[Podcast] Exploring the Power of Growth Mindset for Classroom Success with Camyrea Barnes in MI on Teachers in America

Welcome back to Teachers in America, where we connect with real educators and ed leaders to provide practical instructional tips and talk about the latest teaching trends to help you stay on the forefront of what’s new in education.

Today, we are joined by middle school math teacher Camyrea Barnes from Wayne-Westland Community School District in Michigan. Camyrea has created a supportive classroom environment, where students embrace and learn from mistakes and feel empowered to take on any math challenge. In this episode, she shares advice on how to nurture students' growth mindset and build community with students and fellow teachers.

A conversation with middle school math teacher Camyrea Barnes

A full transcript of the episode appears below; it has been edited for clarity.

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Today, host Kailey Rhodes connects with fellow middle school math teacher, Camyrea Barnes. Camyrea teaches 8th grade Pre-Algebra and Algebra in Wayne-Westland Community School District in Michigan. She that believes with the right mindset and community support, students can take on any math challenge. As a leader on her school's positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) team, Camyrea is also dedicated to fostering a supportive classroom environment. In this episode, she shares how she nurtures a growth mindset and builds community with her students and peers.

Now here’s Kailey and Camyrea! 

Kailey Rhodes: Welcome, Camyrea. I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. 

Camyrea Barnes: I’m excited to be here with you. Thank you for having me.

Kailey: Let’s jump into some questions. 

Middle school math is so unique. As a math teacher myself, I started in English. Then I was one of those people that never thought of myself as a math person, which now I know to never say around my kids. But finding myself in the math classroom was the best thing that ever happened to me. For you, why math? How did you end up as a math teacher?

Camyrea: I’ve always been a numbers girl. I love numbers. I love the arithmetic. I played the violin when I was younger, and I realized me counting the beats and counting the measures, I love that. So, I’ve always been into math. I want to do something in math for a career.

I was thinking to myself, what can I do with math as a career? I also admired my mom a lot. My mom was a huge public servant in Detroit public schools, and she served a lot of families with children with disabilities, and she was an advocate for them showing families how to ask questions during their IEP, how to have conversations with teachers about their child’s 504 plan. Empowering kids like me, little Black kids like me. Empowering them on how to advocate for themselves in the class. And I just saw my mom doing that. I’m like, oh, maybe I could do something with public service and math. But I never thought about math teacher. I never clicked to me math teacher.

But what clicked to me was when I was in high school, my senior year, I had a job where I worked at a summer math camp as a high school teacher assistant, and I got to teach middle school students math over the summer, and I fell in love with the craft of teaching. Not just the concept of math, but building the trust, fostering community, having relationships, connecting with people that you would never thought you would connect with. I fell in love with that. I was like, wow, I can be an inspiration and do math at the same time as a math teacher. All that whole experience is how I end up here as a fifth-year math teacher. 

Kailey: That’s beautiful. Hearing you talk about the relationship building and math, can you speak a little bit about how necessary it is to build those student relationships and really foster that community uniquely in the math classroom space? 

Camyrea: Right. It is so important. I don’t think people realize. People think math is just straight up numbers. You get straight to one answer, which a lot of times it can be like that. But math is such a challenging subject where if you feel defeated, you’re not going to be able to do as well because of that defeated or fixed mindset.

So as a teacher, even during my years of preparing to be a teacher, or even in my classroom experience, I realized how it’s so important for me to connect with my kids when they have those discouraging moments. Me just giving them an uplifting word and saying, “Hey, you got this. You’re already on the right track.”

How that lightbulb would go off for them and they will literally be a whole different mindset, a whole different framework, to just start hitting the ground running with all of that. I was just super, super grateful to be able to experience that relationship building with them in the math classroom.And if you don’t know your kids, if you don’t know your students, you can’t expect them to be able to be fully motivated or to be able to have that work ethic or that effort to want to be successful in math. 

Kailey: There’s something weird about math where it feels more exposed than maybe other subjects. Are you seeing that in your students, or do you feel that as a teacher?

Camyrea: When you say exposed, can you expound on that for me a little bit? 

Kailey: Yeah. It seems like the failure to success ratio in terms of emotions in class. Coming from the English classroom, it felt like having students sometimes even read a poem in front of the class that they wrote. I was like, “They’re probably really scared.” And then I became a math teacher, and I was like, “They are way more afraid to come to the math board and do an equation on the board than like read a poem they wrote.” And so, this fear or this feeling very exposed in the math classroom. How do you see that as a teacher and how do you confront it with that growth mindset for your kids? 

Camyrea: So, it’s interesting because during my first year of teaching, what you just said is exactly what I experienced my first year of teaching. When I came into my classroom, I was that first-year energy, like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to change the world and be an inspiration for my kids and I’m going to teach them math and I’m going to be able to do so many great projects.”

Kailey: “And they’re going to make a movie of me.”

Camyrea: Exactly. “I’m going to be Instagram famous and they’re going to want to invite me on the news stations to show how great I have changed these kids’ lives.” And when I tell you that first week of teaching. . .  actually, my first math lesson I did, it was a lesson on teaching the kids or just doing some review on seventh-grade math.

Reviewing adding and subtracting integers. I’m like, “Okay y’all, so can I have a volunteer come to the board to show me their work?” Mute. No one wanted to come up and I was like, “Okay, how about you? So and so. I saw your work was great. How about you come on up?” They came up. They put the wrong answer up there. And at first, I was going to . . . I was about to say something. Then their other classmates started saying, “Man, that’s wrong.” They were just really tearing the student down. And then, the student and the other student started going back and forth with each other and I was like, “Oh, this is not how I planned out.”

Kailey: Nightmare.

Camyrea: It was a nightmare. My dreams of being on the news stations . . . 

Kailey: I’m going to be the news for a different reason.

Camyrea: Exactly! It just went all the way out. In that moment I was like, “Okay, so maybe calling the kids up on the board wasn’t the best thing to do right then and there.” But at the same time, I was like, “I want my kids to have that exposure to be okay to make mistakes.” I believe in that moment. I took that moment as I could laugh about it now, but back then I was really embarrassed. I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do. But in that moment, it taught me, and it showed me, “Okay, Camyrea, we have to think about something different. We need to do something different to try to get these kids to be not afraid to mess up.” And that’s when I started my whole journey of researching ways, having conversations, and just thinking of different methods to encourage kids to be okay to fail or be okay to mess up. And that’s when I started learning more about fixed versus growth mindset and effort when in the math classroom.

Kailey: Do you talk with your kids explicitly about fixed versus growth mindset? 

Camyrea: Absolutely I do. During my first two weeks of teaching, I don’t teach math. All we do is classroom building, setting up expectations for our classroom, creating a classroom culture, and talk about growth versus fixed mindset, and something I do in my classroom called effort level. We talk about explicitly what a fixed mindset is, where you have a mindset that, “Oh, your abilities are fixed, there’s no purpose of growing. You’re born with your talents. You cannot grow or anything.” Versus a growth mindset that says, “You know what, if I keep practicing, if I keep trying, if I keep putting that effort towards this task, then I can be successful.” And I have that conversation with my kids explicitly during the first two weeks where I introduce to them outside of the math context where we talk about . . . I have them break up into groups where I show them videos of clips and different episodes of TV shows of different characters showing yes, it’s amazing. And I love it so much because the kids, I break them up into groups where they have to watch the clips. I show the clips to the entire class, and the kids in their groups have to determine if it’s a fixed versus growth mindset that the characters display and they have to write a reason as to why.

And after that, the next day we start talking about, “Okay y’all, so based on these examples, can you name some specific times when you yourself has had a fixed mindset or a growth mindset?” And I have them reflect on it. They write it down and then they pair up with a partner and they share with the partner. And then sometimes I’ll give them the autonomy, “Okay. If you’d like to share, just raise your hand. If not, then you share with the partner.” And I told them, we’ll just have full-on discussions about growth versus fixed mindset. And then I asked, “Okay, for math this year, what do you believe is the perfect mindset to have when you are doing math?” And I’m glad I do it before I introduce the math to them, because a lot of times I feel like teachers or educators, they’re introducing a growth versus fixed mindset while they’re teaching a curriculum.

And when you’re teaching it to them, when you’re teaching it to a growth versus fixed mindset before, while are you teaching about hard content, that’s going to discourage them a little bit more. It’s going to be hard for them to really apply what they are learning. I really found a lot of my success introduced in our growth versus fixed mindset within our community building. So, during my lessons, my language to them is centered around a growth mindset. And they could understand, “Ms. Barnes expects me to think this way.” And not just to say, “I can’t do this.” But instead say, “You know what, this is challenging, but I’m going to keep working at it.”

Kailey: Yeah. It feels like you’re so right to speak to the intentionality of . . . I think a lot of us educators are really reluctant to give up content time. But I’m so fascinated about how teachers kick off their year, because it’s so important to invest in stuff like that at the top of the year so that kids really understand that you’re not introducing growth or fixed mindset in month two as a response to how they’re not doing well or something.

It’s like laying the red carpet for this is the path we’re going to walk no matter what. You have no idea what kind of math I’m about to show you. Two plus two. Or define x. You don’t know, so either way you have to approach it with this mindset. And it makes me curious about this group that you lead of positive behavior interventions and supports. I imagine it’s very difficult for you to not bring in all the skills that you have from that into your math class, but can you talk to us a little bit about just that isolated and what that’s about, and maybe how it shows up in your math class as your skillset?

Camyrea: Of course. So, one thing that I do, as you just said, I’m the leader of our positive behavior individual supports team at my school. And we are a group of teachers who basically are trying to create strategies to support students in the classroom. And we usually focus on behavior, but the behavior goes to the academics, because if you have a structure consisting in your classroom, it transfers to the student’s work ethic. So, a lot of times in that group I meet with my peers, I meet with my administration, I meet with my behavior team, and we all talk about different methods that we as a team can present to our staff at staff meetings; methods or strategies they can use to promote a positive culture within their own classroom setting. So that most definitely transpires into my classroom a lot because a lot of those strategies that we talk about, I do try in my class, for instance. 

Kailey: Yeah, you pilot them.

Camyrea: Right, I pilot. Exactly piloting. So, for instance, there is one time where I wanted to pilot a transfer student taking a break in my class, because we had a big thing at our school where teachers wanted to send kids out when they were being disruptive or not on task. But a lot of us on the leadership team said, “Well, if we do that, are we really doing restorative practices with the kids instead of just sending them out?” So what I do is I try to have the kids take a break, where if I’m sending them into the hallway, they know they’re coming right back in after 60 seconds.

“You’re coming right back into that classroom, you’re not going to stay out in the hallway for the entire time. You’re coming back in. And when I come to talk to you, it is going to be a conversation as to what happened? What can we do to relieve the issue? What frustrations are you having?”  And what I notice is when I ask my kids those questions, instead of automatically putting them as the target or they’re the issue, or they’re called the problem. . . 

Kailey: Yeah. 

Camyrea: . . . But I’m addressing it as there’s a problem that they’re having and they’re having a hard time processing. They were able to answer those questions where I would have students who even know, “Ms. Barnes, this math is really complicated. I don’t get this. I don’t understand this. It’s boring.” And I say, “You know what? Thank you for that feedback. So what can I do as a teacher to try to help you become more engaged? What can we do right now in this moment?” Sometimes the kids will say, they’ll give me a reason.

Sometimes they’ll say, “I don’t know.” And I’ll tell them, “Well, let’s do it this way. Can we just do this for today and we’ll think of something else in the near future?” And doing that conversation helped me build rapport in my students and created positive classroom environment. And that was a strategy that I was able to use and take from our leadership team when we talked about it and present that in my classroom. And then when I saw that work, I was able to tell my other staff members, “Hey, this is a good strategy to use. Just talk to the kids. When you talk to them, they will tell you a lot more than you would actually think or perceive.” 

Kailey: It seems like what you’re also telling the kid . . . us sending a kid out in the hallway is like, “I don’t want you. I don’t want you here. Be gone.” But allowing them 60 seconds and then going and retrieving them with a conversation is, “I want you here. How can I keep you here?” And even if their answer is, “I don’t know how,” the fact that you go and seek them out and make them feel wanted and a part of the classroom, I imagine is pretty transformative.

Camyrea: And that’s why I always say this is something I learned within my first five years of teaching is the fact that our classrooms are the most transformative place ever. We as teachers have the power to do so much great work in the classroom despite the uncontrollable factors that come to play. I’m a public school teacher, so a lot of the things that happen that are out of my control due to things that are happening on the state or federal level. I have no control over. But what I can say is, “You know, I’m going to do everything I can within my space to make sure that I’m still promoting that positivity, because that positivity can help transform a kid into being the person that you know they can be to help them recognize their own greatness and be successful.

Kailey: And want to come to class on Monday.

Camyrea: Yes. 

Kailey: Because you will notice that they’re not there. 

Camyrea: Right. 

Kailey: Just going back a little bit to math. We were talking about your first day when you had them come to the board and you’re like, “Oof, this is maybe not the first thing I should do.” And I completely resonate with that.

Day one of my math class was never math. It was always about … I wanted to find out their math trauma, the math trauma they were showing up with in my class. Because I taught foundational math most recently and they came in with so many math scars. They’re so beat down about their math ability and getting them in the room and being like, “Let’s just reset. If you have math nervousness, if you have math anxiety, math trauma, cool. Great. No problem.” But as teaching Algebra 1 in a middle school, which some middle schools don’t even have Algebra 1, not even offering that level of math at that age yet. What foundational skills are you noticing? No matter what year, no matter what, you’re going to have to hit, even though it’s not on that Algebra 1 curriculum. Do you have any secret sauce that you’re pouring all over that kind of foundational stuff and what’s that looking like bridging that gap? 

Camyrea: Yeah. And I want to speak on you bringing up math trauma, because that is a big thing. A lot of people don’t realize the math trauma that kids experience from their peers, from parents or guardians, from teachers.

Kailey: Like me saying I’m not a math person is, a fixed mindset. If I said that to my kid. . . .

Camyrea: Yeah, exactly. So, you bring up the whole bridging the gap part. A lot of it is not like where I have a secret formula, like, “If you do this and put this and that together, you get to have an amazing classroom.”

It is just more so, like you said, addressing that math trauma. So, something I do at the beginning of the year with my Algebra 1 kids. . . at my school, that’s considered the advanced math class. So, there’s pre-algebra for all the eighth graders and then Algebra 1 for my “advanced.” I use quotation for advanced.

Kailey: Yeah. You’re quoting right now.

Camyrea: Yeah. For “advanced,” for my eighth graders. And a lot of them do come in with some gaps from whatever they miss from seventh grade, sixth grade, fifth grade whatever. One of the things I know a lot of my kids do not have the ability to achieve yet is a lot of times just making connections from what they previously learned.

Kailey: Yeah. 

Camyrea: So, something that I do with my kids often is they reflect. I have my kids reflect and my kids say all the time, “Ms. Barnes, you always have us writing. It’s a math class.” I’m like, “Well, you’re going to continue to write because in the math class needs to write.” 

Kailey: Yeah. 

Camyrea: And if your teacher doesn’t make you write in a math class, then you need to ask if you can start writing because when they journal and they reflect on what they’ve learned and think about what level of understanding that they’re at, it helps them see, “Okay, I know I need to understand. . .” Let’s say for instance, you’re learning about graphing. I need to understand the coordinate plane. If I don’t know how to plot up on the coordinate plane, I cannot graph a linear equation.

So I do a lot of journaling and I prompt them to journal every time I do a lesson as an exit ticket or even like as an activity. I have them sit for two minutes and I have them write down in their notebooks or on their bell worksheet. I tell them, “Write down, what level of understanding do you believe you are. Do you believe at the beginning approaching proficient or skilled or not skilled—Mastered?” I have them write down what level they believe they’re at and how can you make sure you can get to that master level. “Why do you believe you’re at that level? What skills do you believe you’re missing based on the lesson we just did with this concept? And what can you do to make sure you get to that ultimate level of master where you can be the teacher? And give Ms. Barnes a break.” 

Kailey: I love that.

Camyrea: But me doing that, knowing and expecting that from my students, and being realistic with myself because I feel like a lot of times as teachers we can have some unrealistic expectation for our kids, which is not a bad thing to a degree.

But at the same time, it could cause us to not being able to be open and vulnerable and honest with our students when it comes to engaging it with their content. 

Kailey: Right. And it can make us feel like a failure because they’re not at this level that the standards are indicating that they “should be” at, and I’m doing air quotes now, “should be” at this grade level.

And that’s a challenge for teachers everywhere. It’s a challenge to see the standards, feel like we’re not teaching the standards, feel like our kids aren’t at the standard, feel like they didn’t arrive in our classroom ready to learn that standard. Talk about mindset. We have to have it. You know, we have to have a growth mindset and also be incredibly compassionate towards ourselves as educators. We’re moving mountains because every child is a mountain and we’ve got to move them all. 

Camyrea: I agree with that. Most definitely. Yeah. So, when I bridge the gap for my Algebra 1 kids, for me it comes down to the abstract part of teaching and the concrete part.

Kailey: Right.

Camyrea: The abstract part is that reflect on work done. Really take your time to understand where they’re at. Me having one-on-one conferences with the kids on a certain days of the week. I’ll just meet with kids one-on-one about their test scores. Talk to them about what they believe. What happened for them to achieve that test score. Are they satisfied with that test score? Sometimes the reflection is individual. Sometimes it’s peer-to-peer reflection.

Sometimes it’s a whole-class reflection, and we have some straight up, honest conversations. I’ll pull up the class NWEA scores, their district assessment scores as a class. What that class score meant? Is the class at grade level? If the class is at grade level, what areas do we need to focus on to improve it? Or what areas do we need to stay and do we want to grow more in?

Kailey: What’s working? Why are we here? Why is it working? 

Camyrea: Yeah. We have some really transparent conversations. I have conversation with the kids about their barriers to success. “What is causing you to be not successful? Is it you coming to class on time keeping you from being successful? Is it you talking with a friend? What are you doing in class? Are you actively taking notes? Are you asking questions?” We, as a class, we have those conversations too. So they can see for one, Ms. Barnes wants to see them succeed, but for two, for them to see for themselves that they have the power to be successful. It all lies within them. 

Kailey: And you’re there facilitating it. 

Camyrea: Yep. 

Kailey: It just seems like you are offering consistent, resetting judgment. You don’t have a rap sheet. You don’t have a ledger. It’s just every day like, “What’s going on? Come back, come back, come back. Reflect, reflect, reflect.”

Camyrea: Yeah, and it’s a lot of reflection. I did a lot of more reflection these past two years, me teaching, and I noticed a big shift in my kids when it came to their math goals.

For instance, this past year I have close to about 70% of my kids meet their district assessment goals. And that’s a huge deal for my kids because they are kids that people would not expect to even care about math, to even care about school in general. But I had kids who were literally going from a fourth-grade, fifth-grade level, ending the school year with the sixth-grade, seventh-grade level. And even though it may not be an eighth-grade level, it’s way higher. 

Kailey: Growth baby. 

Camyrea: Yeah. It’s all about that growth. And I’ve told the kids. I’ve shown them their score. I’m like, “Look at the amount of work you all have done.” And that reflection was a big thing for them. Because they were able to say, they could communicate, “Ms. Barnes, I’m at a beginning level because I missed these two days of lessons. I need to go into a small group lesson with you.” 

Kailey: They’re telling you what they need. 

Camyrea: Yeah, exactly. And that’s the goal I believe every teacher should want to have for their students. Where students, especially at that middle school level, students need to learn how to advocate for themselves. They’re about to go off to high school. They’re about to be adults. I know my personal goal is that I want my kids to be able to be champions for themselves and advocate for themselves because we live in a world where not everybody’s going to advocate for them. Where you have be your own advocate and be your own support to survive and to manage in the society we live in today. 

Kailey: Yep. That was amazing. It kind of bleeds into your Future Educators class. You teach a Future Educators class? Can you tell me what that’s about? Who’s in it? What are you doing? 

Camyrea: So, Future Educators is a class of seventh and eighth graders just teaching them about the world of teaching.

Kailey: Oh, we’re getting them that young. Oh my gosh. 

Camyrea: And I love it because in the class, we start out—this is my first year of teaching it—and in the class, we learn about the different paths teachers take. So, whether they want to do secondary, post-secondary, elementary, preschool.

And then on top of that we talk about the abstract and concrete parts of teaching. So, we talk about lesson planning, what teachers do during conferences, but also the abstract part about being a community. Why it’s important for teachers to understand the students’ social and personal identities.  At the beginning of the year in the Future Educators class, the kids were able to do an identity activity where they had to list out their personal and social identities and how those identities will come up in a classroom setting with their students. How can I, as a teacher, make that kid feel supported in my classroom?

Kailey: Wow. 

Camyrea: That right there was so powerful because for one, I wasn’t really saying much. I introduced the topic, and the kids just facilitated a conversation themselves, and it got them to be closer with each other when they got to see how those personal identities, like their personality traits and their social identities, identities that we were really born with that we really can’t change how those identities interact, and how they coexist in the classroom space. And also have them looking at, reflecting on how some of their teachers interact with them in those spaces. And then we will have conversations about what happens in the classroom space and how can teachers improve or even make better, or keep doing what they’re doing to make their classmates feel welcomed. 

Kailey: I mean, this is stuff that I did in my graduate studies as a teacher. Can you imagine if we had had access to that kind of thing in middle school? 

Camyrea: It would be amazing. I love it so much. 

Kailey: I imagine that it transforms them as students too. 

Camyrea: Yes, it does. 

Kailey: Their presence in a classroom, the way they show up in a classroom, is completely different. I imagine their empathy for the teacher is through the roof. 

Camyrea: We have conversations about classroom management. We had a discussion one day with my students and I talked to them about my struggles as a teacher. I just came from my class the previous hour.

They were just really not the best that day. They weren’t showing at their highest level that day. So when my future teachers class came in, I was like, “You know, y’all? I’m going to just let y’all know, my last class is really like this today. It made me feel very disappointed and overwhelmed.”

We had a whole conversation about what happened in that class period and how that affects teachers and their overall work ethic and how that can drain the teacher’s energy. And the kids, they were understanding. And some of the kids gave some feedback. You know what, I could tell my teacher’s having a bad day because of how they interact with that class right after it. And I tell them, “Well, do you think that’s the right thing for the kids, for teachers to do? Do you think teachers have a right to let out their frustrations or to be upset?” And we had a whole productive conversation about teachers and the amount of work or expectations that we have on ourselves. And it was just so powerful and transformative to hear them talk about, you know, to just to hear that empathy and that connection. 

Kailey: And that being validated. Who’s getting more out of this? You or them? 

Camyrea: Right, right. I feel like it’s just like a whole collective healing kumbaya, but I love those kinds of moments because it brings us closer as a class and community.

And people tell me all the time, Ms. Barnes, your classroom’s always quiet. They’re always on task. I don’t really hear about kids misbehaving. Well, I don’t have a magic wand. I just know the importance of building a community and making sure kids feel safe. If I don’t feel safe in my classroom, then I know my kids most definitely don’t feel safe in that classroom. So, we’ve all got to be on the same page as teachers and students to build that culture of care and that culture of compassion. 

Kailey: Listening. It sounds like you listen to them just as much as they listen to you. Which is the key. 

Camyrea: Yeah. 

Kailey: Well, speaking of keys, what’s your advice for new teachers? 

Camyrea: So, I consider myself a new teacher still because I’m only five years in. 

Kailey: But you know, that’s amazing. The national average, you’re above it. 

Camyrea: I know. I’m above it. I made the goal. I met the benchmark. So yes. 

Kailey: But you know what? That perspective of humility probably keeps you really sharp. So, when you’ve been a teacher for 20 years, keep thinking you’re new. Right? 

Camyrea: Got you. Yes. So, I have a couple of things. One thing I would say is, as a new teacher, be authentic. Be yourself. Know how you are showing up in the classroom setting. We’ve got to reflect as much as the kids need to reflect. When I first started teaching, I had to realize that, “Okay, I’m showing up as a young Black female teacher.”

Kailey: Yep. 

Camyrea: And I have a sister and I’m a daughter, so I’m showing up as that. And when I recognized how I was showing up, it kept me to be authentic with myself and finding ways to connect with my kids who probably share those same identities and also for me to put the work in for kids who may not experience those same things. Another thing too: My vice principal, my first year teaching, she sent me an article called “Find Your Marigold.” And in the article, it talks about how new teachers have to find their marigolds, find your people who make you happy, who bring you joy. And that’s the advice I would give to any new teacher. Find people in your school, or if there’s nobody in your school, join an organization. Find people who you can vent to, but they will problem solve with you. I was very fortunate, and I am still fortunate to have people at my school who I can vent to and they will problem solve with me. They won’t spew out more negativity and complain with me and. . .

Kailey: And they won’t tell you to stop. They won’t tell you to not vent. Because that’s not the answer either. 

Camyrea: Right. They will give me some strategies. They’ll listen to me. I have an amazing instructional coach. I’ll call her my work mom. She is legit. I have to shout out Robin Tuberville. She is an amazing instructional coach and she legit allowed me to have a space to vent. Then with problem solving, strategize me on different methods of teaching. When I would have those frustrations of having students three grade levels behind, and I’m expected to still teach a grade-level course at the same time, and still trying to meet all the standards and hit the standards so I can still meet the quota.

But having those group of people there to strategize me and to encourage me, to let me know I’m still doing a great job, really helped me during my first few years of teaching. So, I’ll just say that to any new teacher out there. Keep being your authentic self. Don’t let anybody at your school, your family, discourage you from teaching. If you know that you still want to show up despite the challenge, then do it, and find people who will consistently motivate you and empower you to keep doing that. Because we got the power as teachers. 

Kailey: I feel like even in any workplace, we can even just talk about maybe like my mom. My mom was a nurse and she had really similar advice. She was like, you know, this is a hard profession. Nursing is a hard profession, just like teaching. And so because it’s hard and because, if we had magic wands, we would be waving them all the time at everything, every direction. Pippi, boppy, everything. And she was just like, you’re going to be around people who the negativity is going to feel seductive. It’s going to feel like the right place to go because there is hardship, so it’s going to feel real. But I love your advice about find those people, even if they’re not at your school, even if they’re online, they’re all educators that you meet on social media that let you vent and then problem solve. I love that advice. 

Camyrea: Yeah, it was most definitely. I feel like if I didn’t have that, I would not have this much wisdom or expertise in my belt without that group of people. 

Kailey: Your marigolds. 

Camyrea: Yeah, my marigolds. Shout out to my marigolds, and they know who they are too.

Kailey: Well actually, we’re going to probably move into rapid-fire questions, and I’ll just reorder one of these. I’m going to ask you three that are like sentences. They’re not single words. So, they’re our warm up to our rapid-fire round. We’ll do the first one. Any favorite teacher colleague, instructional coach, mentor shout outs that you want to give?

Camyrea: I just gave the shout out to Robin Tuberville, but I’ll do it again. Shout out to Robin Tuberville, my instructional coach. I call her my work mom. She’s amazing. I love her so much. And any school district or school who has her, you’re blessed. It’s a privilege to have Robin Tuberville. So that’s who I want to shout out right now.

Kailey Rhodes: Wonderful. All right. You ready for question number two? 

Camyrea Barnes: Yes. 

Kailey: Warm-up question. Kind of segue from your advice to first-year teachers, what rookie mistake did you make? I’m looking at your face. Are you reliving it? What rookie mistake did you make your first-year teaching? 

Camyrea: I’m trying think do I want to share the one that’s most embarrassing or the one that you know is pretty courteous. I’ll share the teaching mistake and then the whole embarrassing mistake. So, teaching mistake that I made. When I first started teaching, I didn’t realize the impact and how important it was to tell students what to bring to class because I was automatically expecting them to bring stuff to class. So literally, I kid you not, the first two weeks of school, I’m like, “Why do these kids don’t have pencils? They don’t have notebooks, no nothing. They should know to come to school with it.” That third week of teaching, I was so upset. And then one of the kids in the moment they were saying, “Well, Ms. Barnes, you never told us to bring your pencil and a notebook to class.” I’m like, you know what? I should have told them to bring it. 

Kailey: Yeah. There’s no such thing as y’all should know unless we’ve said it. And we don’t. 

Camyrea: Exactly. I never said it.

I’m like, you know what? You’re right. I never told y’all to bring your pencil and a notebook to class. You know, I just expected, y’all to know to bring your pencil and notebooks to a math class. You know, stuff like that. 

Kailey: We’ve got to make instructions explicit. 

Camyrea: Right. And then, the second embarrassing thing that happened to me. So, when I was teaching. I had on press-on nails. I flung my finger. 

Kailey: You’re like gesturing, 

Camyrea: Just gesturing something. I think I was getting really into the lesson. The kids were grinding. We were in the lesson. I flung my finger. 

Kailey: X squared! 

Camyrea: Right. I fling my finger. My press-on nail fell off and it went in the middle of the floor. And I can’t play it off or anything, because the kids saw it and they just looked at me and I was glad that none of my kids said anything in that moment. Only a couple of girls came to me after, bringing me my nail back. 

Kailey: Oh my.

Camyrea: I was like, thank you for not doing that to me in the moment, because that would’ve been so embarrassing. 

Kailey: Listen, these kids, they can love on us in unexpected ways. It’s weird. Yes, it’s weird. 

Camyrea: It’s weird. 

Kailey: You can’t predict it. 

Camyrea: You can’t. No, exactly. You can’t. If you are going to wear nails, make sure your nails are secure. 

Kailey: Make sure your hand motions are in slow motion. 

Camyrea: Exactly. That part. 

Kailey: That is so funny. 

Last longer warm-up, rapid-fire question. Describe your pre-school morning routine, including your go-to teacher outfit. 

Camyrea: Got you. Okay. So, my pre-school morning routine, when I wake up, I do like a morning devotional, pray, reflect.

Then I do a 30- to 35-minute workout, hit the shower. Yeah, I have to keep up. That’s like my, that my morning times are my moments before I go into my job. So yeah, 30- to 35-minute workout, stretch, shower, eat breakfast, and then I put on my go-to-work outfits. I don’t have necessarily a per se outfit, but I will say my style is very vintage, kind of retro. So, I’m the type of person who wears a nice little blouse with the suit pants or the trousers and a cute little pair of sneakers and I try to accessorize. Yeah. 

Kailey: That’s cute. 

Camyrea: I like to look nice at work, but that’s kind of like my style of . . . 

Kailey: It’s like business breakdance. 

Camyrea: Yeah. Yeah, basically business breakdance and, you know, I like me a nice little pair of jeans. In the wintertime, since I’m in Michigan, jeans with some boots. And then a nice little sweater, but still like that retro style. So that’s kind of like what I would say my style at work is, but still comfortable because I do not believe in people who wear flats like those brown flats or the heels to work. I would never do that. As a teacher, you would see me in some gym shoes or canvases, and if I’m wearing sandals, they are those plush sandals where you could walk in there, your feet will not be hurting. Because the amount of walking and standing I do in my job. Absolutely not. 

Kailey: I’m going to make a controversial statement. I’m going to say my feet are warmer in a flip flop than in a flat. 

Camyrea: You know what? I can see that. 

Kailey: I’m not going to be flatting around in Michigan. Absolutely not. I’m not going to do anything in Michigan unless it’s warm. 

Camyrea: In the winter months it gets cold. But you know what? It’s Michigan. One day it’s cold, but then it’s warm and then it’s cold. 

Kailey: I’m going to come visit you when it, we got like a 60-degree forecast. Are you ready for rapid fire? 

Camyrea: Yes. We could do some rapid fire. 

Kailey: One word only. Fill in the blank. I want my lunchbox to be packed with blank, and I don’t want it to have a single blank. 

Camyrea: I want my lunch packed with pretzels and I don’t want to have a single ounce of mayonnaise. No mayonnaise. 

Kailey: You’re not dipping those pretzels and mayonnaise. 

Camyrea: No, I do not like mayonnaise at all whatsoever. 

Kailey: No. All right, here we go. Favorite school supply? 

Camyrea: Highlighters. 

Kailey: Yep. Same. Least favorite school dress-up day. 

Camyrea: You know what? At my school we did a movie character day. Actually, no. Scratch that. Pajama day. 

Kailey: Hate it? 

Camyrea: I do not care for pajama day only because . . .

Kailey: That’s controversial. 

Camyrea: I know it’s controversial, but sometimes it depends on the kind of pajamas people put on. There are some people who wear certain pajamas that I was not expecting to see, and it don’t be the kids. Sometimes it’s about staff members who participate. I’m like, I didn’t ask . . . 

Kailey: We need some stipulation. How about like commercially approved Pajama Day? 

Camyrea: Exactly. Commercially approved.

Kailey: You’re going to be in a commercial for books for your kids. 

Camyrea: Exactly. 

Kailey: Those are the pajamas you can wear. 

Camyrea: The cozier, comfy pajama commercials you see on TikTok. We like those. 

Kailey: Those only. 

Camyrea: Some of the other ones? I don’t be a big fan of. 

Kailey: I can tell you’ve had that for a couple decades, and it shows. This is the first time that . . . I’m a convert. You’re right. It’s a tricky one. Alright, and last rapid-fire question, what would you be teaching if it wasn’t math or Future Educators?

Camyrea: I’ll teach law. 

Kailey: You didn’t even think!

Camyrea: Law/psychology. It’s actually interesting. When I was a kid, I actually wanted to be a lawyer first. When I was thinking about public service, I wanted to be a lawyer, but then my mom told me no because lawyers lie. And she said, she does not want to have a daughter who lies.

Kailey: You heard it here first, folks. 

Camyrea: And that was her reasoning. That was her reasoning with her Christian church background. She’s like, you don’t lie. You’re my daughter. And lawyers lie. And I was in the second grade, so I was like, oh my gosh, I don’t want to lie. 

Kailey: Oh my, that is adorable.

Camyrea: So that’s how I went from wanting to be a lawyer to going to like math. But I still like to read like law psychology books. So, I would most definitely teach something along the lines of like Law 101 or Psych 101. I actually have my minor in psychology, so most definitely.

Kailey: Future Educators is the first semester. Future Lawyers or Future Psychologists the second semester. 

Camyrea: Ooh, I love that. You know, there we go. Teach our kids how to, you know, finesse their way around. 

Kailey: That’s right because they’re not already good enough.

Camyrea: In the legal way. 

Kailey: In the non-liar way. Did I say lawyer or meant liar? Oh my gosh. It has been such a pleasure having you on this podcast. You are clearly a leading light in both like your behavior and your mindset and your attitude, but also in just your deep ingenuity of teaching a Future Educator class.

I hope our listeners are like, I could do that. It’s literally like this giving circle that you’re creating. Hey, you want to make our students better, help them understand teaching better. Oh, it’s so beautiful. Camyrea, I’m so glad that you had joined us. Any last words you have for our listeners as a teaching populace of listeners.

Camyrea: Oh wow. Thank you for having me on the podcast. Thank you so much. One thing I would probably just close out with is some my teachers out there are young or veteran. Keep your authentic self. Don’t allow what you see in the classroom discourage you, that you’re not making an impact. You are making an impact.

All the connections, the words, the actions that you say it is hitting the kids way more than you realize. And just really, I kept saying that, just really be a marigold. Find your marigolds, but be a marigold too in your setting. Be a marigold. And then you’d be surprised to see the amount of growth and change you could do in a classroom within a year. And that’s what I would close off with. 

Kailey: You heard it here folks, be a marigold. Thank you so much to our listeners. Thank you so much, Camyrea. We’ll see you later. 

Jenn: If you or some you know, would like to be a guest on the Teachers in America podcast, please email us at shaped@hmhco.com. Be the first to hear new episodes of Teachers in America by subscribing on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate, review, and share it with your network. You can find the transcript of this episode on our Shaped blog by visiting hmhco.com/shaped. The link is in the show notes.  

The Teachers in America podcast is a production of HMH. Thank you to the production team of Christine Condon, Tim Lee, Jennifer Corujo, Mio Frye, Thomas Velazquez. and Matt Howell. Thanks again for listening.

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