#923 Power in the Classroom

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: We welcome Dr. Ria Nolte as our guest for an expert talk on “Power in the Classroom,” drawing on her expertise and experience to discuss backgrounds and real-life encounters in Room #923 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Power & Violence.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…

Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and her guest is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.

A very warm good morning, once again, officially. We’re welcoming Dr. Ria Nolte with “Power in the Classroom” as our guest for today’s expert talk. Ria is a teacher, podcaster, and education coach. She gives both children and adults the courage to find their strengths and to proudly shape their own lives. Over the past 38 years she’s supported and advised more than 5,000 students and over 10,000 parents with real appreciation for who they are. On her podcast “Mutmachgeschichten” (“Stories That Give Courage”), she and her guests share valuable insights on family, upbringing, and education. Given her expertise and experience, today we’re talking, under our current overarching theme of Power and Violence, about power in the classroom, and we’d like to learn more about how teachers and students shape the balance of power in education. A very warm good morning to you too, officially, dear Ria — I’m so happy to have you here with me today for this expert talk.

And I’m very grateful that you invited me. Beforehand, I naturally thought about this concept of power again and arrived at some really interesting insights — the kind you probably only get when you actually have a reason to think about it. And this occasion was very interesting for me. I’m currently on vacation and trying to switch off a little, but I always end up developing something new anyway. And in that process, a few things became clearer to me again. So first of all, thank you so much for that.

Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much, and thank you for your time today — for bringing different impulses into this exchange and for opening up the space for reflection afterwards, so we can dive into the conversation together. Before we talk about power, and about what insights you might have gained for yourself while thinking this through, let’s pick up your podcast again — Mutmachgeschichten — which I already mentioned. We actually recorded an episode together recently too, which I personally think turned out really well, so definitely go check that out on Mutmachgeschichten. Maybe you’d like to start by telling us — it’s not exactly typical — how does a teacher end up with a podcast?

There was a specific trigger, and I remember almost exactly when it was. It was March 14th, 2019. I was in pretty rough shape that day, walked into a classroom, and it turned into a really nice example of power dynamics. It was around 2pm, the class looked at me, and a student spoke up and said, “You’re not doing well.” I said, “Why do you think that?” “Well, we can just tell.” I said, “Yes, folks, my husband is in the hospital and something’s just not right right now. I got some news.” And they said, “You know what? We’d like to give you a shower” — a warm shower. That’s a typical phrase we use when we want to say something nice to someone, ideally with everyone joining in. There’s a classic game in elementary school where a child stands at the front, or gets to sit on a chair, and all the other students say something nice whenever that child is sad or has a problem, so that this good energy builds the child back up. And I found that really touching coming from the students, and I said, “Guys, I’m a little emotional right now, I’ll turn to face the board and you can just say it to me like that.” And then it was, “Yes, you’re a good teacher, and you do this and you do that,” and one of them said, “You tell such great stories, you should really do a podcast about it — a lot more people need to hear this, because we learn so much more from these stories than from math or geography.” At that point I thought, what even is a podcast? And then, one day later, my husband died. Everything was pretty intense, and the whole idea disappeared from my mind, out of sight, out of mind — but not really gone. Some time later, when Covid came, I had a situation with a student who told me she couldn’t cope anymore and needed my help. I gave her my phone number, and we talked, and she said, “I can’t do this. I’m sitting here in the room right next to my parents, but I can see how hard my parents are working, and I just can’t bring myself to ask them about my stupid homework. I need a bit more time. Everything’s piling up over my head.” She asked if I could maybe help — I said, tell me, what do you need? And then we talked for a while about time management, about organizing your work, and also about mindset, and at the end she said, “You’re a real Mutmacherin” — someone who gives courage. And that really hit me hard, in a big way. First: what are we doing to these children during Covid? And above all, what are we doing to families? We’re burdening families with tasks that are actually our responsibility — even though as a school, and as a teacher myself, we did take on quite a lot during that time, and it was pretty dramatic how I had to start working with computers and Zoom and everything else. On the other hand, it became very clear to me just how intensely students were thrown into this new situation. And I told myself, I have to give something back. And then it went “ping” — and the podcast idea was back. And then it went “ping” again, and suddenly, out of nowhere, someone from Clubhouse appeared — someone I got to know just like I got to know you — who said, “I know podcasts, technically, organizationally, and in terms of content. Should we do something together?” And so I started. And on August 9th, 2021, I went live with my first eight episodes, and I felt so much joy in continuing that and constantly looking beyond my own horizon — because really, this isn’t about upbringing, and it isn’t about education. It’s about the fact that education and upbringing are actually only a small part of what we, as mentors — and I’d rather call us mentors, that’s really the nicer term than “teachers” — can pass on to the younger generation. And that includes all kinds of things: things related to mindset, to reading faces, to communication, simple stories from life about how to get back up again, about how you can make peace with negative things, or what it’s like to go to school while you’re sick and what options you have in that situation, and so on. So, little tips around everyday life, but also around the things that move and weigh on students. And I’ve gotten so many wonderful responses, and along the way I’ve met incredibly interesting people, like you — and I’ve realized that I’m not only good at teaching, I also find journalism absolutely fascinating, and I’ve discovered it for myself. And where that will lead in the coming years, I don’t know — I’m just letting it come to me.

Yes, that’s wonderful, thank you so much. And I find it really exciting that you just used the term “mentors.” Maybe we can look at that in connection with the concept of power too. What actually happens in classrooms is also about power, and there are power dynamics. It’s not always the “warm shower” kind of thing that happens here — there are also completely different examples. So how does power actually show up in the classroom, and what role does a teacher play in your view? And maybe here we can also draw the connection back to the idea of the mentor and build on it.

Very gladly. That very question you just asked implied something for me — on the one hand, to answer like Yoda would, there is a light side of power and a dark side of power. And on the other hand, I’d like to share a thought with you, or with all of us: teachers are both powerful and powerless at the same time. The institution of school is already quite old. Compulsory education has only existed in Germany since 1919. But this institution is an instrument of power like no other, structured strictly hierarchically from top to bottom. The ministry, or the government, or maybe even the economy, some magnates — I don’t know if that’s even possible, but I’m sure it happens — pass on the information that’s relevant to education, and education is really always only education in the interest of those in power. We just have to be honest with ourselves about that. That information gets passed on to the ministries, and we have 16 ministries and 16 different school laws in Germany, and these ministries pass their regulations on to the school authorities, and the school authorities pass those regulations, in their full extent of power — and they hold quite a lot of power there — on to the schools. And school leadership has the power to give us directives. They have the authority to instruct us, and we have to pass those instructions on to us teachers, whether they concern our duty of supervision and care, the content of our lessons, or the way we’re allowed or not allowed to do certain things. So from my perspective, we first receive the directive, and then we pass it on ourselves — because power, to me, is really like a funnel, and it gets narrower and narrower the further down it goes. And if you look at the light and the dark side of power here: there are people who can only ever push this power straight through. And there are people who can hold it, and pass it on in measured doses. And that, for me, visually speaking, is exactly the difference between the light side of power in the teachers’ lounge and the dark side of power. There was a situation I once had — I have a secret weapon. I’m only 1.54 meters tall, but I’ve always managed to keep calm and maintain good discipline in class, no matter how tall the students were. And after seventh grade, everyone is taller than me. This particular situation happened in the late afternoon, around 2 or 3pm, one of the last periods of the day. As a young teacher, I was walking around the room checking homework, and I noticed that half the class hadn’t done theirs. I walked to the front — it was still that traditional, front-facing classroom setup — and was just about to start saying, a bit more loudly, that I wasn’t happy about this and why that was, and so on. And in that moment, I saw a student in front of me slowly take off her glasses, fold the arms in, and wrap her hand around the lenses. That made me pause. I said, “What are you doing?” And the student looked up and said, “I’m worried about my glasses.” I asked why, and she said, “When you get that vein on your forehead, I know you’re about to get loud, and your voice is so intense that I’m afraid the glasses might shatter at some point.” Then I smiled, and I knew — that’s a secret weapon. But secret weapons should only be used very rarely, otherwise they stop being secret. And that’s when I started thinking about how I teach, and whether that’s how it should be. Because I realized very clearly that what I was doing was intimidating people, and that I wasn’t actually achieving what I wanted to achieve — a meaningful approach to homework, a meaningful approach to what needs to get done at school — but instead only a kind of sluggish compliance with whatever the teacher does, just so nobody gets any stress. And that’s exactly what I didn’t want. That was a really moving moment for me. And since then, I’ve used that “weapon” less and less — mostly only when we’re joking around, or something like that. At one point, for instance, the megaphone broke down on the schoolyard. I said, I can handle that. And then we opened an event together, and we didn’t need a megaphone, because Ms. Nolte, together with the students, projected the speech. And we sang our school anthem together, and it was fantastic. Although I was pretty hoarse for three days afterward. But these were such powerful pieces of information for me, where I said to myself: yes, I have power, but what do I use it for? And what do I want to achieve with it? And one thing I definitely don’t want to achieve is breaking a child’s spirit — turning them into dull people who leave school saying, “Yeah, yeah, he’s got power, I get it, I’ll just do what he says so I can have my peace.” Because those aren’t the people we need to solve the problems of our time.

Yes, thank you so much. And I found it interesting that you mentioned the light and dark sides of power — we’ve talked in other rooms before about how there are always at least these two perspectives we can look at things from, and the same is true for violence. And you just said: pushing power through, versus holding it and passing it on in measured doses. I found that really fascinating. Maybe we can look at that a bit more closely. Because from the outside, the way you described it — how it’s passed down from top to bottom — the structures themselves don’t change. And yet, teachers do different things with what comes from above, and handle it differently when passing it on, so to speak, toward the students. So from your point of view, what actually makes the difference between power being pushed through versus this holding and measured passing-on happening instead?

Over the last few years, I’ve found what I’d call three important components for myself, which show quite clearly that this model can work. I pass some of this on to young teaching staff too, and I see huge advantages in these three important — I always call them paradigms of my work. Let’s start with the first one: as teachers, we have a duty of supervision and care. That’s a rule that’s actually quite vague, and I believe it’s set out in the civil code — Jürgen could probably say more about that than me. Every manager has a duty of care toward their employees. We have the duty of supervision because, really, it’s the parents who have that duty, but they hand it over to the school, or to the daycare, because they can’t supervise their children themselves in that moment. And they do so fully intentionally, with the thought: nothing will happen to my child there, because there’s a person I’ve handed this responsibility to. That’s a responsibility — it’s not just about power. And this responsibility is also quite tricky. As a young teacher, I never really thought about it and did all kinds of things with my students — nothing bad, just things like going swimming with them, going on bike trips with them, all sorts of activities. I’d brief them briefly beforehand on how we’d behave, and I never really had a problem with it — until I attended a training on the duty of supervision and care. And then I thought, okay, I basically already have one foot in prison. The moment I turn away from a child while swimming and something happens to them, I’m negligent. And if I step even further away, I’m grossly negligent. And if something happens to the child, I’m liable — and highly exposed to liability. There have been court cases where exactly that was proven, or where things got pretty intense. So at some point I stopped doing those kinds of things, simply to protect the children and myself from those possibilities. On the other hand, take the example of “standing up at the start of class.” Some people say that’s old-fashioned, that it’s not okay, that it’s a display of power. But I do it anyway, because I explain it to the students and let them vote on it at the start of the school year. I tell them: we come into the room, I’m already there, you’re still chatting, joking around, doing your thing, maybe already getting your materials ready. And when the bell rings for class to start, I’d like us to do something like a “break” — meaning we signal to each other that we’re ready for class. I go to the middle of the room, you finish unpacking your things, and when you’re done, you show me that you’re ready, that you want to spend this time together with me — so you stand up, and once everyone is standing, we greet each other warmly, you sit back down, and then we can begin. So far, no class has ever voted against this, and we do it together. And I also notice, compared to when I sit in on other teachers’ classes, that this drowsy transition — is class starting now or not, is something happening or is there still something going on — disappears. And at the same time, this moment also gives me the chance to look at the students, and I can very quickly tell if there are difficulties, if someone seems down, or if someone is struggling with something in some way, and then I get straight to the point and say, “Something’s not right here, folks.” Once they’re seated, we talk about the problem. I always say: catastrophes come first, and only afterward do we do the actual lesson. But I’ve cleared something up personally, and I can only see that if there’s a certain calm in the room, if I can actually look at people’s faces, and if that restless energy from the break isn’t still lingering. And that’s where three important things come into play for me. The first paradigm is this reverse mentoring. I see myself more as a mentor — someone experienced in many things, but who, at the same time, doesn’t know the things that matter to the students. I’m not part of their generation, I’m not from their time, I don’t know their music, I don’t know their preferences, and I don’t speak their language either. So I have the opportunity to pass on my experience, but at the same time I can learn from my students. I learn from them what a podcast is. I learn from them how to phrase something great in a more casual way, or what music is interesting that might actually appeal to me too — there’s so much there — or how certain techniques can be used that I, as an older person, might not even think of, because it just wouldn’t occur to me. For example, when it comes to Instagram, I’ve gotten a lot of tips from students, because they move around so much more easily there and say, “Oh, a reel is really simple, just do it like this and that.” “Yes, Ms. Nolte, that sounds good, you did that well,” or, “do a bit more here and there, and you can add a few little stars falling down here and there.” And I say, great, wonderful, perfect. The second thing — so that’s reverse mentoring, students learn from me, I learn from the students, and this mutual exchange creates a completely different kind of eye-level relationship. And when students become aware that I’m learning from them too, I also get a different kind of respectful relationship with them. The second paradigm is learning from mistakes and from fear. I find it so important that there’s this sense of “I’m allowed to make mistakes,” “school is here so I can make mistakes,” “I’m here to learn, not to get everything right,” and “I learn something about myself as well as about other people, and I also learn actual knowledge — but I want to have a say in that knowledge myself.” So, for example, I’ll take a topic and say: this topic is presented in an old-fashioned way in the textbook — what interests you about it? Okay, good, then let’s approach it that way. You work on this aspect, you work on that aspect, we form groups. What’s important is that these and these pages get covered, and then in two weeks you present your topic. That completely reframes the project out of nowhere, and the students get really interested, and I always get the best results that way — results that go far beyond expectations, so much so that other colleagues always ask me, how do you do that? But the students chose the topic themselves, and the students know they’re allowed to make mistakes, they’re allowed to come to me and say, “Ms. Nolte, I’m scared of this.” And I say, okay, you’re allowed to be scared, you’re allowed to be sad, you’re allowed to struggle with difficulties — but go through it, it’s completely normal. And if you need to cry, then cry. Feelings matter. You’re allowed to work with those feelings, and that’s how you grow stronger from it. And the third paradigm is appreciation for yourself and for others. That’s really the essence that emerges from the first two things — this mutual appreciation. And that’s where, for me, this light side of power comes through: this sense of “you are valuable, and I am valuable.” So let’s take each other by the hand and show that to one another. I’ve had so many wonderful experiences, and every year I ask my students questions like: what did you like, what didn’t you like about my teaching, what can I improve next year? And it’s always the things they mention almost in passing that turn out to be the more important things, because they show how life actually works, and how you can handle different situations. And you can go to them and have a good cry, or even give them a hug. Normally, teaching and upbringing tend to involve very little physical contact, which I actually find a shame. I do it anyway, sometimes I put a hand on a student’s shoulder, or if someone has a headache, I ask, “Can I touch you?” and try to help a little so the headache goes away, or something like that. And I really find that a shame, but this sense of appreciation is so, so important — so that students recognize they’re not the least important person in the room. They’re an important part of this process, and we both learn from each other. And that’s this special, new kind of structure, where you can really exercise power in measured doses while, at the same time, giving children the power to decide for themselves, and even to criticize me. And that’s a process that goes back and forth. And precisely because they’re allowed to voice criticism, a situation where criticism comes up usually goes like this: at first there are moments where they say, “yeah, we don’t like this, and we don’t like that, and we don’t like that either.” And I stay completely calm. I don’t say anything. I sit on my chair, right there among the students, and then, all on their own, the students start saying, “Well, you know, but we mess up too, and we did this and that, and that wasn’t great either, so maybe we should think about how we handle the start of class, or how we handle the textbooks, or how we handle homework.” And then, at some point, I can use that opportunity and say, okay, folks, here’s what applies to me, and here’s what applies to you — how do we bring all of this together into one circle, so it feels complete for all of us? And then we leave that class, and it’s not just a mental handshake for the most part — we actually shake hands and say, alright, that settles it. These are now the tasks, the structures for how we’ll run class going forward, and we’ll see what comes of it. And that’s efficacy. The students realize that they have the ability to have an effect on the school, to actually make a difference within this school, and to be a subject of this process rather than just an object of it.

Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. First of all, I find it really exciting — we actually just added your contribution on reverse mentoring to my Knowledge Base, I think it was just yesterday. I’ve shared the link in the chat. You can find it on yaseminyazan.com in the Knowledge Base, under Mentoring, Reverse Mentoring — feel free to check it out if you’re interested. And in the context of the concept of education, we’ve also touched on various aspects. The educational mandate, at its core, is about establishing self-determination, self-organization, self-efficacy, and life competence. And when you introduced these three pillars, or three paradigms of your work, you also brought in this aspect of efficacy. I find that really exciting — being able to contribute in that way, and to some extent to help shape things yourself. And here too, this meeting at eye level, all the way to a genuine mutual relationship in learning — meaning it’s not just the student learning from the teacher, but also the other way around — this aspect that it’s really a reciprocal relationship, so to speak, which might not necessarily be obvious to everyone. And I’m really curious about that. While we keep chatting, I’d also like to open up the hand-raise feature and warmly invite you all to join. I’m sure every one of us has had experiences, whether with school itself, with teachers, or maybe specifically with the aspect of power in the classroom. Feel free to share experiences, respond to what Ria has said, or even just formulate a question. Just a quick reminder, we’re limited to 60 minutes today, so if you’d like to join in, please do so up until about a quarter to the hour — after that I’ll close the hand-raise feature again. I’d love it if we could expand this dialogue beyond just the two of us, opening up further perspectives on the topic and enriching it with your own personal experiences. And one more reminder — this entire room is being recorded, and by joining, you automatically agree to that. We also have three small room rules for anyone joining for the first time today: a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. And of course, you also have the option to use the chat to share thoughts or questions that we can pick up on. And this aspect of mentoring, reverse mentoring — in both directions — which also naturally brings in this element of appreciation, has a lot to do with attitude: my attitude toward the person across from me, or my attitude regarding my own role as a teacher. What function, task, or role do I actually see myself in? Am I, in quotation marks, exclusively conveying knowledge and teaching someone else something? Or can I also learn something from the other person? Let’s look at that once more, in terms of this reciprocity, and also this aspect of appreciation and meeting at eye level. Ria, would you like to pick up on that again?

That term actually comes from a podcast I did with Anastasia Barner. Anastasia Barner is a young entrepreneur in Berlin who founded FeMentor, a platform for women to support each other, mostly in the business world — one person might need help with bookkeeping, another might want to learn English. And within a very short time, it became a highly valued company. Anastasia Barner is a fascinating woman, and she was the first person I heard use this term. And when I talked with her about it — she actually appeared on my podcast, I’d say about a good year ago — I thought to myself, there’s so much more behind this. And then I started projecting it onto my own teaching, and that’s really where I achieved a concrete breakthrough — not just unconsciously handling things the way I might have before, but very consciously using this opportunity to step back, to take myself out of that front-and-center line, and to become, as Frederick the Great once so nicely put it, “the first among equals.” Of course, that came from an absolutist context, so it might not translate perfectly here, but this idea of “I’m nothing special” is something that’s actually quite typical of teachers. I used to always say that only people who have some kind of issue with their own self-worth become teachers. And I don’t exclude myself from that. For me, it always had something to do with height, because in sports we always had to line up according to height, and I was always the last, or second-to-last, in line. That was always really embarrassing for me, having to stand at the back. At some point I was actually happy to be the second-shortest. And this whole issue of height was such a big problem for me that, to this day, I’ve kept struggling with it in one way or another. And I could well imagine that this was one way of saying: sure, you’re small, but you have something to say. Today I know that height has absolutely nothing to do with size in the bigger sense. Someone once pointed out to me: if you didn’t keep mentioning that you’re short, no one would even notice, because you have a presence that shows you have real stature. That’s one side of it. And the other side is that this reverse mentoring holds so much potential, because it gives both sides the chance to step back sometimes, or to step into the foreground sometimes, in a well-measured dose. And that can look completely different in elementary school, or in daycare, of course. I actually just prepared a whole podcast episode yesterday about daycare work, about the circle-time setup. When children start deciding for themselves, in circle time, which game they want to play, and when ways are found to actually vote on it, and the children suddenly realize what it means to work with majorities and minorities, they develop a completely different way of communicating, and they notice: the caregiver isn’t the one deciding here. We decide. We, as a group, have the power. Of course, that happens completely unconsciously, but these early experiences of not being powerless are so formative. Not being just a plaything of circumstance — you can’t start that early enough. And I think that’s also very important, and I think a lot of parents would probably agree with me here, because this sense of powerlessness that gets instilled in children at school eventually leads them to feel powerless about everything else too — to think, well, I don’t need to change that anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it, it won’t change. Yes — if you never start, if you never set out, you stay right where you are. And that’s this comfort zone, and looking beyond your own horizon just doesn’t happen. But we have an absolute duty and responsibility to let children look beyond our own horizon too. Our own horizon, or let’s say our own perspective, is limited at some point, but we still have the task of giving children the wings to fly beyond our own horizon and to find their own new territory.

Yes, really exciting, and some concepts came up for me through the terms you used — things like powerless, powerful, disempowerment, and self-empowerment — concepts that popped into my mind spontaneously. And with that, I’d like to warmly welcome Sabine to the round, and I’m really curious what thought or contribution you’d like to bring in, dear Sabine — or maybe even a question for Ria.

Good morning, everyone. It was really exciting to listen to you, Ria — I could have kept listening. I just find your reverse mentoring really, really interesting. My question is — you touched on this a little already — doesn’t a teacher first have to learn to accept reverse mentoring themselves? And building on that, my second question: I think you’re a bit more progressive in that direction, and anyone who has kids and is a parent sees this too, that in everyday life we’re already doing reverse mentoring with our own children, especially when it comes to technology. So how does it go for you when you actually bring this up actively in the teachers’ lounge with other colleagues? What’s the reaction? Because from my own kids, I know there are teachers who are great and really open to this kind of thing, but there are also other teachers where I think you’d probably hit a wall. I’d love to hear your take on that.

I have to smile right now — I felt like you’d been in my teachers’ lounge. I’m not the only one being progressive or different from many other teachers there. At some point I realized I can’t convince everyone, and I do get regarded with suspicion. What’s interesting is that I’ve had, for years, relatively good grades in math — I’m a math teacher — well, not me, but my students. That keeps showing up again and again. I keep getting classes that seem quite weak in math, and I’d ask, what’s going on here with math? And I’d hear, “ugh, terrible subject, no way, we have no idea, we can’t do this,” and so on. And then I’d say, okay, let’s first try to bring back the joy of math. And we manage that by simply looking at what you actually need math for, what you can do with it, what practical use it has — I have my ways of doing that. And of course we still stick to the curriculum, and in the end, at the beginning I’m usually worried the students won’t pass their tenth-grade exams — in Brandenburg you have to take these tenth-grade exams — but in the end, it’s usually these classes that end up with the best average results, relatively speaking. We have four parallel classes, so you can compare that fairly well. And then some of the other teachers tell me, well, you’re just giving away the grades. I say, no, I’m not giving them away. And then, when they take over these students later, they suddenly notice that the students have a solid grasp of the material, that they can recognize connections, that they work intuitively, even in math, that they think logically. And I achieve that by connecting different things with each other. And this reverse mentoring is one of the things that helps make math fun again. And there are plenty of situations where, at the end of the school year, when I ask, students say, “finally, math is fun again, I finally found a common thread.” And there are colleagues who ask, how do you do that? And then I explain it, and I also say, just come sit in on my class and see for yourself. And there are colleagues who don’t talk to me at all. Maybe they talk behind my back. But the older I get, the less that seems to matter to me. I’ve gained a certain distance from it by now. There are a lot of colleagues who, as I like to put it, clique together — they go to a lot of parties together and things like that. I don’t get invited to that. And honestly, I don’t want to be either. My grandmother always used to say, “Cronyism is scoundrelism” — maybe that phrase captures something of it. And I actually do quite well without it. But you’re right, there are colleagues who are interested, because maybe they want to get out of their own dilemma. Because in all my 40 years in schools, I’ve never once had the feeling of being burned out. I’ve always had the feeling that I can still learn more, that more things interest me, and that I can still achieve more with my students. And a lot of colleagues do burn out, because the power and the energy they need for that kind of power actually drains their energy. And I get energy from my students. And that’s a huge difference. And some of you also know that last year, for example, I went through six months of chemotherapy. I still went to work, and the students knew about it. And it showed — I really lost all my hair. And the students carried me through it, without being pitying about it at all. But this mutual, supportive togetherness gives so much strength and energy, and of course other people want that too. And more and more people are realizing that teaching can be different. So, I basically work as a quiet role model. Whoever wants it, gets it from me. I don’t know which teachers listen to my podcast, or if they even do. I know some follow me on Instagram, and that becomes clear there too. And especially this kind of thing works like exponential growth — at first it’s fairly small, but then, suddenly, it explodes. Because more and more people notice that it’s a good way to generate more energy for themselves too. So maybe that’s a small answer for you — but yes, there are definitely people pushing back.

Yes, I’d love to follow up on that. I think what you’re doing is really wonderful, because I also believe — no, I’m actually sure — that a lot of children develop a different kind of self-confidence through this, because a lot of kids just switch off, because school is boring anyway, and they check out completely. And the moment you actually challenge them, but not by just having them learn, but by adding a bit of self-confidence on top, they get engaged too. I can imagine that. What I’m a bit critical of — not of you, but of the system — is that there are educators everywhere. A lot of what Yasemin knows, they should know too — why isn’t that being taught at a higher level too? And that brings us back to the topic of education in Germany. We keep waiting, and waiting, and waiting, always thinking something is just going to happen on its own. Has anyone ever come to visit you, or could something like this be incorporated into teacher training colleges, saying, hey, this is a way you can approach children?

Sabine, you’re giving me a great idea there. Yasemin, may I answer?

Of course.

You’re giving me a great idea. I would really love to give a lecture on this at a university — that would be no problem at all, and I’d really enjoy doing it. I’ve set myself the goal of putting a dent in the school universe. And if you bring together the idea of the universe and a dent, and think of Stephen Hawking, then a dent is the preparation for a wormhole. And a wormhole is the shortest connection between two very distant galaxies. In school, that’s the wormhole from yesterday to tomorrow. And I want to, and will, contribute a good deal to that. I’m not entirely sure yet what exactly that will look like, but I keep working on it, and drop by drop, the jug fills up. And when ideas come up, like inviting me to an expert talk, or saying, hey, a university or college would be great — I’m ready for anything that moves this idea forward. And people are welcome to come visit me, although that’s going to get tricky now, because I’ll be spending my last year at school, since after that I get to retire, and then I might want to keep working in this direction differently, and maybe carry this idea further. And through my podcast, too, I keep hearing that there are so many colleagues out there who think similarly to me. But teachers have a certain kind of powerlessness, this feeling of being lone fighters. They walk into a room alone, face 30 people, and then walk back out of that room, and the situation is over. And that’s a bit of a fallacy — they believe they’re alone, but there are so many people all across the country who think similarly, who have similar ideas. And bringing those people together, that would of course be a good approach. At the same time, the school system is a subsystem of society. That means more than 50 percent of the population is directly or indirectly involved in this system. And that makes it a very sluggish system. And this system keeps renewing itself over and over. It’s a bit curious, but there’s probably some very typical patterns here, or even scientific studies on it. Let me explain it using my own school as an example. At my school, there’s something called the “Hertmannsweiler spirit.” It’s a certain mentality, a way of relating to school, or to the space of school. It keeps repeating itself, and it’s shaped by a kind of warmth between the students, or a pleasant way of relating between students, and also between students and teachers in general — something you can both see and feel. We even have our own school anthem, and we have these wonderful traditions that happen every year and that show this mutual respect. And this Hertmannsweiler spirit keeps renewing itself, even though we get new students every year. That means we’re very proud and very happy that we have this spirit, because it carries this warmth into the seventh grades too — we start with this in seventh grade, or it arrives and takes root there at some point — and then suddenly these seventh-graders, by eighth or ninth grade, take over the responsibilities of the older students, and we have this feeling that, yes, we get younger, but this wonderful underlying spirit of the school stays the same. And I see it exactly the same way with the school system as a whole. There are always new people, but the underlying tone stays the same. I see this very, very often with young colleagues who come in with great ideas. The first six months, they’re really excited, full of things they want to do, organizing and doing things. And more and more, they end up falling back and saying, ah, forget it, just leave me alone, I’ll just do my own thing like everyone else. That means they very quickly lose the energy and the ability to have a powerful influence on the workings of this system, because the system simply, I’d say, runs them over. With everything we have to do, everything we’re not allowed to do, everything we have to pay attention to, new programs we have to work through again, new timetables, new this, new that. Or people say, can’t we just work continuously for once, and just do our work the way we’d actually like to do it? And that’s where this ambivalence arises between what we’d actually like, and — well, 50 percent of the population wants the school system to change. But right now, we just can’t seem to create the spark that tips it over.

Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And with an eye on the time, I’d like to bring in one more impulse or thought for our closing round today, in relation to this idea of systemic change, let’s call it — because the term also came up today: the term “pedagogue.” I just looked this up on Wikipedia, and I really like the definition given there, and I’d also like to bring up the issue connected with it, in quotation marks, in relation to the teaching profession. A pedagogue is a person who deals professionally, as a rule, with educational action — meaning the practice of upbringing and education — and with the theories of pedagogy. Primarily, the term “pedagogue” is used for a person who has completed a degree in one of the academic disciplines of pedagogy. In German-speaking countries, common qualifications include a diploma in pedagogy, a state examination, or a master’s degree in educational science. Since the professional title “pedagogue” isn’t a protected term, in everyday language it’s often used broadly to cover all professionals working in education, such as teachers and childcare workers. And as far as I know, it’s still the case that, both in teacher training and in other forms of training, such as for childcare workers and so on, these pedagogical aspects only make up a very small share, in quotation marks, of the overall scope of what’s actually taught or learned. And in everyday life, we keep talking about pedagogues. But if you look more closely — and this is probably actually something we’d need a whole separate room for, to really take a closer look at this term “pedagogue” — but this is exactly where I see a lever for change that’s needed, and I’m curious what you have to say about it, dear Ria. Because, structurally, being a teacher is still very strongly geared toward how knowledge is conveyed during training — maybe also toward didactic preparation — but far too little toward this pedagogical component, which would need to take up much more space and room, so that things like reverse mentoring, for example, could already be instilled as an attitude from the very start. Because, as we know from numerous studies and so on, this is really an identity-forming process that already develops during one’s studies, and then a maturing process that happens afterward, in order to bring these pedagogical elements much more into the foreground compared to the transmission of knowledge. What do you think about that, dear Ria?

You’re touching on something really essential there. When I look at my own development over the past few years, I’ve gained so much knowledge, not from pedagogy, but from management. This, let’s say, looking beyond one’s own horizon, also in connection with the podcast, has opened up paths for me where I now say: in educational science, or in training teachers, mentors as far as I’m concerned, or kindergarten teachers or childcare workers, it’s not just didactic skills and didactic knowledge that are needed — psychology is needed too. And there’s so much there, and you know this even better than I do, so many new, modern findings that we simply don’t know, and that we can’t work with, because we’re not aware of them. There’s so much from the field of management, from organizational management, from time management, that we don’t know, but that our students, in theory, should know. It’s not about whether we can also teach students how a tax return works — there are trained professionals for that. We can generally explain what a tax return is, but we can and should explain to students how to best organize their time, how to organize their work. And that’s done far too little, but honestly, we don’t know it ourselves either. What’s the Pomodoro method? What’s the Eisenhower method? How can you organize your time well by working backward from a deadline, or in other ways? These are simple, practical things that I picked up along the way at some point, because I love learning. And that’s the other side of it — a pedagogue also needs the ability to really experience learning, lifelong learning, as something joyful, and to feel that joy in learning. You can learn anytime, anywhere, from anyone, and exactly this openness of eye and ear is, for me, one of the most important criteria — and that requires so much more than just pedagogy. In pedagogy, or in university training, so many more cross-connections would need to be made, and students should really be instilled with the joy of continuing their education independently, of attending an extra lecture or seminar in economics or management. That should be planted in them. And this independence, this ability to organize yourself — that’s one of the most important factors, for me, in actually getting to the point of really looking beyond your own horizon, even as a teacher.

Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And that also makes clear that there’s a certain complexity built into this. So it makes sense to approach teacher training in a much more interdisciplinary way, and to bring in different elements here. You just mentioned psychology, for example, we’ve already touched on pedagogy — neuroscience is important too, to understand learning processes and so on from the brain’s perspective. What’s actually happening there, how does motivation work, and so on — and at the same time, techniques and methods from management, from entrepreneurship, and beyond. We’ve already opened up so many rooms on so many different topics, and we’ve kept noticing that the foundation, so to speak, always comes back to education, and so that this educational mandate can actually be fulfilled, it becomes even more important not only to look at the content being taught, but also, at the same time, to properly support the teaching staff, so that they too can keep expanding their own horizons from every direction. Thank you so much. I thought this was another amazing room today, and especially this expert talk with Dr. Ria Nolte on “Power in the Classroom.” Dear Ria, time really flew by — I think we could have kept talking for another three days, at least. Maybe one more thing to close: is there a message, an appeal, or a highlight you’d like to underline once more?

I want to thank you, and all of you, so much. What’s interesting for me is that whenever I talk about this, new thoughts and ideas come to me too, and suddenly certain things become clear, and I think, right, that’s the connection. Exactly here, at this point, I hadn’t gotten any further before, but now, through talking about it so much, suddenly — pop — it opens up. And that’s the beautiful thing. Just talking to each other, exchanging with each other, and out of that, new thoughts and ideas develop. And that’s so fantastic. And I want to thank you so much for giving me this space and this time.

Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and thank you too, dear Sabine, for the impulses and questions you brought in. And with that, we’ll continue tomorrow with the topic “The Power of Sport” — how do power and violence show up through, or within, sport? That’s the question we’ll be exploring tomorrow. So you’re all very warmly invited to join us again tomorrow at 8am here in the Deep Talk, to open up a space for reflection together through exchange, through the thoughts you bring to the topic. I’m already really looking forward to it. Thank you so much for your time, for listening, and thank you again, dear Ria, for the wonderful, valuable impulses we received here today, which we can also let continue to resonate afterward. With that — until next time.