Blake Boles: The World I'd Like to Live In Pt. 2

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Imagine learning that is deeply connected to the real world, where you can explore topics of your interest, engage in hard fun, and discover the thrill of trying something new. Does that look and sound a little like chaos? Or is that an adventure? Welcome back to Element is Everything, the podcast where we explore what it means to find your element, that place where interests and talents collide to help us feel great and do great. I recently read a 2022 study called Conversations with Kids, which reported students are not getting what they want and need from school right now. 69% of students reported their learning isn't connected to the real world. 65% of students do not learn about anything that interests them. 71% do not have a say in what they learn. Today we finish our interview with Blake Bowles, who guides us down a path for connected real-life learning. Blake helps us see how we can steer adolescents and teens toward emotional maturity versus developing mental health problems caused by a low sense of control, purpose, and achievement.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

You were probably engaged to get married. Right, yeah. Other forms of engagement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah, exactly. Um and so, you know, compulsory education had a really good place. I believe it the intent is really good. I do believe that there is something to be said for everybody having a common foundational education, you know, being able to read and write and calculate. And if you live in America, understand how a democratic society works. Um so back in my day, and even though you and I have a big age difference, you I'd say even in your day, you were probably able to go out and find a job as a teenager.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Yes. And and that was very common. Teenagers worked. But in today's times, a lot of those types of jobs have been replaced by machines or there's older people.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

College graduates.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yes, the college graduates. And and so our teens get lost because they're biologically designed to be working.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

And taking on some bigger challenges at this moment.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yes. And so if you were running a school, which would of obviously be an alternative learning center, I would guess, kind of like what Ken Dan Ford runs, the liberated learners.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Yeah, North Star Massachusetts. One of my favorite models for for self-directed learning for teens.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Um and and we've talked to him before. I mean, is there is there anything you would change about the way he runs the center? Or do you feel like that's spot on? That that's that's it.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Well, I want to go back to this idea that the world I want to live in has lots of different alternatives, lots of different options. And it's really quite grassroots in the sense that there's not a lot of institutions that are super durable over time. I I like this idea of like messy democracy, of a messy marketplace of options where stuff is allowed to, new stuff is allowed to flourish, but that also means that old stuff dies and that options that once uh served a lot of people and seem really relevant and no longer are relevant, they go away. I mean, that's that's part of creative destruction too. And so, I mean, would I like to see a North Star style liberated learners center, which maybe receives some amount of public funding with essentially zero uh strings attached in every medium and large-sized city in the US? Absolutely. Um I also like that uh in 2018 I did this speaking tour and I visited a lot of these liberated learner centers. And what I liked is that each one is kind of different and it's really a reflection of the founder or the co-founding team. And they are they are not cookie cutter, uh, they are not the same thing over and over again. You see this with Montessori schools, you see this with acting academies. They are different. And if I was gonna run something, I'm sure it would look different from the other ones, too. I I feel like I have one foot in the world of really embracing tech. And like I would love at this moment to like work with young people on just riding the wave of artificial intelligence and just like every week being like, okay, what can all this cool technology do now? And how can we have fun with this? And what kind of games can we can we play with this? And what or even don't get me started on the whole like AI is writing essays and that's a giant problem uh thing. But like, how can we, how can we use this technology? Uh I would love to focus on that. But I also love nature and I also love hiking and long bike trips and taking kids on ropes courses or climbing or uh, you know, going away from cell phone signal. And so whatever it is that I'd want to run, I feel like would have this almost schizophrenic uh like super pro-tech one day and then super anti-tech the next day. Not anti-tech, but extremely pro-nature. Like we're doing stuff that's so far away from a you know cell phone service and a power outlet that your phone just becomes this ridiculous brick that doesn't matter anymore. And uh, and that would be me. That's what I would do. And and it would depend upon where I am and who the kids are that are likely to show up for this, what their parents are like, how many resources I have at my disposal, whether I want to keep it small and nimble, or I want to try and make it bigger and involve more people. And in all likelihood, like a lot of alternative schools, like maybe this thing would only last a few years, or maybe 10 years. The fact that the Sudbury Valley School has lasted since 1969, somewhat of a miracle to me, more power to them. Um, all the other Sudbury schools that you know use that that name are much more volatile. They they come and go. And although I'm I'm hesitant to endorse any specific kind of super new Silicon Valley or Austin, Texas-esque uh progressive school, and these things are popping up all the time. Um, I am really happy to see such a dynamic environment where people are trying something new. And, you know, people are taking their excess money that they made from their startup exit, and they're trying to start some new school that integrates technology and meets some standards, but also allows a lot of flexibility for self-directed learning. And it's like, I don't know. I don't know if I would want to participate in this school or that school, but I'm sure am glad that people are trying stuff. And that at least if you live in a certain part of the US, you can have lots of different different options. And like, that is the world I want to live in. More of that. The specifics of what I would do or what I could tell someone else that they should do, I don't know. That's all fuzzy. And it changes from year to year based upon your kid, your kid's situation, you and your own situation, your family's financial situation, your own personal level of effort that you can give to you know, going in and out of this crazy world of education instead of just sending your kids to public school and being like, I don't want to deal with this anymore. Just go to the school like everyone else. And sometimes that needs to happen too. Because like parents have do not have unlimited resources, you know, financial, emotional, time-wise, ability to drive their kid across town-wise. So yeah. Just let me live in that dynamic universe, not the static one, Terry.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Um, in what ways I'm wondering with again, with all the teenagers that you've worked with, that you would have some insight on this, the idea of how kids can create opportunities for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

That's a big one. Uh are there any specific kinds of opportunities you have in mind?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Well, um so what we do in our school is, and I know there's a uh many types of learning styles surveys, but we do have one that we've adopted and it it does help drill down. Um, and it's not intended to label a student as a type of learner, but it becomes a conversation starter around interests and talents and modalities and dispositions and the environment and all that. And so theoretically, you have those conversations, and then you can start helping the learner know what kind of work they want to do, how they want to do it, what done looks like. But I just I'm interested in your thoughts on that and an adolescent or a teen's ability to have that self-awareness and create something for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

I think when we use the language of doing work or learning something, we very quickly lose a lot of young people. Uh, and again, I'm speaking from the perspective of someone working with teenagers. So this might look different at different ages. But those are pretty boring adult words. And I think what matters to teenagers is they want to go on adventures with their friends. And anything that can be seen through that lens, like, hey, you're not about to like learn how to, you know, work more efficiently or prepare yourself for a future career or learn something that meets these standards. No, we're gonna go to like have a cool adventure with cool people. Then all of a sudden they're the they perk up. They're like, oh, yes, uh, you have my intention now. I've put my phone down voluntarily now. And I think what kids need are examples to follow. They need some models, and then they need the the genuine freedom and the encouragement to go out and to play around, to experiment. And I'll again draw from my experience. I I recently took a group of 13 teenagers with my co-leader Dev Carey to Greece and Turkey for six weeks. And these teenagers essentially none of them knew each other before the trip, maybe a few little connections here and there. And they all came together at New York JFK Airport and then flew together with Dev to Athens, and I met them there because I was already in Europe. And then we traveled overland via bus in different parts of Greece, and then we took ferries across the Greek islands and then into Turkey, and then continued overland via bus and went to a few different parts of Turkey, and we ended in Istanbul, and then they all flew back to JFK and from there went home. Great adventure. And people say, What did you what do you do on these trips? And the answer is it's different with every trip. I've done trips to New Zealand that are super outdoorsy focused, like it's about hiking. That's the big theme. I've done trips to Argentina that are much more about language and dance. You know, we're going to learn Spanish, you're going to learn how to dance tango. I've done trips, you know, that have all these different uh focal points. And on this trip, it was a bit more wide open because what these young people agree to by coming on this trip and they have to interview to come on this trip. They can't just register was that Dev and I share this fun habit of coming up with crazy adventures for ourselves and for our friends and for the young people who we work with. And Dev runs a Gap Year program where he can do all sorts of stuff because they're like 18 to 23-year-olds on his program. And so we said on this Greece and Turkey trip, we're going to help you learn how to travel a different way, and we're going to do it by giving you little adventure challenges most days of the trip. And we're not going to tell you what these are ahead of time, but I did provide a list of like what vaguely what to expect. But we're going to do it based upon the interests and aptitudes of the people in the group and the opportunities, the chance opportunities that come up when we are in the middle of this trip. And so, concrete example, we were in Greece, and unbeknownst to us, uh, there was a holiday that was happening. It was Greek Independence Day. And it was kind of like the 4th of July for Greece. And lots of flags, lots of parades. And when we learned that this was going to be happening the next day, we said, All right, your challenge for tomorrow is to go out in small groups, everything's done in small groups, and to interview people on the street about what Greek independence means to them. That's it. And come back and share your findings with us at dinner time. And uh they did that. And some of them learned some interesting things, some unexpected things. Other ones had more trouble. They maybe got shut down a bit more in their conversations, but we all got to kind of share uh experiences at the end and they got to kind of hear how other groups uh approach this. Uh another challenge that we issued at some point, I think in Athens, was uh come up with a survey question and go out and find people. Again, people who speak English, uh, often if like an older Greek person might not be able to respond to this very well, but a younger one definitely. Um come up with a survey question, and it could be anything, anything you could possibly care about to find out from a bunch of people, and go survey at least 10 different people. Um, they could be people sitting at a restaurant, they could be uh at a bus stop, they could be uh, you know, in the hostel that we're staying in, you know, anyone you could find. And come back and share your survey results. And these these adventures, you know, like these two adventure challenges I just gave you, they would have like a whole day to do this. Like they'd be out for seven, eight hours, and they could probably pull this off in like half an hour. But they get to choose when and where they do it, and then they get to have a bunch of free time to do their own thing, find lunch or meet up with other groups, come back to the hostel and take a nap, whatever they kind of need to do and want to do. And so without monopolizing their whole days, Dev and I tried to give them these little examples of like different ways to travel and different ways to think about how to have a fun time in a foreign country, and especially the hard fun version. And a lot of it involved talking with strangers. Other kinds of challenges involved physical challenges because these were teenagers and they did not have a bedtime or a curfew, they would often stay up quite late. And even like a 9 a.m. breakfast would be a struggle for a lot of them, you know, which I I counteract that by going and buying fresh pastries. And I say, like, hey, the best pastries are gonna be put out at 9 a.m. So if you want, you know, you want a good chance, then show up at nine. And so the the nights often would be pretty late for them. And at one point, you know, Dev and I thought, we want to help them experience what early morning glory is like. And so we said, tomorrow, we want you to want you to organize yourselves into small groups where um you are with other people who want to do a similar level of like physical activity as you. Like some of you, maybe just like a long walk might be your threshold. Others of, you know, might want to do some crazy hike. We want you to be out the door by 7 a.m. and then go do something that for your group is your maximum physical effort for the next four hours and come back at 11 a.m. and breakfast will be waiting for you. Brunch will be waiting for you. And again, go back, do the thing, tell us about it and share with each other. And they did it and they really enjoyed it. And they're like, wow, it was so nice to be out early. And some of them were also like, I need to take a very long nap. And they took a nap for the rest of the day. So they failed to go to bed early enough, you know, to actually get rested before 7 a.m. departure time. And so we ended up providing these examples of how to travel differently, how to go on these little mini adventures. And then we gave them a lot of space during their days, and some days there would be no challenges whatsoever. They would just have time to do what they want and what they need. Um, like it was difficult sometimes, Carrie, to stand by this no curfew thing. And I would hear them at I would wake up at 1.30 in the morning and I could like hear them, you know, having this like great time, whatever they're doing, whatever they're talking about, on the roof of the hostel. They're loving it. They're totally engaged, like you can hear it in their tone of voice. Um, and just as long as they're not like causing an actual noise complaint and keeping other people from sleeping, then I would let them do that. And I would, and I saw the sleepy eyes in the morning, you know, I would kind of do that visual inspection and be like, are these like sleepy eyes that also are combined with like a little grin or a smirk on the face? Because that's a good combination. It's like I stayed up late for a very good reason.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Or is it sleepy eyes combined with, you know, something else? And and maybe that would be a cue for for me or dev to check in uh with that young person and just see how they're doing. And we would have emotional check-ins every day of the trip. So we'd have a pretty good pulse on how individuals are doing. Uh, so no one's really like left behind in all the chaos and and all the fun.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah. I I'm a huge believer in camp. I was a camp counselor. I've some of my best memories in my whole life, career of education was as a camp counselor. And um, you take you take camp to a whole new level.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Next level camp.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

And uh so that that's uh a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for kids. Um something I learned from you is that uh vocation is Latin for calling. I never knew that. I mean, you'd think I do have a background in English that somewhere along the line I would have known that, but um, I thought that was really interesting and and I bring that up now because you we had talked about a couple minutes ago about kids and work and you say work to them, that's going to be a turnoff, talking about their future jobs and and all that. Do you have like conversations that you've had with kids or techniques you've used in working with them? You know, we do know the path can be kind of crooked and go in circles and I don't know, in some ways maybe go off a cliff, but ways that you have helped teens and adolescents follow that path. Not not with the idea of, you know, I have to do this because I'm gonna be 18 and on my own and have a career, but to actually like know who they are and help encourage them in that direction.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Yeah. I I think the thing not to do is to ask them that question, what are you gonna do when you grow up? I think that's just unnecessary pressure and and that there are different questions to ask to go down that line of inquiry. Um what are those? Oh, what do you find interesting right now? Like what's something going on in the world that you would love to learn more about? What are your friends into right now? What's the best game that you've played recently? What's something that totally annoys you? What do you hate? And then don't let them escape that one. Be like, no, really, if you don't hate something, then you don't have any values and you don't stand up for anything. So tell me what you hate. Um we played this game on my trips and at uh not back to school camp where I worked for a long time, called Hot Seat, in which one person volunteers to be on the hot seat. And just anyone can ask them questions, but they have to be good probing deep questions, no boring questions. No, what is your favorite color? So I've had a lot of fun asking teenagers probing questions in a community setting like that. They love it. You know, they they want that experience.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Do they have the option to opt out?

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Um they know that hot seat is always a volunteer game, and they also know that we can't force them to answer a question. You know, they can just sit there and and filibuster it if they want to. Um, but the idea is if you are choosing to play the game, then you are going in with the intention to answer every single question that's asked of you, unless it's truly way too sensitive or traumatizing or something, then you just say pass, but you don't go up there and you say pass for every other question. We have full engagement when we play hot seat. No one's checking their phones when we play hot seat. But to get back to your question, they know that they need to be economically self sufficient at some point, you know, but unless they Been so coddled with a silver spoon that, you know, they really don't think they ever have to work for money yet. I don't think that describes the lives of very many kids and not the ones I'm working with, especially, even if they come from more resource families. Um, I think what really helps is for them to actually know flesh and blood individuals who are doing work that they're super passionate about. This has always been one of my biggest critiques of school, which is that it's ostensibly to prepare you for the real world, yet it completely cuts you off from the real world. And the only adults you're interacting with are educators, who are, you know, at their best, are like really nice social workers uh and then administrators, but you're not actually interacting or getting to learn from or hear from people who are doing work that they find interesting, aside from like maybe someone's parent comes in and talks about how cool it is to be a firefighter, you know, because that's some sort of like sexy, like, you know, outlier job. But no, not everyone's going to become a firefighter. Um, I think a lot of of this can be done at home and probably should be done at home, uh, which is to have this habit of bringing adults who are not just family members or or family friends, but like somehow importing cool adults into the lives of your kids to at minimum have a dinner and to talk about what you do. And at if you're in a more of a very flexible, like unschooly like situation, maybe to find a way to get the young person somehow involved or helping out or being able to sit in or participate in the lives of those working adults. And this is difficult. A lot of jobs, just for liability reasons, you just can't have a teenager hanging around. It's that that's a way that the world has changed over the past few hundred years. Just jobs have become less physical, more knowledge work, less community-based, more sequestered into offices and concerns about someone getting injured or something. The we just sorry, we can't have a 14-year-old hanging around here. So that is difficult. Um, as far as academics go, because the world of academia is fascinating, there are so many cool things that happen there, and research is super interesting. I've always been a fan of helping young people actually get a taste for academia before they are then asked to do all this hard work to do college prep stuff, to jump through the hoops and take the APs and take the standardized tests so that they can play this college admissions game, which is just this burnout-inducing, hellish, sisyfician journey for so many young adults that we have come to normalize, uh, which may be looked on in future years as some sort of modern atrocity. If you're gonna do that, if you're gonna play that game, at least know what you're fighting for, right? And so I love helping teenagers actually go sit in on college classes. And I've done this over and over again, and it's like shockingly straightforward most of the time. Uh, it begins with like, okay, teenager, you need to have some genuine interest in something that's, you know, can be labeled an academic subject. Uh, and if they don't have that, then it's not the time to push this activity. But if they do, then it's like, okay, theater, got it. You know, you look at community college, you look at state colleges, you look at um public and private uh cool universities nearby, you find the actual uh professor or maybe teacher's assistant or grad student or researcher who is actually doing the thing that is kind of interesting to the young person. And then you coach the young person into sending an email, a very nicely worded email to this person directly and speaking from their own voice. You do not do this as the educator, you do not do this as the parent. That is short circuiting and crushing the the plant uh before it has a chance to grow. And um, the teenager emails the person in academia and says, Hey, I love what you do. I'm interested in this. These are the books that I've read or the documentaries I've watched about this subject. Here's how I'm involved with it already. Would it be okay if I came and sat in on a class? Or if not that, would it be okay if I came to your office hours and talked with you for half an hour about the last paper that you published? Or would it, you know, insert would it be okay here? And then, you know, the the success rate of this is shockingly high. It's so high because there are so few people doing it. It's this is not an email from an undergrad begging for a grade to be changed. This is not some administrative thing. This is like a message from a wild animal, you know, this like completely unassociated 15-year-old who just says, like, I think your work is fascinating, and you're probably fascinating too. And I would love to just take a little bit of your time to hear from you or to get your feedback on something, or just let me sit in on your lecture, which you're already going to be doing. And as long as you are not afraid of the repercussions of a 15-year-old sitting in on your lecture, and maybe the administration doesn't care for this, but if you're willing to like take a chance on me, I would love it. And I include some of these stories in the book. And but I've done a lot of this stuff out, you know, off the books, so to speak, and just private coaching uh with young people and their parents. Um and it's so empowering. It is so empowering when this 15-year-old gets a response from someone who seems like a you know a big deal, even if it doesn't have to be a celebrity, just like uh a person with a PhD responded to me and they said, yes, uh, you can sit in on my class like that, just that. If you can get them to send the email, and it's a genuine email, and you get the response, and they go and they actually do the thing and they meet the person, that is like the moment. That's the key that unlocks everything else. And the rest of whatever we call education in school might be so less relevant than just having a couple of moments like that in your young life where you realize that you have the key that unlocks the door to the world. Yeah. And anyway, to have young people access real working adults that you know, it could again be something that's outside of their realm of awareness or interest, someone who drops by for dinner and talks about what they do. But it could be something that is connected to a pre-existing interest or curiosity. Um, just more of that. That's the good stuff right there. And that's what will motivate the young person to say, like, oh, if I want to do something cool, like this person's doing, then, and then they see the steps, they're like, okay, I got to play this like getting into college game, and then I need to play this like research game. Or uh maybe I don't need to go to college and but I still need to have contacts in order to get into the theater world, because the person told me that contacts are everything. I need to have some experience. Maybe community college can give me that experience. And then they start to piece it all together. And then it turns into the hard, fun game. This, like, how do I have a cool adult life? They all want to have cool adult lives. None of them want to be like bored, pathetic losers. They don't. I just simply don't believe that.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

I would agree. And we talk about we need to give kids more control over their life and their learning, but a lot of them don't know how to take control or feel like they don't know. They don't have any role models. Yeah, they don't have any experience. And so a little, you know, what you're talking about there is kind of helping them see the baby steps of do this one little thing, and then you you get to feel what that feels like, and then you go a little further and a little further, and then all the pieces come together.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

And I think I'm actually advocating for for seeing the promised land at the at the end of seeing someone who is in the middle of doing work that they find highly engaging and and interesting. And it and I think it's even more powerful when it's not something that is like culturally sexy. Like it's not like uh I'm a YouTube influencer and uh my life is great. We my friends and I just rented this this house in LA for you know $10,000 a month and we we have all these great parties. But if it's someone who's like, I work in uh industrial process management, and you would not believe how fascinating it is to try to get a bag of chips, you know, to to weigh 2% less than it currently does. And for someone to uh one of my favorite just general interest podcasts is called Econ Talk. It's been happening ever since podcasting started, 2006. And one of the most uh listened to episodes on Econ Talk is with someone who worked for like a chip company and who describes how uh potato chips are produced. And I specifically remember this machine that you know, you have like chips coming down a conveyor belt at like 50 miles an hour, and then the chips hop over this little gap, this air gap in the conveyor belt. So you have this like tidal wave of chips, and then you have these sensors and these little air guns that are sensing the like bad chips, you know, the overcooked chips or whatever. The and then it shoots the chips out of the air using the little air gun, you know, this like ballet of industrial processing. And this guy who was being interviewed was just so enthusiastic about making chips that it's like it's contagious, right? Right? That that's either the world of like podcasting or reading books or or oftentimes social media, like like viral videos on TikTok or Instagram. There's a surprising amount of content out there about just like how stuff gets made and taking boring. There's good TV shows about this too. Like stuff that you you have no idea how it's made, and someone explains this is how it's done, and you're like, wow, that's actually kind of interesting. Uh but whenever possible, don't just let it be a 30-second TikTok clip. Let it be a person. A 60-minute podcast interview with someone is way better than a 30-second TikTok clip. And then having dinner with someone or going into the office of someone who actually does this is way better than the 60-minute podcast interview. So just as close as you can get to the real live person in front of you speaking knowledgeably and enthusiastically about what they do. Like that's career prep right there. That is what will drive the college prep that parents, you know, it makes parents feel so much more secure. That's what will drive the young person taking these self-directed steps towards their, you know, capital F future. And so much of it does not look like school. It just simply does not look like school. It's self-directed exploration, often in community with other peers and done in the presence of adults who are willing to let these kids explore and make mistakes and to, and to be themselves around these kids and to help them go down their rabbit holes of weird interest and exploration without a lot of judgment. That's all it is. It's it's not too hard at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

And the rabbit holes are great. And um, yes, the one hour podcast interview is definitely better than just reading the book. And I really appreciate the time that you've taken to um, I have enjoyed your work, and it has been a real treat to actually have a conversation with you. And I appreciate the time and I appreciate the work that you do with teens. And I wish you luck with your your next project, and I'll be highlighting it with our podcast. You know, I couldn't agree more with Blake when he says teens want adventure. But let's be honest, don't we all? Adventure looks different for everyone. What excites one person might terrify another, or even bore someone else entirely. But that's the beauty of it. There's no keeping up with the Joneses when it comes to adventure. Whether it's launching into outer space or nurturing a seedling in your backyard, your adventure is yours to define. No one gets to tell you it's too small, too big, too weird, or too impossible. So here's your challenge for this episode. Get in front of someone who's connected to your idea of adventure. If you dream of space travel, reach out to someone in aerospace. If you're curious about growing tropical plants in a cold climate, find a garden expert. The goal isn't just to gather information, it's to expand your network, your perspective, and ultimately your wisdom. Your adventure starts with a single conversation. And that conversation just may put you in your element. I hope you found some value in today's episode. If so, please take a moment to leave a positive review on the podcast platform you use and share the episode on social media. If you visit the Element is Everything website, you'll find additional resources on today's topic. Invite friends and family to join our community of listeners as we ponder science, perspectives, and strategies around personal accountability, courageous learning, and clear decision making for a sense of connection to ourselves, others, and life.