Being “Agents of Our Future” with Rachel Davison Humphries  

Please note, this transcript is generated by AI and may include some errors. 

Spencer Payne: All right, here we are with another episode of Front of the Class Real Stories from Real Educators with Rachel Davison Humphries. And Rachel, can you give us little introduction to those in the education world? What is it that you say you're working on today?

Rachel Davison Humphries: Well, thank you for having me, Spencer. Hi, everyone. My name's Rachel Davidson Humphries. I work at the Bill of Rights Institute. I have done that for the past, let's see, coming up on nine years. And right now we are trying to save the free world a little bit. The Bill of Rights Institute works on US education in history and civics. So our mission is to teach civics and that's really necessary right now. So what I'm doing is working on student projects and national things to try and make sure that young Americans are invested in the future of a free society and a free country here in the United States.

Spencer Payne: And with such a broad and very large and bold mandate, do know if you're doing a good job? How about the end of the year do you say, this was a good one, or we've got to do more of this? How do you get a feel for that?

Rachel Davison Humphries: You know, I always said when I was in the classroom, because I taught middle school for almost 10 years, that teaching is an act of optimism. And so I think measures are really hard when you're talking about hearts and minds and to get wonky, you can talk about dispositional effects, which you can measure kind of the researchers like to measure those. But really it's, are we doing good work? Are teachers and students using our resources?

And that's how we know we're doing a good job is that we're getting used by the teachers who need us.

Spencer Payne: Yeah. And, and regarding, regarding civics, for those who maybe are coming at this from maybe their science background, maybe, I remember that term, but I haven't heard it in a long time. Yeah. Can you help us with a little bit of an understanding of maybe when you say civics, what do you mean by that? And then maybe, yeah. And then maybe what. Yeah. And then what maybe is an example of a lesson that is maybe your most popular or one that you really want to convey to the teachers who use your curriculum.

Rachel Davison Humphries: What do we mean? Yeah, what do I mean? What do we mean?

Sure. So civics broadly conceived as the study of government in society. But the Bill of Rights Institute, we take a broader view and we think about civics really as another term, which is civil society. What are all the different, how do all the different institutions, whether those are public or private, whether those are small or big, support the self-governance of our society. So how do we take schools, businesses, charitable organizations, government entities, and help young people understand their role in society and how they interact with one another to make us able to govern ourselves?

So one of the things that's unique about a democratic republic is that we are self-governing. There's no king. There's no house of lords, right? That we are the agents of our future in our government. And so making sure that young people understand that and really invest in that across all sectors. So one of the things the Bill of Rights Institute does is talk about what does it mean to be a citizen in your science class? What does it mean to be a citizen in your math class? What does it mean to be a citizen at work?

What does it mean to be a citizen in your kind of charitable activities? And so when we talk about civics, we talk about not only just the narrow function of government, but also this kind of broader understanding of the role of different aspects of civil society kind of across your life.

Spencer Payne: And is there an example of maybe a most common, most popular, or most proud of lesson plan curriculum story sharing of how you bring that home for your teachers and your students?

Rachel Davison Humphries: Yeah. Sure, yeah. Yeah. I think one of my favorite figures to talk about is John Brown, I fear not. He was a fantastic example of how to question what it means to be a good citizen. So John Brown was an abolitionist who thought that violent uprising was the way to inspire change.

And so the questions that you ask are, that the right action at the time? Should he have worked more closely within the bounds of legal activity? It was for a very just cause. So what do you do when something is so abhorrent to you that you can't think about doing anything else? And we actually, we have a whole lesson on John Brown in a curriculum called Heroes and Villains, which is very character driven and ask students to really think about what does it mean to be, what are your responsibilities as a citizen and how do you think about them? I love the character of John Brown. I love thinking about that with students and all adults really could have those same questions. I've had those conversations with adult groups and student groups and teacher groups. John Brown is a great example of the way that we think about investigating our history and asking questions about what is right action in our society?

Spencer Payne: Yeah. There's so many examples of, what that could look like. And I'll, even, I'll just give one of like, I'm a big fan of going back and reading history, especially founding fathers, that time period, cetera. And one thing that was just a very quick, a very quick note, because again, I don't know if this was right or wrong. Like this is, this is up for genuine debate of like, is this the right approach? Is it not the right approach? What's good about this? What's bad about this? But you go back to, you know, founding fathers of what they're fighting for. Um, you know, we're fighting for, freedom and our autonomy, our ability to self-govern, not just have someone across the sea tell us how we're going to live our life or that we can or can't have this or that. And George Washington at certain times in the biography written by Ron Chernow, you know, big 700 page book.

Rachel Davison Humphries: Yeah, the turnout biographies, those are hefty.

Spencer Payne: Many people might not read it, but it was really, it was really fun. If you're, if you're really into that level of detail. And anyway, there's, there's some times where, you know, some of his, his soldiers in the revolutionary war are, are fighting without shoes. They haven't been paid in months, sometimes years. There's not enough food. Like the continental Congress is not getting them the supplies that they need. And so when you're in that environment, you're like, I'm fighting for liberty. I'm fighting for the people, but yet.

I don't have the food and supplies I need. So some, some of those folks would potentially steal from the, the Tories or the British supporters locally. just because they needed food, they need, they needed some basic supplies and like, is that right? Is that just, you able to steal against, are you becoming the exact enemy that you are proposing to fight against? and it's just, it's, it's one of the words like, what do you do? Well, actually George Washington at some point when people did this egregiously against orders had some of those people had some of those people executed for violating orders or stealing from the people. Cause like, can't be fighting this war while we're doing that. so anyway, like these are great civics lessons of like, is that right? Is that wrong? On what basis do we decide if that's going too far or not far enough? Like these are hard questions. Like if you're in the moment, you don't have the supplies for your army. You're trying to fight a just cause. How am I supposed to do that without the right supplies?

Rachel Davison Humphries: These are great civics lessons because-

And in the moment, if you've never thought about it, you may make a decision you regret, right? And so one of the things that we try and do at the Bill of Rights Institute is all of our resources are based on constitutional principles and virtues. And so all of our resources, all, you know, 7,000 of them that are freely available on our website, how are tied to thinking about some aspect of a principle or a virtue, which gives you criteria to make those decisions as you're, you know, out in your communities, faced with hard choices. The role of government and its proper role is a conversation that is ongoing, right? I was once a scholar once said that every major conflict in the US is still the federalists versus the anti-federalists. It's still what is the role of government? Is it local or is it national?

And so all of those questions are questions that every generation has to grapple with. And it's becoming harder and harder as things become more seemingly complex. I'm not sure that they are more complex, but they're seemingly more complex because you have so many more voices that you can turn to. And so you're getting a lot more information and it's hard to sift through. And so...

You know, we do a lot of current events lessons as well and try and say, okay, you heard about the Chevron clause. What's the Chevron clause? here, or one of our more famous lessons that actually was Colin Kaepernick when, when he had his protest and we put a lesson up and the Washington Post picked it up and, know, that was a free speech lesson. What is, what is free speech? What is protest? What is its history in the United States? Why, why is it important in a free society that you have the right to protest and free speech?

And so those kinds of questions, as they come up, we really try and make sure that we're very rooted in the principles and virtues to make sure that those are first and foremost a framework for you to make decisions as you go through your life as an American.

Spencer Payne: Yep. Well, thank you for all that. Lots to learn there. I'd love to back up for a second of this is now the Bill of Rights Institute. You've been doing it for nine years. Before that, you were a teacher. How did you get into the education profession in the first place? What attracted you to it? What drew you to it?

Rachel Davison Humphries: Yeah, well, I have a kind of, I have a bit of a journey. I think my impulse has always been to help. And so there's a great quote. I found it in the book, The Road to Character by David Brooks, but then I learned that Frederick Buechner was the original author and I read a bunch of Frederick Buechner's work on vocation. And he says that, find the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need.

I was like, okay, well that makes a lot of sense and that tells my story kind of looking backwards. So I didn't find that quote until I was much later into my career. But I actually, started out as an, as an oldest daughter wanting to help my family. My grandfather was sick with late stage Parkinson's and I was like, how do I help? Well, after he had passed, was like medicine, that's how you help.

So I went and became a paramedic. didn't, or EMT intermediate, so baby paramedic. I did 911 service and I was saying, okay, I'm helping. People are like physically improved when I leave, but is this really the kind of, is this all I can do to help? Is this the biggest, is this the best way to make change in people's lives? And after some hard searching, actually. You know, I was running double the national call average. had 12 calls per 24 hour shift. It was a very intense experience. Um, and I, I was in a CVS, I think in uniform and someone came up to me and says, Rachel, Rachel, I'm, so glad my father's fine and you saved him. He's, he's doing great. And I didn't remember the call. I didn't remember the person. I didn't remember their dad. And I was like, I'm not sure that change is happening for them.

I'm also not sure this is the kind of change for me, right? Like, what is this doing for me? I gave him a big hug. I said, it's so good to hear. And then I went away and thought about a lot of things. And I found a book called Colleges That Change Lives. My little brother was trying to choose a college. And I read about a school called St. John's College. And I thought to myself, if I want to do great things in my life, I need to know what greatness is. So I went to go study philosophy at a little great book school in the mountains of Santa Fe. And while I was there, was like, hmm.

Charity, charity, just like direct helping and then they'll be able to make the best choices for themselves. And I went to, it was the years of the hurricane Katrina and I went down to hurricane, I went down to New Orleans with 20 of my classmates and we did clean up down there and I'm gutting people's houses and I'm saying, don't, and all they want to do is move back home. And I'm like, I don't know that that's the best choice for them. But I'm not the one to make that decision. And is charity the best way to really help people? And start asking myself hard questions about that. I had some internships and some fellowships. And then in 2008, when I graduated, there were no jobs in charity anyway, because there were no jobs anywhere. But I had really started thinking about education. And there's this quote by George Orwell, which is, you hate violence and don't believe in government, which is funny now because I work at the Bill of Rights Institute, but.

If you hate violence and don't believe in government, the only remedy remaining is education. And what he means is that the way to truly make social change in the long arm of history is by improving the way that people are educated, improving their access to understanding what's best for them. And so I started looking for jobs in education. I started out as like a little baby curriculum assistant, helping someone start up a series of charter schools or a series of micro schools now is what they would be called. and then I learned about Montessori and started working at Montessori schools. And I had an incredible kind of career that we can get into a little bit more in kind of radically agency driven learning environments. So places where students really controlled a lot of their own learning experience. And I was a support for that.

Spencer Payne: Yeah, just let's just get into that. us what that is like where maybe a student is driving and how old are they? Like, can you give it any examples? Place us in the type of classroom where the student is like, I want to go learn more about this, as opposed to you're going to we're going to force you to learn this today. Like, tell us more about what that looks like. How does that sound again? How do you know? And how do know that's going well at the end of the year?

Rachel Davison Humphries: Yeah, yeah, so absolutely.

Yeah, so I have a couple of different examples of that. So I'm Montessori trained at the adolescent level. So in Montessori environments, have middle school is 12 to 15 year olds. It's really called early adolescence. And then you have late adolescent, which is the high school, is, you know, 16. Really, it would be 15 to 18 or 16 to 18. So 12 to 15, 15 to 18 are the kind of two grade bands.

I really like that because the ninth graders can take on real leadership. And if anybody's ever hung out with ninth graders, know that ninth graders and 12th graders really should not be in the same. There are two different like versions of person. And so I had, fell into it. Someone, someone interviewed me and says, no, she's for the middle school people. And he was, he became a mentor of mine at Austin Montessori school. His name was Tom Logan and he was a phenomenal educator who really introduced me to how to think about giving over the kind of learning to the student. So the way that it works in most Montessori environments is that you have bounded choice. So you take your course, your course of study, whatever it may be, and within that course of study, the students have choice about how they approach different aspects of the learning.

So you'll have lessons that are all grouped that everybody participates in and then you'll have parts of the time, parts of the day, parts of the week, parts of the month, depending on how it's structured, where the students are developing their own projects within some boundaries of that environment. So that's one model and I'll talk about another model that I had the opportunity to work in later. So for instance, we had a challenge. I worked at a farm school in Indiana called Oak Farm Montessori.

And while at the farm school, we were gifted a two-ton Quonset hut that we were going to convert into a chicken coop. So the question is, how do we move it? And so that's the question. And you introduce the question and you provide the resources. And then the students go out and do some research and figure it out. Like, what are the options? What are the prices? How are we, like, what would the labor cost? What's the danger? How do we think about this?

And then they come back and they can propose things and then you know there's a conversation between the adults and the young people about how we do this and we decided that we were going to follow the model of the ancient Egyptians and we're gonna use rollers and pulleys and levers to lift this two-ton chicken coop with 25 middle schoolers and we accomplished it we got it to the road where the truck could winch it and lift it onto the truck to move it to the other part of the campus. But to get it from where it was set back in the woods to the road, we used pulleys and levers and rollers and giant and the labor of 25 adolescents. Yeah, sure.

Spencer Payne: I'd love to deep dive on that for a second. If we don't mind, just because the end of the end of this, like we have this two ton Quonset hut that's going to become our chicken coop. And we are asking a bunch of 10, 11, 12 year olds ballpark middle school, maybe 12 to 15 year olds. Okay. 12 to 15. Uh, how are we going to do this? Like, can you just like, let's just deep dive on this for a second. Cause I find this fascinating. Like how, how long did it, how long did it take to how long was the research? Was this a week? Was it two weeks?

Rachel Davison Humphries: Yep.

12 to 15 year olds. 12 to 15 year olds.

It's a five week period. It was a five week period. So you have about a week. They do.

Spencer Payne: That's a five week period. Okay. And for, and I'm assuming they have some questions along the way of like, how much does this rope hold? Like how, how are you facilitating when they're having questions that might be ridiculous? Like, no, no, no, don't go down that road, please. Like,

Rachel Davison Humphries: Yeah. Yeah, three times a week, three times a week, I had a three hour block. That was our science block. So we had block scheduling, three hour work cycle is a kind of standard period of time in monetary environments. So you'll have a big work cycle. So they can really get into something in the class. And we would alternate between small or we would have like a small lesson kind of introducing the machine. So this was really secretly this was my simple machines physics unit.

Right? So in my plan for my integrated science units, this is my simple machines physics unit. Secretly, I didn't tell them, today we're studying physics. But I had all my pulleys and levers and load like weights. And they I would introduce the concept when they came to me and they said, well, why don't we do, you know, this part, I would have all the materials ready.

And or I'd guide them gently into like thinking about it, say, well, have you thought about, and then they go and they are like, yes, of course. Right. and then they would practice on the pulleys and levers in the classroom and they'd ask questions and we'd, we'd investigate. then again, because we were a farm school, we actually had a pulley system out in the barn. So then we would go test some things out on the pulley system in the barn, test some rollers out on the pulley system in the barn. pulling students on a pallet is kind of what we ended up doing.

So we'd like had them lift hoist themselves on a pallet, like just standing on a pallet and then move themselves with a pulley system on a pallet and see how much, see if the smallest kid could lift the biggest kid if they use the proper lever, what happened if they were at the wrong point in the lever. And we did all of that for probably about two weeks. We would go over and measure and try and figure out exactly how much this thing weighed. I don't remember exactly.

I think we just found a proxy one online and saw how much that weighed in order to, I don't think we actually did any measurements of the weight. And then we took about a week to prep the setup. It happened, this happened to be on our other campus. So it was just down the road and we didn't have any restrictions on access. And, you know, our farm manager gave a lot of support because he was the actual handyman. He had a homestead and six kids and he, Mr. Cole, really supported the work, making sure we had all the materials we need. And then over the course of an afternoon, three hours, we were able to move the two-ton chicken coop. And then they had a big reflection. They talked about their learning. They talked about why it was important, what they learned. They talked about what science they think they learned.

And so we kind of rounded out the kind of, you know, project learning cycle with the reflection. And I took video and then we made like a little video of the project and the process and it was really fun.

Spencer Payne: Yeah, I say, do you recall the level of enthusiasm, pride? I would imagine doing something like that as the student body, they're doing this together, multiple weeks, they did it. I'd imagine there's a level of enthusiasm that is far greater than, how about that geology test that we just got a B plus on, right? I'd imagine this is a wildly great time.

Rachel Davison Humphries: It was, yeah. Yeah. And I have, you know, what I would always try and do again, because for me, the question always was how can I help them become self-governing people? Right? Like that was always kind of my, my, kind of, I've had a deep interest in kind of in liberty and freedom for a long time for a variety of reasons. And so how do, what education will best support that?

Well, it's an education where someone really understands what they're capable of. How do we give them experiences to learn what they're capable of that are authentic, right? So my issue with a lot of project learning is that it's very, that it's contrived, that it's simulated, right? And so in my environments, what I was able to do was do real learning, right? Like in real world experiential learning.

Which is why I don't always talk about it as project-based, but really it's experiential or even expeditionary. I would have middle schoolers running expedition trips for a week because they're capable of it. I think we forget often how capable 12 to 15-year-olds are. For most of human history, they were independent people. They would go off and be you know, in the city learning, they'd be in the fields leading teams or leading the teams of horses. You know, they were, they were adult contributors for most of human history by about age 13. That's why so many of our, you know, whether it's, you know, the Bar Mitzvah or the Quinceanera or there are so many milestone events that happen in that age range, because that was the age of, of adulthood in most of society for most of human history.

And so we forget how capable they are. And so was always my goal to say, how can I create a real learning experience? Another example was another example in this environment was our biology lesson where we said, we have chickens and we're not getting enough eggs to sell at our farms market. How do we improve the egg yield? And that simple question gives you an entire unit of biology and ecology.

You have to learn about digestion. You have to learn about reproduction. We did dissections. We did experiments where we changed different factors of their diet and their light and the angles of the sun coming in from the windows. And certain students thought maybe it was that they didn't have enough stimulation. So they made chicken mazes and tried to figure out how smart they were. And other students were like, well, their run is too small. So what if we put with what if they have more exercise? And so you had this kind of really interesting question that had a real lock. And at the end we count the eggs and you can say, we went from.

Spencer Payne: Yeah. And you've got a testable hypothesis. And then if that one didn't work, you've got another testable hypothesis and you've got all these ideas. at the end, you can actually see like, these two things didn't seem to do anything, but these two things seem to do everything. And what a way to teach science behind like the words and the scientific method. And here's how this works. Other than like, they are creating their own hypotheses and testing them, whether they know that language or not, they're learning it. Yeah.

Rachel Davison Humphries: Exactly.

And it's like, I'm testing them. And it was an absolute gift to be able to do that, right? Not every environment. I mean, I just, had such a blessed career in environments where I could do that, right? So my, my, for the biology unit, their final project was they had to teach me about a system of the, about a body system that they learned about, but they couldn't use poster board anything edible or anything with glitter. So those were my constraints. just because good no glitter rule. So I had students do a puzzle of the digestive system. I had to do stop motion animation. I had a video game. I had a puppet show.

Spencer Payne: I love it. I love a good no glitter rule, by the way, it gets everywhere. It's just a mess.

Rachel Davison Humphries: amazing to see a 12 year old boy make chicken puppets and then do a puppet show teaching about chicken intelligence. It was fascinating. And so they, you know, those constraints created a lot of creativity that was really, really powerful. That's a very different model than when you have a true like, opportunity to do expeditions. So after I taught in the Montessori schools here in the United States, I was

My now husband moved to Central America and I followed him because I love him. And I had the opportunity to teach at another radical model. was Montessori inspired Acton Academy in Central America and Guatemala City, where half the day the students are working on academics and half the day they're working on either passion projects or expedition trips.

So all of their academics are completed in three hours of the day. And so by lunchtime, they have done everything that they're gonna do for that period. They get choice within that, there are lower bounds, but no upper bounds is the way that we talk about it. They can only work so slowly, but if they wanna work as fast as they can, I had a student who came in and it was like he was like unleashed horse.

And he was like, I can work as fast as I want. And was like, yeah, if you pass them the tests, go for it. And he did algebra one geometry and half of algebra two in one year. He was a 12 year old boy. Cause he was like, I, I love this. And he would go home and he'd do four or five hours of math at night. Cause he, and I would just keep up with him. And I told him, when you get to Calc AB, I'm going to have to send you to like a college course, but I can be with you for this part of it.

And then the other part of the day, so they would have to report on what they were doing with their passion project, how much frongers they had made, whether that was an album they were writing or motocross, you know, tournament that they were training for or what have you. And then the alternating days we were working on expedition trips. So they were planning week long excursions where we would go. It happened to be Guatemala, so we got to go to, you know, Tikal for a week, which is an ancient Mayan site and they would investigate different aspects of that and then also run parts of the trip. Right. So I had a transportation manager and a lodging manager and the entertainment manager and an activities manager team and a budget manager team. And they would all coordinate within constraints and boundaries. But there was real risk. Right. If the budget manager hadn't talked to the food manager, we would be eating rice and beans by the end of the trip, because we only had so much, you know, so much money for food and beverage.

Spencer Payne: And the kids were those budget manager and food manager, right? So they're learning how to go manage a budget and how much food for a week. And if they, for 20 kids, right? And so they're, again, that's act, talk about active learning. That's not a theoretical for a test. That's like, geez, we're rice and beans here the last two days. Sorry, sorry, sorry guys. Sorry. Yeah.

Rachel Davison Humphries: Mm-hmm, yep.

for 20 kids. Yep.

I'm sorry guys. You know, obviously we wouldn't do anything unsafe. We're not going to starve them, but it would be not the most comfortable. You're not, you're not having the luxury foods by the end of the week if we didn't budget properly.

Spencer Payne: Yeah. One thing I'd love to highlight here for a second is just like, we've got this, we're talking to farm school in Indiana, moving quans at huts and students learning what are some of the testable hypotheses that can help improve chicken production and then actually finding it out and realizing it. We've got now this school in Guatemala that your life has taken you to. Oh, I just want to merely highlight.

If folks are thinking, I'm going to become a teacher, I'm going to go to the same school and teach the exact same thing for the rest of my life. And 17 years from now, I'm literally just using the exact same words I used 17 years ago. I mean, you could do that, but you certainly don't have to use. You certainly don't have to write. If that's what you think of as teaching, I just want to highlight, there's a lot of different ways to do this. There's a lot of different methods. There's a lot of countries. There's a lot of places you can do this. Yeah.

Rachel Davison Humphries: If that's brings you joy.

Right. And more and more all the time. Right. So there's the the micro school movement has exploded across the United States, the private schools, the charter schools, the, you know, there are more and more options. If you're someone who really loves students and wants to be in that kind of the chaos that comes with very small learning environments, kind of I don't always describe it as self contained because that has very specific connotations in the public school sector, but it's often it's a self-contained classroom and you're teaching all subject areas to all students. My math lab in one of my schools had seven different levels of math student in a group of 30 students. And so I was prepping quizzes and tests for functionally seven different courses simultaneously.

But, you know, that workload also means you're learning fiber arts, right? Like there are these advantages and disadvantages. I can take fiber from birthing a lamb all the way through to knitting a sweater. I can do, I know how to do all that. And that's because I had the opportunity to work at these incredible learning environments where students had the opportunity to really ask important questions about what they were capable of and what they knew and what they didn't know.

Spencer Payne: Yeah.

I love it just, as, we kind of get, get closer to wrapping up here, I'd love to ask maybe, one more question on stories from the classroom and then get into more of our quick hitter questions, but stories in the classroom, any, any, any stories come up for you and maybe it's one you've already shared. Maybe it's a different one. Any proudest moments in the classroom for you or your students, anything that's still like you look back on and you're like that, that was it. That was, that was when we were all firing and all, all cylinders. I was at my best. The students were my best. I'll remember that moment or that class or that for the next 50 years, anything really stand out to you of just proudest moments in the classroom.

Rachel Davison Humphries: Yeah, and so this was on our, this isn't actually, I mean, I've had a lot of experiences of students just kind of surprising me and surprising themselves with what they're capable of. So I had this experience in Guatemala where my students had not traveled within their own country very much.

And all my students were bilingual, so I didn't have to worry about a strong language, bilingual to varying stages, a strong language barrier. But there was one student who really struggled with the kind of self self learning environment. He struggled to to focus on his work. He struggled to to to have a high standard for himself. And we were on this trip and he had taken one of the easiest jobs, was the entertainment manager. So he got to choose the music and the, which is the fun, it's just quick tip. If you ever want students to choose music, you can make the rule that they can choose anything they like so long as they can explain to you what the song is about.

And if they're willing to explain to you what the song is about, then it can go on the playlist.

Spencer Payne: Hmm, okay. Now it's more than just hitting add to playlist. Now it's a little, gotta listen, I gotta pay attention. Okay, interesting, I like that.

Rachel Davison Humphries: huh. Yeah. So that's that's a good like boundary for choosing playlists for students. But at any rate, so he, he had really struggled. He actually gotten into a fight with a kid and was suspended for a little while. And that was very uncommon in these very small environments. and, he, were on our trip and we, you know, at about day three in these trips, the kids are really starting to settle into being a community working together, looking out for each other, the like, the grease, everything is greased and everything's going. and we were sitting outside after dinner at our hotel and it was near some, near, near some water and he was swinging his key and his key fell off his finger into the water. And it was one of those moments because these are kind of, you they're not, you can't just go get another tap card.

It's like these are hard, hard keys. and everybody kind of stops and looks at him and he looks at them and you can tell he's trying to decide whether or not he's going to be angry or sad, whether he's going to be vulnerable or whether he's going to lash out. And in that moment, one of the other boys came up and said, it's okay, we'll get it. And you could just see him relaxed.

And so he, everybody galvanized around him. They all went and got their goggles and bathing suits. like, we, was like, okay, I'm going to make sure no one drowns. And they spent 25 minutes diving for this key. And they finally were able to find it. And it was just one of those, you know, the sun is setting and it's all these children in the water, really supporting one another in a beautiful way. And that was one of those, one of those moments where you're just like, a really supportive environment can transform young people. And I don't know that he'll even remember that moment, but I hope he does. And he remembers what it's like to lean on people in a way that lets you be vulnerable. And so that was one of my proudest moments was just seeing them and having this beautiful experience with them. And then we went on to have a lovely rest of the trip.

Spencer Payne: Yeah, and thank you for sharing that and also thank you for not telling the kids no, no, no, it's gone. We're just gonna let us go get a new one and depriving them of the fun that I'm sure I'm guessing one of them right now has another version of that story. It's like, I can't believe she let us do that. That was so fun. We got the key like

Rachel Davison Humphries: I have a couple of stories there where the thing that I was like, should I let them do it? Becomes the highlight of their trip, right? Right? Like we got lost once on a hike and I did not take control. Like they figured out how to get us back and that was the highlight. We were lost. We couldn't but we were gonna die. No, we weren't. But like.

So yeah, think that's part of, again, that agency-driven education is you can't learn to ride a bicycle at a seminar, right? Like in order to be a person who's able to make good decisions, you have to practice making bad decisions. And having the space to do that is hard in modern society, especially for adolescents, especially for young people who really are very...

very constrained right now in very narrow ways of interacting, right? They don't have jobs. They don't have, you know, they don't have a lot of younger siblings that they have to care for often. They don't have a lot of responsibility, right? Everything is prescribed for them and everything is directed kind of externally. And what does that do to their sense of their, their self? Like, what is their responsibility?

And then by extension, how does that translate into what they think their responsibility is to society? As we think about being self-governing, like society. And so it all is very layered and interconnected for me. The reason that I care about agency is the same reason I care about citizenship and civil society is that, you know, those that work to be a free person requires a kind of work in advance, kind of preparation. And so how do we create environments that can foster that kind of preparation has been my work for my entire career. It's just taken kind of two different phases.

Spencer Payne: Yeah, well, a great way is to allow students to get lost within reason and allow them to then figure out how to find their way back. because then it's amazing that again, they're shouting joyful. can't believe we did that. We, we fought off the bear. No, you didn't. But like they're, they're at that age and then you're learning, I can make a mistake and I can get back on course. And what a powerful lesson to learn for, those who maybe have not learned that lesson. And then maybe they make their first big mistake when they're 18.

Rachel Davison Humphries: Mm-hmm. Right.

Spencer Payne: If you haven't learned how to get back on course, might not believe that you have the ability to, and it can be debilitating. So why not learn those things?

Rachel Davison Humphries: they won't even put themselves in the position. They won't even put themselves in the position. There's a chilling effect, right? That they just won't put themselves out there to make mistakes is kind of what we're seeing now. And I'm really grateful that I had that career and that I was able to find environments that let me do crazy things with students within reason and boundaries. And, you know, I was able to kind of move to different environments.

And then that I found the Bill of Rights Institute, which is a national organization that supports this kind of philosophical pedagogy that supports self-governing society through creating resources that help teachers do this in more traditional environments.

Spencer Payne: Well, a couple more rapid fire quick hitter questions as we wrap up here. if you were chatting with somebody who is maybe just about to go into their first year of teaching or they're in the middle of their first year teaching, what might be the number one piece of advice that you give them or knowing what you know now, what might you go back and give yourself when you were in that very, very first year in the classroom teaching?

Rachel Davison Humphries: When in doubt, co-create.

Yeah. When, when you're like, I don't know how to do this or I don't know what they need or, I, you know, I, I don't, I don't know. Right. Turn it over to them. See, I found this especially, especially helpful in discipline. I don't know how, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Call them in, ask them. Right. So this is what happens. There has to be a consequence. What do you think the consequence should be? but also.

I don't know what kind of assessment. How do you guys think we should assess this? Or what project options should I develop? Everybody give me three project options. When in doubt, co-create.

Spencer Payne: Yep. Yep. Yep. Awesome. And what to you is the single best thing about this profession?

Rachel Davison Humphries: single best thing.

It's always the brightness that comes when a student really understands something or does something they didn't think they could do, or it's just the transformation that the joy of learning does for young people. And it's like a magic trick. It's like you're a magician, that you're able to create an environment where this other being comes into your life that wasn't there before. Yeah.

Spencer Payne: And on the other note of that, what's the single worst or toughest thing about being an educator in this profession? Or if there was a magic wand and you could point it and change one thing, where would you point that wand?

Rachel Davison Humphries: that all of them had home environments that were able to support them. That's the hardest part is when you have a student who you know has so much potential and so much capacity and so much capability. had a student who I was actually, I was able to get her into a boarding school. She had a really hard home environment. And I was able to get her a scholarship into a boarding school where she could really just generational change. But she couldn't, she lasted a year. She had to go back.

She couldn't leave her siblings functionally. And I totally understood that decision. She was really torn up about it, but I was like, no, sweetie, I get it. Then you do what you need to. But I don't think she ever was able to exit that environment or that situation fully. so she wasn't able to kind of, at that time, again, she'd probably be in her 20s now. I haven't been in touch with her. She did reach out a couple of years later just to tell me how much our relationship meant. yeah, if I could have every kid have a supportive home environment, that'd be the magic wand I'd wave. To go back though, I actually have one more, I know it was just one thing that you would tell every teacher, but also, especially for adolescents, try and see the child that's not yet there.

So a lot of young people are presenting a person that isn't who they are. And so part of kind of your practice as a future of early adolescence especially, so these again, seventh, eighth, ninth graders especially, like, don't see the child that's there, see the child that's not yet there, is kind of the way to practice where they're headed, not what they're presenting you with. And whether that's academically or emotionally works the same, but the child that is not yet there.

Spencer Payne: Yeah. See, yeah. See through, especially at that age, there's a lot more masks of here's who I'm here. Here's who I'm supposed to be. Not necessarily who here's who I really am or where I'm going or yeah. Or here's where I'm going. Yeah. Yeah. Any last words of wisdom that maybe you haven't had a chance to share or anything that you just feel is so important. You just want to, you just want to say it a second time. Cause it's that, it's that, it's that important to you.

Rachel Davison Humphries: or here's who I'm gonna be for the next 14 minutes and then I'll be a different person after that.

I'm going to go where we ended. Teaching is an act of optimism. So it's important that we remember what it's for. It's for these young people. And citizenship is an act of optimism. We engage in our society in the hopes that we will make it better for continuing generations. Every generation has to reestablish the foundations of our freedoms. We are only one election cycle away at any time from losing or not gaining what we would hope. And so both teaching and citizenship are optimistic acts in a democratic society. And I think that we need a little bit more optimism and a little bit more sense of Americans are really resilient, young people are really resilient, and they need to know that there's an optimistic future for them, that they can make the world a better place, that the world is really good in a lot of ways and the ways that it isn't, we can help them make that better. So I thank you for this opportunity and the time and the chat.

This was really fun. people can reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn or on Instagram and I'm happy to chat.

Spencer Payne: Perfect. Yeah. I hope there are more stories that people want to learn more of your real world applications and seeing how middle schoolers become the person that they didn't know that they could become with the key store, the getting lost or a big, big fan of big fan of those. So thank you for sharing those. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, with that, that's a wrap. Thanks so much. And yeah, keep, I hope, I hope you continue to have more stories, even though you're not in the classroom of seeing the teachers that you were teaching, be able to do some of those things that you were able to uncover.

Rachel Davison Humphries: Thank you so much, Spencer.

Yeah, I do get more stories now actually. I lead our student debate programs and our student fellowships. So I still get to hang out with young people regularly, which is really exciting. I'm actually taking a group to Washington DC this summer, a group of 20 young people where they've co-designed the experience.

Spencer Payne: Perfect. I like it. Well, thanks again so much. Appreciate it.

Rachel Davison Humphries: Thank you, take care.