" I had no idea what anyone did anywhere.

Audio:

I don't know how my wife did it. We had five children doing distance learning. And my kids were good. They totally kept a distance from learning. We asked children to do school on the same device they play Minecraft. It's like holding a Weight Watchers meeting in a Wendy's. I mean, it was insane.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

So you have the pandemic, which at the start of the pandemic shut down a ton of that stuff. And we just brought back clubs for kids to get together by interest as opposed to chronological age in the grade they're in.

Melinda Lewis:

Oh, man.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

And it's middle school. They still don't have a lot of choice in their schedule because the state tests are still very general. It's like, "Seventh grade ELA." The kids that I see doing the best socially are the theater kids, the kids that stay after school do drama club because they have their group which then builds their confidence to be themselves no matter where they are.

Melinda Lewis:

You can't have much shame as a theater kid.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

No. They're putting it out there and they're so excited and I love it.

Audio:

Hi, everybody. If you're just a boy or girl who can't say no...

... then you won't be able to say no to tickets to the McKinley Drama Club's presentation of...

What? What?

Oklahoma!

Oh, no!

No way.

So come on down, partner, and leave the ducks and geese at home.

Oh, what a beautiful evening you'll have.

Yeehaw!

Okay, tickets are $2 at the box office. Don't miss it. It's a great show.

Melinda Lewis:

How have you arranged your pedagogy? Is it just learning by practicing? Is it the qualities intrinsic to who you are?

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

It's funny. A lot of my grad school, not my doctorate, but my master's program was in behaviorism and ABA and applied behavior analysis. And actually from a lot of people on TikTok, by the way, TikTok can be very educational and also not, but I've learned a lot. It's made me question a lot of ABA and behaviorism and kind of swing back more into cognitive and paying more attention developmental. So I feel like that's made me a stronger teacher. So in that way, I've actually cut out a lot of my master's pedagogy. I was like, "Nevermind."

So applied behavior analysis, especially in the program I was in, had focused on working with clients with autism. So it was very much like Skinner, like, "All behavior can be adjusted via messing around with the antecedents and the consequences." I will say I do still use that. That shows up in moment to moment. "What is the motivation for this behavior?" So I will say that in terms of pedagogy, that has still happened where I am still constantly analyzing like, "How can I give you access to what you're motivated by in a way that is healthier and a good replacement? So if you're looking for peer attention or you're looking for adult attention, how can I give you an avenue to get there that isn't screaming at me?" I don't know. You know what I mean? That's a really tame example of what can happen sometimes in a classroom. So that's still kind of interwoven, but I've also realized that ABA has kind of been used to control a lot of things that may not necessarily need to be controlled.

Audio:

(singing)

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I think advocacy is probably another thing that really stayed with me for my doctoral program and kids really taking ownership of what they're learning. And I actually presented on this recently for a PD and I presented in my doctoral program about it. It's this one book that someone showed me and it's Who Owns the Learning? by Alan November. It's from like 2009. But basically he talked about audience, and I think this is why I did get into TikTok. If you know your audience, it's kind of like the algorithm. And I tell that to the students, "If your audience is this person, I want you to think about not just what's important to you but what's important to them. And that kind of shapes your argument." Now one kid did ask me if that was manipulation. I said, "Who knows? I'm a Gemini. Could be in there." So what could they be creating that contributes to the community or even to themselves, or can I at least get them to understand how it could help them?

And I think about that when I make my videos. If my audience is teachers, my following started with a lot of new teachers because I was doing those POV videos of me talking to them. Looking back, it's like, "Oh..." But whatever, I don't really give advice anymore to young teachers because every school is so different. There's no one fix. It's just like all the parenting books that get sold that don't matter because none of the kids are the same, but they make so much money off of selling it because who doesn't want to think they can have control over it?

Melinda Lewis:

Yeah. I would say though that your advice was almost always, "Just don't worry about it. You're doing fine."

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Pretty much, because that's what you have to do.

Melinda Lewis:

I think a lot of your page is about at least having one person give you permission to not be perfect.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yeah.

Melinda Lewis:

Because I feel like that is a very wide audience to be like, "Yeah, there is just no way to build the perfect curriculum or be the perfect teacher, be the perfect parent or be whatever. You have to give yourself permission to be Type B."

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yeah, who I am as a teacher, I used to be the tough love one. Like, "Yeah, give me that kid. I'll make them understand. I'm going to show them." Well, they're five, so maybe chill out. So I think because I watched myself and also, like I said, had to totally walk away from what I learned in my grad program and be like, "Actually a lot of that stuff I learned probably ended up hurting a lot of people. Oh, okay." So your ego kind of goes out because you're like, "How can I get better?"

So I teach life science and world geography. A lot of times the kids are already pumped about the subject. I don't really have to sell it. Right now we're getting into adaptations of different animals. Do you know how many of these kids grew up on Wild Kratts? They're living their best lives. Do you know what I mean? So it makes my life a little bit easier, because it can be hard to make those connections, especially when you see all those kids all the time.

When I taught elementary, your brain is so fried. I don't think people understand and I know it gets thrown around on teachertok. Decision fatigue is a thing. Teaching is basically customer service in a store that the customers did not want to go into and there's 30 of them and they don't want your product and they all want to talk to you at the same time. I can't say it enough, if kids know or at least think that you like them, things get a lot easier.

Audio:

(singing)

Speaker 16:

Hey, it's your mom. I have a question about that podcast you do. Are you on the Instagram or the Twitter or the Facebook? If I have an idea for a podcast, how do I get in touch with you? Love you. Bye.

Melinda Lewis:

What's up, mom? Yeah, so you can find us on all those things, actually: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Just go to @popquestpod on any one of those and follow.

If you want to send us ideas, you can either go over to our website and leave us a message at popqpodcast or you can get us directly at popq@drexel.edu.

You can actually find us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher. I can help set it up when I get home, but then you have to promise me to rate and review.

All right, love you. Bye.

Audio:

(singing)

Melinda Lewis:

I don't remember your digital life. I mean, we all had Xangas.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I did not! I never had a Xanga.

Melinda Lewis:

So yeah, you didn't have a Xanga. I don't think you had LiveJournal. I don't remember you having a rich digital life. So I find it pretty amazing that you are the digital.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Well, I spent so much time in my own head that I didn't have time to put any of it down. I also don't love feedback. So the idea of putting things online. Now I'm medicated now so I can now handle just not reading a comment. I don't care. In high school, because I wasn't medicating until I was 18 for my anxiety, the idea of people seeing my stuff? Yeah, I had no desire to have any input from anyone ever. Remember I took drama senior year and had to quit because I stayed up all night trying to plan every reaction I could have for the improv games. I'm not kidding, till 3:00 AM.

Melinda Lewis:

I know you're not kidding.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Just the poster child for get that Zoloft in there. What were we doing?

Audio:

Hey guys, for this next part, we're going to do something really fun. We've been studying improv all semester, so all we need is a word and we'll use it to inform this next scene.

Basketball.

Okay, basketball. Here we go.

Honey. Why are you crying?

A kid at school called me a fairy.

Don't listen to him. It's great to be gay. I love you no matter who you are.

Thanks, mom. That's important for me to hear.

Of course. Now go wash up for dinner.

What are we having?

Basketball

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Now I love attention and social media has just opened that floodgate and I'm like, "Woo! I can get this from outside my classroom."

Melinda Lewis:

Yeah, I think it's interesting because you have teaching, which in and of itself is very public, because you're in front of people.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yes.

Melinda Lewis:

Also getting feedback. So much of the way that you treat teaching is about reciprocity and making sure that it's not just a top down, but that they are feeding back into your teaching. And it requires feedback in order for you to be a better teacher. And then also you have social media, which is just all feedback all the time. And so to move from like, "I don't want feedback when I'm pre-planning" to what I feel is a wild west of feedback and just unmoderated carelessness, I just find so incredible.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yeah. I mean, it's a big shift. I just set a boundary. Sometimes I post something and then I just don't look at it for about an hour. And if a comment, if I can see from the first word, I just don't finish it. And some of that is strategy of like, "Okay, I know that if I feed into this, that's going to enable this person to do more." It hasn't really been a huge issue with me because my following is not big enough that I get trolled all the time or I have to look through comments in case someone's saying something absolutely terrible. So they're pretty okay. But I think I've learned the online stuff is supplemental in my life. If it were to go away, it's extra. So I don't think I could ever do this as a full-time thing, ever. I wouldn't make it. I don't have the work ethic, to be honest with you.

Melinda Lewis:

I don't know, you post all the time.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yeah, but they're not high quality. Listen, did I turn on the ring light for this because my lighting in my bedroom's real bad? Yeah, I bought that. It's real wobbly. It doesn't work real good. I don't even use that when I make them. Most of my videos are just me talking in my car.

Melinda Lewis:

But I would say that in an age where people are searching for the authentic, I'm just going to fan girl out a little bit. I think that's why people send me your TikToks, not knowing we're friends is because they're like, "Look at her. She's so funny. She's so cool." And I'm like, "Yeah, I know. I've known for 25 years. I get it."

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I mean, here's the thing. I like making videos that are basically me just having a conversation. And obviously it's specific to TikTok because I have an Instagram that I do nothing with. It's like it's an afterthought. I don't really want to expand. So if TikTok ever goes away, so do I. I'm not going to look for new platform.

And I think because the way the algorithm runs and because I've kind of tailored mine to be about education, the people that get shown my videos are people that are more likely to relate to stuff that I'm saying. So it's just kind of worked out in this really good way. I mean, part of that is my plan. You use certain hashtags.

But I joke about my videos being low quality. I really do try to think about the words that I say. There have been times where I've posted something and then deleted it because I was like, "I need to think about that a little bit more." I don't know. It's weird. It's weird because you play these games of like, "Will this do well and why do I care if it does well because this isn't real life, so how much thought do I want to dedicate?"

Audio:

(singing)

Melinda Lewis:

Did you start on TikTok as an audience member and then say, "Now I'm going to take some videos"?

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

As a lurker, yeah.

Melinda Lewis:

So how long did you lurk and when did you say, "This is my time to shine, baby"?

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I got into TikTok right when the first closure happened. So easily just one of the millennials that was like, "What is this, Vine? Oh my God," just finding a lot of funny stuff on it. I don't even remember who the first teachers were that I found, but I was like, "Oh, this is a thing." And I had already been teaching for 11 years, so I felt more confident. At that time, I filmed more in my classroom and you start off real small because you start off and your views are terrible and you're like, "Well, I guess I'll just keep having fun with it and keep making stuff even though no one watches it and just see what happens, just put it out there. It's no big deal." And this sounds so stereotypical, but it's like I didn't think anything would happen.

And I think using the hashtags new teacher, first year teacher, see that's what I'm saying I was very aware of what audience I was going for and I saw it as like, "Oh, maybe this is something that specific audience will be interested in." And it grew over the summer when I had all the time in the world to do whatever.

And for the longest time, I wanted to make no money off of it. I even made videos about it that I was like, "This cannot be a job for me." So I waited for a really long time and then I got a couple of partnership deals and then joined the Creativity fund or Creativity beta. And then it just kept growing. So I don't really foresee it stopping. Because again, if it goes away, I'm still okay. I can't imagine making that my whole career like, "Oh, I'm going to do just influencing. I'm going to do..." People are so sweet because they're like, "You should do comedy." I cannot express enough how hard standup is, but I get laughs because most of my day, the audience is mandatory. I think if I were to do comedy, I'd be great at crowd work because that's what teaching really is. It's a lot of hecklers and controlling the energy, and that I'm good at. But to plan something for 45 minutes, there's no way.

Audio:

I've had enough of being treated like this, feeling oppressed. And I said, "Do you know what I miss? I'd actually be listening if you was doing your job, which would be teaching." The whole class simultaneously went, "Oh [inaudible 00:22:43]!"

Melinda Lewis:

What has been particularly surprising, reaffirming about entering into this TikTok space?

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I would never have had my mind open the way that it needed to be, if not for TikTok. And that influences my teaching because I teach geography and a huge chunk of geography is current events and how humans are currently interacting with the land and with each other. So I'm very grateful.

Do I think I could spend less time on it? Probably. I think I've actually probably gone down a little bit in my consumption of it, but it has brought so much to my life. So I see it as a big way to network. I do think you can get lost. I think some teachers on teachertok have gotten a little too comfortable. I think they are going the vibe of family vloggers with what they're posting because kids are not props. They are not your content and that really bothers me.

Melinda Lewis:

I think when I think about teaching, there's something that feels very icky to me about creating content for the sake of creating content as a career. The idea of creating content and making that a sort of trend because you have to maintain your channel, that's the stuff that gets in my brain of like, "This feels really uncomfortable, actually."

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

Yes. That's just such a weird line to me. I just don't feel great about it. Kids have to go to school so then making you laugh is like a bonus, but it's not a thing that you then make content about or in a mean way. I've been tempted. Don't think, I haven't been tempted. My kids are hilarious. And they would do it in a heartbeat. It's not about consent from them. They would be like, "Yeah!" They'd be amped up. It makes me feel so gross because in that instance, they become props and they're not people anymore. And they're not old enough to really consent or to understand that digital footprint, and they have to be there. They didn't even choose to be at school. If you take the time to actually just, I don't know, get to know kids, they are so cool.

Audio:

I want to thank my dance teachers growing up. I want to thank my choir teachers. Ms. Brigham, thanks for believing in me. Ms. T., you didn't like me, but you were good at your job. And thank you to the Academy.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I just think that being an influencer is so much better when it's not your whole thing. Because I make videos and it doesn't matter how they do. And the thing about TikTok specifically is that the quality of your video does not dictate how well it does. It really doesn't. And when I mean quality, I don't mean not even the jokes, but lighting, the kind of phone you use, the equipment, I don't edit. That's not what makes the difference for things to quote, "go viral." So I feel like it's really hard to make that your whole thing. And I worry that when people first get into it and they get a couple videos that do well, they think, "Yeah, I could turn this into a career," and it's really just not that stable, in my opinion. So that would be my recommendation. Don't do it unless it's just for funsies.

Audio:

(singing)

Melinda Lewis:

Well, I appreciate all that you do, Dr. Not Gonna Say, not just for teachers who are, I'm going to guess, the majority of your audience, but for students in your classroom and beyond and really encouraging others to think through their practices with thoughtfulness and intention and also compassion. And I think if anybody was to be an influencer on TikTok, I'm forever grateful that it's you. Yeah, I always knew it. I always knew it.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

You're a part of it too though because the stability and friendship that I had growing up is what led to me making it through my anxiety and having the confidence that I had. If I didn't have you guys growing up, I wouldn't be the person that I am today.

Melinda Lewis:

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Not Gonna Say.

Dr. Not Gonna Say:

I love you, Melinda.

Melinda Lewis:

I love you. Bye!

Pop, the Question was researched and hosted by Dr. Melinda Lewis. Our theme music and episodes are produced by Brian Kantorek with additional audio production by Noah Levine. All of this was done under the directorship of Erica Levi Zelinger, the deanship of Dr. Paula Marantz Cohen, and the Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University.

Audio:

Pop, the Question!

I know it's important. I do. I honestly do. But we talking about practice, man. What are we talking about? Practice. We talking about practice, man. We talking about practice.