Understanding the Riots from a Human Development Perspective with Mr. Chazz, MPA

Meet Mr. Chazz

Today we have a special guest, Mr. Chazz joining us. A couple of weeks ago, I was going through TikTok and I discovered Mr. Chazz on there.

I was just going through video after video after video and I was so impressed with his content. It lines up with what I teach here. All behaviors' communication, understanding tantrums from a different perspective, connection-seeking behaviors instead of attention-seeking behaviors. I was just like yes, yes, yes. Also, it is kind of a rarity to find a male early educator. 

Personally, I worked with some males when I was a pre-school teacher and they were some of my very favorite teachers. They just understood the kids, they could do rough and tough play without feeling like it was like, you know abuse. They were so fun to work with that I loved it. So, I like saw you, I am like, the male teacher, he has got all of this content on point. So I figured you would be an amazing addition to the podcast and blog. 

So I reached out, asked if you come on my podcast, you obviously said yes, here you are and I have you scheduled. Originally I didn't tell you this but I have you scheduled for my 12th episode which is in August. Then, something has changed in the country.

George Floyd was murdered and you started doing some videos on the rioting, on how to understand these things from a human development perspective. I just knew that it was so much more urgent for me to hear from you and for my podcast to hear from you. So I change things around and unscheduled all this stuff and I said, you know what, whether you are a parent or teacher, it is time to hear from Mr. Chazz, your perspective.

I am just really excited to learn myself.

Okay, so a couple of things you need to know about this man.

First of all, this is why I think his TikToks are so dang good. He was a spoken word artist in college. That is so cool. If you do not know what spoken word is, go YouTube it because it is one of the coolest forms of art.

He has a Master's in Executive Leadership and his first teaching experience was a Montessori class of 30 3 to 5-year-olds. I have had a class of 30 3 to 5-year-olds, and I know how difficult that can be, especially when it is your first class. Holy cow! Then the last thing I am going to say before he jumps in and introduced himself is that he, before this pandemic, started teaching music with over a hundred kids every Friday ranging from 0 to 6. So, that is pretty awesome. I love it. So tell us a little bit more about you.

His Longer Introduction

Okay. So I will start it off by saying just what my purpose in life is. My purpose in life is to enjoy the process of becoming the best person of myself and help others do the same. So everything that I really try to do in my professional and personal life, is dedicated to self-growth and also the growth of others. I will be the first one to admit that I still have a lot of learning and growing to do.

I work in nine different schools and pretty much what I do is I do training.  A lot of the training I do is orientation training. It bringing teachers into our program which is understanding our philosophy. I am really passionate about that because I struggled so much when I first became a teacher because I did not know what to do. But as you know, when I learn better and I found mentors and through the reflection process, I grew so much more to the point people were asking me for advice. I was already so inspired by the fact that I was growing a community of little humans in my own classroom and growing and developing them in their formative years. But it was even more inspiring to me to know that I could have an impact and not just in my community of little humans but a bunch of community of little humans and adult humans.

I have been in this position as an educational specialist for four years. When I first got into the position, my first thing was I need to connect with as many people as possible- the little humans, the children, and the adults.

Let us talk about how we can look at what happened in Minneapolis from its human development perspective.

So when we talk about this, I think it is... There are so many facets to this conversation and what I really love to do, what I am training when I am coaching, I love to kind of relate the challenges that you know children are having to the challenges that adults have. We go through a lot of the very same challenges. We all have emotions and our emotions are our drivers, right.

Everyone on this planet is trying to meet their needs, right? There are varying needs and depending on who you talk to, some people say that they can categorize all the needs and fix needs of certainty and variety.

But really, the need in terms of this specific conversation, the need that people have been feeling and that may have been a result of the things that are happening right now is that need for safety and security.

Everyone needs to feel safe and secure.

Adults and children like humans need to feel safe and secure. When we talk about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, that is the very foundation. When people do not feel safe and people's needs are not met, they are going to do what they can to meet those needs, especially if it is one of those survival needs.

So I think that is what is happening here when we see things like the looting and the rioting that is happening. I am not condoning rioting. I am not condoning looting.

What I am saying is when people are trying to meet their needs verbally through protests, through kneeling, through peaceful ways and they are ignored, just as a parent or a teacher when you have ignored your child's needs, their classrooms' needs, especially if it is the need for connection or the need for safety, a lot of times there is a physical response to meet their needs.

So let me kind of break it. Let me kind of relate it to as a parent.

Imagine you have your baby and a stranger picks up your baby, has your baby at the park, whatever. They have your baby. Now, you are probably going to start to feel a little uncertain because it is a stranger, you do not necessarily trust them.

That sense of safety can extend to other people that you care about and love about. You want your child to feel safe and you do not feel safe with that stranger holding your child because you do not know them. The first thing you may try to do is say hey, can I have my baby back? Can I hold my baby?

You are going to try and various ways to probably verbally and maybe not. Maybe you might go to the physical first, but more than likely you are going to try to verbally get your baby back. That does not work or that stranger is ignoring you, then what are you going to do next? You are probably going to start reaching for your baby. You are going to do something physical to try to get your baby back, to try to re-establish that need for the safety of your child, your baby.

That is the way that a lot of people are feeling that when they are seeing people that they feel they can relate to like that person looks like me being murdered and over and over and over again. A lot of times when we talk about this, we only talked about it in isolated incidents. When honestly, for people who understand the history and have also gone through the court experience and seeing the media, we understand that this is something that has been going on for centuries, right?

When we talk about the relationship, this can get to a whole ‘nother conversation about power which I think is something that is very valuable to learn as a teacher or as a parent.

Because even as teachers and parents, our natural inclination is to try to have as much power as we can, and sometimes we do not feel comfortable if we do not have enough power in a situation.

But I am of the school thought that we should give... when people do not have a lot of power, and this can go for anyone.

I did recently watch a documentary called 13TH. It is on Netflix. If you do not understand it, you are hearing... I am hearing a lot about systemic racism and oppression but I do not quite understand it, I do not quite see it. I understand that it is happening. I believe it but I do not quite understand it. I think 13TH is a good documentary. I think that is a good idea to kind of start off to look to get a better understanding of it.

To kind of wrap it all up, when people do verbally express themselves and they feel ignored or dismissed, the natural reaction is to go to a physical means.

That is understanding the problem.

What can we do as parents, as teachers, in the future to make that world a better place to where maybe the riots are happening less often. There are other means of people's voices being heard. I think about it, it is just two sides, right?

You know one side will talk. For a voice to be heard, someone has to be listening.

What we can do as teachers and as parents are that we can listen to our children, are the next generation, and people in general. This does not just extend to children. Since a human to listen to each other, because part of how children are going to learn is by seeing it us, as adults, modeling it, right? So they see us listening to each other, having civil discourse, us really empathizing and even maybe sometimes changing our mind from the things that we hear, from listening to someone.

It is okay to change your mind, modeling that as parents and teachers but also, modeling with your child, allowing your child to disagree with you, you know. The common thing that we say as parents and teachers is because I said so.

We expect children to blindly obey and just be yes kids to everything that we say and to listen to us. But then at some point, you want them to be adults, too.

We want them to be able to speak truth to power and actually stand up for what is right, but they do not have a lot of practice in their younger years of doing that.

So they are going to be more likely to go to the physical response a lot sooner, right? As opposed to trying to find more creative ways to create because a part of the utility of the riot and the looting is that it has created a shock factor, right?

When we are shocked, then people are paying attention.

To put it, what a parent would see or a teacher would see in a classroom

When a child wants attention, maybe they are doing attention-seeking behaviors. We reveal these connection-seeking behaviors. Maybe the first thing does not work but they realized, okay if I ask later, if I do something really shocking than that is what is going to work. So that is kind of what happened. I know, I think would we even be having this conversation if the protests were just peaceful if they worth right when there has been as much media coverage over it. Because this is something.

George Floyd is not an isolated incident. This is not something new. This is not something different. The biggest difference in what I see in George Floyd as opposed to you know. One, any time where you can see a video or you see any kind of medium of technology when you see it, it has a little bit more bits or has a little bit more of an impact which is kind of talks to the other point that I am going to talk about is how we stop it.

Anytime you see it, and also in combination with the riots, with the looting, it caused us to pay attention. It caused more people to maybe do a little more research, to maybe try to understand, maybe to create dialogue or conversation to where maybe progress happens.

I hope this perspective can bring you some of the clarity and understanding that it brought me. I think his voice is respectful and clear… and I am grateful for the Black voices that are educating me and helping me do BETTER. I feel like I’m finally understanding and WANTING to actively do my part.