200 Effort Changes Everything

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Welcome And A New Tone

SPEAKER_00 0:17

What up though, and welcome back to I'm Growin Manch Man John D in the building. So, you know, I haven't really shot in a minute like well the way that I'm gonna shoot today. And I feel like I've gotten to the point where I've become very confident in messages we as men follow to talk about those things, like having the courageous conversation with men about not I guess the the approach I used to come from was just that as a child, I grew up in an environment where being called a name, being called a name was like it was regular. And I think my bad behaviors of talking about men the way that I have has probably turned people off. And I have to do a better job because that's the way I kind of grew up. So my my language is probably a lot more harsh than it should be. So I'm gonna do a uh a better job

Effort Starts With Admitting Wrong

SPEAKER_00 1:12

at delivering information and hopefully I don't run anybody off because my I come in peace and my information is to help you increase your quality of life. Now, in order to do these things, you have to be open to being wrong, and you have to put in an effort that you haven't seen before over a longer period of time to get a result that only you can create. The result is so cold that you look forward to working on it so that it changes into something you didn't know it could become. Effort and energy that I put in to try to improve on a daily basis gives me reason to promote this message. And you know, it's not like it's new. We all know, like somebody done told you, like, you're only as good as the effort you put in, or, you know, like if you don't put in the effort, and you know, I guess it's steps to learning. There has to be some type of struggle for you to grow. And I don't think people understand the part of struggling. And you have to be mature to understand that struggling is supposed to create an energy in you to get out of it. And a lot of times the struggle can get the best of us if you don't know

Question The Messages You Inherited

SPEAKER_00 2:25

how to get out of it. So I guess I kind of understand that. But the message on this podcast today was to pretty much talk about messages we grew up on, like all of them. Instead of defending the things that I'm talking about, you should challenge yourself and say, why do I believe that? Like, does this belief help the people around me? Does it help me? A lot of the practices that we followed are very selfish, like really selfish. Like when I say selfish, I mean the way that we approach relationships. We have this mindset that if you make this amount of money, you can control the relationship. Like you don't have to say it out loud, but if you're single, then that's probably what it is, because we were taught these messages that women were gonna take our riches. So if they're gonna take our riches, you're going to create barriers for yourself to not get what you deserve. These messages that we get, if we don't challenge them, what we end up not happy in life. You can say that you're happy. And I can't say that you're not, but I do know it's levels to it. And, you know, there are people that say they that and and I do want to say this. A lot of times my message just gets misconstrued because there are women that like to defend men. That that kind of blows my mind because at the end of the day, I want you to know I come in peace. And this message is for those who're ready to receive it. If it's not for you, you can keep it moving. Because I don't want anybody to ever think I I want to hurt anybody. And you know, you could say the information's bad, right? But if you think about it, the bottom line of my message is that without your own effort to get better information, to practice things that will create a different result, you won't get what you deserve. So your effort is everything. If you don't look for new information, you don't practice it. How are you supposed to get something that you didn't work for? And our information is really only as good as our childhood. Parents, friends, the things we watched. Because after you leave

Money And Control In Relationships

SPEAKER_00 4:35

your childhood, you enter this area of life where you hope that you have enough to like continue enjoying it. Because you should you and this is crazy too. As a child, a lot of people didn't get to enjoy the life. I guess that was a small few. Because I didn't get to enjoy life, but I learned how to navigate. And I'm not gonna say that it was the best information at all because I only knew what I knew. And I was very selfish. I was putting myself first, even in in my family. If I don't put myself first, and this was simple stuff, it wasn't like health. I gotta put myself first, I gotta take care of my health. I'm talking about just I'm supposed to have me time and make sure that I, you know, I don't get a become a nervous wreck because they put this thing on fathers and husbands as if everything is just too much. And and you know what? It could be for some. And the only way in my mind to be able to know it's not work that it will drive you crazy is if you get therapy, because the amount of effort it takes to be a father and a husband probably was not demonstrated in your household growing up. So you're learning, she's learning, he's learning, we learning. At

Fatherhood Pressure And The Case For Therapy

SPEAKER_00 5:48

the end of the day, men pretty much believe in the the idea of money. And I and I'm gonna mention what I talk, spoke on my wife, my principal. Men don't go into education because it doesn't make enough money. I can almost you can make a survey. Would love to see the survey, particularly black men. Because I just noticed in my district, we don't have that many administrators that are black men. And it's not because they're not looking for them, it's just not a pool of them out there. But why don't we have the pool? Because men don't go to college to become educators. They go to college to for a job that's gonna pay them a lot of money. In order to get paid an education, it's a longer gratification. You have to come from a background where money was not that important. Most black men come from an environment where money is necessary. So you're not going to spend this money to go to college to become a teacher. And that's very unfortunate. But we're very young, as in people, really young. Like I said before, we just got rights in the 60s,

Why Black Men Avoid Teaching

SPEAKER_00 6:55

you know. So as we continue to move on, I do believe black men will go to college to become educators because the ability to change a family through your interaction with them is probably the best gratification you could ever get. And I'm gonna tell I'm gonna show you why. If you get to the point where you can become a certified teacher, you have the ability to work on a craft that will change young people. If you can change young people from the environments that they come from, you make the environment that much better. But if you don't work on a craft, how can you get better? Majority of the black men that I know that's in education are career changers because all of us wanted something that made more money than education. And then we found our way in education because maybe we got a degree that didn't transfer or translate into something that we wanted to do, and we ended up in education. But what I learned through this process, I don't want to give a percentage because I, you know, my wife may be saying that's the first time, thirst thing, like that's when it goes bad. But from what I remember, like all of the black men were really involved, whether it's sports or extracurricular activities, like becoming better in their craft, like doing extra things. Of course, it was to make money, but they developed relationships where they were trying to help these kids grow. Imagine if they went to college to become that. And I'm gonna tell you the difference. When you go to college, and I and I missed this, I didn't get this, but this is what I've observed. When you go to college to become a teacher, you learn the pedagogy of young people, like of how to teach the young people. When you when you don't go to school for that, it's so, you got to be so intentional to go back and get that information because when you get a temporary certification, they want you to go to college and get these classes done. But if you're older, you're just getting them done to getting them done. You're not getting them done to truly master that part of the craft. And I believe that's what's education is missing. The mastery of the craft. Pedagogy is so

Pedagogy And Communication That Works

SPEAKER_00 9:05

important in learning how to communicate effectively so that kids can understand what you're saying. We as adults assume, because we are speaking English, that these kids understand that. If you don't use words they understand, they're gonna like just halfway translate the message. Of course, they can spell, but just because you can spell doesn't mean they can use context clues. You don't use context clues. How can you truly understand the message when it was a direct message? And I feel like if you don't work on communication as a teacher, you don't go to school for it, you don't work, you don't learn the pedagogy of teaching, you can't become the person you want to become. That's one thing I don't understand either. Like I would love to be in the presence of a master teacher in their element. And when I say that, I normally see it on videos. I'll normally see it on videos. And um when I'm in a professional development, they'll show a video of a remarkable teacher. But to have conversations, to see what they do, what they did to get there, that's a different intent. We gotta, I know I started out on the messages, the miss messaging, but I guess this is a miss message too, because from my experience, particularly down south, when I was in Florida and Georgia, like the black men there that were in education were so involved and engaged. And I know Atlanta has a lot of black people, but I'm I mean, even in in Orlando, the level of participation, I don't know, it just looks different. So so being here, not seeing well, being underrepresented, uh, it's like I I can see that there is a need, right? But you want them to be qualified. So I just want the kids to get the best they can. But if we don't go to school to learn the craft of teaching, you have to be so much more intentional being a career changer. And I that was really why I retired because not why I was retired, but when I came out of retirement, because I really did walk away from education, I was just so tired and felt like I could do something else. But when I came back, I said I was going to be the best math teacher ever. I had started doing things that I'd never done before. Like just practice, I still practice math every single day. Every single day I still practice math. And and the reason why I do it because my wife is so cold at math, she don't even work in anything with math, but she remembers everything. So and she's and I I I asked her, like, how did you get to this point? She was like, Everything connects. And I'm like, I don't, I don't understand like how everything connects. Can you show me oh great one? Because she's not even in it. I am lowest

Becoming A Master Teacher On Purpose

SPEAKER_00 11:50

on the totem pole at math in my house, and I've taught math more than everybody in the house. I've taken more math than everybody in the house. But I'm I'm just we have to change the message and push the idea of a black man going into school to become an educator. I know people are caught up in money. But the benefits of becoming a mastercraft teacher, I promise this. If anybody's listening to this, if you really want to go down in history, I mean go down in history, go to college and become a teacher. I don't care what kind of teacher, but when you become a certified teacher, I want you to always work on your craft. And when what that what does that look like? Finding how to get better performance out of your students. Most likely, you don't know what it takes. So you should be learning different ways to get the most out of students because when they leave you, they are gonna go back to the environment that they came from. And if you don't give them some words that could possibly change their life, both of y'all wasting your time. And I know that teachers don't feel like that, but if they worked on their craft every single day, the results will change. That is a guarantee. And I think we get caught up being in education that just because you go to work every day, that means you're getting better. No, you're just going to work every day. You have to find ways to get better, you have to become so intentional that you truly believe if I give these kids a few words that it's gonna help them along the way. But if you're just giving the content and you don't understand that they don't understand you, I'm not saying you're hurting them, but you're not giving them what they need to get to the next level. I know some people like, what do you know about getting to the next level? I'll tell you this if you knew how I grew up and the way that I look at education, you would understand like everybody should look at education like that. Everybody in education should be mastering their craft where they become so cold at teaching that people want you to help teach their teachers how to teach. And I'm telling you, that is a different type of money. It's a different type of money. If you really want and I and this money is way better than any other career, because if you become code at teaching at an early age and you continue to work on your craft, you won't ever need money probably by 30. Because teaching, it's it's so many things that can make a teacher great, but you have to do it on purpose. Some people say teachers are born. I don't believe that because I I don't there's no way that I was gonna ever become a teacher. Only reason why I became a teacher is because I could not get in my field of HR and I didn't have any experience and I didn't know how to do it. So, and that was that was a horrible uh degree that I well, it wasn't a horrible degree, it was a horrible concept of what I was thinking about at the time. But who's telling me anything? My father didn't graduate from college, and my mother didn't go to high school. So their information was so limited, it was just go to college, get

Planting Seeds Without Yelling

SPEAKER_00 15:05

a degree, and you'll get a good job. That's not really true. No, a lot of people that didn't get a really good job, but now that I think maybe a lot of people didn't do what they were supposed to do either. And that is okay because it's trial and error. We out here, but my kids, our kids, won't make the same mistakes. Even my students, I am planting seeds. Last year, the soil was tough. It was tough. Now it's it's it loosened up, and the kids just treat me differently. And I feel like they believe in my intent. And my goal is to not yell this year. I I really don't want to yell ever again unless it's an emergency or it's necessary. I'm at a game or something, like something where it makes sense. But to yell at anybody, and now mind you, when I say yell, I'm I mean, these kids can sometimes rub you the wrong way, right? Now I don't curse and I don't use inappropriate language, but sometimes I can I can I can yell with like somebody said it was a it's a father tone. Like, get your butt in the house. So I know I want to be able to demonstrate that without yelling though, because it is, it, it is, it's a different respect. Kids give me a different respect, but I know some of them are being yelled enough at home, and I don't want them to think that that's okay. Not from me, because I'm working on it. I want to be better. So we have to change in this message. I'm telling you, rescripting the culture one conversation at a time. We have to challenge the messages we learned as a child. Because if we don't and we defend them, we stay in the trap. We can't possibly think when we like when we were born that our parents knew enough. Like, come on. Me and my wife know way more than our parents when we started parenting, but we still don't know anything because we still trying to crack things, right? So if you don't look for new information, you'll keep practicing bad habits. And if you don't figure it out, you're saying you're praying that your kids will figure it out. And this is the thing. No matter what age you are, you can get better information and start practicing better habits and change the quality of your life in in weeks. And and the only way it can actually get done is if you do it. I think it's a lot of messages out there, and the only message I want you to have is that you are the most important person in the world. But it don't matter if you don't believe in it. Your effort changes the results you haven't seen because your parents would have told you how to do it. Your environment would have showed you how to do it because nobody wants to be last. Nobody wants to be the last one to find something out,

GATA And The Closing Challenge

SPEAKER_00 17:40

but you could be the first to do what is necessary to change everything. But it's gonna take a different type of effort. The effort is one of those efforts where you're gonna be mad at people not acknowledging your your journey. But once you understand that they have their own life, they're waiting for you. Y'all make today better than yesterday, and don't worry about anything you can't control. G A T A. Get after that action or that action will get after you. Be great on purpose.