EP: 1 - Mary Poppins 2.0: Reigniting the Spark in Education

Hey Gen Xers, remember when Mary Poppins seemed like the ultimate fix for everything? As a teacher and therapist, I’ve spent years wishing we had her magic back in the classroom. I’m Suzanne M. Swain, EDS/MSSW, and I've lived between the worlds of therapy and education, teaching emotions, middle school, and everything in between.

In this episode, we’ll dive deep into the heart of teaching and how creativity, empathy, and a sprinkle of that "Mary Poppins" magic can revive education. Together, we’ll explore how teachers can reclaim their spark, bring joy back into learning, and foster real connection with students—because, as Dr. Rita Pierson said, "Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like."

Join me on this whimsical journey to rethink middle school, inspire creativity, and rediscover the joy of teaching. Let’s create a new version of education that nurtures both students and teachers, because, like Mary Poppins, we have the power to transform lives—one classroom at a time. Ready to play? Let’s rewrite the game together!


Contact Suzanne Swain:
Email: Suzanne@msmarypoppins.com
Website: www.msmarypoppins.com
Facebook: Suzanne Swain
Produced By: StellaMix Podcast Production 

Transcript

0:05

Hey gen X-ers. You ever kind of wish like Mary Poppins would come down and help your kids. You ever like, have that thought. I'm a teacher. And as much as I try to be Mary Poppins, I can tell you that we really could use some Mary Poppins vibe going on. Because. Kind of feel a little bored these days. I need to feel inspired. I need to feel like I'm growing like a seed and, and, and starting to engage in some new information. New ways of doing things. Hi, I'm Suzanne. My name is Suzanne I'm swaying. EDS M S S w. And I exist in a funny little space somewhere between a therapist and a teacher. And it's a great space to be. So I teach emotions. I've been a professor I've been an eighth grade teacher. For a really long time. And taught writing. I also taught fifth grade science and I have been studying the art of education and pedagogy for years. Ever since I was born. A long time. But I finally finished my project. And I would really love to share with you some things that I've learned along the way. On my yellow brick road of imagination into the world of education. But. I've always felt that fixing education isn't about policy and, you know, labeling kids in certain departments and doing this and that. I, you know, I'm not about labels. I realize that a lot of the problem that we have in education is actually the words we're using. That's the enemy. It's not the people like it's all about the people I loved teaching and loved, loved, loved getting to know all of the families and diverse. Cultures. Food and music and everything. I always just felt so connected. You know, you ever feel that connection with people, you just like you have a job or something where you're just like, these are my folks and you just felt like you could thrive because ideas started happening, you know, you networked and it just, you felt plugged into the world. And sometimes I have to go back and watch Mary Poppins because it reminds me of what the essential nature of teaching is. Is that inspiring joy? Is the sunshine for learning. Right. There was a lady named Dr. Rita Wilson. God rest her soul. And she was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And she did. A Ted talk and the Ted talk, she said, Kids don't learn from people. They don't like. Some of the wisest words I've ever heard. But, you know, what's funny. Most of my teaching career people thought I was insane for that. Yeah. I have roadblocks all over the place. Y'all. But then I realized I was like, you know what? We need to go into creativity. We need to go into ideas. And, and what if my middle school classroom could be like a sink tank? You know, and we have all these diverse people and there's all this potential here. And you know, who knows what these kids are gonna grow up to be? You know, their brains are all these different little brains, like all these little consoles at, inside, out with all these little characters sitting at the table. Watching me trying to get whatever they could in academic vitamins from me each and every day in 45 minutes or less. They had to be there. They had no choice. So they didn't really worry about that. It wasn't about money. I mean, it wasn't for any kind of pay or anything. You know, the exchange was just the interaction of information. And it's honest, it's pure. It's good. Because as a teacher, you know, obviously everyone knows you don't be a teacher for the money. That's not, that's not it because you know, money, power and ego are not the things you want to focus on. If you want to be a teacher. You know, that's not, it you're a Honda civic kind of person. You know, So, but like Mary Poppins, you know, teachers, we were a little bit Horty. You know, we have a lot of hoarder kind of tendencies where you know that little bit of glue left or, or, you know, oh, wait, I have a couple of candies left in this one bag. And you know, our backpacks are probably just a giant Walgreens mish-mosh pile or something like that. But we tried on it. We try for our 40,000 a year and we fight the good fight every day. And. I just felt like I wanted to have some appreciation for the teacher hood of Mary Poppins. And to say to my fellow teachers out there that, you know, I feel like we need to be inspired. And I feel like it's time for teachers now. Do you notice this it's like the teacher movement is coming and I'm so excited about this because it's about learning again. Thank you. You know, I'm such a neurodivergent of the eighties that I'm like, you know, everything is some metaverse and I'm like, you know, video games or I'm in this world, or, you know, I'm listening to music and I go to that world or whatever. And in the metaverse there's a place for a Mary Poppins. Because, I mean, what is she really she's a nanny, but we don't really do that now. So like, if you were to take Mary Poppins, And remixer like, I make a mix tape. Of Mary Poppins in a way, both movies. Sure. Why not? All the books and just kind of remix it. With Walt Disney's brain, because wouldn't, you just love to swim around in there for awhile. And. See what happens in a modern world with that? Put her out there or him or they or whoever, but like get that person there. And let them inspire people, let them be the best professional development we've ever had to just reignite the flame of interest in our jobs. Because quite frankly, being a teacher doesn't seem like a pretty awesome thing to do on paper. Now you get all the vibes of the kids, you get the fields, the kids are amazing. You love them. Like your, your they're your own. As it's also a therapist. I spoke a little girl yesterday that. Had some really tough stuff going on. You know, she lost her parents and she felt really alone. She was just a little, a little thing. You know, about eight years old. I lost my mom when I was 13 and went to school the very next day. And my teachers were the ones that kinda took care of me. They took me in like a village, you know, And I felt plugged in and connected right at that moment. Whereas I don't know how I could have survived. At that point, my dad also had cancer, so things were pretty sad at home. So school was my place of light. It was warm and glowy and snugly and like a blanket of information that I could take with me. And the librarians were just, you know, kind of Google before Google was a Google thing, but they had amazing card catalogs you could flip through and all kinds of tactical things. And. It was a place of wonder. You know, like it was a place of opportunity and where I could have the distraction I needed from difficult things in my life. And so this little girl yesterday, She's sitting there. And she's so sad. And it's like, how do you explain such a complicated mess? And how to get out of it to an eight year old. And you just see the look in her eyes and you're just melting. You know, your heart just melts. You know, this kid is worse than any Sarah McLaughlin, Laughlin, puppy, commercial type of thing you'd ever see. And I wanted to make her happy. And I was like, I'm going to have to lie. That's the only thing I can do. I need to give her a shot. Of something that's just joy. Like the polar opposite of whatever emotion she is feeling right now. And it's some kind of horrible, mixed sadness emotion. But I, one thing I know about sadness from inside out is I know. That she represents empathy. I had a great opportunity to speak with Megalophobe who wrote inside, out in a zoom recently. And we talked about some ideas I had about the movie and she was so helpful and, you know, and I think about her being the game maker of inside out. You know, Kind of like on the outskirts there. And how does she plan sadness? But she said that, you know, sadness means empathy and you can see that from the way that she sat with Bing, bong and consoled him. And she, you know, she's the teacher. Of the whole group there. She's the one who's the teacher. It's funny because as a, you know, little glasses wearing sweater wearing. Melancholy. Sideliner kind of sit on the carpet, rolls at the dance, kind of on the sides and play with stuff. Now I'd have a phone, you know, as to be sadness is actually kind of a good thing, because what I always saw in sadness in the movie is that she was sort of like a Mary Poppins. You know, Disney has a great way of bringing in these characters. But this, this little piece of empathy and kindness and sweetness and everything. That goes along with. What it means to be a real person because you know, Mary Poppins, I always wondered about Mary Poppins is backstory. You know, like what did she eat? What was her favorite food? You know, what does she do to like, hang out? Like what would she watch on Netflix? Yeah. It's like, I want to remix modern version of Mary Poppins. Well, so this little girl. I told her, I said, you know, Kiddo. I got something to tell you, you have one. The lottery. So I looked around the room and I tried to find something I could give her like a ticket or anything, and I found this little glittery. Uh, piece of paper. And I wrote on it. You know, ticket. And I handed it to her and I said, I have been sent here to help you. Really. Yeah, I've been sent here to help you. And you know what? I am your fairy God teacher. It's nice to meet you. My name is Suzanne. And he was the deal. You helped me escape from middle school. Aha. And now after teaching eighth graders for so long and using so many Glade plugins to deal with the smell in the classroom, I now get to be a ferry. She's like, what? I said, yeah, you know, it's funny. I was going to go to get my doctorate, but no, I got another weird letter in the mail. And this letter came in purple packaging and it had all kinds of squiggly, noodley things all over it. And it asked me to go to ferry school because I had been a master teacher and an administrator and a librarian and all these different things in the school. And I tried every single job I possibly could, so I could know everything and everything I could about the strategy of school. And instead of going back to UT to get my doctorate where I had gotten my clinical social work degree in may, I said, well, kiddo, I opened that package. Cause you got to open something like that. And I was invited to be a fairy God teacher. Wow. Lucky me. And she said, okay. So, how do you get to be one? I said, well, Yeah, we're rare. There's only like two in Putnam county where I live. You. I live in Tennessee, out in the rural area. I was like, yeah, the only two of us here around here. And in Cookeville, we got to. And she's just wide-eyed she's kinda meet the other one. I'm like, well, maybe. We'll we'll do a lunch or something. I said, I have a lunch with the tooth fairy next week. Her name is Debbie, and she did pro bono dentistry workout in Africa for kids. And so then she got a letter to become a tooth fairy. Just like, okay. Yeah. You just got to sell it. So. I was like, sure. We can have lunch. And I said, well, I became a fairy God teacher. By having a master's degree in education, then getting an educational specialist degree, which is even rare because it doesn't even exist in a lot of states. It's like between a doctorate and a masters, and then you have to go back to school again, outside of education, outside of pedagogy and all these things. And then you got to learn to be a therapist. So you got to learn all there is to know about emotions and that whole swirly world. Thank goodness. We have movies like inside out to help us out. Because I need a visual here, please. Wow. She was mesmerized. She was absolutely intoxicated with the idea that I could in fact, be a fairy. It was great. The joy was coming back. You can see it in her eyes. Her old body language started to change, you know, 80% of languages is non-verbal. So you could see her just kind of opening up and opening up. Did you grab something fuzzy and safe and, you know, took a candy and things like that. And she was just ready to listen. I said, well, Yeah, you. I go to the special schools online through UT and it's like a special program. You have to have a real special password for. It was kind of modern, you know, and would probably work. And so she bought it and I said, yeah, to do all kinds of weird classes in like, you know, imagination and creativity and art and painting and. It was a really cool artsy sort of world and dance and theater and all these neat things and taught us to use our imaginations for joy and, and how, you know, the chemical adrenaline can be. Kind of dangerous sometimes because you know, adrenaline is like red bull and it's supposed to help you for fight or flight. When really bad stuff happens. But sometimes it sticks around too long and then you kind of stay there in that mode. You know, like when something really, really bad happens and you can't get out of it, it's like all that adrenaline was just running around. It's like red bull. But then it's weird because like when you drink the red bull. The character anxiety shows up. And she's like, She's super helpful, super smart, super technology oriented. She's all kinds of capable. But crippled by her own emotions. Herself. Imagine the emotions inside of emotions. Inside of anxiety's head. Yeah. Go there. I have questions. So. But if you get her to kind of calm down and stop drinking the red bull and sit in a massage chair and draw a picture for a little while. Imagination comes back out and Bing bong starts to play and everybody starts hanging out and having a good time at a dance party with disco balls and all kinds of fun. And silly string. Well, If you don't learn from people, you don't like. Then we need to make sure. That liking your teacher. Is part of it. And as a gen X-er I have to say that it's most of our kids that are in middle school right now and middle school is now. Kind of in dumpster fire mode. It really is like, these are warrior teachers. I'm telling you. They're like the Navy seals. Okay. These people like props to some seventh and eighth grade teachers. I see you out there. I see you, especially my English teachers, eighth grade English teachers. Hello to you, cupcakes and Slurpees. Big grants, things like that. So. But it's it's bad now. Do you know how middle school started? You got to go back to the beginning on this one. You know, in order to have a Mary Poppins, you gotta know where we had the need for, to begin with. So middle school. School's originally were started by something called the old Satan diluter law. It's in the Smithsonian. I've seen it. I actually fan girl over it. When I went the last time I went to DC for the gun violence conference. The old saying the lunar law says that if kids do not have a formal public education, that they could be abducted by Satan and possessed. True enough. Now middle schools on the other hand. Came on along later on, when they realized that puberty was a form of hysteria. Right because women were being trained basically with, you know, things during the day, like Valium and whatnot, and, you know, men were at work and all these things in the fifties and sixties and. You know, they thought, well, if they could. You know, if puberty was sort of like a form of hysteria, much like, you know, PMs or, or that's like, what would be, what if. Maybe we need to talk to some psychiatrists and see what to do with these kids, because they're crazy. You know, and. Uh, so they brought in psychiatrists and told them that they basically need to make a mental health facility for kids going through puberty because they could be possessed by Satan or in fact, just kind of be a little too wild for the regular populace and cause too much trouble because schools are based on the Prussian German. Otherwise German, uh, school model of raising kids in order to be factory workers. So they use bell systems. And if you only go to the bathroom at certain times, and we've adopted that into our school system, as what we're doing. So all that bell stuff that's from making us factory workers. Well, we're not factory workers, most of us anymore because a lot of factories have closed and things. So, you know, it's time to modernize. I mean, we're still going on the basic thought of education from way back in the day in the founding of our country, when. You know, things like this or why we started. So, yeah, middle schools, junior highs as they were called mostly were started in that same model of being basically a psych ward. To put them away for a couple of years and see what happens. But one where it kind of failed out is that those teachers were not taught. Mental health and how to cope with a variety of learning disabilities learning issues. And so on. Okay. So. We tried different options. And I was able to go to an arts magnet school for middle school. Palm beach county school of the arts class of 1996. I went all the way through to my senior year. And guess what y'all. Mary Poppins lives. She's out there. She was at the school of the arts. That's where Mary Poppins is. That's the teaching environment. She needs to be in. You know, if we want to think about how Mary Poppins is doing. Because she's a teacher and they need help. Like someone needs to reach out. Hello, are you okay? Do you need help? Like, can, do you want to talk? Let me take you for a piece of cake and pizza or whatever and say what you need to say, girl. Person. Anyone. As an educator. And I don't want you to think of classroom teachers only as the only teachers in your life. Anyone that, that shares knowledge with you as a transaction. That's a teacher. That's a teacher. So these teachers need some help right now, and they need some inspiration and some professional development and something to get the wound back up. And it's going to be a lot more than some popsicles and a dance party. So, what we can do is look at schools that worked. Look at situations that brought joy to our children and let them have a childhood back. Gen X-ers um, we have an epidemic of homeschooling going on. And I love the fact that people are making the choice to, you know, choose a different path for their child and for whatever reason that may be. I think that's great. It's very admirable. You know, my best friend, Dana she's homeschooling right now. And I learned so much from her and her children. That hi guys. And. You know, I can understand the reasons why people are wanting to homeschool and K-12 teachers are frustrated. There's, you know, money's being stripped from the left and right. You know, all these things are happening. And now they want to blow up the department of education, all kinds of crazy stuff. So it doesn't seem like it's a time for teachers, but yet it does. Because you have avid elementary, people are starting to understand the plight of teachers and. How funny the world of teaching is it is the weirdest, most noodley, crazy little place you ever saw. Imagine working at a middle school for the arts. So I got into that school when I was 13. And, uh, I went there for seventh through 12th grade. I was in the visual arts department go visual. We had a red little application form. And I thought that was sort of ironic. And time of Alanis, Morissette that. You know, um, the red paper meant something positive and that it was, you know, a good blessing type of thing. So I filled out my application. I did this big audition and I drove, I did all these drawings and everything. Listening to my Paula Abdul and playing my Sega Genesis and working on fantasy star and all that. But trying to get into this art school, because I knew that if I went to a regular junior high kid, like me, You know, that sits on the sidelines at a dance and sits on the carpet rolls and just watches everybody like a fly on the wall and too scared to do anything, except get a soda. And hope that her friends will come over and talk to her at some point, but I wasn't, you know, I was socially phobic kind of kid. But I love to draw and I could draw cartoons pretty well. And I used to make money when I was in second grade drawing cartoons for other kids on there. You know, school box and things like that. So there's me over there, but I didn't think I'd survive at a regular junior high with football and all that stuff. Come on. And we're talking mid eighties or mid nineties here. So the art school was my option. And let me tell you all, it was a whole new metaverse. The popular kids, more talented. They were incredible. This guy, Sam. Sane and Welsh. He learned to play the piano like overnight. And he's, he's a genius. Stephanie, Kababi had this voice of an angel. I was like, how did you do it? She's like sitting next to me in English class. And then all of a sudden she gets on stage. He's like, wow. And I'm like, oh my gosh, girl. I was an Aw. Every single day of how incredibly impressive people were. We had different art areas. We had visual, like I was in where we did painting and art and Ms. Green dusky and. Ms. Rudy, remind Mary Poppins that got us through and, and showed us how in the afternoons we could use art to synthesize our thoughts and talk, take all the stress from the day. And. And put it into her art and give it feeling an emotion and let it out. And you know, that was mental health. Then that was our mental health. They were our therapists. We did art therapy every day. But the other art areas, we had dance that I was so jealous of is a little fat kid because all the beautiful dancer, kids and everything. You know, we had dance with Ms. Portia and they did these beautiful, you know, I attend. Uh, assemblies and everything. And Cedar would put on productions like hair and I mean just, wow, the kids are going to act and sing. And of course they were all the clowns in class, you know, and the music kids were kind of quiet like us and, and, but they were kind of the smart ones, you know, the good math and all that, like you might expect. And. But they could play instruments, which is something I could never do. You know, I was the kid that never played an instrument and got picked to be like the elf with the curly shoes and the giant hat instead of the. You know, one of the nice ELPs. On the elementary school music. The assembly. So. In any case this place was Mary Poppins world. Like I felt like I entered a school full of Mary Poppins is, and this carpet bag that she had was in every classroom, nothing costs anything. I had all the art materials. I needed money. Wasn't an issue. Power was. Power was creativity. Power was talent. Talent was the currency. I've been amazing what these kids could do at 13. Many of us couldn't do at 45. It was crazy. We said at lunch outside, just anywhere you want real Bohemian style. I was growing up in west Palm beach, Florida. The weather's gorgeous, you know, it's, it's, it's south Florida and sunshine. We had sunshine, we had friends, we could sit with who we want and people play guitars and make things, painkillers, faces, you know, whatever kind of wackiness and our teachers were just as weird. They'd stand up on a desk and sing greatest love of all in the middle of class or. You know, All kinds of silly stuff. But everybody was just a little bit on the noodle east side. Maybe it was the Florida heat. Maybe it was Ms. Green Dusty's wild experiment, you know, coming to fruition, but. You had a bunch of neurodivergent kids with a bunch of neurodivergent teachers. Not a lot of special ed. Pull-out no gifted. Really. We all were gifted. Everybody was gifted because they were neurodivergent. They could think on several levels outside of the box. They didn't let the box be a cage. Being in a box is no fun. Nobody wants that. But sometimes I think, you know, we get a little muddled in our lives with some of the rules and I think just the words need to change. And that is where Mary Poppins lives. Because of the words can change. Like my father says to be competent, capable, and connected. Is the secret to great teaching. And as a school principal for years, he started schools, my family businesses schools, I was born in the schools. You know, I've been watching teachers my entire life, long living in the school office as the kid playing with the durables, you know, I've been watching people forever. And I realize our teachers need credit where credit is due. And we are not done talking about teachers, not by a long shot. But Mary Poppins is there. Mary Poppins is when teachers get to be creative and they take anxiety and put down that red bull. You know, give her an ice hot cup of cocoa and let her draw. Let her be free to be artsy and weird and creative. And let them. Have that space to be who they are.'cause that's good teaching. You know, if they have that time to noodle, then they're going to bring that to the classroom and bring their excitement back. And that excitement is absolutely infectious. We need that Mary Poppins spirit back. But I think it's, we need to appreciate teachers in order to do that. And I want to elevate those teachers. I want to integrate them into the classrooms to take that little seed of knowledge, that beautiful little seed that each and every child is and let them bloom into a nice, happy little Daisy. Friendly flower. All, uh, um, you've got mail. The friendliest little flower. And play the game of middle school a little differently than we did. You know, in gen X, that was a place of trauma. It was like going to the hunger games. You know, it was like playing Dragon's layer. Where if you make one wrong move, then you got to play the whole game over again. It was like, you know, the eighties was all about like, you're going to die. If this happens, you're going to die. Watch the Goonies. You're going to die. You. Like, if you're a goonie, you could die. But we always face like sudden deaths at any moment, even in Disney movies. But now it's not like that. We can provide a safe space for our kids, a happy space, a place where teachers also have. Equitability, you know, they can feel like they are appreciated paid well and treated fairly so they can have that clear mindedness that they desperately need. So that Mary Poppins, if you're out there. Fellow teacher. Let's do it. Let's get back in the classroom. Let's erase the dry erase board that we had with all of these old school thoughts about how we used to teach people and what used to work, kids are not gonna be made in a factory workers anymore. Kids are not going to be possessed by Satan. You know, this is not what it's about. But now we have all these issues going on, where things aren't allowed in schools and so on, and teachers have lost their way. They've lost their power, their joy, their spirit. And I want you to get it back and we're going to get it back together. I promise you that. And guess what? I may just have a plan for how to fix those middle schools out there by looking at that school of the arts and examining what made it tick and what meetings. turned back into imagination. And think about what we could do for our kids. If we could just take a minute to examine Mary, Mary Poppins. Look at what she can do and try to help our teachers to get to that. To me. So to all of you, I challenge you. To think about this. Think about your kids. Think about your childhood and who were your heroes? Are you riding on Falcor the dragon at the end of the neverending story, did you make it to the castle at the center of the labyrinth? And did you rescue your baby brother from David Bowie? You know, did you grab the worm along the way? All you got to do is play this new game. We're going to play a new game. And we're going to rewrite this game this time with all kinds of bonus levels and fun things. But we just got to do it together. So, if you're ready to play this new video game. I've got some quarters. Ready player one. I'm ready to play as Mary Poppins. My name is Suzanne M Swain EDS, M S S w. And I'm auditioning to be Mary Poppins. 2.0.