Episode 18 - Raising Curious Kids: Teaching Techniques for Modern Parents

Join us for an unforgettable ride as veteran educator and prolific writer Mark Gozonsky takes you on a whirlwind adventure through 110 public tennis courts in Los Angeles! 🌆

As a recent retiree from the world of teaching, Mark opens up about his career's standout moments and the invaluable insights he's gained for parents and caregivers. 🍎

But here's the real game-changer: Mark dives deep into the art of 'loafing' as a powerful teaching technique. 🧠 Discover how this seemingly unconventional approach can ignite your child's curiosity, encouraging them to explore, question, and grow. 🌟

Mark passionately emphasizes the importance of early experiences in reshaping young minds. 🌱 Unlock the secrets to sparking your child's passion for discovery, one adventure at a time. 🌠

🚀 Mark explores the exciting world of crowdsourcing and shares his personal writing journey on social media. Get inspired to design your own parenting adventures. 🌐

Don't miss this incredible podcast that's not just about tennis, teaching, or writing – it's about transforming your parenting game! 🎉 Tune in now and let's embark on this epic journey together! 🎙️ #ParentingUnleashed

Learn more about Mark Gozonsky by visiting Gozonsky.com to read his writing and Centrodegozo.com to follow his tennis trek across Los Angeles County.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

One of the main things is that my my younger by two minutes daughter Claire said like daddy's when after you retire, you should play tennis on every public tennis court in Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah. Good idea of tips from the kids. Oh, it's pretty pretty Looney. It got to be like this time, like a year again, I have to do lesson plans, and I have to set up my classroom just right. To make it perfect for that one moment. I don't have to do anything. So I was like, I know what I'll do. I'll go play, I'll go start playing tennis on every public tennis court in LA County. So thanks.

TD Flenaugh: 0:46

Hello, thank you so much for joining the falling for learning podcast, I am TD Flenaugh, and national board certified educator and parent who is on a mission to ensure that parents have the strategies, resources, and skills needed to make sure that they know how to get their kids on track for learning and to stay on track for success. Hi, thank you so much for joining us. Today, we have Mark design ski. And he is a veteran educator and a writer and he's going to give some information and insight as a parent and educator about how to make sure that students are falling in love with learning.

Unknown: 1:43

Wow, I'm gonna do that. I can't find I can't wait, Ron and I were gonna do that.

TD Flenaugh: 1:51

So go ahead and give us an overview of like your career and what you're doing now.

Unknown: 1:58

You're. So I'm a retired teacher, taught for 20 years about turning them as a elementary school teacher, and then 10 As a high school English teacher, and retired a year ago. And you and I were just doing an impromptu celebration of my feelings about how I feel about not going back to school this year. And I'll recreate that moment for you right now and went a little something like this

TD Flenaugh: 2:35

to be all right.

Unknown: 2:37

So amid all the joy, I also have reflected upon my years as a teacher with I mean, why not? Why not feel joy now? It's not gonna change anything. But I know I learned a lot. As a teacher, I learned a ton as a teacher. And I think that's that's one of the good signs. That's a promising sign when teachers learning something, at least somebody's learning something, that one person in that room is getting something out of the experience. And I pretty much always was. I remember, I remember caring passionately about what I was doing. And I think that's another good indicator. That might be almost enough about me. You asked like what I'm up to nowadays.

TD Flenaugh: 3:26

What are you doing now? Yeah. Well, I've

Unknown: 3:28

always I've always been writing and I was writing and publishing throughout my teaching career. I think that's wrapped up a bit. I have regular gig writing feature stories for the LA Times now. So that's been great case of what I plan on happening actually happening. Because as I was retiring from teaching people asked me well, like, what are you going to do next? I'm going to be a journalist.

TD Flenaugh: 4:00

Right? Sure enough, here I am. Okay, so I have been following a little bit about what you've been doing. And so it goes right in hand in hand with falling in love with burning, because one of the things that you've been doing is going throughout the city of Los Angeles. And can you tell us about your latest project?

Unknown: 4:26

I'll tell you a little bit about the project that I've been working on. And in general, it's all it's an amazing opportunity. It's just like, Mark, we want you to go around Los Angeles and tell us what you think and feel about what you see when you go back. I'm like, Yes, I am just the right person for that because I'm always going around all over Los Angeles. I'm always thinking and feeling stuff. I'm very sensitive. So originally, the first piece I wrote for times was about my quest to play tennis on every public tennis court and Los Angeles.

TD Flenaugh: 5:01

All right, wait a minute, how many are there? Do you know?

Unknown: 5:04

There are quite a few. I'm not counting highschool courts. Okay, I have some partly out of convenience, because I would just be too many was probably out of convenience. And I decided to try to prop that up by saying like, well, people who don't belong on high school or on school grounds shouldn't be going on school grounds. No, no. Yeah, you go there on the weekend. Like, why not? Like no one else is around. But anyway, that was that was my choice. Like, I I'm just doing the park, the park courts. Now. There's like, 240 of those, and I'm up to 110 almost half, almost halfway there. It's been a lot of tennis courts. And that's good. Because otherwise I would just be sitting around asking my wife if it was time for lunch. So I go around to all these tennis courts and I take almost exclusively public transit, or I ride my bike, which is another big part of the puzzle. I do feel kind of like my my commute has become my job. Because sometimes it'll take me like two two and a half hours to get to these places like the way

TD Flenaugh: 6:21

you're traveling two hours, or what Okay, wow. And then back again, correct. You got to get yourself another full time gig.

Unknown: 6:34

So that's a lot of interaction fluid interaction with the sort of the built landscape of Los Angeles it's a lot of interaction very low key and you know, not eyeballing anybody but you do see a lot of people a lot of people watching right if you ever like I wish I had some situation where I could feel some combination of like, oh my god and compassion, like right hop on hop on a bus or better yet hop on the metro because you'll see a lot of things

TD Flenaugh: 7:06

so just to go back to this like we talked about this is a falling for learning and about how to you know ways to explore so it first of all, we know it's about exploration and like the freedom to explore. So tell us about like tennis like what made you decide to do this tennis journey

Unknown: 7:32

there's a lot of things behind tennis. One of the main things is that my my younger by two minutes daughter Claire said like daddy's when after he retired, he should play tennis on every public tennis court in Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah. Good idea.

TD Flenaugh: 7:51

Tips from the kids.

Unknown: 7:54

Oh, it was pretty pretty loony. It got to be like this time, like a year ago, and I have to do lesson plans. And you have to set up my classroom just right. To make it perfect for that one moment. And you have to do anything. So it's like, I know what I'll do. I'll go play, I'll go start playing tennis and every public tennis court in LA County. So thank you always to Claire for giving me this great idea without rich. Yeah. You know, be scratching my head for like, what am I supposed to be doing?

TD Flenaugh: 8:22

Is this typical of your like, relationship with your kids? Like, they suggest you do things and you give them like your like follow it or give them the freedom to explore different adventures when they were younger? Oh, no,

Unknown: 8:38

I better give them freedom to explore now because they're 20 years old. 28 Yeah, yeah, I think they made it the treacherous 27. So they're 28 so they better be doing live in their adult lives. But as they were coming up, my wife and I were pretty notorious among our friends for being like your linear kids do what? But they did pretty well. They defined as free, free range children. And just getting back to myself and learning. Yeah, man, I'm learning a lot. I learned. Like, you know, I learned that the mountains in in East LA, they're like right there. You know, it's been really good for getting out of my West Side. Bubble. You know, you experience things on the west side, you're like, oh, that ocean breeze sure is nice. You know, you get out to the West and you're like, I didn't even know that there were hills in Monterey Park, but there are they're nice low rolling hills and if you get up on top of them, you can see clear down to Long Beach, and it's just like oh, no, just all these places where all these people live like millions of people live in. You know, Covina, West Covina. You got people living down there. Long Beach I discovered Long Beach as part of LA County. Did you know that okay,

TD Flenaugh: 10:03

yes. Absolutely. So, yeah, I grew up in Pomona so I think like the first No, sorry. I did not grow up in Pomona. I was born in Pomona. Gotta be clear about born in Pomona it's I know like the county boundaries. I'm like, that's the end of that county.

Unknown: 10:23

I'm sorry to talk over you but I'm gonna anyway. I played Clermont, that's the furthest see stuff.

TD Flenaugh: 10:30

Yes. So that one Pomona is not as quite as far as Clermont. That's the one yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yep. So I didn't know. So I just saw you're doing the LA County. I know you're writing for the Los Angeles Times and they're doing LA County, so I didn't know that.

Unknown: 10:48

What are you gonna leave out? Pasadena. You're gonna leave Outta Compton? I don't think so.

TD Flenaugh: 10:53

So that all county so that's, that's great. So we have 110 that you've gotten to so far? How many more do you anticipate doing?

Unknown: 11:02

That's my wife. If I had to do a mile she said you better.

TD Flenaugh: 11:07

She's gonna hold you to your word. Okay. All right. So it sounds like so just taking it back to our parents. And falling in love with learning. We have exploration and it's very low cost, right? So maybe your kids may not like the parents listening maybe their kids aren't gonna do the tennis courts but it might be another part of their city or their town that they'll find everything or they'll just search different places and that could be a way to explore and fall in love with learning how

Unknown: 11:38

I would put in a plug for like a park in okay or time it's not like you're like you know the park your go to park

TD Flenaugh: 11:47

another park that's not parked outside of your area? That's a good idea. Yeah,

Unknown: 11:53

different Park.

TD Flenaugh: 11:55

Okay, take

Unknown: 11:58

the LA Times has a lot of parks. materials. So if you're like, I don't know any parks to go to like type in parks LA Times I wrote a piece a different piece I wrote was based on one of my well, not one of my all time best teaching lesson, which was about loafing, Walt Whitman poem, Song of Myself where he goes, Eileen and loaf and invite my soul. And it goes on and on. Beautifully, remarkably. I just have to stop there, guys. What is it? What does it mean to live there? Like we all know, Mr. Why don't you tell us? Like I have a better choice. But like, No, you don't. We hate all your better ideas. So I was like, No, listen, this time, it's good. Let's go out and let's just love knowing. I think now you'll like it. You'll like it this time, I promise. So we would go out and we had this huge lawn at the high school where I did most of my high school teaching, grand arts and arts. Anyway, huge lawn, and we would just go out I was like, Okay, let's just love and they were like, what's that I was like it just do nothing. And you can look at the clouds. You can look at bugs in the grass, you can just talk to each other, you can take your ease. Like really I was like, huh, watch me. And so I'd lean against the tree and just let them low for 10 minutes. And then I'd be like, That's it back to class, we have to write about that we'll write about it. And there's no justification for it. It's as bad teaching. But if you do something and then you come back and you write about it, that's good teaching. So it's just that little adjustment. That's how you have to do something and then write about it anywhere. It's the loved loafing when I gave him. You know, when I asked him for feedback, when I bravely ask them for feedback at the end of the semester and said, like, what do you think you're going to remember about this? They would say loafing. Like if it was a bar graph like this would be loafing and like everything else we did, maybe we made scale models of Moby Dick and hung them from the ceiling. We did like Orwell's world, which was an amusement park based on 1984. I thought all of that stuff was great. And they were like, we'd rather you just tell us the answers.

TD Flenaugh: 14:23

Hello, parents and caregivers Join us every Wednesday for our well educated Wednesdays on Instagram Live. From 530 to six o'clock, we will be getting your questions answered about how to get kids on track for learning and to stay on track for success. It's free. And you can ask any question that you would like. We're here to serve you and to make sure that you have the tools and strategies needed to make sure your kids are a success. And you can make sure that next generation is on a path to greatness? What stood out there as you're saying the ease, right? So sometimes we have parents who get really intense, and they, unfortunately turn their kids off from learning. Yeah. And so these are some strategies for helping.

Unknown: 15:27

There's a lot of a lot of hazing that has gone into education like we did that way to memorize all those Latin roots. So how do we get that done?

TD Flenaugh: 15:41

I like to term a hazy. Think about it in that way. Teachers do it, parents do it. And it's the hard you gotta go the hard way. Yeah,

Unknown: 15:50

yeah. I don't know if hard is necessarily, I mean, sure, you learn things the hard way. But you learn things a lot of different ways. And I was just like, the experiential learning, I always figured, like, if kids were having an experience that touch them, you know, somewhere. And then they wrote about it. That would stick with them. And it didn't work for all these kids, like a lot of kids, you know, by the time they hit, you know, later years high school, they're programmed to learn in a certain way. And to all of a sudden be like, gold to experience things and ask questions. Yeah. Time for gram, their curiosity. They're like, No, I'll do that on my time this year. But anyway,

TD Flenaugh: 16:34

no, you're right. It is something good about trying to get it in early for kids so that you could change that mindset. Some of them do try to break out of that. But I do encourage parents as the parents, right, who have that special sauce with their kids, that maybe they will be able to help break them out of it, or someone close to the family can break them out of that entrenched mindset about learning if they've had some negative experiences or something like that. So

Unknown: 17:02

yeah, especially kids who are like not good at school. Yeah. But all of them, like even the kids who aren't good at school, they're all playing a game. And there's so much like adult pleasing that goes into being a good student, like, you really have to have all these personalities. And, you know, some of these teachers are going to be inspired teachers, and some of them are just going to be folks who are trying to, you know, pay the rent. And so, you know, all of that, you know, it goes both ways, teachers have to do a lot of emotional calculus with the 30, or 40, or 50, or however many of them, our kids are in the classroom, but students have to negotiate their teachers a lot. And I don't know, whatever, that's kind of life. But I guess if there was a point here, it would be that as a parent, you talked about sort of the special sauce. If I was going to advocate for anything in the parent, child relationship, we would be like to have fun. And to let the student take the lead and what they want to learn about, like really kind of low key, encourage that, like, definitely encourage it. Because encouragement, I think is hugely important. And people remember that they treasure. But if it I don't know, like, you and I were talking a little while ago, we talked about skateboarding, which I always hated as a topic. When students started thinking about skateboarding, I was like, oh, no, not skateboarding. But I was wrong. I should, I should have paid more attention to that. Because, you know, I was thinking that that was a topic that a lot of kids just loved. And also like, huge thing and skateboard culture is learning and thinking about the way they learn as they learn from their peers,

TD Flenaugh: 18:45

and falling.

Unknown: 18:48

Like the most important one of the most one of the top three important lessons that I had to take a fall. Yeah, so they're learning. They're all kinds of learning great stuff. And I was just being an elitist snob like always, and totally missed an opportunity there. So I urge others who are if you're listening to this Dopey and elitist snob about it's a treasure trove of learning.

TD Flenaugh: 19:10

Yeah, it's something that we have to remember as teachers, especially the longer that we teach, and then maybe even you know, as as true for parents as well is that they have a youth culture, right? Especially parents, of course, as teachers, we take like culturally responsive, we learn about this different thing, but of course, your appearance, you provide the culture, right, but But you one thing you can't touch you have to remember is that you've culture and, and, and try not to put it down, like try to embrace what you can about it and help them you know, yeah, yeah. So it's like sometimes we make a big disconnect because we really put down with different elements of their youth culture. That's, that's how you can think it. But don't think It's even be better not to think it. Right? Sometimes we even like well forget, I remember my husband once was like, this kid came through, you know, his speaker was loud with his phone blasting. And I was like, What's the difference between the boombox he's like? I don't know. Like we forget, right? We forget, like, Yeah, we had to build a boombox back in the day, that the kids have their loud little speaker, they might have a little speaker, they might have their phone or whatever. And it's like, That's annoying.

Unknown: 20:34

I would follow those kids around trying to, like whatever they were they were planning because those kids like, Yeah, that must be good. If they want everybody to know that there. Yeah.

TD Flenaugh: 20:45

Sometimes we forget. But it's important for us to honor that part of them as well. And, you know, try not to be too intense. I also tell parents, like take a break, if things get too intense if you're trying to work with your kid.

Unknown: 20:59

Oh, for sure. Yeah, you would do it with your printer, right? When your printer doesn't work. I'll just come back. I'm gonna come back. And I'll figure out the printer later. So if you do it for your printer, kid? Sure. So I think a lot in terms of what can teachers and parents do that a video game can't do. Because we see these kids like, their video games, like until the wee hours of the morning. They're really intense and devoted to it. And I can never quite crack the code on this, because there's so much discovery involved in these video games. So you've got to figure that stuff out for yourselves. Like you figured out like, the whole game is like you figured out how to play it. And I was like, How come? How come learning in school doesn't work like that? Because that's such a rich? That's such a rich environment.

TD Flenaugh: 21:52

Yeah, that discovery? Yeah.

Unknown: 21:56

So if I, if I could start, like making wishes about how education worked in the future, I think it's gonna, you know, I think there's, I think there's going to be a lot more incorporation of video game. But the technology and the psychology of it. Because I see that with, like, Duolingo that some game, it incorporates elements of competition, and oh, no, it's not exactly a game. But it's pretty good stuff.

TD Flenaugh: 22:34

Yeah, I mean, I think you've made some really great points about how, you know, exploration, free exploration. Also, like discovery, like, you know, when they are loafing, they get to kind of follow whatever it was interesting to them out there, and it may not, you know, every same place, but you know, everyone may have locked into something different while they were out there, loafing, observing the environment, and, you know, then it never stops, right. Like, as parents and teachers, if we could think about how we could continue that for students, whatever it is, right? If it's something like skateboarding where they're really challenging themselves to fall, and do better and do challenging things, and then they'll also be able to see that transference, right between like, okay, when I'm writing, I could mess up when I'm doing math, I can mess up, just like when I meant in skateboarding.

Unknown: 23:37

I think the the sex, this idea of encouraging exploration is really important in the era of the chatbots. Because now, like, any kid could turn in, you know, that elusive beast the the five paragraph essay, right, like, we got that for you. I got that for you, mister, here's my five paragraph essay. Yes, integrate. And I think the challenge for teachers now would have to be like, where are you? Where are you in that essay that you chatbot right for you. Like, where's where you kid? And like, that would be I would have like a giant rubber stamp. And I would just say, where are you? And have them you know, give them an A because what are you gonna do like not give them an A for the first draft, I give them an A for the first draft. And then say, Okay, I want you to write a second draft. And I want you to talk about like, where are you in this?

TD Flenaugh: 24:36

You know, personal experience, personal voice, those kinds of words that you use, in the way that you phrase? It makes sense. So what's coming Do you Do you have a project that's coming after your tennis or you're just

Unknown: 24:59

now I was gonna ask you, what would you do if you remain what would come after tennis?

TD Flenaugh: 25:09

Well, I think the railway like you know, the LA, the, our metro, I know you have people listening across the country and even people in different countries, but the Los Angeles's trains or rail system, you know, Metro I don't even know what the term is. It's not a subway, but I guess it does go on. Anyway, our train, train, train transit system is fairly new or being developed a little bit more, I guess there's some old parts, but they've been developed to go throughout the city. So I would say you know, travel it and see where it can take you. Like, I know, I've taken it to like the Hollywood Bowl or whatever, like close to it. So yeah, stuff like that, like,

Unknown: 26:00

push it to the limits, see where it goes and parts with crumbling? You know, if you try to take the Amtrak down to San Diego here, like good luck, and you're getting over a cliff, it used to be a beat, not to Cliff. Sorry about, yeah.

TD Flenaugh: 26:15

They've been working on it. Yeah.

Unknown: 26:18

Yeah, I think I'm gonna put I was thinking of like, crowdsourcing, literally this morning. I was like, Maybe you should just crowdsource the rest of August into September. Just like ask your friends. Like, I got about a month of free time. What do you think I should do? Do you think I should do that? Or do you think that would be people would look at that and be like marketing itself?

TD Flenaugh: 26:35

I think people would be interested in following gear, you're learning your journey. And I was saying you're learning it is your learning journey, but it's also your writing journey. Right? And so where can people find you on social media? And we can leak some of your stories as well?

Unknown: 26:55

That would be great. Well, kazanskiy.com it's just spelled the way it sounds. Okay. ascii.com That's like the HQ like most of my, my links are right there. And it's just me my name on Instagram, if you want to see me banging away on the drums or whatever, holding up things that have grown in my garden.

TD Flenaugh: 27:22

All right, sounds good. We will link it in there for you can find him in the links for articles as well as social medias. It's been great talking to you. Likewise.

Unknown: 27:34

Thank you so much for having me.

TD Flenaugh: 27:36

Alright, have a great day. You too. Bye.

Unknown: 27:39

Bye. Thank you again for joining at the following for learning podcast. We are here every week. Saturdays at 5pm is when we drop our new episode. Please listen in every week for those strategies and tips to keep you and the next generation on track for success. You can also find us on YouTube by going to youtube.com/at fall for learning. Again, that's youtube.com and follow the number for learning. We really appreciate you and we are here on a mission to make sure that that next generation is on track for success and on track for learning. Thanks again. I'm TD Flenaugh. Have a wonderful week.