Intro: Welcome to the Teacher Interview Podcast. I’m your host, Wes Kriesel. I work as Director of Innovation and Instructional Support in Fullerton School District, and every week we sit down and get to know a teacher better. My goal is to learn what drives and guides teachers, especially when venturing into that risky territory of trying something new. Join me. Today on the Teacher Interview Podcast, we interview Beniy Waisanen. He teaches fourth grade GATE at Golden Hill Elementary School.
Wes Kriesel: Oh, Beniy, welcome.

Beniy Waisanen: Thanks.

Wes Kriesel: So, Beniy Waisanen is here on the podcast with us today, and tell us where you teach and what grade.

Beniy Waisanen: So, I teach fourth grade GATE at Golden Hill Elementary.

Wes Kriesel: Awesome, awesome. So, we’re just going to start out with just asking how you got into teaching, and then we actually interviewed some people who you gave us their names and we asked them things like one word to stand for Beniy or a specific moment they remember with Beniy. There was also bonus feedback.

Beniy Waisanen: All right.

Wes Kriesel: So, you know, tell us anything you want. All right. So, well, let’s start without further ado, just how did you get into teaching?

Beniy Waisanen: So, after college—I started as an art major but kind of morphed around into liberal studies and I ended up taking a bunch of art classes and music classes and literature classes. I took liberal studies because they let me take whatever I wanted.

Wes Kriesel: Oh, that’s cool. What college?

Beniy Waisanen: Cal State Fullerton.

Wes Kriesel: Cool.

Beniy Waisanen: And I ended up going and working for a family friend in a property management office, and I worked for four years.

Beniy Waisanen: After graduation.

Beniy Waisanen: After graduation.

Wes Kriesel: Okay.

Beniy Waisanen: And learned that the office job was not—I was desperately done with that. I learned a lot, I really grew up there and learned a ton, but I learned that I want to do something different. And I had volunteered at summer camps for years, working with kids and I loved it.

Wes Kriesel: Okay. Summer camps like in the mountains around here?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, the mountains.

Wes Kriesel: Really?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, yeah, with church groups and… I was at a summer camp and I was [00:02:30 unintelligible], “What do I? It’s like I love kids. I love school.” I had this [00:02:35 unintelligible] like, “I need to be a teacher. This is the moment.” And I went back to school and I thought about being a history major, but I quickly morphed into in the elementary because I love learning. Probably my biggest passion is learning anything new.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Beniy Waisanen: And I love all the subjects. My students asked me, “What’s your favorite subject?” I was like, “Well, I really like them all.” And elementary turned out to be the perfect fit.

Wes Kriesel: That’s awesome.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah.

Wes Kriesel: So, go back before that. So, going into college, so you mentioned studying arts and music, was it?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, I grew up playing music. I was always into piano. I played like five different instruments in elementary and high school band, switching all the time. And in senior year, I loved music but I didn’t want to have the life of a musician, but I also loved art and I could see—So, I had a great art teacher, Doug Stanton at Sonora High School, who taught me how to draw, taught me and let me just do whatever. I could run, just do it, and he’d just let me be there, and we did some animation, did all kinds of cool stuff. So, he’s a big inspiration and that got me into art at Cal State Fullerton.

Wes Kriesel: Did you find that art was, A, easy to do, B, fun, or was it hard to do and fun or…?

Beniy Waisanen: It was hard to do. It’s something that I always wanted to do as a kid and I wasn’t very good at. I wasn’t the great artist. I just loved it. And when I went in in freshman year in high school, I said, “Can you teach me how to draw?” He’s like, “Sure, sure.” And he did the, I forget the name, but the “drawing on the right side of the brain” program?

Wes Kriesel: Yeah, yeah.

Beniy Waisanen: And I learned how to draw realistically, and that was so cool because I could do it and I got a lot of positive feedback from that. And so, that gave me the confidence to try it out and be like an illustrator. I loved writing and I always liked ideas and wanted to do something creative, and this is something I could figure out how to do. And in college, I really fell in love with the design process.

Wes Kriesel: Okay, tell me more about that.

Beniy Waisanen: So, one of my big struggles as a kid was I loved being creative, but how do you come up with ideas? So, I loved Legos because the ideas were there, right? There’s the thing you build, and then you go on and build more. You know The Lego Movie where there’s like the eighties space guy?

Wes Kriesel: Uh-huh.

Beniy Waisanen: I was the eighties space guy because like, “Let’s build a spaceship.” I built spaceships all the time. But, in like writing stories or art, I was like, “What idea do I get?” you know? So, I always had that question, and when I went into college, they taught you how to brainstorm ideas, choose one, refine it, and develop it into a project that worked.

Wes Kriesel: And this is in the context of art?

Beniy Waisanen: This is in the context of illustration, two-dimensional art, three-dimensional design. I took a lot of woodworking classes where I got to make—I made a recorder, I made a mbira, I made a hammered dulcimer.

Wes Kriesel: I know what a dulcimer is, but you made a ibira?

Beniy Waisanen: Mbira is a thumb piano, an African instrument. So, I spent a semester designing, making the prototype and then designing my own. The initial prototype actually works and I kept it. The final project failed and I got rid of it eventually after. It looked nice but it didn’t sound at all.

Wes Kriesel: Well, one of the things I forgot to mention at the beginning is, as we go through, I’ll try to tie things into innovation or risk-taking or trying something new. I forgot to say that. But, so you just mentioned like having this project and, I mean, you could tell you enjoyed it.

Beniy Waisanen: I loved it, yeah.

Wes Kriesel: You lit up when you talked about, but then you’re like, “Yeah, ultimately it failed.”

Beniy Waisanen: I totally failed at the end. But my prototype succeeded and I learned something from that to see what were the aspects of that. So, I learned a ton about what works in real materials and how to kind of take something from an idea to a real thing, and I love that process. That process, I mean I kind of always wanted to be a writer, too. Charles Schulz is my hero is a kid.

Wes Kriesel: Peanuts, right?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah. And so, I wanted to write comics or draw, tell stories. I always struggled with ideas. Taking those art classes in college, I was able to take that design process and apply it into writing, and so I’ve also fallen in love with teaching writing because I can connect the idea between the design process of coming up with ideas. And so, I try to take my students through that process in whatever we’re doing, explore. When we’re doing a writing project, we might explore it for a week or two weeks. I tell them, “Don’t start your story yet. We’re going to explore ideas and play.”

Wes Kriesel: Oh, interesting.

Beniy Waisanen: Right? Some of them do that naturally, but some of them jump the gun, “I’m done,” and they haven’t even thought of two ideas. They just came up with an idea and they made it they’re done. So, trying to get my students to get and see that process.

Wes Kriesel: So, give me a tip. I love that idea. So, when you have students who are more, and I could be wrong, but in the GATE world students are more concerned about kind of getting it perfect and getting it right and maybe even finishing, maybe a little bit of competition and beating other people.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, definitely.

Wes Kriesel: How do you get them to slow down and do that exploratory? Do you have a secret sauce that seems to work?

Beniy Waisanen: I will not tell them the rules of the project.

Wes Kriesel: That’s got to be frustrating.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah. So, I frustrate my students, definitely, and there’s a lot of trust and from parents, too, because parents want to know and they want—

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. Right.

Beniy Waisanen: So, I over—I mean, it’s taken some time, it’s my 19th year of teaching, but over time, if there’s trust they’ll go through the process. So, yeah, I give them small nuggets and I try to give them structure, but not rules, right? And so, that’s an art.

Wes Kriesel: Oh. Talk to me more about that.

Beniy Waisanen: Okay. So, going back to Cal State Fullerton, I was a liberal studies major and I got to pick a senior-project-type thing, and I designed a bunch of courses around the idea of structure and creativity. So, my guiding principle was, in the art world, there was a lot of pushback against rules and the traditional ways of doing it, and I was like, I always wanted to go the other way. I [00:09:12 unintelligible] class, but there was one painting teacher who was like, “Don’t use brushes. If you’re going to paint a branch, use a twig.” I’m like, “I like tradition. I like structure.”

Wes Kriesel: I like the brush.

Beniy Waisanen: So, I was always looking for that. And in writing, I got really interested in rules for poetry, like types of poetry rather than just freeform. Because freeform for me, I didn’t know what to do, but if there was some kind of structure, like Legos, I felt I could wrap my head around it. And so, I ended up writing a paper about the connections between structure and creativity in art, in music, in literature, and in my own teaching I try to design lessons in which I’m giving them structure. So, like right now, I’m doing a unit on mysteries, and so we’re looking at the patterns. They read three mysteries, we watch mysteries, we watch a Nancy Drew mystery and a Snoopy mystery, and we’re looking at, “What are the common things that are in all mysteries?” and we break those down. We’re doing some of the thinking maps, what types of characters are in all mysteries, what types of scenes are in all mysteries, so that they can see that structure. And then, I’m going to let them loose, playing with that, right?

Wes Kriesel: Yeah.

Beniy Waisanen: But I’m not going to tell them, “You’re going to do this first scene like this, you’re going to do the second scene like this.” Because if you hold them in too much, then they might be more successful but they don’t reach as high sometimes. And there’s a degree of risk in terms of teaching this way because my students don’t always succeed either, because sometimes they’re overwhelmed or sometimes they just don’t get into it, and so that openness sometimes, they might be more successful in that structure. So, I’m continually trying to refine my own teaching and trying to balance that so that they’re going to be successful. So, it’s kind of a living—I never do the same thing twice, which is a lot of work sometimes.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah.

Wes Kriesel: That’s really cool. I keep thinking of the word formula. When I was a new teacher, we kind of used formulas to—this was high school—to help teach struggling writers. But very quickly, as you became a better teacher at teaching the formula, you realized your students, the writing is not really getting better. It’s becoming more the same and there’s more consistency across your classes, but are they really better writers? And so, let’s say you see a student who needs some sort of formula or you could call it structure, but then how do you get them, once they get a comfort level and they get kind of successful, what do you do then midway through the process or like they’re doing another writing assignment, how do you remove some of that or what do you do to shake it up so they really get into that exploratory phase?

Beniy Waisanen: Because we have students all over the place, so the idea phase, they’re getting ideas, they get started, I generally have them write their draft and I just get out of the way. I let them write the draft. Once they’re in the revising stage, they’re in so many different places because they had that freedom that it becomes kind of a challenge.

Wes Kriesel: Right, right, right.

Beniy Waisanen: So, it’s gotten easier over time, but I basically look for patterns. It’s very similar to the writing workshop approach that we’re taking as a district, which I love because it fits with the way I teach, which is you’re looking for teaching points that meet some needs and then modeling. So, I’ve always just kind of modeled. So, I have a bunch of snippets of stories that aren’t real stories but they’re just models of scenes, like, “Here’s how you do dialogue,” or “Here’s how you add detail,” and I do a lot of bad writing to show them bad writing so that they can see it, and then they can see the good writing in that. Bad writing is really important for students to see bad examples so that they can recognize it because it helps them see the point.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah, yeah. So tell me, like in my teaching, I connect that to something called non-examples.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, exactly.

Wes Kriesel: I’m going to show you fruit, here’s an apple, here’s an orange, here’s a rock – the rock is a non-example of a fruit. And so, by showing them what it’s not, you’re also teaching.

Beniy Waisanen: Right.

Wes Kriesel: But, talk more about your bad writing examples and, what do you see in the students when they start to realize that you’re actually teaching them something and not just showing them bad writing?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, well, I mean they laugh. So, I mean, I show them something that is—the funny thing is, I often am modeling it on their own writing, like this is the kind of bad writing I’m seeing. So, sorry students. And then, I will write like they write, so I will write just in one complete, you know, I’ll write a whole story in one continuous runaround sentence, and they recognize, “Oh, that’s…” They can see it.

Wes Kriesel: They’re like, “That’s horrible. Please stop.”

Beniy Waisanen: When it’s not them and it’s on the screen, they can see it very quickly.

Wes Kriesel: That’s interesting.

Beniy Waisanen: It’s just when it’s not their own. So, it’s taking that identification away so they can judge it. A lot of the resistance particularly like in gifted students or in perfectionists, which is all over the place, is because you identify with something that has to be good and I can’t judge it because then I’m judging me. And so, learning to separate that.

Wes Kriesel: You’re doing some real therapy on me right now. My wife’s going to be like, “You need to listen to Beniy.” I mean, that’s true for me. I have an idea and, if there’s criticism, then I get defensive because I’m…

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah. So, she needs to come up with examples in her own life, but they’d be made-up. So, she needs to make up some bad examples like, if I were doing it…

Wes Kriesel: What if I wrote a check and it bounced?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah.

Wes Kriesel: I’m just kidding. It’s too personal.

Beniy Waisanen: I was at a conference at Cal State Fullerton with Ian Byrd. He does Byrdseed education, right?

Wes Kriesel: Yeah, yeah, I know…

Beniy Waisanen: So, he was giving a talk and I am often intimidated by his work because he’s so good and he’s such a good presenter, but he was talking about, I don’t remember the topic, but I think it was curiosity. He was talking about how he messed up in the classroom. He said, “When I did this, this is how it went wrong.” I was like, “Man, this feels so good to hear him admit that,” right?

Wes Kriesel: Mm-hmm. Right.

Beniy Waisanen: And I went up to him and asked him, “Is that true? Are you making that up? I want to know,” because I think he’s pretty good most of the time. But, he said it was true, maybe exaggerated a little bit. So, I think it’s good to exaggerate the faults you’re aware of for them to see it, and that feels really good from a student perspective to see the adult, you know. They often assume that we know everything and it’s perfect, and it’s really healthy to not be perfect in the classroom.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. So, I’m going to make it jump and just see if this goes anywhere, but you mentioned exaggerating to help students see something, and then I thought of in theater you exaggerate so the person in the back row can really perceive your emotions. If you underplayed it, they can’t tell if you’re emoting at all. So, do you relate teaching to performance?

Wes Kriesel: Oh, totally, totally.

Wes Kriesel: Okay. So, tell me more about that.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, I’ve found that I’m stylist—I think there’s planners and then there’s improvisers, two types of people. I’m an improviser. And I didn’t know this about myself, but it only works, I’m also a really highly compensated introvert so it really takes a lot of energy for me to teach, but within the defined context of the classroom, it works. So, part of the reason I have my rules in my classroom is so we have a safe space where it’s going to work and where we have the freedom to improvise and to be safe and to play and that we’re going to move quickly. And so, I don’t have, I mean there’s always a lot of planning and teaching, but there’s got to be room to adjust to where they’re at and listen to where they’re at and move with that. So, yeah, that’s definitely my style that I take.

Wes Kriesel: So, tie that improvisational part back to drama or creating a performance. You’re reacting to them, but are you using exaggeration and animation as an actor would or…?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, yeah. I need to forget myself because if I think about it too much it’s not always as good. So, I generally, I kind of have my goal of where I’m going, but I don’t always know exactly how I’m going get, you know. And so, that energy, that tension of not knowing but I’m going to go in there, you know. And it doesn’t always work, so sometimes lessons will [00:18:05 unintelligible], but sometimes it goes places where it’s really exciting and we do something completely new. It certainly doesn’t happen all the time, but there have been times where we’re going somewhere and they come up with an idea like, “Let’s do that! That’s way better than what I was planning.” And so, I try to involve my students in kind of where we’re going with things.

A concrete example, I always during read-aloud, one of the struggles in the classroom is like, quiet, I need quiet, so when I read aloud I have pretty strict rules about them being quiet, so I gave them clay to work with. That comes from Rick Morris. He’s like, “[00:18:44 unintelligible] clay. I’ve done that for years.” And then, we were doing something, I gave them just a flip, like, “Let’s draw with Notability and let’s try this for this one assignment,” and they were doing some really cool stuff.” And it’s like, “Let’s do this during read-aloud. I’m going to let you draw in Notability.” It’s quiet. One of the benefits of clay is it’s quiet. Whereas drawing with pencils on a notebook, you’d think it would, but there’s all the clicking and the opening and the moving back and forth, which is too much.

So, just being willing to—they liked it. They were doing well with it. Let’s completely change what I’ve done for 19 years and try this new thing, and it’s really cool. They’re really enjoying it. So, just being open to what they like and what’s new.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. That’s interesting. So, there’s this, I think you used the word tension of like you have this goal and you’re also not over-planning how to get there so that you yourself feel curiosity.

Beniy Waisanen: And a little scared.

Wes Kriesel: And a little scared.

Beniy Waisanen: Definitely.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah, and I think from what you’re describing, your students also know it’s kind of like it’s a ride.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, definitely.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah, and so they feel that energy.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, I consciously try to grow myself and do that publicly in front of them, in my lessons, in what we’re doing. It’s not all fake modeling. Sometimes we’re really like, “Let’s…” you know?

Wes Kriesel: Yeah.

Beniy Waisanen: So, one thing I do is at the end of the day I’ll do random questions.

Wes Kriesel: Okay, tell me about that.

Beniy Waisanen: It’s just like, “We have five minutes. Let’s do a round of questions,” and they can ask me anything and they can bring up anything. And so, they’ll ask me just like, “Do you know this?” I’m like, “Whoa, that’s such a cool question. I don’t know. Let’s…” and something that we get something cool and, you know. But, that spirit of looking and trying new things.

It doesn’t always work though. So, like this year for our Harvest Festival, we do an auction and the classrooms are allowed to do an art project. And so last year, I did this cool dragon and my students did it. It was a collaborative art project and it worked really well. I was like, “Okay, cool. We’re going to step this up a notch this year. I’m going to have…” Because last year, I drew the dragon and then they did the coloring. I was like, “I want this to be their drawing.” So, I had everybody draw dragons. I got 33, and I was like, “We’re going to compile this into something and make it really cool,” and totally I was having anxiety dreams about how I’m going to put this together. It didn’t work, and I had to say, “Look, this didn’t work.” And they accepted it. They were like, “Yeah, I’ve had anxiety dreams, too.” So, it was cool even though it didn’t work. But, as long as you don’t do that all the time, it’s every once in a while, I think it’s healthy.

Wes Kriesel: That’s awesome. Okay, so I want to jump back to, you said you were going to Cal State Fullerton, you got your teaching credential, then where did you start teaching? Where did you get your first job?

Beniy Waisanen: I did my student-teaching at Golden Hill.

Wes Kriesel: Okay. Oh, where you are now.

Beniy Waisanen: In sixth grade. Where I am now. That’s a good story, actually. I was with a master teacher, Suzanne Lee, and she was awesome, but she’s a very organized person and very intense. She’s a great teacher. I learned so much from her. But, she was kind of like a testing stage for student teachers. They come in there and, if you could survive her, it’d be okay. So, definitely there was a lot of pressure to perform. And I had one night where I was supposed to teach science and it was on heat energy. I was supposed to teach a lesson on heat energy. I was like, I had no idea what to do and I was looking at the standards. And so, I was sitting there, it was nine or 10 o’clock at night, the lesson’s the next day, I have to do it…

Wes Kriesel: You’re making me get anxious.

Beniy Waisanen: And I said, “All right, I’m going to write a song.” I’d never written a song before but I played music and I can play guitar, and I figured out like a chord progression I could do. And I took the standards for the heat and I just wrote a song, totally just the standards, and it was like,

“Heat is a form of energy

It flows from warm to cool in many ways

Hot things cool down and cold things warm up

And eventually they end up the same temperature.”

So, I wrote that song and it was totally improvisation, I didn’t plan it, and I think it got me my job because it was such a good—She, Suzanne Lee, started using that every year.

Wes Kriesel: What?

Beniy Waisanen: The principal, they payed attention, and I was like, “Whoa, you wrote this song. It’s a really cool thing,” right?

Wes Kriesel: Wow.

Beniy Waisanen: So, I don’t know. Who knows? But…

Wes Kriesel: And that’s a great risk, but you were also like, “I have a goal and I have to teach this,” but then it was trying something new, so it’s risky.

Beniy Waisanen: And I had had experience in art and doing projects and being able to go through that, and so it took some skills and brought them together. So, it was fun.

Wes Kriesel: That’s awesome.

Beniy Waisanen: Oh, it was exciting.

Wes Kriesel: Exciting.

Beniy Waisanen: And terrifying a little bit.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. But I think that’s part of the magic of teaching. When teaching gets into that magical place where students experience something that they will never forget or not forget for a long time, it’s because of drama and conflict and tension and emotional energy.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, and hard things, like creating a space in your classroom where they’re willing to try something hard they’ve never done before.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah.

Beniy Waisanen: So, last year, I’ve been wanting to teach music in my classroom for many, many years because it’s such a love of mine and I’ve not been very successful. Now, with iPads and GarageBand, it’s been a lot easier. So, that’s a huge, huge thing I’m able to teach in now. I mean, I’ve got students composing with chord progressions and things like that because the technology makes that possible.

Wes Kriesel: Cool.

Beniy Waisanen: So, last year, I had tried to get them, my students, to write a song about explorers. It didn’t totally work. Last year, I was like, “I’m going to try again,” and I was going to set it to a melody that everyone knew. We were going to use This Land is Your Land. And then, the crazy part of me is like, “Let’s see if we can do it with our own melody.” And so, I just said, “All right, you need to come up with some kind of melody,” and I just said, “Go for it.” I gave them half an hour or 40 minutes and there were tons of failures, but one student who I would never expect it, he did it. He came up with this melody, and we had two or three competing ones but his was so good and so smooth that everybody voted for it because it just worked.

Wes Kriesel: Oh my gosh, that’s awesome.

Beniy Waisanen: And it was so cool because it was really their work. They all got to try it and then one was a successful, and then we went and wrote lyrics to his melody. So, they all got to be part of that and they all got excited about—and they owned it because it was their song.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. That’s really, really cool. Wow, the time is just flying by. We have five minutes left. I can’t even believe it. But, I do want to drop in some quotes from people, and I don’t know, I mean we’ll just…

Beniy Waisanen: Go for it, yeah.

Wes Kriesel: You react and tell me…

Beniy Waisanen: All right.

Wes Kriesel: Okay, actually, we’ll play a little game.

Beniy Waisanen: Okay.

Wes Kriesel: So, there’s three people, one was your principal Katrina Piche, and then Dolph Petris, and then your wife, Elizabeth. So, I’m going to read you all three words. Let’s do this the hardest way imaginable.

Beniy Waisanen: All right.

Wes Kriesel: I’ll read you all three words, and then you tell me which one said which word.

Beniy Waisanen: All right.

Wes Kriesel: Okay. So, one of the one of the words was eclectic, one of the words was bohemian, and one of the words was kind. What do you make of that? Who said what?

Beniy Waisanen: Well, I think kind is my wife because I think she told me.

Wes Kriesel: Ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding, you got one of those.

Beniy Waisanen: I am going to say eclectic is Dolph and bohemian is Katrina.

Wes Kriesel: Almost, almost. It’s the other way around. It’s the other way around.

Beniy Waisanen: Oh, okay.

Wes Kriesel: So, pick one of those words and comment on it. Which one stands out to you?

Beniy Waisanen: Okay, so eclectic. I have so many different things going on in my interests, in my life. I like music, I like woodworking, I like fencing, I like…

Wes Kriesel: Fencing like with rapiers or…?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah.

Wes Kriesel: Okay.

Beniy Waisanen: At Cal State Fullerton, one of the reasons I was excited about going there is because they had a fencing program and I was on the fencing team with the former number eight Okinawa fencer.

Wes Kriesel: Oh, really? Wow.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah.

Wes Kriesel: Wow. Do you still fence?

Beniy Waisanen: I don’t, but it’s a love. I was a Tolkien fanatic and fencing is like, “Oh,” so you know.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah.

Beniy Waisanen: But, the real sport of fencing is pretty challenging. It’s a very different thing. So, I loved it, but… And my students always ask me, “What’s your favorite subject or what…?” and I really have a hard time choosing them because I love reading and I love history, and the more I teach something—I even love math now whereas I was not a math person growing up. But, teaching math, you fall in love with it. So, as long as I’m learning, I’m pretty happy.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. That’s awesome. I love that. So, kind of these diverse interests, but it’s your personal life but it’s also in the classroom.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah.

Wes Kriesel: So, it’s just a way that you are…

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah. To stay happy teaching, I’ve had to always connect them and keep learning. It’s like at the core.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. Is there, I mean it sounds like it happens very naturally, and some of the questions I try to kind of see if there’s a way like, let’s say you find other teachers who are getting stale or burn out and it seems natural for you to find energy and interest and curiosity, how do you help colleagues who are maybe stuck, in a rut, they’re doing the same thing, but they look at you and they’re like, “Yeah, but that’s Beniy, I can’t be like that?” Do you find ways that you get to encourage your peers?

Beniy Waisanen: I’ve kind of fallen, I mean Golden Hill is on the journey of becoming an art school, and so I didn’t really ask for it but it’s kind of like my—I’ve got lots of skills, and we have a great staff that we have a really good community where our teachers are really passionate. They’re not all equally skilled, so they’re really interested in learning about it and they have accepted me to be part of that process of leading that. So, I’m on our leadership committee with that and I get up and present. There is that state of like, “Well, that’s Beniy,” and they accept me for who I am and that’s given me a lot of confidence to be willing to share what I know. Because normally, I don’t always want to do that because you don’t want to, you can’t push people to do things. So, if they want to hear it, it’s there. And so, it’s important to have a community, I think, and speak to the people that want to hear it. And I think we have a great community that promotes that.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. I love that spirit of on one side it’s humility but then it’s also like, well, if people encourage you, you will share, and you get confidence from that but then it’s also potentially beneficial. And it’s a really, like in terms of growing as a professional, you at some point have to admit, “I don’t know how to do that,” and ask somebody who does.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah. When I started teaching, I did not think of myself as an artist. I was an art major, but I did not…

Wes Kriesel: What?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah. I was not, you know. I was like—look, I mean I was in a property management office for four years. I didn’t become an artist. And so, I did not have a lot of confidence. But, we have a musical theater program, and through that I was like, “I’ll help out with that.” I was single. I didn’t have, you know—working on sets. I was like, “Well, no one else wants to do it. I’ll do it, okay,” and then it turns out it worked and they liked it. I was like, “Whoa, you like it? That’s cool.” And that happens enough where you put something out there, and I’ve always been willing to say yes and try things even though I, you know, so trying things and then people are like, “Whoa, that’s really cool!” I start to feel good. So, teaching is, especially in my life at Golden Hill, has given me an immense amount of confidence. And that’s come from all the people that have been supportive and let me do things and try things which I never would have tried on my own.

Wes Kriesel: That’s awesome. I really think that that idea of saying yes is powerful, first. I mean, like, “Oh, they need someone to do this? Okay, I’ll do it,” and then you get positive feedback and it encourages you. So, I think just one of the things I just want to drop out there for people listening is like, what could you possibly say yes to that’s in front of you that people are asking for?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah. And right now our district is, I mean we’re doing this innovation and we have permission to innovate, and that has been immensely powerful. The reason I’m trying this like writing the song of the explorers thing and trying that out is because I have the clear message from our district, “You can try this and it’s okay if you fail,” and that’s like really powerful.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah.

Beniy Waisanen: And it’s hard to do. And I’m like, I feel some responsibility in leading at our school because I do have some background, although we have lots of teachers with different backgrounds in theater and music and different things and in art, in dance. But, I definitely feel a responsibility to try it, and I’m excited that I can share, “This is how I failed, but then this is how I succeeded,” and sharing that process because someone’s got to start, and we have lots of teachers starting. So, I’m really excited about watching that as we grow, go forward together.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. That’s really cool. Okay, I’m going to just mention a couple other things and ask for your reaction. Okay. Well, I don’t know if this statement is true, “You will never see him without a book in his hand.”

Beniy Waisanen: That’s true.

Wes Kriesel: I’m looking [00:32:48 at your arm] for a book.

Beniy Waisanen: It’s in my car.

Wes Kriesel: It’s in your car?

Beniy Waisanen: Walking up to recess or walking up to lunch, I’m always like, usually I’m like, “All right, I’m going to read a page or two.” Now, that’s not always true.

Wes Kriesel: Now, do you have a favorite genre or what’s?

Beniy Waisanen: Eclectic.

Wes Kriesel: Eclectic, okay.

Beniy Waisanen: So, I grew up reading Tolkien and fantasy. After I had my daughter—she’s now 11—I got this weird thing where I’m like my dad, I’m reading more nonfiction. So, I’m currently reading this book called Debt: A 5000-Year History. It’s like all about—I like to learn and like lots of things going on in our society and there’s lots of questions, so I’m trying to educate myself and learning about economics, which is not my strength, and history, which is not my strength though I love it. So, yeah, reading a lot of nonfiction these days and reading above my reading level, so a lot of challenging stuff. Every once in a while, I’m switching to mysteries or a good novel or something like that, too.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. Okay, so I’m going to end with this and it’s the controversial quote where Dolph says you’re not swayed by popular decision. Is that true or what do you make of that?

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am principled and wanting to follow what’s good for kids, what’s really good for kids. So, teaching is the art of trying to find out what’s good for kids and you got to keep all the things in play. You have to keep testing in mind, but you have to keep the fact that kids grow at different rates in mind. You have to hold those things in tension. So, what guides you has to be something that’s—so, my biggest thing to myself is working on being kind. I think I’m a kind person, but I’m also pretty tough, and so finding that balance. As I get older as a teacher, I’m better at classroom management, so I can be stricter sometimes because I know it works. But, sometimes you got to pull back, and so looking for those big ideas is the…

Wes Kriesel: Yeah. So, kind of having these values that you operate by and not just in-the-moment decisions, but it sounds kind of like a balanced approach.

Beniy Waisanen: Yeah. Yeah, how you decide when you have 15 different things pushing you in different directions. How do you decide what to do? You have to go to your core and what’s most important. That’s about people, about relationships, and trying to find that path.

Wes Kriesel: That’s awesome. Well, that’s a perfect note to wrap up on. We’re overtime, but it was awesome. So, I just want to say thank you.

Beniy Waisanen: Thank you for having me.

Wes Kriesel: Yeah.

Beniy Waisanen : I’m very honored to [00:35:25 unintelligible]

Outro: This has been the Teacher Interview Podcast. Thank you for joining us.

[00:35:39]