Episode 16: The Teacher as Punk Rocker with Nancy Barile
Melissa Milner 0:09
Hi, this is Melissa Milner. Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. The goal of this weekly podcast is to help you explore your passions and learn from others in education and beyond to better your teaching. The Teacher As... will highlight uncommon parallels to teaching, as well as share practical ideas for the classroom.
In this episode, I interview Nancy Barile, an accomplished educator at Revere High School in Revere, Mass. Nancy has won several teaching awards and has written articles for numerous publications, including Scholastic, Hey Teach, and EdWeek. She's contributed lesson plans on readwritethink.org as well, which is, I know, a website I love to use.
Nancy's book, I'm Not Holding Your Coat: A Bruises-And-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion, will be out this Fall. Check it out on www.bazillionpoints.com for updated info and a chance to pre-order. In this interview, Nancy shares her work with us and how her background and passion for punk music informs her teaching practice. Enjoy The Teacher As... Punk Rocker.
Welcome to The Teacher As..., Nancy Barile.
Nancy Barile 1:19
It's great to be here.
Melissa Milner 1:21
What do you want The Teacher As... listeners to know about you?
Nancy Barile 1:24
I guess that teachers come in a lot of different styles and variety. We come from many different backgrounds. And many times, our own backgrounds inform our practice. I think I would like to let people know that veteran teachers-- and I am a veteran teacher. I've been teaching now almost over 27 years. That we still have a lot to bring to the table, and that we are still energetic and enthusiastic about teaching.
Melissa Milner 1:57
Absolutely. We are always learning, and growing, and getting better. What's the proudest moment you've had in your career so far?
Nancy Barile 2:05
You know, I've been really blessed that I've had many proud moments. And you know, one of the things, too, that helps is social media enables us to keep in touch with our students after they graduate. And I don't accept friend requests from students while they're my students. But afterwards, they can, and I've kept in touch with many of them that have gone on to wonderful things.
One of my students was a girl named Leidra. This was in the late 90s when there was a lot of gang culture in Revere where I taught. And I actually lost a student to gang violence my first year of teaching. He was shot and killed not far from where I lived.
Melissa Milner 2:55
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
Nancy Barile 2:57
That was a really, really devastating thing to happen. And Leidra was one of my students at the time, and she was Cambodian. And also at the time, there was a lot of racism and prejudice at my school that she just did not feel welcome and happy in our school. And by her sophomore year, she ended up dropping out. And I was devastated, because she was really bright and super talented and artistic. And we kept in touch, and she would call me.
One time she called me and said, I want to go to-- at the time, there was a school called the Catherine Gibbs School on Newbury Street in Boston. And she thought she was going to study for a business degree. And she was just scared to go there and do the paperwork. And I went with her, and she was really bright. She'd bang through everything really easily.
And I got her an internship actually working in the business office at my school, and she was offered a full time job there. And they told me she turned it down, and I was kind of devastated that she turned it down. And she said, oh, I have to talk to you, I have to talk to you. And we met for dinner. And she said, well, I have to tell you something. And I was terrified of what she was going to tell me. And she told me that she did not want to be in the business world. She wanted to be a teacher. Would I support her? And I was like, oh my god, yes.
And she went on to get her Master's degree, first finish her Bachelor's degree at UMass Boston and then get her Master's at Salem State. And not only did she become a teacher, she became an incredible teacher, a special education teacher. And she just did so well, and she's a teacher to this day and one of my dearest friends, And so moments like that, especially when you see your former students become teachers, that was a really proud moment.
And I also had a student who was a Bosnian refugee who was also going to drop out. And I had seen him running track, and I told him, no, you're not going to drop out. And furthermore, I think you should run track. And a long story short, he turned out to be really, really fast. And he wasn't eligible, because he had a lot of F's on his report card for indoor track right when I told him to join track.
But we sat down with them, the coach and I, and we said, get your grades up. Your whole life could change. And he went on to become a state New England champion. He received a scholarship to Phillips Andover for a postgraduate year. He went to Wheaton College on basically a full scholarship. He studied international relations. He now works for the federal government.
And 10 years after he graduated, he nominated me for an award called the Kennedy Center Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award, where he had to write a 500 word essay. And he sent me the essay, and I was just blown away by his writing ability, which was pretty incredible. And I ended up winning and getting to do a lot of cool things, like be on the field at Fenway Park.
But it's just really, to me, the real joy of being a teacher is seeing what happens to your students afterwards, you know? And I've had plenty of students who I thought, I don't know what they're going to do when they get out of school. And even students that I've failed or failed my class come up to me in the gas station, and they're like, Barile, listen, this is what I'm doing now. And so, to me, that's the real joy is seeing the students go on to do great things.
Melissa Milner 6:45
It's amazing to hear you talk about not just how you inspire these students, but also the amazing diversity. I don't know if you're still doing that, but you get to teach great diverse kids.
Nancy Barile
Yes, that's always been one of the great things about teaching in Revere and one of the reasons I would never teach anywhere else. I mean, you name a country, we have a student from that country at our school. And it really makes the teaching experience exciting and vibrant and fun.
When I had that student from Bosnia, I didn't even know where Bosnia was. Bosnia was Yugoslavia when I was growing up and studying geography, you know? And so you know as well as I, we learn as much from our students, they teach us as much as we teach them.
Melissa Milner
Absolutely.
Nancy Barile 7:34
And that's always been the case, and I love learning from my students.
Melissa Milner 7:39
What parallels do you see-- first of all, we haven't even mentioned yet, you have a passion and a history with punk rock. What parallel do you see between punk rock and teaching?
Nancy Barile
Yeah, so the whole punk rock thing is funny, because I grew up on punk rock. I graduated high school in 1977, which was the huge year for punk rock. And then after I moved to downtown Philadelphia, I began promoting punk rock shows and managing bands and writing for fanzines. And I never really realized it until I started thinking about it, when people started asking, what makes you a good teacher? Or why do you think you do these things?
And when I really thought about it, and reflected upon it, and went deep, it was punk rock that made me kind of be able to, for example, connect with disenfranchised and marginalized teenagers, mainly because I was one and so were my friends. So it was easy to sort of-- I was a kid who sat in the back of the classroom, bored to tears, and just didn't feel a connection or empowerment from my school. And I think that helps me be able to reach my students.
It also gave me a really good do it yourself work ethic. I teach in a low income urban school. We do not have a lot of money. Back in the day, when we wanted to see bands that we loved, but we were too young to get into the venues where they were playing, we just rented Elk Centers and Knights of Columbus Halls and did our own shows, called bands from all over the world.
That's how I met my husband. I bought his album, and I called him to do a show in Philly. He was up here in Boston. So just kind of taking matters into our own hands and doing it yourself. I did shows with bands like Minor Threat and Black Flag. Now, when I look back, I think, we were kind of wild to do that. But that translates to my classroom when I'm knocking down walls to get resources for my students: books, field trips, bringing guest speakers, provide opportunities for them.
Because to me, one of the greatest things that a teacher does is provide opportunities for students. And that's all punk rock. A few years ago, one of my colleagues, we read the book A Long Way Gone, which is about a child soldier in Sierra Leone. And she wanted to bring the Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars to our school for an all school concert. And I was like, Erin, you're crazy. They were on Oprah. I don't think they're gonna come to the school.
And she kind of called me out. And she was like, well, you're do it yourself, let's try and do it. And she did. She got them to come to our school. It was one of the greatest moments, the entire student body in the gym, dancing to Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, playing this great world music. And it was one of the absolutely, probably the greatest moment of my teaching career, looking around and seeing everybody united in music.
So that do it yourself work ethic has really served me well as a teacher. So getting books, getting people, I've taken my students now to New York three times. And I just do Donors Choose, and I do GoFundMe. And you know who funds it? My old punk rock friends and my high school friends. And my students are able to go, my low income students. 80% of my students live at or below the poverty level, so they don't really have money for field trips. But we've been able to raise money and go on these fantastic field trips where we go the Empire State Building, and we see shows and exhibits, and it's really served me well over the years.
Melissa Milner
What a wonderful opportunity to be able to do that. And to have community help fund something like that is a powerful message, as well.
Nancy Barile
Yes, and one of the things that really warms my heart more than anything is that now almost all my projects, besides my punk rock friends, high school friends, so many of them are funded by former students paying it forward. Because they remember being able to have these opportunities when they were kids.
Melissa Milner
That's wonderful.
Nancy Barile
And I'm an English teacher, so punk rock also has taught me the power of the written word, taking a stand despite conflicting data and complicated politics or intense societal pressures, that power of the word to communicate anger and joy and to change the world. Now I see my students out there, fighting for Black Lives Matter and other causes. And I see their posts on Facebook and, oh god, my heart just swells up when I see them speaking out against things in this country that they don't approve of, and using the right to dissent and the right to protest. Man, that really makes me proud.
So all of that kind of came from punk rock. And also, punk rock made me fearless. Back then, the main antagonist to our lives as punk rockers were locals who didn't want us in their neighborhood or police, actually. So it made me kind of fearless, too, because I've been through riots, and I've had a bomb thrown at me. Back then it was just Tuesday night, things that I look back now, and I'm like, geez, that's crazy. But it made me sort of not scared.
So when kids say, like, oh, this or that, I'm like, well, I had bombs thrown at me. So like, bring it on. We can get by. We can get through this. We can get through anything. And I'm drawing on that now during pandemic times where I think, oh my god, is life ever gonna go back to normal? And I think, well, you lived through some crazy stuff already. So this, too, shall pass.
Melissa Milner
You'd think it's an uncommon parallel, but it really isn't. There's so much about punk rock. How about your act of booking bands?
Nancy Barile 14:09
Well, yeah, because back then, all your communication was done over the phone, very expensive phone calls, or through letters that you wrote. And so I often tell my students, if you know how to write well, I've gotten free tickets for the theater, for the opera. I had this wonderful woman down in Maryland who brought international opera to Boston all the time. And I just wrote her an email one time asking her if she had any extra tickets. Well, not only did she have extra tickets, she used to provide enough for me and one of my friends at a school in Lawrence.
But she eventually let my students design the program, publish essays in the program, create the artwork for the program, and appear as extras on the stage at her opera. The ability to be able to communicate well, which I learned very young when I was trying to get bands to play our shows and reach out to people from all around the world, that has really served me well. And also helping kids get scholarships and helping kids write college essays. And I often tell them, I did not know how to read and write effectively.
I had a student who, when he was in seventh grade, he was mauled by Rottweilers. I didn't know him, but I knew his sister. And he was in Mass General Hospital, very serious condition. And I kept seeing on his sister's Facebook that in every picture she posted, he had a Slipknot t-shirt on. I don't know if you noticed this, but they're a pretty heavy band.
So I reached out to my punk rock community, because I felt so badly for this kid. I was like, maybe Slipknot will do something for this kid. But I didn't know Slipknot. But I put it on my Facebook, and I said, does anybody know Slipknot? And some friend who used to roadie for one of my husband's bands contacted me. He said, I don't know Slipknot, but I know the guy who did the Warped Tour and the Mayhem Tour, and Slipknot played on those tours.
So 7:00 on a Sunday morning, I send an email to this guy, Jeff Lyman. And I tell him the story, and I put the 911 call. You can hear the kid screaming in the background being attacked by Rottweilers. It was really heavy. And I put the pictures of this adorable little kid with a Slipknot shirt on there. And within five minutes, the guy emailed me back and said, yeah, I'm sending this to Slipknot's management. This kid has backstage passes for the Warped Tour and the Mayhem Tour, if he's able to come. And then I called the kid's sister, and I was like, Slipknot is gonna call your brother. Clear that with your parents first, please.
And they ended up calling him on the phone, and talking to him for like 40 minutes, and sending him a big box of merchandise. And then when they played here, they gave him free tickets, which then, by that time, he was a freshman in high school. And he contacted me, and he was like, nobody will take me. Will you take me? And I was like, I don't think they're going to let me take a kid to a Slipknot concert. But he was still having a lot of operations on his head, especially because he had big chunks of skull taken out by these dogs.
They let me take him. I called my dear friend who's always up for an adventure, Jackie. And I said, you want to go see Slipknot and Korn? And so we went. We took him and his brother, and we had a great time. But we would never have been able to even negotiate any of that if we didn't use the power of words to help plead our case to the management and other people. So I tell the kids these stories so that they understand that it's not just about writing an essay. It's about communication effectively to get what you want.
Melissa Milner 18:15
I know a lot of teachers are using project-based learning and Genius Hour. And to be able to teach them a lesson like that, it doesn't hurt to ask. Nothing's going to happen if you ask and they say no. I just interviewed Matt Paxton from Hoarders. If I was all shy about it, I would never have Matt Paxton on The Teacher As... podcast. That's stepping up and taking the risk, then also having a persuasive way of doing it.
Nancy Barile 18:42
Right. It's all the rhetorical triangle, ethos, pathos, and logos. And that's what I tell my kids when they're like, I want a dog and my parents say no. And I was like, get out your rhetorical triangle. Let's figure out how we're going to do this.
Melissa Milner 18:56
Awesome. What are you zooming in on right now in your work?
[ZOOMING IN SOUNDBITE]
Nancy Barile 19:03
So I've written a book about my experiences living in Philadelphia, growing up as a Catholic school girl, discovering music, discovering punk rock, and then using that to do all kinds of fun things in Philadelphia, meeting my husband. And that's called I'm Not Holding Your Coat, and it's going to be out in the Fall. So I'm really, really excited about that.
And then the rest of my time is really spent trying to get my curriculum online, so that it is both exciting and engaging and also effective for students. Because I don't think any of us really know what's going to happen. And I want the learning experience, if it is going to be remotely, to be as exciting and challenging and fun as it is in person. So I'm lucky. I teach a class on film, I teach a class on the walking dead. Yeah, I teach a class in mysteries.
So I teach them really fun classes that I hope that I can get kids excited about online. That's my challenge right now. So I'm really kind of zooming in on that.
Melissa Milner 19:05
So do you have any ideas that you want to share with the listeners?
Nancy Barile
I'm still in very much the beginning stages of even things like Google Classroom. And so the thing that I was most successful about when we first went to shut down was creating assignments that students would have a personal connection to. So whenever I did anything, I always tried to create a personal connection in it. So if they were writing an essay, it was going to connect to their own lives.
And so that, I would say, when I started doing that, participation improved like 100%, when I started asking kids' opinions, and what they valued, and what was important to them, and what connections they made with certain movies and stuff. So that is definitely going to be my focus, to have a lot of that kind of thing in there. And sharing and the whole collaborative experience, I think, is really difficult to do over Zoom. So I'm gonna try to work on how to do that.
Melissa Milner
Yeah, we're new to Zoom, as well, in our district. And I know there's breakout rooms, so that could be interesting, yeah.
Nancy Barile 21:39
Yeah, you just reach a certain age, and you think, well, yes, I finally got this down. And then they're like, no, we have a shutdown and everything's going remote. And you're like, oh no.
Melissa Milner 21:51
I'm sure that your punk rock history, your punk rock experiences will make you very, very powerful online with students.
Nancy Barile 22:00
Yes, they certainly make you resilient if nothing else.
Melissa Milner 22:03
That's right.
Nancy Barile 22:04
We'll figure it out.
Melissa Milner 22:06
So what is your favorite movie, and why?
Nancy Barile 22:09
I've been thinking about this one for a long time, because I have many. I teach a film class, so I have many favorite movies. But the one that I think I'm going to talk about right now is a movie called Fatal Attraction starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. And so I've always loved this movie for so many reasons. I saw it in the theater in the 80s. First of all, Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Academy Award winning actors, really great.
It's set in New York. I love movies set in New York. And it's incredibly suspenseful and exciting. And I show a sanitized version of it in my film class. And what we do with it is we do a feminist criticism on it. We look at it as a rhetorical artifact, and we break it down.
Because, of course, you're easily manipulated. You want to hate Alex Forrest. Who's really at fault here, and what really happened? And we break it down where you can see that the message becomes the single working woman is vilified, and the stay at home mom is sanctified. And what kind of messages is the media sending to teenagers and viewers on a daily basis? And so there's so much in that movie.
And I'm telling you, because you can never watch it in one class period, when I push stop on that movie in the middle, kids are freaking out to the point where I don't tell them the name of the movie. Because I know they'll go home and watch it. I always make sure I start it before they say the name of the movie. Because they're like, no, you can't stop it now!
So it's great, because it's a great platform for learning as well. And looking at messages that-- teenagers especially are bombarded every day about gender and politics and race and everything else in the world. And so one of my kids said to me, I can't even read a stop sign after taking your class. I can't watch a commercial without thinking, what does this really mean? So, I'm like, yes, my job is done here.
Melissa Milner 24:31
Exactly. I love that. So how can people reach you, hear more about your work, about your book?
Nancy Barile 24:38
Okay, so I am on Instagram at @NancyBarile. That is my main focus for promoting my book. And I'm also on Twitter @NancyBarile as well. My email is nancy370@comcast.net. I'm always excited to hear from fellow educators, and I have Facebook, too. I've met quite a few fellow educators through Facebook.
And I also did mention that I write for a blog called Hey Teach that's on Twitter and Facebook. It's from WGU, Western Governors University, and we cover everything in there from classroom management to the pandemic. People can sign on. It's very, very helpful to teachers, especially new teachers. We try to cover everything that you'll come across in the classroom so that you can just go on there, look something up, and have some tools at your hands.
Melissa Milner 25:46
You have definitely inspired me, and I can't thank you enough for talking to me.
Nancy Barile 25:50
Yes, thank you for having me on. It was really fun.
Melissa Milner 25:54
If you enjoyed this episode, and have not done so already, please hit the subscribe button for The Teacher As... podcast so you can get future episodes. I would love for you to leave a review and a rating, as well, if you have time. For my blog, transcripts of this episode and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner. And I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates.
I am sending a special thanks to Linda and Lester Fleishman, my mom and dad, for being so supportive. They are the voices you hear in the Zooming In soundbite. And my dad composed and performed the background music you are listening to right now. My intro music was "Upbeat Party" by Scott Holmes.
So what are you zooming in on? I would love to hear from you. My hope is that we all share what we are doing in the classroom in order to teach, remind, affirm and inspire each other. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap!