⛓️‍💥 It's Time to Decolonize Your Teaching Style — with Podge Thomas

Amelia HrubyHey there, off the grid listeners. Amelia here popping in before this episode with a special announcement. Come to class, which is my three day workshop intensive, where I will teach you how to teach and sell online with competence and care, has been rescheduled for June fourth, fifth, and sixth. You probably heard me talking about it here on the podcast in May, and I had to push the dates because my beloved dog, Zoe, sadly passed away the week that come to class was going to happen, and I just couldn't teach in those immediate moments of grief. So I rescheduled come to class for the beginning of June, and I added even more support if you'd like to join us.

Amelia HrubySo this is just a very quick message to invite you to head to the show notes and check out come to class. You have until the end of May to sign up. It's going to be a great time. And since it had to be rescheduled, you can still join. Again, head to the link in the show notes to sign up.

Amelia HrubyNow, let's get into this episode. Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go off the grid.

Amelia HrubyOkay. I know that you really wanna put your phone away. Yeah. Okay. Hello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients.

Amelia HrubyAnd right now, it's a show about how to teach and sell online, or rather how getting better at teaching online can actually help you sell your online courses, classes, and workshops better. I'm your host, Amelia Ruby, and that topic is what I'm teaching in my upcoming intensive, Come to Class, which is happening May fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth with a special optional prep session on the thirteenth and bonus office hours on the twenty first. It is going to be a wonderful time. And today I'm sharing a very special episode to help you decide if you might want to join us for Come to Class, or even if you're not gonna join us to help you rethink the online learning and teaching spaces that you enter or host yourself. In this special bonus episode, I am talking to Podge Thomas about metacognition, decolonizing learning, and why Notion is one of our favorite liberatory tools for teaching.

Amelia HrubyYeah. We said it. We believe it. That's what we're gonna get into in this conversation. And it was recorded not for all of you here and off the grid, but actually for students in come to class.

Amelia HrubyBecause in addition to the three day workshop intensive, come to class students also get a lot of great bonuses. And one of them is special behind the scenes conversations with some of my favorite online teachers, facilitators, and course creators. So this conversation was recorded as one of those bonuses, and Podge was kind enough to let me air it here and share it with all of you as well. And if you join come to class, you will also get conversations that I won't be sharing here with my dear friend, Taylor Elise Morrison, who is an amazing facilitator, works with companies like Google, Franklin Covey, and so many others. She's gonna talk about how to host your Zoom rooms, how to handle conflict, how to make breakout rooms not suck.

Amelia HrubyLike, it is actually possible. They can be great if you do them right, and Taylor's gonna teach us how. I'm also talking to my friend Nick Antoinette about the online spaces that they've hosted, which include their amazing co working group, Get You Done Club, as well as their signature course, How Much Money is Enough. Nick is an expert in digital intimacy, and they're gonna tell us how they have crafted their heartfelt super connective spaces as well as how they plan their time when they're teaching because Nick is so good at fitting so much into, like, a sixty minute session without anything feeling rushed. And I don't know about you, but I am constantly running over every time I teach.

Amelia HrubySo I wanted to learn from Nick how to fit it all in, how to time it correctly, and come to class students, get to hear that conversation where they so kindly walked me through it. And then there's also one more bonus conversation with Amber Factor of Sunfish Ceramics, and Amber talks about how to teach tactile things. Like, what if you're trying to walk people through how to do something with your hands? What What if you're trying to translate an in person experience into an online workshop? Amber's gonna tell us how she moved some of her ceramics and pottery workshops online during the pandemic and how she creates and holds space when people are learning new tactile skills.

Amelia HrubySo those bonus conversations are only for folks inside come to class. And if you like today's episode, you're probably gonna wanna hear those too. So you're probably gonna wanna sign up for come to class. Registration is open now, but it closes on May 12. So you have a few more days to keep considering and sign up.

Amelia HrubyBut I truly hope that if teaching or learning is a part of your online business, that you will decide to join us. So head to the show notes for all of the information on come to class. And now enjoy my pulled from behind the paywall special behind the scenes conversation with Podge Thomas. Hi, Podge. Welcome to class.

Amelia HrubyI'm so happy to have you.

Podge ThomasHi, Amelia. I am very happy to be here.

Amelia HrubyI feel like I should say at the beginning that I think you were one of the first people that really got me thinking about the role of learning and teaching in my online business. Because when I had you on the podcast a year and a half ago now, quite a while ago, our first conversation ended up being a lot about being a student and your experience with traditional education and how that led you into nontraditional employment over time. So I'm curious if you wouldn't mind just sort of opening us up with a bit of a recap, I guess, about your experience as a student. You know, what was your, I guess, life like going through school, and how did that shape your relationship to learning and to wanting to teach or not teach?

Podge ThomasYeah. So when I think about and I talk about my experience in education, I'm talking about traditional education. I'm talking about school, the institution of school that starts around four or five years old, mandatory until you're about 18, and then optionally you can go into higher ed. And I always hated school. I hated going to school.

Podge ThomasThere were a number of different reasons for that, and it really wasn't until probably the last five years or so that I began to unpack it. When I first started working for myself, I was doing operations and talent management type consulting, and that was a direct response to how toxic work relationships were. That eventually and and one of the things I would talk about was that this transition from school to work was connected in a way that we don't really talk about, that we go to school to learn so that we can go to work where we're not supposed to learn anymore, we're just supposed to work. So that was my lens for doing that work. And then that shifted, and I began to think a lot more about learning, being an adult learner, because probably from maybe my mid twenties on, I was always trying to understand some of my own behavior around school, like, the struggles I had as a student.

Podge ThomasAnd for context, I spent, like, a good portion of my twenties, thirties, and forties in school in higher ed. And there were things that I that I was doing or not doing as a student and as an employee that were really disruptive for myself, and I didn't understand. So I would heavily procrastinate. I would get very distracted in class. I really kind of railed against I don't consider myself sort of anti authoritarian, but I was often very frustrated by teachers and by managers or executives in how they were thinking about what our daily experience was like, what our classroom experience was like.

Podge ThomasSo these things was kind of part of the the same conversation. I think much less about traditional work now, and I really think about more about school. So early childhood education, I was definitely bullied. I definitely was really distracted and not engaged. If I'm in a room full of people, it's impossible for me to focus.

Podge ThomasI wanna be in a room with, like, fewer than six people. Like, that's how I can actually then engage, then I can actually think about what I want to say or what I want to contribute to a group conversation. The bigger the room gets, the harder it is. It's almost like I leave my body. So there was this sort of traditional classroom setting, right, where you sit in a room full of people, and you listen to somebody who's at the front of the class, and there's so much variation in how people will teach, whether you're in a early education or high school or or a higher ed setting.

Podge ThomasBut it's pretty much this person is at the board at the, you know, what used to be a blackboard. I don't know how they do it anymore. And I'm supposed to sit here from, you know, one to three hours maybe and just listen. Maybe I can ask questions. So I've definitely been in educational situations where I could ask questions.

Podge ThomasI was not allowed to ask questions in high school. That was very specifically something I wasn't allowed to do in high school. I switched high schools at some point, and my new high school, I remember raising my hand, and I ended up in the principal's office not understanding that I wasn't supposed to ask questions. And then there were other aspects. There were definitely racial aspects of being in an educational system.

Podge ThomasAnd one of the stories I like to tell I don't love to tell it. It's not it's not a happy story, but I was in graduate school. I don't know. This was probably ten years ago at this point. And I took, one of the classes I was taking.

Amelia HrubyI was in business school, and I took

Podge Thomasa class. And right at the beginning of the class, the guy that was teaching the class, he happened to be the dean of the school, and I knew him. I'd had some interactions with him. He approached me, and he asked me if I would like to have some tutoring, some one on one tutoring with him outside of class. And I was like, sure.

Podge ThomasWhy not? And it took me a few weeks to realize that he had asked me, and he had asked another person of color. We were the only two people of color in this whole class of probably 30 people, and he had only asked the two of us if we would like, apropos of nothing, by the way. There was no reason for it. And halfway through the semester, I had met up with him at my school had, like, a had, like, a room and a co working space, and so I met up with him when we were going over something or other.

Podge ThomasAnd he bumped into somebody that he knew, and he was chatting. And he turned to me, and he said, oh, by the way, this is Podge. She's my pet project. I was, like, 39 years old at the time.

Amelia HrubyLike nauseous hearing that. I really don't like it.

Podge ThomasWas so awful. And, you know, there are so many stories that I have like that. So so, you know, kind of fast forward over to the last several years where I've started to think and write a lot more about education, traditional classroom settings, neurodivergence, how race and racism shows up in the classroom. And what I understand to be true now is that the way that I learn, I learn by doing I'm a kinesthetic learner, that's almost impossible in a classroom. So if you if you talk to me, if you try to just talk at me for more than about ten minutes, I'm just gonna zone out, I'm not gonna absorb anything.

Podge ThomasIf it's theoretical and not practical, I'm also not going to absorb anything. I also have ADHD, so that makes it really hard for me to stay focused. So there's that aspect of it. There's also the aspect, especially in the American education system, but the same is true in in in The UK, which is where I was in school from, until I was 18, that the institution of education was set up with the intention of conformity to be a civilized member of society. That was the intention, and that was exclusive of black people.

Podge ThomasEventually, black people were allowed to go to school in this country. They had a different system. I'm not I'm not I don't I'm not here to necessarily go into the history of, like, every single dingle aspect of America's sorted right sorted past, you know, with with race relations. Yep. But it made me realize that in addition to being neurodiverse and in addition to the traditional classroom setting being a very challenging place for me, this is also a very hostile environment.

Podge ThomasThis is an environment of microaggressions. This is an environment where it's assumed that I know less, that I belong less than my white counterparts, and that really had an effect on me. I should have dropping out of graduate school. I did go back and finish, but not before I had a had a very like a 10 out of 10 hard conversation with that guy, actually, with the dean of the school. So another piece of this is that with all of this schooling that I have, I never actually learned how to learn.

Podge ThomasSchool teaches you information, it doesn't teach you how to learn, and learning in the classroom is only one piece of the puzzle. Homework is only one piece of the puzzle. The learning that you do outside of

Amelia Hrubythe

Podge Thomasclassroom is really the majority of where that information needs to sink in. And so outside of the classroom, what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to read. Well, I have a reading disability. Like, you know this about me.

Podge ThomasI am a YouTube like, if YouTube had been around Mhmm. School would have been much easier for me. Right? Watching, being able to press pause, so much more dynamic and accessible for me in terms of absorbing information. So I became really obsessed, certainly over the last probably fifteen years, about learning how to learn, and that's what I always called it.

Podge ThomasAnd it wasn't until somebody pointed out to me, and I know that we're gonna talk about this a little bit later, but somebody pointed out to me that using Notion forces metacognition, and I was like, metacognition? What is that? And that's what the idea that's that's what you call learning about learning. It's this idea that you are, while learning, sort of simultaneously thinking about how it is that you're absorbing that information. How are you engaging with it?

Podge ThomasAnd it sort of becomes like an inner cheat sheet that you have. Right? Like, I've been practicing metacognition for so long. I just kind of know, like, oh, this environment isn't gonna quite work for me. Like, I need to I can read this.

Podge ThomasI can sort of skim this, and then I can go back and like, all of these different tools that I have amassed to be able to absorb information and learn new information even in a lot of settings where it's hard, you know, I have taken classes with you. I take classes with other people. It's hard to all the way get away from a traditional classroom setting, but there are ways in which as an adult learner, as someone who who is thinking about how I learn and thinking about how I can interact with new information, there are little tools here and there that I can sort of, you know, pull on, not just to enjoy a classroom setting or enjoy a learning setting, but also to be able to learn and engage and absorb that information and be able to reuse it in a way that makes sense to me. So did I answer your question?

Amelia HrubyYeah. In many ways, and thank you for all of that. I think what's really standing out to me from what you said is, one, the emphasis on what school does is teach us how to conform, and it trains us to be workers. Right? It's not about learning how to learn.

Amelia HrubyIt is not about nurturing, you know, yourself into who you're meant to be. It's not about finding your purpose. It's none of that. School is about learning to conform to the standards of the society that expects you to be a productive worker on the other side of school. And, I mean, that is fully shaped by and perpetuates white supremacy culture, racism, capitalism, all of the isms that we encounter, and I really appreciate you highlighting so many aspects of that in, you know, in a structural systemic way and through your own experience.

Amelia HrubyLike you said, the institution of school, these spaces, universities, classrooms, they're places of microaggressions. They're places where certain students are presumed to know more than others and then are asked to perform and assessed at this sort of, like, what's meant to be the same for everyone, but we all know that that never works out that way. And I also one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you specifically is because we have such different experiences of school. Right? You know, I think I love school, as you know.

Amelia HrubyWhen we had that first conversation, you gave me the line that still lives in my brain, rent free, as they say, that I did school like Ken did Beach. I think about this all the time. I'm just like you know, sometimes someone says something to you and you're like, yeah, that's a perfect summary of twenty years of my life, and that felt true. And I think that I find there are kind of two types of people that I talk to who do a lot of teaching in their online business. One is the person that's kinda like me who loved school, and a lot of our job when we start to teach in our business is to break the cycle of what school traditionally is.

Amelia HrubyWe have to step back from liberal education as a model. But just like we do in our businesses, you know, often when you start a business, you just try to, like, live out the corporate structure you were taught. Often when people start to teach, they just live out the institutional school values they were taught. But then you take you teach your first online class, and you're like, oh, no one's gonna do the homework because why would they? Because there's no, like, forcing or discipline or grade at the end.

Amelia HrubyThat's one sort of narrative. And then the other is, like, all of these wonderful, brilliant, especially neurodivergent neurodiverse thinkers that I encounter who school never worked for them to begin with, so they were never gonna teach online that way because it was never viable. And so I've learned a lot from yourself and others about different ways to reshape the classroom so it can be more accessible. And not just more accessible, but, like, more interesting, more fun, more nourishing, more specific, more welcoming. You know, once we, like, break open that value system, it can be anything we want.

Amelia HrubyWe can rebuild it in new ways. So I just appreciate you sharing everything that you did, and I'm grateful for all the work that you're doing on metacognition. And I wanna hear about what you're teaching right now. So your business over the past year has transitioned from being primarily service provider consultant to teacher facilitator content creator. Can you talk a little bit about how you started teaching online and, like, how you sort of shape your sessions now with everything that you know intact?

Podge ThomasYeah. Definitely. And I just wanna say, you know, I wrapped up my last one on one client last September. Right? So seven months in.

Podge ThomasI've been working for myself for eight years, and I'm seven months in. So I I feel like I'm in year I mean, I'm in year one. Right? I feel like a baby. And I officially did my first sort of launched my first kind of small group program about a year ago, and this was I think I called it notion by you and for you.

Podge ThomasAnd the the goal was to help people design their own Notion systems. And so specifically so what I used to do, especially the last probably four years or so that I was doing one on one work is I was building Notion systems for small businesses, which I love doing. I love building things in Notion, but then there was this disconnect. I would build it, and then my clients would want me to stay around, stick around to to to run it because they never were really connected to it because they didn't build it. And it it was less satisfying work for me.

Podge ThomasSo what I wanted to do with my solopreneurs was I wanted to show them how to build it for themselves so that they could have that connection to it. So I did that, and then one portion of that group was digital gardening. And after I taught this whole class, I was like, I just wanna teach digital gardening. This is so much fun. And so that's what I decided I would do, and I ran my sort of first official cohort for that last October.

Podge ThomasAnd then I did two small workshops at the end of the year. I did a workshop on how to just clean up your notion because I know that everybody's most people's notion, not mine, of course, but most people's notion is just a mess. And then I did a little workshop in December on dashboarding. Like, how do you make your dashboard cute and vibey and cozy or whatever? And then since then, I think I'm, like, in the middle of launching my eighth thing this year.

Podge ThomasSo specifically to answer your question, there's, like, the different things I teach. I'm teaching people how to build Notion for themselves. That's sort of ostensibly what I'm doing. But within that, I'm also learning how to launch. Right?

Podge ThomasLearning how to launch, learning how to teach, really thinking through, and this this definitely is connected to the operations pieces that I used to do. Thinking about the user experience. What is my student experience? Like, what are they bringing to the classroom? Many of my people are neurodiverse.

Podge ThomasMany of my people are queer. Many of my people are just nontraditional in lots of ways. How can I create a dynamic learning environment with a dynamic set of tools so that a broad range of people can come and learn from me, and then take that and run with it out in the world, out in their business or whatever it is that they're doing? And so what I landed on is something that I really like. It's so much work.

Podge ThomasI'm getting faster at it, but it's so much work. So I teach the class. I thought that I could do it in two hours. It never it's always, like, closer to three. So I just started.

Podge ThomasI was like, okay. We're gonna be here for, like, two and a half to three hours. Just prepare yourselves. Right? So what I'm doing is I'm saying come come to my class.

Podge ThomasI'm gonna show you how to build something. I'm going to live build it, and you can follow along if you're if you're pretty good at Notion and you can kinda keep up. But if you can't, that's okay. Just watch and ask questions. And I'm gonna record it.

Podge ThomasAnd then you'll have the recording. So then you can go back and you can hit pause whenever you need to, go and build the thing, come back, hit play, did it write like that back and forth. That's so helpful for tactile learners. I also create a document of written instructions. Here's how you do it step by step for the people who are really good at love like, people who couldn't read a recipe.

Podge ThomasI cannot read a recipe to save my life. It's impossible. If you read if you love to read recipes, this is a great way for you to learn. And then I also would create the entire thing and make it a live link. Not one that you could duplicate, because that's cheating is what I like to do.

Podge ThomasBut now you have a reference. You have a source reference. So you've got a live class, you've got a recording, you've got written instructions, and you have a source. And the goal is just replicate it. And it's a different we do sort of a different system every time.

Podge ThomasI can talk about the container a little bit, but we do a different system every time. We've done content management, project management. We did a system for automating a launch a couple weeks ago. It's less about the actual use case, and it's more about just come and practice. Just come and practice.

Podge ThomasYou understand what this system is. It's it it it lives somewhere inside of the of of your understanding of how business works. So that's the context. That's the piece that you understand. Learn the actual tool by building this thing.

Podge ThomasAnd then if you wanna use it, that's fine, but that's not really the point. The point is just, like, it's that it's almost like muscle memory. Right? Like, come and actually, like, what are the keyboard shortcuts? What are the different blocks?

Podge ThomasHow do you make a database? How do you connect things together? Da da da da da. So that is currently so so I I teach digital gardening. That's more like a group program that I teach three times a year, or that's the goal, to teach it three times a year.

Podge ThomasAnd then I also have this other container called Notion Builders Club, and we're we're we're doing nine workshops. We're building nine different systems throughout 2020 sync. Six. So it's just kind of this, like, repeat. Just come and repeat.

Podge ThomasIt's a new system every time, but you that you get now you get to build more databases again. Now you get to figure out how to connect them to other databases. It's this idea that if you can get enough repetitions in and you can connect them to some meaning that is contextual. Right? It's not just theoretical, like, okay.

Podge ThomasI understand what this is. This is this is related to the work that I do. And now you've got several ways that you can engage with the material that throughout an entire year, now you can get really good at this tool, and now you can figure out how to build those systems in your business. Because I could build a system for you all day long, but you lose the opportunity to learn how to learn. You lose the opportunity to sort of look at, oh, I get really stuck with this type of thing.

Podge ThomasWhat's that about? And then we can talk about it. Right? Like, all these different pieces. I went to a Notion workshop the other day that somebody else that somebody else was was teaching.

Podge ThomasAnd it was really heavily focused on some of the new features that Notion has that essentially automate databases for you. And, I mean, for some people, that's really helpful. There are people who just wanna click a button and it's done for them. That's fine. But what that leaves on the table when that's automated for you is that it is an opportunity to understand not just how to do the thing, but why you chose to do the thing that gives you those answers to the question of, like, how do I learn?

Podge ThomasWhat is my system for learning how to learn?

Amelia HrubyOh, absolutely. This is my whole thing with Notion that I've always said to people. You know, years ago, when I was starting my business, I'm thrilled that I set it up in Notion. And then a year after that, I taught a Notion course with my friend Grace, which I don't do anymore. Don't get excited.

Amelia HrubyPeople go learn from pods. You can't learn Notion from me. But what we we're always, like, so insistent on is, like and this ties back into the meta combination piece, the learning piece, the teaching piece is, like, so many people would tell us, I'm sure you get this too. It's like, I open Notion that I don't know what to do. So people would always say to me like, what do I do here?

Amelia HrubyIt's just a blank page. I don't know what to do. And they would default to tools like, especially for project management, task management, to tools like Asana or Google or all of those other tools that tell you how to use them. They're like, put all your tasks here. We already set it up for you.

Amelia HrubyBut to me, that is the conformity model of learning and education. Right? It's like we built this whole system. Your job is to learn our system and make your work within it. Like, you get to be productive inside the system we built for you.

Amelia HrubyAnd we'll tell you it's science backed, it's whatever. It works for all these fancy companies and people, so you should be able to make it work for you. But in Notion, you actually have to build a system from scratch. You have it has to be emergent. It has to come out of what you need and how your brain thinks and works.

Amelia HrubyAnd so I always found building a Notion very challenging at first, because it felt like for one of the first times, I was being asked, like, well, what is a task to you? What do you need to manage? What's most important here? What do you need to see every day? What's the the first thing you wanna look at when you open your work computer?

Amelia HrubyAnd I had not thought about those questions before. But once I actually did, then I was able to build something that was so suited to me. And the byproduct of that was that, like, I'm definitely more productive when I'm using that system. I don't think productivity is the end all be all of it, but forcing myself to work in Asana was always so much friction. I couldn't get it done.

Amelia HrubyAnd when I can work in a way that actually, like, nourishes my creativity and generativity, I can do a lot or as much as I want to.

Podge ThomasYeah. And so let's tie this into decolonizing knowledge. Right? This idea of educational sovereignty that we are entitled to decide how, where, and why we learn as adults. And let's talk specifically about entrepreneurship.

Podge ThomasRight? We are people who know, and I'm sure people are sick of me making this analogy, but we are people who know how to make doilies. I can make a doily. I wanna teach other people how to make doilies or I wanna sell my doilies or both. But now I have to learn how to run a business.

Podge ThomasBut I've been a doily maker for the last ten years. And so we find ourselves as entrepreneurs, especially as newer entrepreneurs, well, how do I how do I how do I do that? How do I where do I put everything? How do I figure it out? And, ultimately, you know, we've people find people like you to understand marketing, find people to learn how, you know, sales, like, all these different we learn all of that.

Podge ThomasBut then where do we put everything? Where does it where does it go? And we are all we've all been trained by by Google, which is a very static, you know, sort of like folder file system. It's very hierarchical. Everything is nested.

Podge ThomasYou can't find anything in there. It's hideous. Notion doesn't do that. It's very dynamic. It's a lot more like a web.

Podge ThomasBut this and I think, you know, I don't wanna say that Notion is a tool for liberation, but it it also kind of is. Right? Like, I don't wanna give that to any tech bro. I don't care where he's

Amelia HrubyI mean, what he's doing.

Podge ThomasBut there is liberation, especially because to get there like, I was listening to your podcast earlier, and you talked about the friction of learning. There's there there is just friction. When you don't know what you're doing, there's friction, and that's inherent. Using a tool like Notion, if you can go through the discomfort of not knowing what you're doing and just flailing around and trying and figuring it out, what's on the other side is actually quite a lot of freedom in how you run your business, how you document your business, how you then change things and test them around. Right?

Podge ThomasLike I said, I've I'm into my eighth launch this year, and there's a big difference between what that looked like in January versus what it looks like now in almost May. And it was easier to make those shifts and changes because of how I had structured everything in Notion, because there is so much flexibility within that system.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I think it's like flexibility requires friction somewhere, like, to start out. Like, you have to stretch to get more flexible. Right? You have to kinda pull on the muscle a little bit so that you have the space to find that freedom from it, to be able to do the things that you wanna do.

Amelia HrubyAnd this really has me thinking as well about that friction in the classroom. Like, as teachers, facilitators, guides, mentors, I think part of our role, maybe even like a understated part of our role, is to hold people through that friction, is to sort of help them from you know, I think every learning experience is a transformative experience. If people are actually learning, you go from not knowing or doing something to knowing and doing something. That is a transformation. And there is friction in that process.

Amelia HrubyYou have to kinda cross the bridge of the from the not knowing to the knowing or the not doing to the doing. How does that show up in your Notion spaces? I mean, I love how you emphasized, like, you provide the the video, watch me do it and ask questions. You provide the written instructions. You provide the sort of example that people can look at, but not duplicate because they need to rebuild it on their own if they want that.

Amelia HrubyBut what do you do in the classroom when someone's like or, you know, the proverbial classroom, the Zoom room, wherever you are with these people when they're like, I can't figure it out, Podge. How do you handle moments like that in your teaching?

Podge ThomasYeah. I mean, we just slow down. This is one of the reasons why sometimes my workshops go on for so long because I I'll tell them, like, I'm gonna build this whole thing because I wanna make sure that the entire thing is captured in video. And so if we need to slow down so I can address your questions, and that's what we're going that that's what we're going to do. So I will the first thing I wanna do is I wanna make sure that the question that they're asking is the right question.

Podge ThomasSometimes the question that my students ask is not really the is not really and I've I've worked with people in Notion for long enough to know when you ask this, you usually mean that. Right? So I'm gonna listen to try to figure out, okay, what is it that you're actually actually asking here? Is it a notion skill question? Is it a, like, how do I how am I thinking about this information question?

Podge ThomasIs it, you know, is it are you are you confused because this is unfamiliar to you, or are you confused because this type of thing is hard for you to understand? So I'm really gonna start I'm gonna kinda unpack a little bit. Okay. Well, what's really going on here? And then we'll try to kind of restate or present the question or the challenge in a way that and now I understand and you understand.

Podge ThomasWe have a common understanding about what you're asking me. And now I can go back in and I can show it to you again, or I can explain it in a different way. You still don't understand it? Fine. Let's do it a different way.

Podge ThomasLet's talk about it another way. Is there anybody else in the room who has you know, because sometimes somebody might be saying something, I'm not really hearing it, but then in the chat, someone will go, I think that she's saying blah blah blah. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah. That's what I mean.

Podge ThomasThat's what I mean. Right? So those moments of discussion can be helpful in unlocking something for this one person. And then, obviously, there's the advantage that that also might unlock something. You know?

Podge ThomasAnd then and then you'll see you'll look at the chat and someone will go, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't I didn't know what that was either. And I'm like, okay.

Podge ThomasOkay. Okay. You know? I think especially because, like, you and I have been u using Notion for years. Sometimes the things that are so obvious to me are really not obvious to somebody else.

Podge ThomasAnd I'll be, like, trying to, like, explain a super complex thing in a million different ways, and it just turns out, like, I just didn't say this one thing that was so obvious that just made everything else kinda make sense. So that's how I address that. When I teach digital gardening, it's a bigger container. It's a longer container, and I wanna give people more room for the questions and discussion, more targeted feedback. Right here, you're building something that is really personalized, and so we can talk about your specific use case.

Podge ThomasAnd that's really there's probably just, like, a lot more slowing down there. Okay. Well, where what are you trying to do? Like, what do what what is the outcome? What are you trying to achieve here?

Podge ThomasSo I'm oftentimes sort of trying to contextualize someone's question or struggle or misunderstanding within something bigger. How do you think how do you normally think about things like this? Where are you trying to get to? What did you do before this? Right?

Podge ThomasSo I I I want to sort of broaden the the view, the lens, if you will, so that we can understand what your question is in context because it's not usually just about that one thing. It's usually tied to something else. And honestly, oftentimes, what that is is, like, rooted in some kind of, like, educational harm. Right? That, like, you you you know, in your classroom setting, you know, anytime x happened, you just, you know, you just glazed over because you just couldn't.

Podge ThomasRight? And so he, like, oh, okay. So that that's where you kinda get stuck. Okay. Can we, like, can we slow down and then slow down and then, like, really zoom in and see if we can we, like, unlock one piece of this?

Podge ThomasOkay. Can we unlock this? Okay. What's going on there? Oh, okay.

Podge ThomasIt's this. Alright. Let's let's let's, like, go back. Let's, you know, let's back up. Let okay.

Podge ThomasNow does that fit? Now, you know, and you can sort of backtrack into the thing and then find a new way forward. I really enjoy doing that. It's so special or cool or something to watch how someone just goes from, like, probably almost crying out of frustration to, like, almost crying out of relief. Like, oh my god.

Podge ThomasI can't believe that you helped me unstick that. You know?

Amelia HrubyYeah. That's so beautiful. And I think you're so right that in those moments, we're we're often touching on an experience of, like, past educational harm, especially because your work in Notion is about how to manage knowledge and how to create workflows, I think. I mean, that that's what a content management system is. That's what a digital garden is.

Amelia HrubyIt's like, how do I gather the knowledge in a way that I can actually access, utilize, create from it? How do I capture my launch process such that launching can become easier over time? And so the tool that you use in your work and the content of your teaching is metacognition itself, as you've said. Right? And I'm trying to imagine for myself, like, do I think that's true of everything we teach?

Amelia HrubyMaybe. There's probably I think there's a way you could take a metacognitive lens to anything that you're teaching, whether it is a movement class or a ceramics class or how to make doilies. Like, we can build all of that in. Sometimes the the, like, object that's being created in the class or the transformation that's happening is about knowledge itself. Sometimes it's about some other thing, like the mug that I made at the end.

Amelia HrubyBut I think that part of for me, part of becoming a teacher was really surfacing. Like, how do I learn, as you've said in your own journey, like, having having to really learn how you learn such that you can articulate how you teach. Right? You talked about how, like, the way you teach is really built out of many of the things you need to learn, as well as creating things that you don't need, like the recipe list. You're like, that would never work for me, but I see my students need it, so I will make it for some of them.

Amelia HrubyAnd then building from there, something I think about a lot is, like, sometimes the way some people teach just isn't for me, and I, like, actually just kinda can't learn from them. And and sometimes that's actually problematic. Like, sometimes the way they're doing something is, like, I think, inherently rooted in a system of harm, and they shouldn't do it that way. But sometimes it's just like, this person only does PowerPoints, and I don't like them. You know?

Amelia HrubyLike, sometimes it doesn't work in my brain. How do you feel about that as you're, like, transitioning into being a a teacher as a primary part of your work? Like, are there some students where you're, like, yeah, maybe we just learn differently, and I'm not a good teacher for you? Are there ways you try to shift to be more accessible to more people? I'm curious what comes up for you there.

Podge ThomasYeah. I'd that's actually, like, a pretty easy question for me to answer because it this is what we're talking about here actually in in in the world of business is differentiation. Right? Why why is somebody in my class versus in notion mastery? Right, in Marie Pullen's notion mastery.

Podge ThomasI think that the more I the more I learn about how to teach and the more I learn about how to learn, the more the the people who that works for will will will find me and will want to learn from me. And it's also why, like, I'm not like, if someone came came to me and or or or I maybe, like, if it was just clear from a number of different people that it was something that I was missing, of course, I would think about that and address that. Right? But and I always ask for feedback. Right?

Podge ThomasLike, I'm I'm trying to hey. I'm trying to be a better teacher. Do you have any feedback for me? But I do believe that part of the part of the journey that the peep that my audience I want my audience to go on is a journey of of consent. Right?

Podge ThomasHere's a freebie. Do you like do you like the freebie? Here is my nurture sequence where I'm very like, this is who I am. This is what I do. This is how I do it.

Podge ThomasRight? And then I'll invite them. Come to a workshop. I've got a bunch of them on demand or you can come to a live thing. And I think that every time I get that check, then those people are gonna stick around.

Podge ThomasAnd every time somebody unsubscribes, it's because it it was very clear to them that whatever I was doing, it's not just you know, when you when you read my newsletters or you read my launch emails or you take like, it's very clear. Like, I'm not trying to, like, not trying to get people through the door so I can make money. I'm trying to get people through the door and and then give them a series of opportunities to say yes so that if it so that if they show up in a workshop and and they go, oh, yeah. Okay. This is all making sense.

Podge ThomasThis is all part of the same thread. Right? And I do I look forward to becoming a better teacher. I look forward to learning the things that I don't know yet about how to communicate information. And in the meantime, I'm really leaning into and intuiting my way through this through this this process.

Podge ThomasRight? Like, if I was in a classroom, what would I want? What are my students saying, and how does that help inform x, y, or z? Not necessarily a new offer. Right?

Podge ThomasBut, like, how am I actually approaching this? If I'm gonna if I'm hearing something, I'm gonna try it on. Okay? Does do I need to make an adjustment here? Yeah.

Podge ThomasDoes that does that, answer the question?

Amelia HrubyYeah. It does.

Podge ThomasI don't know. I mean, how do you feel about that? Like, what do you I mean, do you think about you know, I when I think about being in a classroom with you that you're teaching, I think about how you were in a PhD program where you would have been teaching and how different like, I don't feel like I'm in a graduate program with you. Right? Like, so how how do you sort of approach the ways in which you're communicating information and how that adjusts and changes over time?

Amelia HrubyYeah. I think that, you know, in my own teaching journey, I've been teaching so many different things for so long in so many contexts. Like, I started teaching in high school when I took lessons at a dance studio and my parents couldn't fully pay for them, and they offered to let me teach little kids how to tap dance in exchange for the classes I was taking. So I did that in high school, which was very adorable. They were all, like, four years old trying to tap dance, which is also a futile effort.

Amelia HrubyBut but, like, that's where I started teaching. And then, yes, like, I I TA'd for things in in college and higher ed, and then I taught my own classes at the university in graduate school. And then from there, I moved into when I was working at the company Sister, I was teaching their feminist business school courses. And I think that across those experiences, what I really learned is so how to contextualize, like, why this matters and what is at stake in us coming together in this way. And in a weird, problematic way, in the college classroom, what is at stake is just so transactional.

Amelia HrubyIt's like you need this class to get the degree that you want. Like, and so one of the things I did was just try to be really upfront about that with students and sort of carve out pathways of, like, I want us all to have a really fulfilling and interesting experience. I want you to walk away from this class having thought about things that you haven't thought about before in ways you never considered. And, also, if you're just here on the path to a degree in something unrelated, and here's your track through this, if you are, like, very interested in this philosophy as a topic to study and you wanna go deeper, here are, like, options for enrichment in those ways with me if you're, like, headed down this other path. But it was, like, providing all of that context always felt so important.

Amelia HrubyAnd I think this is where a bit of what I was saying earlier around, like, when you get outside of the, I have to take this class to get the degree I want, to do the thing I think I want to do with my life context. Like, now, when people come to my classes or workshops or whatever it is, first of all, I'm, like, honored and flattered and, like, so grateful that they took the time. Because I consider I'm, like, I'm competing with your very adorable dog, with your, perhaps, like, yelling in the background kids, with, like, you could be doing literally anything else. And so I enter the room with, like, so much respect for everyone's time, and I really try to maintain that. And it sets my expectation for my own self in a space at in a class I'm holding pretty high.

Amelia HrubyI'm like, they could be doing anything else, and they're here, so let's be really clear about what you're gonna get out of this, what I am hoping you will have by the what you will have done or know how to do by the end. And I think that in the beginning, that did sort of lead me a little bit back toward the, like, liberal education, Socratic method pathway. And so I learned over the past few years how to, like, soften that, how to pull back, how to bring the body into the classroom, especially in a virtual classroom. You know? I often like to start with music or explicitly say we're gonna take five minutes to settle in.

Amelia HrubyLike, no material will start until five after if you need a bathroom. Like, I try to provide transition space because I recognize people are coming in. Like, you know, you might have been out chasing your kid around in the backyard. Now you're, like, trying to land in this class with me. So I I find that really important in a virtual context.

Amelia HrubyAnd then I loved how you emphasized, like, the differentiation. And to me, part of what's coming up in come to class is, like, part of how you differentiate is not it's not only what you teach. I think people talk about it a lot, like it's the content is the differentiation, but how you teach is a huge differentiating point. Like, I don't really think I teach much in my classes that is not taught by other people elsewhere. Right?

Amelia HrubyLike, I'm not inventing brand new things. I'm teaching frameworks that other people have often come up with. I'm remixing them in ways that are interesting to me. Right? Like, you're teaching how to use a tool that is out there with YouTube videos.

Amelia HrubySo it's like how we teach, how we hold the space, how we offer the transition time, answer the questions that makes it what it is. And so, yeah, I'm also, like, very attuned to that. And if I'm being really honest, I think it's just, like, there's there is sort of a voice of, like, white supremacy culture in the back of my mind that's like, if I'm doing it right, it should be accessible to everyone, and I should be able to be perfect at it. And it, like and that's just not appropriate, accurate, important. I think there is something in me and in my own, like, journey that's like, if I'm gonna make things accessible, it should be for everybody.

Amelia HrubyYou're like, oh, like, it should be free. I can't get keep any knowledge. I can't charge anything for what I teach. And, like, I have to deconstruct that because that's also not what decolonization is or means anyway. Yeah.

Amelia HrubyExactly. And, you know, you asked and answered this question in your podcast

Podge Thomasthis week. Is online teaching over or online classes? Is that is that is that an industry that's over? And, you know, I don't think it is, but I was waiting anyway just to make sure that you didn't think that they were either. So, I don't.

Podge ThomasBut the reason I think why they're not and the reason why I think this industry is only going to grow, I don't even really want to call it an industry, honestly, but the but it online classes, I think, are going to become a a much more realistic alternative to traditional education, especially for young people who are really starting to figure out that school's not doesn't you know, you go go go pick up a $100,000 in debt and not be able to get a job. Right? And that the opportunity to be able to learn something or to try to learn something from one person and then realize this person isn't for me and then be able to hop over to the next person is exponential. And that doesn't happen in higher educate. Like, you sign up for a class because it's a prerequisite, and you don't like the teacher or you don't like how the teacher teaches, you're screwed.

Podge ThomasThere's $5 down the the you know, and and how many hours throughout the semester. And that's really disappointing. And I think you're right that I feel the same way about the people who come to my class. I take it really seriously that they are not, you know, scrolling on Instagram and instead that they are, like, you know and I I'll ask them, like, you know, come to the front. Come to the front of the class.

Podge ThomasLike, let's get locked in. Right? Like, I'm gonna t I'm just gonna I'm gonna dump a whole bunch of information. It's gonna go kinda fast. We'll stop for questions, but, like, let's do this.

Podge ThomasI wanna get them excited. I want to respect their time. I want them I want them to leave knowing something that they didn't know before. I just got an email from someone the other day who said, I wanted to build this system in Notion, and I didn't think that I could. And then I realized because I've been coming to your workshops, I absolutely know how to do this.

Podge ThomasAnd then I did it, and then it's fabulous. And then they sent me a bunch of screenshots, and I was like, right? And so really excited about come to class. I'm really excited that this very, like, meta, right, experience is a container for me to me and and and everybody else to come in who's teaching classes or wants to teach class to come in and go, okay. How can I get better at this thing?

Podge ThomasHow can I steward people in the right way? Right? How can I how can I reduce harm? Right? How can I think outside of the box?

Podge ThomasHow can I offer opportunity for educational sovereignty? How can I decolonize learning? And it's yeah. I'm growing my business, but, like, I'm doing this thing that's really fun and really cool. Mhmm.

Amelia HrubyYeah. Yeah. I feel the same way. And I also just think that, like, coming out of, like, my breakup with social media and, like, everything I talk about there where I always insist that, like, getting good at Instagram is not a transferable skill. It doesn't make you good at anything else, actually.

Amelia HrubyLike, it getting good at TikTok, not a transferable skill. You're just, like gaming and algorithm gets you nowhere else. And so I'm always looking for places where I'm like, what are the things that when I learn them, I can use them everywhere. Like, I think writing is one of those things, but, but so is teaching. When you get good at teaching, that is you can do that in so many contexts, in so many ways.

Amelia HrubyIt can work in your online business. You can teach and sell classes. It can help you write a better sales page. That's part of come to class. But also if you go back and get a traditional job, it can make you better in a meeting.

Amelia HrubyLike, it it's just so teaching is such a powerful skill, and it's transferable to so many areas of life, of our own lives, of our communities. And so I'm really I love thinking about it. I very also, you know, recording this before come to class happens, but I'm very excited. There's so much I'm having to really pull back because it's a three day workshop. I can't actually say every thought I've ever had about teaching, but and also I'm getting very meta in, like, thinking about, okay, how am I gonna structure these spaces?

Amelia HrubyLike, how am I gonna model different, you know, modes of doing things? How am I going to, like the whole come to class experience is gonna be is gonna be me being, like, did you all notice how I did that? Here's why I did that. Here's how I thought about doing that. That that thing you just experienced and lived through with me, here's the whole framework behind it and why I decide like, it's gonna be really very meta, which I, as a philosopher, fucking love.

Amelia HrubySo

Podge ThomasYeah. Yeah. Ex exactly. And I it's the iceberg that pokes above the water. Right?

Podge ThomasI've been in lots of your group programs and classes. And if I walk in and I feel good about the experience and I leave having learned something and I'm excited, what I know is that that is because of a culmination of years. Right? It's not just a curriculum that you wrote for that one thing. It is years and years of experience in embodying what it means to hold space with people, embodying what it means to try to transfer knowledge to other people, embodying what it means to be a responsible wielder of the power that you hold in that room.

Podge ThomasYeah. I I'm so yeah. I'm always so in awe of, like, how good you are at doing that. Yeah. Not to to be, like, not to, like, butter you up too much, but you're really good

Amelia Hrubyat it. Well, thank you. Yeah. It's definitely something I think we'll talk about a lot more and come to class. I think a lot about the role of hierarchy in a classroom or an online learning space and and how how to hold it.

Amelia HrubyRight? Like, I think the role of the teacher is to guide people. You're not just the same as every other student there, but how can you also co learn in your teaching? How can you also even just as simply as you said shared before, like, if someone's not understanding something, how do you bring in the voice in the chat that maybe sees it or hears it in a way that you're not? Yeah.

Amelia HrubyI think we'll have a lot more conversations about that too.

Podge ThomasYeah. I'm super looking forward to it. I think it's gonna be really fun. Yeah. Really fun.

Amelia HrubyFuck yeah, fun. Oh, fucking fun. Oh my god. I love being such a nerd with you. It's the best.

Amelia HrubyWell, Puj, is there anything else you'd like to say to the folks that come to class about your own teaching or learning? Anything we didn't get to that you wanted to pull in?

Podge ThomasOne thing I want to say is that to the people who are maybe considering this and perhaps worry that they don't know how to do it, they don't know how to hold a container for people, that this is a skill that you can learn. And if you have a desire to teach something, go teach it. And then teach it again, and then teach something else, and teach that again, and keep doing it until you get more comfortable, and you get better at it, And then keep doing it and then keep learning and finding opportunities to learn more about how to be a great teacher because it's really possible. It's really doable. It's really fun.

Podge ThomasIt's really rewarding. And, yeah, don't don't think that you can't do this. You can definitely do this.

Amelia HrubyYeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you for the pep talk. I completely agree.

Amelia HrubyWell, Posh, thank you so much. I'm so excited for come to class and to also, like, for your students who take your Notion courses, I hear from them regularly. They love them. They get a lot out of them. They're always showing up in the interweb with their fancy new Notion dashboards, which I love to see.

Amelia HrubySo we all have that to look forward to. And, yeah, until then, I guess we'll just come to class. Here we go. Okay. Let's do it.

Amelia HrubyI kinda hate social media feeds on my brain like a bacteria. Do you like this? Leave a comment? Can you share this? Okay.

Amelia HrubyThat was an abridged version of Social Media by Surfer Boy and Rectangle. To hear the entire song, find Surfer Boy on Spotify or head to the link in the show notes. Thanks so much to them for sharing the song with us, as well as to Melissa Caitlin Carter, who sings our theme song that you hear at the start of every show. I'm your host, Emilia Frooby, and if you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will download the free Leading Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.funtoolkit. Until next time, I will see you Off the Grid.

Amelia HrubyHello again. It's me, Amelia. Remember me? That voice you just heard seconds ago? I'm popping back in because I wanna share a special gift with you or three gifts in fact as thanks for staying tuned in to the very end of this episode.

Amelia HrubyThis spring, I led a program called Close Biz Friends inside the interweb, and I helped people create resonant free resources that they could share strategically on their marketing channels and then amplify their visibility through cross promotion. And I'm arriving here to share a few resources that folks created in that program with you. The first is from Andy of Spiral Tending. Andy's a therapist and they made a super helpful toolkit with 10 ways to market your healing business when time and money are scarce. I got a few new ideas from it myself, and if you're a healer, I highly recommend heading to the link in the show notes and grabbing it right now.

Amelia HrubyThe second gift I wanna offer you is from Heather Backs of Small Business Rodeo. Heather's created a simple tech stack field guide that is an essential resource for anyone who's ever wondered, what invoicing tool should I use, or where do I find a good calendar link, how do I pick a website platform, or an email service provider. If you've ever wondered any of those things, then you're definitely going to want this amazing Notion dashboard full of recommended tools and advice on building your tech stack without overcomplicating it. So head to the show notes to grab that free resource today. And then finally, Julia Kiambi has just launched the free solpreneur corner, which provides support for the inner work side of running a business.

Amelia HrubyJulia is a medical doctor turned intuitive guide, and her Soulepreneur Corner missives are beautiful compliments to the very practical, tactical work that we do here at Off The Grid. So if you could use Soulpreneur Corner messages or a simple tech stack field guide or 10 ways to market your healing business when time and money are scarce, head to the show notes to grab those free resources today, And thank you so much again for being here. I am forever grateful that you tune into the show. And until next time, you know where to find me Off the Grid.