What Are the Dangers of Suppressed Emotions in Students? with Jared Scott

Andrea: Welcome to Those Who Can't Do. I am Andrea Forcum, and today I have Jared Scott, who is a motivational speaker, mental health speaker, and is working on, and I think created, the Culture Shift Tour, um, where you are actively doing a ton of amazing work to help students with mental health and motivation and all of that.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. 

Jared: Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. 

Andrea: So you, what you do is like, I think one of the top fears for most people, like public speaking is like up there, up there. How did you get into that line of work? Like where did, how does somebody go and be like, I'm going to go talk to a massive group of people?

Jared: Yeah, well, I did it by accident. I was a shy kid. I did not want to be a public speaker at all. So it definitely was my biggest fear. Um, it started with a tragedy to be honest. And most people, whatever they're passionate about usually does start in a traumatic experience. I lost two friends in high school to suicide and I was about 15 years old.

We did not know how to handle it as a community. I came from a small town, probably six, 7, 000 people in my town, Greenwood, Texas. And Midland, Texas was like a, uh, a town nearby that probably had 50, 000 people in it. And in one school year, we had 12 students attempt to take their life. Two of them were friends of mine, and we didn't know how to handle it.

We didn't have the mental health resources. Mental health in West Texas, where I grew up, was kind of a myth back then. We did not talk about our feelings or our emotions. So we didn't learn how to manage our mind or our emotions. We just put a fake smile on, we went on our way. We worked really, really hard.

We did everything we could not to think about the way that we were feeling. You know, I remember sitting down with my grandparents when this happened and the best advice that they could give me, and it was honest advice because it's what they knew. They were like, Jared, you need a job. And they just put me to work.

They're like, you need to do anything else. Like, you need to play sports, get a job. I worked two, two jobs, you know, like we did as much as I could not to think about what was going on. But suppressed emotions over time becomes depression. And that's what I saw happening around me. The friend that we first lost to suicide, she was happy.

To me, like she was the happy girl, the lucky girl, the cool girl. She was a class clown type of person, you know? So I realized like, if she could wear this fake smile every day and she can go unnoticed, how many other kids are going unnoticed? And then I thought about myself and I was like, I'm the shy kid that sits in the back of the class and keeps to himself.

Nobody knew what I was going through at home. I had young parents. They both were teenagers when they had me. I'm talking 16, 17 years old. So they were just kids trying to raise a kid. They didn't know how to manage their mind or their emotions. They didn't know how to teach me. They were always fighting.

And I was put in the middle of that and I was trying to handle their emotions. My emotions didn't know how to do it. So I just came to school like everybody else. Big smile on my face. Outside it looked like everything was perfect, but on the inside, I wanted to scream. I was about to break. And then my friend lost her life and I thought to myself, Oh my gosh, she must have been wearing the same fake smile that I was wearing, but she wore it so well that she went unnoticed.

Personally, my friends ask me every day if I was okay, but I would just say that I was fine. I'm just tired. You know, I'm just, I didn't get good sleep last night. And I would just brush them off. And eventually I would get angry at them because I would suppress and then projected onto them. Like, I'm not mad.

You're mad. I'm not sad. You're sad. You know, like I was always pushing back and I lost friends over that. Cause I wouldn't talk about my feelings. And since I wouldn't talk about it, I felt alone in it. It felt like, as if I was the only kid in the world that came from a split parent home where parents argued, you know, I was alone in my feelings and alone in everything that I was going through, that it felt like life was only happening to me.

Until this tragedy, this tragedy happened. That like shocked me and woke me up that like, I'm not the only one going through this and how long until it's too late for other people to. Um, the friend that passed away was actually my best friend's girlfriend at the time. So I was really worried about him and how he was going to handle it.

So at the time, I wrote music. Music was my shy kid outlet. Nobody knew I made music at the time. I would just sit alone in my room, only child. So I would just write in my notebook. I put my emotions into my music, but I never really recorded the songs or put them out for people to hear. And at that point I was like, you know what, I'm gonna write a song in memory of my friend and I'm gonna take it to the schools and I'm gonna wrap it to the kids and I'm gonna make sure that nobody feels alone in their feelings like I do.

And, or like she did. And so we did that. It was really hard. Don't get me wrong. Like as a shy kid, the first time I stood up on stage, the first opportunity I got to rap that song, I froze. Like I completely froze. I was 15 years old. Everybody in the crowd knows me as a shy kid. It was like a be the difference day at school.

So they had multiple speakers there. They had this globetrotter named Melvin Adams there. And so I went up on stage, I rapped my song. Afterwards, he comes up to me. And he's like, Hey man, I love the song. I love the passion. He's like, but you're a terrible speaker. And I was like, I know he's a funny guy.

He's my mentor to this day. And, uh, he was just like, it was terrible, terrible, you know? And he's like, but I would love to show you how to become a communicator. I would love to show you, you know, how to speak to people in a way that they can understand. He's like, cause you were mumbling. You were looking at the sky.

You're looking at the ground. You didn't look people in the eyes. He's But I know your passion. I can feel that. And so he started to take me to schools with him, 15, 16, 17 years old, year after year, when he came through the Texas tour with the Globetrotters, like we would do this tour and I would go with them and he would bring NFL players and MLB players, other speakers.

And I was just learning from everybody. And eventually I just, you know, crafted multiple different, you know, ways to communicate with people through music, through comedy, through, you know, Just entertainment and then through storytelling all these ways, you know, there's a bunch of different ways to be a public speaker that you could kind of, you know, be comfortable for a while.

For example, I get up on stage and I rap first. So that way I feel comfortable because the crowd loves the music. Music makes me feel comfortable. And then I talk, you know, so there's just ways to kind of make yourself feel a little bit more at home when you're on stage. And then eventually, you know, after a thousand schools, here I am, I'm comfortable talking.

Andrea: I would guess so. Do you ever have, um, what you feel like is like a hostile crowd when you go to these schools or do they, do they generally kind of like vibe with the rap and all of that kind of stuff? 

Jared: I have never, and I knock on wood saying this, I have never had a bad experience. at a school. That's incredible.

A thousand plus schools and organizations. I've never had what somebody would call a bombed moment besides maybe that first one that I just told you about. And I think the reason why is I'm not coming up there saying that I'm the best speaker in the world or that I know everything. I'm coming up there to tell you that I'm here to be completely honest, vulnerable, and authentic with you.

That means with my flaws and everything. For example, there was a speaker that came to my school, his name is J. C. Pohl, and he was one of my mentors as well. He came to my school when I was still, you know, trying to get into the motivational speaking scene. And I was watching him speak, and the first thing he said was, if this is boring, if it's unrelatable, or something you've seen before, I want you to come up to me afterwards and tell me how to fix it.

So I did, I respected that because I'd never seen any speaker do that, like open up the stage, right? 

Andrea: And 

Jared: so I was like, I have a solution, you know, like I have this song and I've been doing it with this other speaker and I've seen the reaction from the crowds. I said, how cool would it be, man, if you gave a student an opportunity to tell their story for themselves?

I said, you talk about magazines and stuff like that during his presentation. Cause he was, I was like, I've never even had a magazine. I said, you need to have students talking about the pressures they're going through today, social media, all this stuff. Right. And he gave me a job. He literally hired me. I did hundreds of schools with that agency for seven years.

He took an 18 year old kid, took a risk on me. And, uh, I thank them so much for that, but also it inspired me to create this culture shift tour when I finally went off on my own and created my own movement, which is student stories. So my whole program is about giving students a voice and empowering to talk about their pressures for themselves.

And then we do a whole workshop. Which is basically trauma focused therapy to get them to remove the negative emotions from the traumatic experiences that are clouding their vision to see the future and then they can see forward and they can create solutions for all the challenges that they feel stuck in.

And then we present those to the staff. We develop them in workshops into an actual movement, and we take student made solutions and we turn them into annual movements at schools. So that way we can shift the culture, which is the personality of the school. So it has to be something that's consistent, persistent, relentlessly done over time, right?

Because that was, those big problems that I saw when I started going to schools with other speakers. I'm like, Hey, we're here for 45 minutes. We get the crowd hyped up. We change the climate, the atmosphere, but things go right back to normal the day after we leave. The next week they forgot they had a speaker, then the week after that they don't even remember what you talked about.

Like, we have to create some sort of revolving door that changes the personality of the school. And so that's what the Culture Shift Tour became. 

Andrea: So can you talk a little bit more about what that, that program looks like? Because when I was teaching in Southern California, one of the biggest challenges we had with our kids, especially after COVID, was we had all of these kids with really acute issues.

And then we had kids, like you mentioned, that they didn't look acute, like there wasn't anything going on that we could see where we would be like, that is a huge red flag. I need to send that kid to counseling. So that meant that the counselor spent all of their days talking to the kids that were very obviously struggling and the kids like you that looked fine, they get missed.

And a lot of times it depends on what's going on at home. Like their parents don't know cause they're also not talking to their parents about it. So yeah. How do you see like schools where the resources are so very limited using the kind of resources you're talking about? 

Jared: Yeah, for sure. So one thing that I've noticed when I come to schools is my vulnerability is what attracts the right students.

So when I get up on stage and I'm completely vulnerable with them afterwards, the right students line up. Sometimes there'll be a couple students that are gonna wait outside till everybody else leaves and then they come talk to me. This is where we gather the students and put them in the leadership class.

So, there's a keynote, and then there's a leadership that follows it, a breakout session. I ask the school to handpick the most influential kids on campus that they think would be leaders. That's the ones they pick. But when I'm there, I'm studying this crowd. I'm picking the ones that look like me. You see what I'm saying?

The kids that come up to me in secret afterwards, or I see them lingering outside the door, I'm like, hey, come here. Put your name on this sheet. I need you to be in our leadership class. And so through the day, I'm gathering the right kids to come to this class after lunch. And then it's a mixture of kids that are leadership kids.

Some kids are getting straight A's. Some kids are failing. Some kids, you know, you would have never known that they were supposed to be in this class, but through a process of vulnerability, right? The stories are set up perfectly to hit as as wide of an audience as keynote. Like I'm very intentional about everything that I do, the stories that I tell in the keynote.

are for specific personality types. So I try to touch on every single personality type that I can think of. My, my degrees in psychology, family dynamics, uh, childhood trauma, like I'm trying to be psychological with it. Right. So every. group of kids in there is going to think, Oh, that relates with me. That one relates to me.

It's not just my story. It's like 10 student stories rolled into one. And it's all a part of this one story because we're all connected and part of each other's stories. And at the end, there's that call to action. That's like, Hey, you just heard my story. You heard their story. It's your turn to tell your story.

So if you want to be a part of this group, like, let's go do the work and take the action. And in that, in that breakout class, that's where it gets real and having them write down their traumatic childhood experiences, write down the feelings that came out of it, forgiving the people that hurt them, forgiving themselves for believing any lies that came out of that hurt, the story that they told themselves afterwards.

Replacing those lies with the truth, seeing themselves for who they truly are, and then coming up with the solution for the rest of the school. Because they're all leaders, they just don't see it sometimes. 

Andrea: Right. Right. So when you, you said they go to a class, is that the same day that you do your keynote?

Or is that, okay. And is it like a one afternoon thing, or is it something that's like continual? 

Jared: It's like two hours long. 

Andrea: Okay. 

Jared: It's a couple hours long. And then by the end of it, we have solutions that are their ideas that we're going to take to a staff meeting. That's either after school, because I like to do it all the same day because we're, we're running off momentum at this point, 

Speaker 4: you 

Jared: know?

So it's like, we have these papers and these sheets of papers full of all these traumatic childhood experiences that the handpicked kids. presented to us. So this presents an opportunity for us to shift our perspective as a staff, because number one, just those papers by themselves, the staff's like, Oh my gosh, 

this looks like an 

anxiety attack.

You know, and if they handpicked these kids, some of these kids, they, they thought to pick them because they saw them as leaders. 

Yeah. 

They picked them because they thought these people are getting straight A's, they're doing a good job. Then, you know, and then they see these pieces of paper and they're like, wait, wait, so and so wrote this down.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what they're actually dealing with. You know, so that first shift of perspective is huge anyways, but then to see the process of them writing down the emotions that they've been distracting themselves or suppressing for a really long time. And then the people that they forgave and the stories and the lies that they said about themselves this whole time.

Like if you believe you're not enough, it doesn't matter if I tell you how amazing you are. Negative emotions cloud your vision. So if you can't see how amazing you are, you're not going to believe it. And if you don't see a future version of yourself, then you're not going to take that version into consideration, all the decisions you make today.

So we realized like, this is why kids turn on drugs and alcohol and you tell them they're going to ruin their future, but they can't see that future version of them. So they don't believe it. That person doesn't exist to them, you know? So it doesn't matter. 

Andrea: Yeah, and I mean, I know for a lot of the kids, I mean, they would just be trying to not, like, I think that's the thing that a lot of people misunderstand about these kids who are coping is for a lot of the kids that I worked with, it wasn't that they were trying to feel good by doing drugs and alcohol.

It was just to stop hurting for a little bit, to feel like a little bit of nothing. was so much better and so much relief for them because they were just trying to suppress all of those emotions, all of the trauma, all the memories or whatever they were afraid of happening, you know, once they went back home.

So when you get these stories from them, do you pass those on to like the counselors at the school, like attached to the names and all of that so they can follow up? 

Jared: Yeah, some of the ideas that kids have came up with, this is one of my favorites, it's called Brace Yourself. And so they have different colored bracelets.

The kids are like, I don't want to talk about my emotions to the counselor. I don't want my name attached to it. You know, every time I did that, some kids are like, you know, when they call the police or Child Protective Services, like, things got worse for me. So they have negative emotions attached to the experience at the time that they actually were vulnerable, which is, that's terrible that that happened, right?

And as a counselor myself, I know with all the rules and stuff, it gets hard. So these kids were like, what if we had color bracelets? A blue one meant that I was sad today, a red one meant that I was mad today, and, you know, so on and so forth. And then there's these yellow bracelets, and there's this hope squad, this group at the school, that their job is to go out there, see the color of people's bracelets, and go sit down and have talks with them to change their bracelets.

And they called the movement Brace Yourself, right? So they could express how they were feeling without talking. And so I thought that was amazing, right? So there's, there's ways around that, what you're talking about, like if the kids don't want to talk and speak up and put their name attached to it, but obviously there are legal boundaries that I have to stay within.

Right? So if a child comes to me and they're in danger, physically in danger thinking about harming themselves or they're being abused at home. I have to report that. 

Andrea: Yeah. Do you warn the kids about that when they come to the class after? Okay. Yeah. I always, you know, because being in the classroom with these kids every day, you know, A lot of times we'll share quite a bit.

And so you always do have to be like, like, I want to be a safe place for you. Like, I want you to feel like you can share whatever you want to share with me. However, just be aware. Like, cause I, the, the worst thing I think I had when I was an early, early teacher is when a kid, I didn't do that disclaimer and a kid said, like, can I talk to you about something?

And then after they said it, I realized like, I have to report this. And I had to tell the kid, like, I am so sorry. I like, I have, I have to. Go talk to admin and report it and the look of betrayal on their face where I was just like, oh, I screwed up like you trusted me and I don't mean to betray that trust.

And that's a real I think challenge for a lot of teachers because we do want to be that safe place, but we don't want, but we also want these kids to be safe. And we also know that for For some of these kids, like that's going to mean calling and having other people involved in very, very personal things that they're going through, which is incredibly difficult.

So yeah, that, so now how many schools have, have you been doing this program with? 

Jared: This is the culture shift tour. We have been in over like probably three, 400 schools. I have personally spoken over a thousand. So, I would look back at my career, though, and say that we were doing what we're doing in the Culture Shift Tour a long time ago.

Even when I was with Teen Truth and with different programs and agencies, we would make kids sit down and we would go through their challenges with them and we'd try to help them see solutions, but they just couldn't see the solution, you know? And so it was after my schooling, I was 23 when I finally went back to school.

So I mean, I'm 28 now. It was just, it was a process to get it to this point that it is now, we call it the Culture Shift Tour, but it's been in hundreds of schools, and we have some movements that kids have started that have been yearly things for the past five or six years, even when we were doing it back with Teen Truth, you know, cultural connection days, annual days at the beginning of school that students started with a small group idea, became an annual movement, and they don't even go to school there anymore.

So to me, it was like, those ideas were like, man, that's what shifting the culture is about, like leaving a legacy behind when you graduate, you know, something that these kids come back to even after they've moved on and graduated to come back and speak at something that they created when they were in high school.

It's just, it's amazing. You're planting seeds. And it's up to them to water it and to grow it. We hold their hand as long as we can, but that's what's going to create real lasting change in communities. To me, I never wanted to be, I actually hated motivational speakers when I was a kid. I really did, not just because I was scared of public speaking, but because I just didn't see it working long term.

You know how there's people in your school that you love because they're there every single day, and they're consistent and they're persistent, and you have that one teacher that was vulnerable with you, and you feel like you know them on a deeper level, and you trust them? Yeah, I always felt like this stranger's not going to be able to come in.

And really helped me long term. And so I wanted to find a way to bridge that gap. I was like, I want to come in, offer a different perspective based on my outside position, because that does help people shift their perspective. But I want that perspective shift to last over time. How can I do that? I'm going to have to create something that creates lasting change, even when I'm not here.

Andrea: Yeah, and I think that by by giving kind of the microphone as it were to the students and letting them share their stories and then passing it on to those people that are there every day with these kids. That's incredibly powerful. I think that that's something that a lot of schools could really benefit from because that way when there does come the day when the administrator goes to district and district says, Sorry, we don't have enough funding.

For another mental health counselor at your school, they have now documentation of like, this is why we need it. This is why it's not fair to expect these counselors to be doing class lists and also meeting the needs of all of these kids that you, they, I mean, they put such crazy numbers of kids on some of these.

Thousand to one? Yeah, like, and I want to say that like, It's supposed to be like 150 to one is what is like supposed to be like the, which is also crazy. Like expecting one counselor to be able to really touch base with 150 is already wild. But then the numbers, I just remember it being like so many kids.

And then also, okay, now you've got to work on class changes and you've got to do all of these other things. It was just 

Jared: schedulers. Yeah. Yes. And given a different job that third degree had nothing to do with. 

Andrea: Exactly, which is, you know, insane because you shouldn't have to be balancing all of that. Um, so when you're rolling this stuff out at the schools, what are some of the hurdles that you've had to face?

Have you had pushback from administrators or from people that like, didn't really see what you were trying to do or didn't see a need for it? 

Jared: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it comes down to budget. I mean, every time we have so much footage, uh, and we have footage of students telling their stories. I have one student that's gone to 15 different schools with me in 15 different states.

You know, he was emancipated when I met him. Me and my wife actually took him in for seven months. He came and lived with us. He's now working with a nonprofit, put together an annual event in his town called Springing the Truth, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars with these nonprofits. Like nuts.

He's 19 now, but like the things that we have as social proof are so amazing. Like they're unbelievable. And when people see them, they're like, yeah, we definitely want this. How much is it going to cost? And so I pride myself on being a professional problem solver. That's what I tell 

Speaker 4: people. 

Jared: I'm not the best speaker in the world.

I'll be honest with you. I'm a problem solver. I connect to people and we just figure out problems and we find solutions. So, we've created funding guides, we have a whole team that calls non profits in the area, we have schools share the bills, we, we raise the money, we have sponsors that we've made relationships with over the years, so when a school comes to me, I've had schools come to me with zero budget, we've made the calls, we've helped them.

Connect with the right people to write the right grants and get the right funding and then we leave them with more money than they had before they met us. 

Andrea: We love to see it. Well, I was actually going to ask that because I recently was sent like a list. I'm in, you know, the university system now and I was just recently at one of the middle schools around here.

We're talking about the need for mental health resources and somebody just sent me a list of a bunch of grants. I was going to ask. Is it potentially something that schools could fill out a grant in order to fund having you come? Okay, that's awesome. We 

Jared: specifically created the program around the multiple budgets that schools have.

Because schools have multiple budgets for, you know, mental health, SEL, leadership, community outreach, you know, parents, stuff like that, whatever it may be, there's a million different ways to put it. We've had schools pay through the traffic budget because decision making when it came to, uh, you know, drinking and driving and stuff like that.

Red Ribbon Week, they hired me for Red Ribbon Week and they still are able to pay me because obviously, like we said, drugs and alcohol. Kids turn to it for a lack of better relief. We make better decisions. We handle our mind and our emotions better. We don't need to turn to drugs and alcohol. A lot of the budgets are based on things that are symptoms or things that came out of negative mental health experiences.

And so if we fix our mind, we fix a lot of our problems. One of my main, uh, you know, tags and things that I say is I'd rather lose everything I have than to lose my mind. And we use our mind for everything at school. So when it comes to academic budgets, it's like, man, if we're not taking care of our kids mental health, they're not going to pass the test.

Yeah. 

You know, if they can't see past the negative emotions that they've gathered from their experiences at home, when they get to school, they're already defeated. They're not going to pass the test. You know, we have to build mental resilience in our kids. 

Andrea: It's awesome. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and we will be right back.

Welcome back to those who can't do so. Um, some of the things I wanted to talk to you about are, because especially since you've been doing this for such a long time, I wanted to hear your insight on kind of what the root problem is. Like what is causing this mental health crisis to your mind? And also, have you seen a shift between before COVID and after COVID?

Jared: I was actually going to use COVID as the example. That's funny. Because you remember what COVID happened like, we were all panicking in the beginning. Fear ran the world. And my perspective, personally, as a public speaker, when they said no more traveling, stay away from people, was that my job is over.

Right. Yeah. But, but my son who was three at the time was having the best time of his life. He was happier during COVID than he was before COVID. I mean, he's running around the house, happy Batman cape, and I'm thinking like, great for him, right? The world's in panic and he's just playing, 

Speaker 4: but 

Jared: that's the power of perspective, right?

From my perspective, it was panic from his perspective. Me not traveling meant I could stay home and we could play more. 

So 

I had a decision. I was like, I'm in it. continue to look at my life as panic, or I could change my position, get closer to my son, shift my perspective, be a better father. 

And so I 

chose that, did the same with my wife, I became a better husband and we got closer as a family during COVID.

So at first I felt bad saying that, right? Because people are going through terrible things during COVID. That is also a reality, right? But I started to talk to people, people like to be honest, Jared, even the terrible things that happened during COVID, There are some things that I had to face, and one of those things was my thoughts and my feelings.

I've been so busy with work and distracting myself with everything else that when they told us we can't come to work anymore and I'm sitting at home just twiddling my thumbs, I finally had to face some of the feelings from my childhood that I had suppressed for 30 years. I can't tell you how many people told me that they started taking their mental health and their physical health serious.

Because of COVID. 

Yeah. 

Because of COVID. And so I'm not saying it's a good thing. I was just saying that I decided to pick out the good things that came out of it for me personally. And I started to talk about that with people, like, what were the things that came out of this that you could learn from and become a better person for?

And that was definitely one of them. After COVID happened, there was a huge demand for our services, mental health services. 

Speaker 4: I mean, there 

Jared: was grants, there was budgets, even in Texas, out of all places, you know, they finally said, you know what, this is important. 

And 

so we started getting indoors that we had been slammed in our face before, you know, so I just saw that as an opportunity for us to have a reset, hit the reset button and say, Hey, this is important and we do need to talk about it.

Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. 

Jared: So I think the, the main, the first question that he asked is what started the mental health crisis and I think it would be suppression. We never dealt with it. 

Yeah. 

Suppressed emotions over time becomes depression, but over more time, and you probably know it becomes sickness, illness, and disease.

Suppressed emotions cause stress. Stress causes inflammation. Inflammation is the beginning of like all sickness ever, right? So, so I mean, there's problems and we have this, you know, increase of, um, autoimmune diseases, right? My wife had one for 28 years. She went through trauma focused therapy, healed, even in her blood work, ANA levels, everything's gone.

She's, she's been physically healed because she healed mentally. from her traumatic childhood experiences. And she had a handful of them. She had a lot. 

Andrea: Yeah. It is, it is crazy. And I feel like people kind of think that's kind of woo woo when we say that, but like, it's not just, it's like, literally there's chem like cortisol is a real chemical in our brains.

Like it's measurable. There are things that are measurable that we can look at. And I, in my life, I have had One migraine and it happened after I had, um, I've got ADHD and I was trying to use a new medication, um, that was like based on like, it was, I forget what it's called, but it basically was like a serotonin based one where it was like trying to regulate that.

Um, And I stopped taking it suddenly. And so I had a dip in that and then it was incredibly stressful weekend. My car got broken into my husband graduated and I was navigating all of these things. And I had like a horrific migraine that was a hundred percent caused because I screwed with my chem brain chemistry and then got very stressed.

And the cortisol levels in my brain, just like. Firestorm, and I had the worst migraine of my life. I had never experienced that before. And I don't know if you've seen Inside Out 2. I'm assuming you have, given, of course, right? And the way, the way that they depicted a panic attack in that movie, and I, cause I, I've had panic attacks before.

I thankfully, um, Don't get that much anymore. But that movie does such a good job of pointing out the way that kids who even kids who have like a good home, like, I think that's another misconception is like kids who have trauma, like they had to have had just the worst home environment ever. And I'm like, you know, yeah, 

Jared: it's the 

Andrea: environment in their heads.

And sometimes our brain thinks something is danger. Like it, it's the same chemicals, right? Like our brains are getting flooded with like the fight or flight. Chemicals, even when like they're not in physical danger, but their brains feel like they are, um, and we as educators, you know, we end up having to deal with a kid who's like not wanting to put their phone away.

And you're like, can you put your phone away? And they overreact, just explosively overreact, just like an Inside Out 2 where the girl's like screaming at her mom, like God. And you're just like, what is happening? And like their brain is literally in survival mode. And we know logically, you. That like you're like, this is not life or death, but maybe to them, it feels like it because they don't know if their mom has woken up yet this morning from their bender last night, or they haven't heard from their dad and, you know, he was flying somewhere and they're really worried about that.

And now you're taking away their one way of kind of making that connection again. And I think that, you know, it's, it's so hard for, for us to always have the kind of empathy that is required when we're dealing with kids whose brains are just. So raw with emotion, you know? 

Jared: Think about this. Think about this.

When you're a kid, you don't really know who you are yet. That's your job in your childhood is to figure it out through experiences, what I like, what I don't like, what makes me happy, what makes me sad. So stranger equals danger all the time. Yeah. So when you don't know who you are, but you also live in a world where everybody's looking at their device, watching other people live their lives, you spend more time watching other people than yourself.

So you're so focused on everybody else, you forget to get to know yourself. So you're full of uncertainty because should I walk like them, talk like them, dress like them, act like them? Should I be them? Should I be somebody else? That uncertainty brings fear and anxiety regardless. So that's why they're on the edge, right?

When somebody asks them something like, Hey, how can I help you? Have you ever asked somebody that and they really don't know, like they clearly need help, but they really don't know, but you would have to know yourself to know what you need. 

Andrea: Right. 

Jared: So that's the first time when I ask a kid, how can I help you?

And they have no clue. You don't know yourself. It's understandable. You're young, but we're going to have to start spending alone, not on the phone time with us and ask ourselves deeper questions to get deeper answers, to figure this out so we can get rid of the uncertainty, which gets rid of the fear, which gets rid of the anxiety.

That makes sense. And so you ask them, are you okay? And they're like, I'm fine. I'm just tired. But from that point, they're already are lying to you because they're not who they say they are. 

Yeah. 

They're not lying to themselves because in their mind, their mind actually knows that they're not okay. And asking for help is the only way to get help.

But that creates that cognitive dissonance, you know, holding contradictory beliefs about themselves at the same time. Yeah. Who they say they are. Lies are stressful. That's why lie detectors work. Like you just said, the cortisol levels, norepinephrine, adrenaline starts pumping. They start having panic attacks daily and lies multiply.

So the story that they told themselves on fine starts to multiply and they become a different person on every group of people that are around because everybody knows a different story. 

They're a different 

person around their friends and their family, different person on social media than they are in real life, different person around the teachers, different person everywhere they go.

Right. 

Yeah. 

And so all these have multiplied that's stressful on their brain. So eventually their brain sends them the signal, get rid of the lies, they're doing us physical harm. The problem is, if they don't know themselves, they might have put their identity in the lie, and they think that's who they are.

They think that they're the problem. So when the brain says, get rid of the problem, they think they have to get rid of themselves. That comes across as a suicidal thought. 

Yeah. 

Doesn't always end in them taking them lives. Sometimes it ends in them just isolating themselves around when, when everybody else is around, isolating themselves in their room, because they think that they're the problem when they're around, they're hurting people.

Yeah. 

And the way that I, I always shut this down when kids basically explained to me that they're problem. I'm like, Hey, I could try to help you, but if you don't help you, You'd still end up helpless, right? Like, yeah. So by that definition, you're the only solution to your problems. And if you're the solution, you can't be the problem.

And every time it just like, wait a minute, hold up, hold up. I'm not the problem. Like, like they blamed themselves for their parents divorce. They blamed themselves because their parents fight. Because if parents are not good at talking about their emotions, their kids are not going to go to the parent and ask, why are you fighting with that?

Why are you mom fighting? You know, cause they don't, they want to avoid confrontation. They probably did that before and it ended up in a fight and now they're in the fight. So they're thinking to themselves, I'm a human being, so I have to find reason. There has to be a reason my mom and dad fight. Maybe I'm the reason.

You know, maybe they'd be happy if I wasn't here. What if I had never been born? And I know this, cause this is the story that I told myself. So the story is it's all my fault. And then the lie that you believe is that, well, it's because I'm not good enough. Maybe if I was good at sports, maybe if I was a better student, maybe if I was smarter, maybe, you know, what if, what if, and all this uncertainty bringing more and more fear, eventually the underlining line is, you know what, I'm just not enough.

And if you believe you're not enough, you'll never be enough to yourself until you remove the label of I'm not enough. And the only way to remove that label is through forgiveness. You have to forgive yourself for believing that lie, forgive your parents for putting that pressure on you. This is some hard conversations to have, but they're necessary because forgiveness is the only way to detach negative emotions.

And it's not about saying sorry. It's about letting go of all the parts of you that are untrue. 

Andrea: Right. 

Jared: So you'll be living in a lie until you forgive and let go. 

Andrea: Yeah. You mentioned hard conversations. How do your parents feel about, um, your speaking career? And, you know, you, you mentioned that your parents were incredibly young when they had you, you know, what has been their kind of feedback about this, this career that you've got?

Jared: Well, I was very angry when I first started. My dad never lived with us. I was cheated on by my mom when I was eight, left, and you know, my high school career was me being upset with him. So when I first got that stage, you best believe I was talking bad about my dad, you know? So he wasn't upset. He was ashamed.

You know, he really was. And he was sorry, but I didn't want to hear it. You know, when I talk about forgiveness in assemblies, I can see kids literally cringe. When I say you got to forgive your parents, I will see kids literally shake their head almost involuntarily. They're like, nope, not going to do it, you know, I'm 

Andrea: not doing that.

Jared: And I'm like, that was me, you know, but they may have hurt you once. They may have hurt you 10 times. They may have hurt you a hundred times, but every day that you remember to your nervous system, it's like, it's happening again. You're holding onto these negative emotions and you've hurt yourself thousands of times more than they've hurt you.

By the way, you responded to that pain. Right? So maybe they don't deserve it, but do you deserve to hold on to these negative emotions for them for the rest of your life? And when I put it that way, kids like, okay, I'm starting to see that it's not about them. It's about me. Right? So 21 years old, when my son was born and I held my son in the hospital for the first time, it all clicked.

Number one, I called my mom first and I was like, Hey, sorry for being such a pain in the butt when I was a kid. You know, I just, it came full circle in that moment. But then I also thought about my dad and all the times that he did try to reach out to me, all the times that he did try to coach my sports, how he was literally 15 going on 16 years old when I was born, how he was probably just freaking out.

You know, there were so many factors that I didn't take in. And so I called him back and I said, dad, we're going to come stay with you for six months. I'm going to come live with you. Is that okay? I want you to get to know my son. I'm going to give you another shot, right? 

Andrea: Full committed to that. 

Jared: He broke down in tears.

He cried and cried like a baby. I lived with my dad for six months. We sat on the porch night after night, talked about his childhood so I gained perspective of why he was the way that he was. You know, my dad was getting in trouble always, you know, outbursts at school and anger and stuff like that. Like his dad drank.

Like I understood it. And my, my grandpa to this day is the nicest guy you'd ever meet. So I didn't see him as this guy, but he graduated to this guy over time. Right. This wasn't the same man that raised my dad. 

And 

so once I got that perspective and I forgave him and he forgave me, I forgave myself. The last step was really getting him to forgive himself.

That one was so hard. It took years. When we finally had all that forgiveness, that was just completely given between the both of us. I mean, we was so, my dad's my best friend to this day. 

That's awesome. From 

21 years old to now 28 years old. My dad and me are best friends. And if you would've asked 15-year-old me, hate him.

Hate him, he was a dis, he was in my dis tracks when I was a rapper. You know . I bet, right? I was Eminem bro. I was just, I was that bad. I was mad at M&m Energy. I was mad at the world, you know? 

Yeah. But an 

anger's a secondary emotion. 

Right. I 

wasn't really mad. I was sad. 

Yeah. 

You know, and it just takes somebody, it takes courage.

It takes vulnerability. It takes, it takes all these things to admit that I'm not really angry. I'm sad, which makes me vulnerable, which makes me feel weak at the moment. But when I use that to get free, then it becomes a strength. 

Andrea: Yeah, so 

Jared: vulnerability is the key to freedom. 

Andrea: It's so hard. I feel like especially, I mean, it's hard for adults, right, to be willing to be vulnerable.

I think that, you know, as adults in relationships, all of like the things you do in a relationship that damage relationship are usually as a result of you felt too vulnerable, you wanted to protect yourself, and therefore you lashed out in whatever way or you protected yourself in whatever way. And then for these kids who, you know, are still sometimes actively being hurt by some of the choices their parents are making.

I feel like it's got to be a huge. a huge emotional leap for them to go from just being vulnerable and trying to protect themselves to being willing to forgive, which then kind of exposes you again to being vulnerable to, to hurt and all of that. 

Jared: It's a continuous process, right? So some kids are like, why should I even forgive them?

I know they're going to hurt me tomorrow, right? Or why should I forgive them to detach from negative emotions from this environment when I could, I gotta go home to this environment tonight, you know? So, and I understand that point of view, but I try to explain to them that. A visionary is someone who sees beyond their current environment.

Someone who sees beyond their current circumstances and mentally lives. in that better place. I use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. all the time is that I had a dream. That's a dreamer, a visionary. We're living his dream out right now. Every time, you know, that we come together in unity, community and connect, like all the things he foreseen into the future, we are living because he had a dream and because he stood for that dream, you know?

And 

so it's, it's, it's something that it's not ever going to be easy because anything like that's worth having is hard 

to 

get. Number one, but it's definitely worth it mentally, man. I can mentally be in a beautiful place, even though my surround, it's raining right now and I'm having a great time talking to you.

Yeah. 

You know, like it's dark outside. I get it. But in here, you know, that's where the light is. 

Andrea: Right, right. So one of the things, um, I think is really interesting. So I'm living, I was in Southern California, now I'm living in Indiana and they just came out with a policy where now schools are not supposed to allow cell phones at all during, during school hours.

Um, How do you feel like phones are impacting student health? You had mentioned a little bit about, um, what, what they're experiencing when they're on their phones. Um, but how do you, how do you view that? And how, how are you going to handle that with your, your own kid as far as getting a phone? 

Jared: Yeah. So, you know, I try to tell the kids full disclaimer when I start this part of my program, because I have a full social media properties of social media program.

Cause it's been asked for so much and only full disclaimer, I'm not a social media hater because I would look like a hypocrite if I talked about this and then you go see that I post daily on my social media. It's not negative, it's not positive, it's powerful. Because it depends on your algorithm. So if you think it's completely negative, then understand that's because you're engaging with negative people, they're putting you in echo chambers, echo chambers of negative people that share the same type of content with you, and you're echoing that back and forth to each other.

So you're in a negative community of negative people sharing negative things. No wonder you think social media is negative. You come see my Explore page and see my feed. I'm only following my friends that are also public speakers, people I look up to, people that have things in life that I want to have, point of views that I love.

And so you're going to see nothing but positivity, love and support. It's a whole different world. You'd be like, man, social media is a pretty positive tool. Every time I'm feeling down, I get on social media. It inspires me to get off my phone and go create that life for myself. But I chose that algorithm.

Yeah, and you get to choose yours too. And also you get to choose how much time you spend on this device. Nobody's telling you, Hey, hey, it's been two hours. You haven't picked up your phone yet. You better get on your phone. Right? Like nobody's telling you that, right? Yeah. These are your choices. When we do the leadership classes, I, I do have them check their screen times and, and I had, I had a girl one time that had 14 hours on average.

That's an average. That means some days it's higher, some days it's lower. I, I don't know how she did it. She lived through the FaceTime. I don't know. 

Andrea: Mainly 

Jared: it's about six to eight hours average that kids are spending. That's a day. That's a school day. That's a full school day. I get it. And so I tell them just project that to the end of your life.

That's 40 percent of your life watching other people live their 

Speaker 4: life. 

Jared: Like how in the world are you going to accomplish what you came here to accomplish? How in the world are you going to get to know yourself? You're so focused on everybody else. There's just not enough time for you to waste that much time.

Yeah. 

There's just not. And when you break things down into percentages, And you see the bigger picture and you zoom out, it becomes a lot more clear to them. 

Yeah, 

we'll, we'll put the screen time saver right there on, on our phones during this class. If it's really that big of a problem, like you need to put the three hour mark on there.

Like I understand you get home. Some of them are like, well, I'm just listening to music on YouTube. So it calculates that I understand stuff like that. At the end of the day, it's your responsibility to control what you consume because whatever you consume will eventually consume you. It will. 

Yeah, 

there's no way to escape that social media is a business.

When, when Congress asked Zuckerberg how Facebook makes money, if it's free, what did they say? We run ads. So what does that mean? They collect your data, every single thing that you like, click, engage on everything that you see more than three seconds. They consider you interested in that. They're going to send you more things just like it.

You are the product and you're the consumer on social media. You are what makes it powerful. You decide what you engage with. You want the world to be a better place. We should all just engage with better things. 

Andrea: Yeah, exactly. Well, and you know, it's interesting cause I do feel like this, like Gen, Gen Alpha, Gen Z, I feel like is much better about being aware of the fact that they can actually train their algorithms.

Um, you know, some, some are less aware of course, but I've had a lot of conversations with like my college students and stuff where I asked them, you know, what are you looking at? What are you watching? They're like, well, I don't ever. you know, engage with this piece because I don't want to see more stuff like that.

So I go out of my way to engage with certain content to train the algorithm. And, and I think that's a huge shift because, like, millennials, like, we, there was never a thought that we're training anything, right? We're just like, we're just like walking, watching cat videos and stuff like that. Like, we're not, we're not thinking like, oh, Here's the subtext of this video that might actually tell the algorithm, I want to see X, Y, and Z, you know?

Um, so I do think that's something that's really cool is there is, I think more awareness of, okay, I can choose what to see and what the algorithm is feeding me. And I do feel like because of programs like yours, there, there is way more of an emphasis on mental health, you know, and one of the struggles I've seen with a lot of kids is they know that the that they're doomscrolling.

They know that what they're doing is not healthy, um, but they don't fully recognize that it's It's them that's suffering because of it. They'll be like, my friend has a problem with social media. And I'm like, do you think maybe you also might have a problem? They're like, well, not, not like theirs, you know, like I'm mostly okay.

And I'm like, all right, but you know, so 

Jared: It's the saying that you have to remove the plank from your eye before you remove the speck of dust from your friends, you know, it's that same, but I love them to be honest, these younger generations, like working with kids, 14 years that I've been in schools now, 14 years.

So I've seen generation, like I've seen it start to shift. And these younger kids, man, they, they're good. They have their business minded. 

Andrea: Oh yeah. 

Jared: They, they have ideas. I've met 16, 17 year old kids that, that run multiple six figure businesses online. Like you would be mine. It's just, The kids that I come across, the things they're accomplishing so young and how smart they are, uh, you know, sometimes too smart for their good is what older people will say, but, but, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm proud of them and I just want to help them.

I don't, I don't want to talk down on them. Everybody, you know, people will try to get me to say, what do you think about Gen Z doing this and cancel culture, this and cancel this and that. Look, man, we swing really far to the right, they're going to swing really far to the left, we'll meet somewhere in the middle.

I'm just here to, you know, I'm here to hear them out and support them. Look at the world we live in, you know, look at what's going on in the world right now. You expect these kids to just, you know, be happy, go lucky, like, hey, they're trying their best. Like, like seriously, this is a hard time to be alive and a hard time to be a kid.

Andrea: Well, and I feel like what the, The message that you're giving to these kids and to these schools, like right or left, people should be able to agree that we want kids to be mentally healthy, right? Like that should be something that is a bipartisan issue, like mental health for kids. It like, that should be something everyone agrees should be prioritized is that kids, we, we want them to see adulthood.

We want them to be contributing members of society. Like that's the foundation of education, like prepare them to be successful adults, you know? Um, and I think that. I think we need more 

Jared: people in the gap. That's why I tell people I thrive being in the gap. I'm not going to go right, I'm not going to go left.

I'm going to sit right in this middle, I'm going to hear both of you out, and we're going to try to bridge this gap because really, we all need to do this together. 

Andrea: That's really 

Jared: what it comes down to. 

Andrea: The crazy thing is, is that, like, that's like almost a hot take to sit there and say, like, you will listen to both sides.

Um, and my, My podcast is like very apolitical as, as odd as that is for education. Um, but I, I do try and kind of err away from discussing like highly political stuff. Um, I don't 

Jared: even have an opinion. I love people. I love people. I love you all. Right. 

Andrea: Right. But yeah, it is. And it's hard for, I think kids growing up in, in, like you said, like the very polarized thing.

I think that also kind of impacts their, their mental health as well. Just that tension. 

Jared: They think they have to have this. stance that somebody already set out for them. It's like, no, like you have, everybody actually has their own personal reality. 

Andrea: Yeah. 

Jared: You're based on your personality, the way you think, the way you act, the way you feel.

So you can tell me whatever. And if it's the way you're thinking, the way you're acting, the way you're feeling, that's your personal reality. That's real to you. 

Yeah. 

And that's valid to me. Right. Because that's how you're experiencing this. I can't tell you now. That's not true. That's not how it goes.

That's how you feel. 

Andrea: Right. You know, right. Well, and the wild thing is too, I think for a lot of kids is they think if they think they agree with one side on one topic, they have to agree all the way down the line. And like, there's so much nuance and all of that. And so I, you know, I'm encouraged that you are.

Um, out there in the schools talking to these kids and encouraging them to, you know, have the metacognition to think about the way that they are experiencing life and thinking about their past experiences. And, I mean, encouraging forgiveness and setting goals, I, like, that is the best thing I think we can possibly do for these kids.

And you know, you're totally right. I think that it will trickle into everything else these kids are doing and into the school cultures as well. 

Jared: And especially if we help them set goals and then we help them remove the negative emotions that might be clouding that vision towards the goal. That's really what it is.

And just show them the process of doing it, remember, feel the emotions, forgive, replace the lies and repeat that over and over and over again. If they know how to do that, they can continuously do that as life continues to happen to them and they hold on to less and less and less and they don't have to do it all when they're 30 or 40 freaking out about 

Andrea: it.

Yeah, right. So one of the things I always do, uh, towards the end of my episodes is I always discuss what, um, or I, I take a question from a listener. And the question I got this time was basically looking at the apathy that we're seeing with students, especially regarding academics. And what do you, I mean, because motivational speaker or speaker, like you are Helping motivate kids.

So, um, do you have advice for classroom teachers on how to motivate kids that just tend to be extremely apathetic? And you are, I mean, I remember there were days I would literally beg kids. I'm like, please do this assignment, please. And they would just be like, I just miss, I'm not doing it today. And I'm like, all right, well, 

Jared: There's always a rhyme to the reason and a reason for the rhyme.

Like it goes back and forth. So something always is the reason why they're sitting there in this emotional state that they're in. I can give you a quick example. There was a kid that went to two of my leadership classes back to back two years in a row, I came to this school. I had this kid get handpicked by the staff twice, but he didn't do anything the first year.

He sat there with his. Fist clenched and he was visibly upset. I tried everything I could to get this man to open up, even took him out in the hallway, gave him a heart to heart, right? 

Yeah. 

The second year, same thing, same type of reaction. About halfway through the program, he gets up, slams the markers on the ground and just tells everybody in that room, the truth.

He told them. That he had lost his brother, had got shot and that he was on call as a volunteer fire department the night that he got shot. He got called out to that call and he ignored that call, 

Speaker 4: didn't know 

Jared: it was his brother. And he was dealing with that for, at that point, almost four years, okay? Like, this was old.

This was old. Like, this was an old thing that happened a while ago. Senior in high school, he was about to move on, and he eventually said, you know what, I'm gonna tell the truth. And it was in his own timing. Now, I just say that to say that there's some kids that it's going to take that consistent, persistent, relentless love towards them.

Just so and showing support, not like you got to work, you got to work, you got to work. You know, it's like when my mom used to tell me, you better not fail, you better not fail. You better not fail. Like it made me fear failure. So I stopped trying. Like it made me hate work. So I just attached negative emotions to you got to work.

And now I don't ever want to work, you know? So I just, you know, the, the first year after he didn't open up, I remember Nolan, the student that told you about earlier that came and lived with me, he was there. And so I just told him, Hey, go be a part of that group. Um, he actually reminds me of you, you know, I can see it in him.

So there's 

something going on there underneath the surface. I don't want you to pry into it, but I just want you to become his friend. And so Nolan had been, turns out Nolan had been texting that kid. on, on, uh, Instagram every now and then just checking up on him. And then the next year when we came, he was excited to see Nolan.

Nolan was a part of that group again. They started talking and then halfway through that, that's when the kid finally, it was his decision to stand up and tell the truth. So I believe what really broke down that really tough exterior barrier that this kid had put up was that consistent outreach from Nolan over the years, just checking on him, just making sure he's okay.

Speaker 4: It wasn't a 

Jared: push to make him make sure that he does what we want him to do. It was just, Hey, are you okay? Is there any way I can support you? It's over and over again. And every teacher watches probably like, I've been doing that. I've been doing that. I just encourage you not to quit. 

Yeah. 

Like that's the difference between people that succeed and people that are failures.

They just didn't quit. 

Yeah. 

I used to take examples with the kids all the time. It's LeBron James. The kids love LeBron now. So, you know, I'm an MJ fan, but you know what it is. LeBron's the all time leading scorer in the NBA. Of all time, he has the most points ever, but he's missed over 14, 000 shots. That means he has missed 14, 000 times at the thing that he is now known to be great at.

Yeah. 

You know? And so I just think about that all the time. And I just tell people like you, maybe you just haven't missed enough shots yet. And you don't even have the opportunity to miss those shots if you don't take those shots. And that means that little hay pad on the back, how you doing today? Good.

Anyway, I could support you today. Just let me know. And then go on. Like, don't just, don't make him a, a, a, like a, I don't know, an example of him in the class. Right. Where you're bringing a negative attention to him, but just letting them know, just letting them know that you're there. 

Andrea: And I think that's such a good perspective shift too, of like thinking not like I haven't gotten it yet, but I haven't missed enough shots yet.

I think it's such a good perspective shift. And I know for me, there was one kid, my first year teaching and he was Such a talented writer, but he refused to write unless he was in the mood for it. And so I would, I remember like just telling him one time being like, listen, like, I know, um, you're not in the mood to write today, but I just have to tell you, like, you are so talented.

You were so good at writing this. And he reached out to me a few years ago and was like, I'm working on my first novel. And I remember that conversation. So, you know, sometimes we take shots and we don't even know what the impact of them. are going to be until like a decade later. And then there's this grown man who's a writer now.

And he's like, Hey, I know that I completely ignored you. And I failed a good portion of the assignments in your class, but the lessons were still there. So I think for a lot of teachers, we just see the grade at the end of the year. We don't necessarily see the impact of like being there and also like encouraging those kids as well.

I was 

Jared: that kid. I was that kid. 

Andrea: I 

Jared: had a teacher, Miss Hannah took one of my poems and submitted it without me knowing to a competition. That I won. 

I didn't even 

know until she told me and I didn't even know that anybody paid attention to the things that I wrote, you know, and it was, it's, I'm 28 years old and I'll never forget that day.

I'm going to forget that teacher. You know, that one little thing that she did for me noticed me out of the crowd. You know, this is things like that. Every little thing, a bus driver at a bus driver named Ms. Purser. My mom worked 12 hour shifts. She was a single parent. I got up every morning, got myself ready.

Even as a kindergarten, get on this bus. And Ms. Purser would watch out for me. There was older kids that bullied me in the front of the bus. She would get onto them all the time. She gave me my own seat. Every day when I got off the bus, she'd tell me she hoped I had a good day today. When I got back on, she'd ask me about my day and we'd talk until we got to my house.

On the days that Ms. Purser was not driving the bus and somebody was driving that bus for her, those were the worst days. I don't even know if to this day she knows the type of impact that she had on my life as the bus driver. 

I 

tell people that at convocations, like, you're the janitor, I don't care if you're the janitor.

You're a part of the culture. 

Andrea: Yeah. 

Jared: You know? 

Andrea: Yeah. And it's true. We remember you. Yeah. A hundred percent. So great. Okay. So before I let you go, can you share with people where they can find you, what, um, your website is and how they can find you on social media and all that good stuff? 

Jared: Yes, ma'am. So my website is Jared, uh, Jared scott speaks.com.

Jared Scott speaks. And then all social medias are Jared Scott Live. That's it. Awesome. All social media, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. 

Andrea: Good deal. And are you touring exclusively at schools or can they catch you at a conference? 

Jared: Actually, I'll be speaking at the, um, blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence conference this December, December 4th, fifth, and sixth at Disney World.

Awesome. So that's, that's gonna be awesome. And then, um, I'm gonna be traveling with Eric Thomas. I don't know if you guys know who that is, but the hip hop preacher they call Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a speaker. Uh, him and Jeremy Anderson on the Next Level Speakers tour this year. So there's a lot of, uh, of stuff on Next Level speakers.com.

You can check out those tour dates and those are actually open to the 

Andrea: public. Awesome. Well, great. Thank you so much, Jared. I appreciate it. 

Jared: Yes, ma'am. 

Andrea: All right, guys, we'll be right back.

Welcome back to Those Who Can't Do. So I have to tell you guys, as I was talking to Jared, I kept thinking, I feel like he has been to one of my schools. So when I was teaching in Southern California, and I actually confirmed it with him, um, on one of our breaks, he actually spoke at one of the schools that I taught at.

And I have a vivid memory because there was like a freshman orientation day that they did. And they told me that there was this guy who was like rapping and then just talking to lines of kids. And I was like, what is happening down there? Like, I just didn't have a full understanding of what the program was at that point.

Um, but I do remember the kids coming back and being hyped and being excited about what he shared and it having an impact on that freshman class. Cause that was I want to say it was like my last year at that school. And I do remember that freshman class was a dream, um, culturally in comparison to the previous class that was had a lot of challenges.

So I just thought that was so cool that he actually, like, I'm like, wait, I've actually seen, cause I only caught little clips cause I was taking kids out and I was doing all of that. So I didn't actually get to see his whole thing, but I did get to catch clips and I did get to hear feedback from kids that were like, the speaker was rapping.

And I'm like, wait, what is happening? So I just thought that was so cool that he actually has come to my school and I've seen the impact with the kids, which is really, really awesome. And I, I really, truly do believe, um, in his mission and his desire to want to help kids to forgive and to set goals and to not let their past define their future.

I think that's a really beautiful. thing that he's doing with his program. So I think I should absolutely check him out. Um, if you have thoughts about what we talked about today, or you have suggestions on whoever you would like to have come on the podcast, you can email me at Andrea at human dash content.

com or on Instagram or Tik TOK at educator Andrea, or you can contact the human content podcast family at human content pods. And thank you so much to the listeners who have left a review. and put some comments in there. Um, we got one from Michelle Farrell 2399 on YouTube, which on the Joe Dombrowski episode and said, great interview, a hundred percent correct about the IEP as a parent of three children with varying degrees of disabilities and an educator of almost 20 years spot on and infuriating that my kids get what they're entitled to.

Only because I know the system. I'm unable to advocate for my students in quite the same way, though I have been a behind the scenes advocate for other parents multiple times. Yeah, I, I'm so glad that you felt, um, like we pointed out a very important issue in the episode with Joe. Um, it was fun chatting with him and if you guys, if you guys missed the Joe Dombrowski episode, he had a lot of strong opinions.

That's about Teach for America that I highly recommend you go and revisit. If you want to catch the full video episodes, they are up every week on YouTube at EducatorAndrea. Thank you so much for listening. I am your host, Andrea Forkham. A very special thank you to our guest co host, Jared Scott. Our executive producers are Andrea Forkham, Aron Korney, Rob Goldman, and Shahnti Brooke.

Our editor is Andrew Sims. Our engineer is Jason Portizzo. Our music is by Omer Ben Zvi. Our recording location is the Indiana State Bi College of Education. To learn more about our Those Who Can't Do program disclaimer and ethics policy and submission verification and licensing terms, you can go to podcasterandrea.

com. Those who can't do is a human content production.

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