Warren Smith
Appearances
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
in my mind, almost positive, kind of led that formation of what caused them to leave, and he ascended in power, became the only assistant principal, and his good buddy, who was 30 years old at the time, became the principal. Which is pretty young to be a principal. He was a very nice guy, though.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
For whatever reason, I got moved across the street into a separate building though, which I actually liked because it gave me more room to grow. And so the students would, when the teachers, I had all the students would rotate. The teachers would bring them across the street. I had this great lab, multimedia lab with a 3D printer. We were investing in new equipment, camera technology, Photoshop.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I had 11 iMacs. running Premiere Pro and Photoshop.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I think that it was really interesting to notice the difference. The students downstairs, behavioral versus physical challenges, the students upstairs were the ones that resonated the most. With Photoshop, video editing, there was an enthusiasm. So a student with autism, something about some of these skills, they just love, you get them going on video editing. That's very detail-oriented.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So it happened yesterday. I was fired from my full-time teaching position.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Yeah, and so I just loved working with those students, and I didn't get to do that until my last two years here. So, but it was the first two years with those other students, I still think I was making progress with them, like bringing in digital.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I had, as a teacher, you're not supposed to have favorites, but this, the student that I was probably the most fond of who ended up getting kicked out over something that, um, he was just a brilliant illustrator. He could draw just incredible and came from nothing and. Most of these kids, I think the core issue was just there was no parents. We would have open house and no one would show up.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Right. So they were on their own. Yeah. And that student in particular, I found something that resonated with him. We invested in like a Krita drawing tablet and he accelerated with that. But the problem came in the form I noticed when they would say, he's drawing illustrations of samurais in combat. What good is that going to do him?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
We want him to do projects that are relevant to the school, but then they would give me no criteria of, or set plans. There was no curriculum in place. I developed it all myself, which I wasn't, there's pros and cons to that. There's a lot of freedom to that, but the challenge is that it allows them to come in at their convenience if they- And who was they?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Leadership, which I never had an issue with. I never had an issue until I published that video.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I am absolutely surprised by this completely. I never expected this at all. This came out accidentally. We have interactions like this on a daily basis. This one just happened to be captured on camera.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Let's try and learn how to critically think. So let's analyze the tweet ourselves. So that statement, do you see anything problematic?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
If a woman says that, you know, saying that there's a difference between men and female and then being attacked as transphobic, I think that's what she's saying by attacking someone for stating that sex is real. That is exactly what she's saying. Is that transphobic to you?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Like you said at the beginning of this conversation, you said, given the fact that J.K. Rowling is transphobic, how do you feel about Harry Potter?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
no i feel like an idiot now it's okay though but this is why we do this to learn to learn how to think i discovered 2017 a video of a professor low quality video in this classroom that looked like mine you're standing from the classroom talking about archetypes of harry potter it was you and i was like that's cool and this is 2017. that was the first video i saw of you and i went down the rabbit hole cafe and all that classics but that
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And I said to my, I'm going to try this because I was teaching students about filmmaking and movies. And I was teaching a journalism class and I was like, this ties in directly. And I just, I loved this style. I was like, teaching is a performance. There's a performance art element to this because you have to be engaging to be able to stand in front of the classroom and get them engaged and
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
there's an artistic element to that that I'm not quite sure how to articulate that. It might not be right. No, you did. It's a performance. But that's what I saw in your video. So I went in, it was probably a few weeks later, and we have all the cameras. And I was teaching a student how to use it. I said, okay, now you know how to use the camera. Let's try and record this lecture.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I saw this thing on YouTube. And I essentially ran through archetypes in Harry Potter, and they loved it. And that video is on YouTube. People can watch it. No one watched it at the time. But it's up there and that's years ago, maybe five years ago. That's how it started.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So I started and I was like, this is a great, I agree with you that YouTube is a Gutenberg revolution that we cannot comprehend what it means. It is massive potential and it's exciting. So I fell in love with that aspect of it, started to, because there's teaching portfolios. Well, what better way, what better thing to have in a teaching portfolio than a recording of you actually teaching?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I have devoted four years of my life to this school and yesterday it was like being a character in a video game and just being deleted.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So they ask you to have artifacts, provide artifacts of your teaching. Here's a video of me teaching, beat that. It's like- So that was the thinking. And also in multimedia, we would do reviews of movies like The Queen's Gambit. It was just a way to get students to practice articulating themselves.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Public speaking, when you don't have a room full of people for them to practice in front of, a camera...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
is not a bad substitute because it allows them to watch it back hear their voice which at first no one likes it makes causes you to cringe it's very interesting response right right but you can learn so much from watching and those repetitions and doing it again and again and and they loved it some of the students just really loved it so to bring us to that video They asked me to do a newscast.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
They're like, we want to try a new idea. Can you do a newscast for the school once a week, which is what I was doing in that public school. But that was a legit newscast that would go out live to every classroom once a week on Friday. They had all this technology to do it. And they would upload everything to social media. That's why I have a Twitter.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
That was the only reason I even had a Twitter account at the time. That was the original school. The original school of public, I can even say that it was the Neshoba Regional High School in Massachusetts. So if you go to my Twitter feed, the very first, only first tweets, they're all just Neshoba student broadcast because, and the head of my department would ask me to just share them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I thought that was just normal.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Not too much. I mean, I would not, I would, it was more projects like the Queen's Gambit review and I had a colleague, the music teacher, had a passion for camera technology as well. And he was my closest collaborator because we were voc teachers, vocational teachers, meaning we worked with the whole building. We were the only ones that everyone else worked with just their sites.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
There was like a culinary teacher, landscaping, and they were always experimenting with the vocations, but music and multimedia always remained consistent. How big a school? Only downstairs, 50 students. Upstairs, about 50 students. Okay.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Well, the ratio was... You said it was three to one, about, eh? That's what they strive for, but they're constantly battling understaffing because teachers just vanish often.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I had been posting little things, just like I was mentioning, like reviews and things, but no one was watching them and no one cared. It wasn't, you know... And working with the music teacher, we would do the mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence in music, things which are still up there. So if you're curious to dig into that, you can, if anyone's watching this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
But to answer your question about how this video came about, so they asked me to do a news broadcast. We're not equipped to do that, but we tried anyways. And they're like, we want this kid to... to be the person on camera and just go through, this is what happened in the school this week. So we go in the room, we go to set it up and he's getting stage fright, camera shy.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
He's just, and I think it's very important in teaching to lead by example. So let's just treat, let's just do a warmup. I'll sit on camera, you operate it. Let's just have a conversation. Treat it like a podcast real quick. Let's do like a five minute warmup. Just ask me something that you wanna, that would interest you. Okay, he hits record. Alright, so how have your views on J.K.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Rowling changed given her bigoted opinions? Or how have your views on Harry Potter changed given J.K. Rowling's bigoted opinions? Well, first we need to address that and then just walk through it. And I thought, that's interesting. Maybe I'll try something new with this YouTube thing. I just uploaded it. I was like, that's interesting enough to post. I didn't think anyone would watch it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Well, first we need to address, is she bigoted? That's the glaring presupposition. Right, right. Right. So that constitutes a loaded question. Right. So what are you basing that upon? Well, you know, I've heard that she has tweets. Okay. Do you have any? I can show you the tweets if you want. Sure. Let's take a look. Dig some tweets out. We read the tweets. Okay. So do you find that?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
What about that is transphobic? Okay. And I don't remember the exact tweet. We clarify it. And then he goes, oh, but she did apologize as well for this other thing. There's this other piece of evidence. Okay, let's take a look. Same process. Then we, so I point out, okay, so there's really no much different. There's not much difference between you and her.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
You understand that she's stating that it's important to her, her experience as a woman. She has no issue with someone identifying how they want to identify, but that's not going to change. That shouldn't impact her experience and the reality that she's a woman and what that means in reality. No, I agree with that. Okay.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So now looking back at the beginning of this conversation, that claim you made when you call her bigoted, do you think that was a fair thing to say? No. Now I feel stupid. That's okay. That's why we do this. And often I would have interesting conversations when they arose, going back to the idea of, and there was some blowback about that, of why are you having conversations?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Your job is to teach students how to set up cameras and shoot videos and do photo editing and 3D printing and using this technology. But as we just pointed out, there's extreme, if the goal is to use this technology with students in the way that is going to most benefit them,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And there's so much utility in teaching students how to think, how to articulate themselves. And often they have questions about things in the world. I've had students ask me, what's a Republican versus a Democrat? And you're like, you're a senior in high school. We need to talk about it. And then we can kill two birds with one stone. And then we'll have stuff to edit.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And it's things that interest you. So if we're going to say, we need footage to edit, might as well make it interesting. And if we can make it, if we can talk about something that actually matters in the world and you can learn something from it, well, why not?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And you could just film music videos and things, but I... I see more utility. And if a student wants to discuss something like that, I see, you know, that was my reasoning behind it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So if you're watching, if a student is watching, they shoot a music video and they're watching themselves playback dancing and they're editing that, okay, but when you watch yourself speaking... debating or just... You're learning those oratory skills. You're getting over public speaking right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
There's more utility, I believe, than simply... There's nothing wrong if a student wants to do something like a music video. You could do something creative too, but even then it's got to have a point. Why not encapsulate as much as possible if our objective is to use what we have to help students as best we can?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Well, there's no way for me to know exactly. I think that in a, I think there's a, as you know, most things in life are far more complex than a singular explanation. I think that a lot of it was the virality itself. Given that we're a school where there are some loose practices, there's been things like the two principals just being removed.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
There was attacks of scandal a few years prior to my arrival.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
because we have the way grades are assigned often it's the site's sitting there it's like okay what's Jimmy gonna get in your class um give him like a 73 and there's no record there's no reasoning to it and that's literally how it occurs what so the why did they offer me nine thousand dollars to shut up or why to sign this and like why do you need an NDA it's so it's
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Well, public attention, it was that video that you're talking about. But the beginning, I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot because I've had time to reflect on it more. After that video, there was, it was a strange experience because suddenly you have one five minute video and suddenly you have this perceived value. but I mean, I was the exact same person as before that video.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And so, I often, yeah, you often, I wondered that sometimes. I'm like, why am I here? I mean, the health insurance is awful. It's like, pay is not... Why choose? That's why people leave. But there's a lot of good people there that aren't... It's not like this is the bottom of the barrel. Teachers that can't... There are some of those. It's like, dude, what are you doing?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Right, there'd be some of those, yes. But there are also many... good people that are doing it because there's something fulfilling about it that I miss, to be honest.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
17.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I don't think he was even accusing her. I think he was just repeating what he thought was reality.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
He genuinely believed that that was what the truth was. He thought that was reality. He articulates that. I've heard many classmates state this, so it must be true. In the same way, you hear this often. I just made a critique video with Barry Weiss doing this, I was a little hard on her, on Joe Rogan, and she's saying, it's the same pattern.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
She's applying this to Tulsi Gabbard, and he presses her on it slightly, and it dissolves. And we all are capable of doing, we all do do this in our lives. I'm not above it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Now, I mean, it was not, for me, it was life-changing though. So I have people, some people wanting to talk to me, which was people that I have genuinely admired. Like, I mean, this is a bit kind of the, Dave Rubin, just opportunities that I never just, never expected.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
There was one edit when he takes out his phone because he's looking for the tweet for a few, maybe a minute. And so I cut that out. and uploaded it to my YouTube channel that I had been uploading everything in the past.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It started getting a few views, and then it got 30. 13,000 views the music teacher I was telling you about who had been on this journey with me in a way we were exploring this technology even making videos where there was no students on our free time like the Fibonacci sequence in music was just two of us uh-huh He texts me. He says he's got 13,000 views. Oh, for me, that's... Whoa.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And over what period of time? Maybe... This is probably like a week.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Two weeks. Okay. Okay, right. That afternoon... You get a text from my brother and he says, Elon Musk tweeted a video of you. Oh yeah. There's the kiss of death. Ha ha ha. Right. And I didn't, I hadn't opened my Twitter account since that Neshoba school. So I couldn't log in. I didn't have my password and figure it out. And I was like, let me, oh, whoa. Okay. That was then two days later.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Well, then I go to school the next day. Don't say a word. I'm like, I'm just going to not say anything. Maybe no one saw it. You know, I don't really comprehend what's going on with it. When you're in it, it doesn't. Principal calls me in his office. He's like, yeah, not talking about it is not going to work. Like, everybody's seen the video. He was on the fence of how to feel about it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
He was obviously worried, as anyone would be, about his responsibilities in getting in trouble with the higher-ups. Is this against the policy? We have releases. I have the releases where there's no student on camera. We have an audio release.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And so I've been reflecting on those conversations because I often, I found myself kind of feeling like I was trying to live up to something from that video. So this idea of what suddenly I was labeled this kind of like this critical thinking Socratic method guy. And I wasn't intentionally doing that at all. I have no background in Socratic method or critical thinking.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I've been doing this for a while. But this is different. And I think it's totally understandable to be a little shocked. We're in new territory here. Yeah, right. Pierce Morgan's team reaches out. Would you like to come on Pierce Morgan tomorrow? Uh-huh. Well, I'm at a crossroads. It's like... Do I run with this as far as... There's two options.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Let it pass over, go back to my life, or I recognize... Maybe, maybe go back to your life. Or I recognize that this is a once in a lifetime. Potentially, I don't know what it means, where it could go. But it could be an opportunity. There's only one way to find out, and that's to run with it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Well, if I say, I know this much from my life and regret, if I say no to this going on Pierce Morgan, which could go badly, I might regret this, but I know I will regret it forever.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Because I have regretted things in my life before. I know that regret, it's worse to try something and to fail in the pursuit of that. I would rather try and run with this ball as far as I can, take it as far as I can till I get tackled. than to refuse to pick it up.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Original plan was movies. All I wanted to do growing up was make movies. There was nothing more exciting than seeing people be able to alter time and space. It's like they were using the fabric of reality to create worlds which... are real when you're watching it. You've explored this idea. And what else, the logical course of action, what else would I possibly want to do than that?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
There was nothing more exciting. And I was undergrad, one of the top film schools in the country, UNC School of the Arts. And I excelled and I was nailing these opportunities. And I was like, it kind of got to my head. I got short film after short film. Suddenly it's,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I was just doing what I thought was sensible in the moment.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
in a pattern that had not going to LA, like writing and producing a feature film right out of the gate, using that momentum with this team of like the students that have come together and become this like pirate band almost that had moved from, and we raised $25,000 to make this feature film. And as we're gonna,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
camp out and everyone's going to work for free and film it on the farm where I grew up so we can get all the locations for free. And it would cost at least a half a million dollars in production value if you were to do a one-on-one comparison because everyone's working for free. And it... I feel like I blew it a lot. I feel like I blew a lot of opportunities.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And I'm trying to think of any specifics, but in general, I did come to the realization that LA is not somewhere... LA is not where I want to live. Hollywood is not a game in which I want to participate for the long term. So I knew I wanted to get out of that. I didn't know what I would do. I went freelance videography and eventually graduate school. So it took me to graduate school and I left LA.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
But those students, the colleagues, the friends... Making a movie is challenging. There's a lot of... It presses relationships. It's a deeper idea of why that is. Because often I think there's some people are subconsciously just want it to be over. Because when you're making a movie, it takes like a year.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And then you have the editor and he's editing for, you know, that's the part that takes a year. The production itself, a month or two or whatnot. But then it's just like, this has to be over and there's so much pressure. And then that causes people to kind of dissolve under the pressure. And it's like, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
We're never going to have all these people come together and work for free.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It was just me for a 15-minute interview. Okay. End of a segment. Yeah. This is very... So I'm in Massachusetts in this little town in the woods. I didn't know what to expect. I was like, is a crew coming? Like, what's going on? A guy in a van pulls up to my house. Oh, yeah, you hadn't talked directly to the camera, did you? He's like, here, I'm going to mic you up. I don't know what's going on.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
No instructions. He's like, I jump in the back of a van right after school. So I'm at school talking to the music teacher. I'm like, dude, they want me to go on Piers Morgan. Do you think I'll get in trouble if I do this?" And he's like, you got to do it. And I'm like, I got to do it. Right, right. And I said the same thing I said to you.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And he said, just don't, it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission is because I knew that if I were to ask for permission and they were to say no, I'd be in a predicament now. Right. I'm not going to turn that down because I know what that feeling would be.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So after graduate school, I found myself as a public school teacher right up before COVID, the year leading into COVID, just teaching what I majored in. And my plans are always to be a college professor. And I teach some courses, but I'm not tenure track or anything. And perhaps one day I... But...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Yeah, right. The pain of regret is a unique form of pain.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
The door opened. That's what I was trying to put my finger on earlier. And I had no one to blame but myself on how it turned out. That's seriously annoying. And that's what eats you.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
That ties directly into what happened on Piers Morgan. Okay. So 15 minutes, and he asked the usual questions you'd expect. How was he with you? He was really nice. He was very...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I found myself in this unlikely position, and I enjoyed it, teaching the same subject matter, video technology, what we're doing right here. Two high school kids. Two high school kids.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
be inviting to begin with so that worked out well okay so and he asked the question the last question was interesting it's the one that stands out in my mind and he is in all your hair because he watched the video he was producers someone went to the youtube channel in the research and i was like give me something to they found the me talking about archetypes in harry potter
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Ah, that I got from you.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And he goes, so he thought I was some Harry Potter scholar or something. He goes, so given all your Harry Potter studies, what would the best piece of life advice be? And from all your Harry Potter studies. I used to voluntarily enter the unknown. Which is what you were just talking about. It might be the unknown beneath the surface of Hogwarts.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It might be facing the serpent that can turn you to stone when you see it. Like fear. But you must do so voluntarily in order to save Ginny. And it's the voluntary aspect of that that is... which is just classic. Everyone echoes that. They're like, okay.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
But it's true.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
The next day I go back into school, they call me back into the principal's office and they say, dude, you went on Piers Morgan. Like, can you at least check in with us before you do Piers Morgan? Those exact words.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Can you at least check with us? But what you just articulated was masterful. And that's the best logical read that you could provide on that situation, I think.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
There's no benefit to them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Yeah, and he knows about it almost. They insinuate that he knows what they're doing the entire time.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
just by pure kind of just chance. And I really enjoyed it. COVID hits, everything goes ape crazy. The school shuts down. They make cuts because of the teacher's union. All first year hires are gone. So that kind of left a taste in my mouth about unions. One of my first experiences with unions.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Oh, there was. Oh, good. There was that. Well, the assistant principal who ascended and led that whole coup, there was something different about his response. But the principal, the 30-year-old principal, who was always very helpful to me and helping me to get... You know, like, Warren, you should get your license in phonetics, and you can have this new special ed license my first year.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
He was kind of this... a guiding hand before he suddenly had this power. And there was that at the end, and he was like, I would have done the same thing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And he said, I need to run this up the flagpole. I'm going to need to call. This is just getting... I don't know how to respond to this. Pierce, Maury, I don't know what to... This isn't in the playbook. Yeah, right. So they arranged for a meeting with the executive director and her team of lawyers. There's a board that runs this school. She... Answers to them, I guess. She's never present.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
She used to kind of have her office over near mine, but I hadn't seen her at all this past year. She just said... And so she... There was a meeting with her. Yeah. I went into a room with that principal, the one who... And it was a Zoom call. I think... No, it was just audio. And her lawyers were sitting next to her and they just said, well, technically you didn't break any rules, so you're...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
congratulations, good luck to you. I hope you don't make a mistake. I need to lose you. And I thought, fair enough. I'll take responsibility for anything I say and do. And me and that music teacher were like... home free, but that's... It felt like that should be the response.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And so I started looking for another job and I found a school that specialized in kids with behavioral challenges. And this is kind of what I was alluding to at the beginning. There are things that I've not, I've wanted to talk about in these kinds of interviews that happen or when someone wants to discuss this, they want to discuss the video.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So you said something interesting about, and I agree, that the university, the dean has narrated in your own home what you do with YouTube. How does that correlate to the dean's business or the university's business? What's interesting is that when you go into the handbook, which after all this occurred, I went and kind of poked into, it's written that they have every involvement.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
this school into whatever a teacher says politically on social media if they say and there's no clear objective definition of what where that line of course of course so they just reserve to themselves the right yeah the college of psychologists has basically done exactly the same thing and
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So they could have actually gone after you. Oh, yeah. It was a unique contract to begin with. And I remember signing that when I first agreed on to that school. It said you could be fired for any reason, no reason, at any time. Yeah. And that's not a reality at your average high school. So that stood out to me. I thought, interesting. Okay. Well, this is a new world.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And I find myself, cause you've spoken about when you feel your words, making you not what you could be or weaker. You can feel it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
If things were different, No one ever spoke to me about it again, the video or I was continued to make YouTube videos is what I should point.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Now that I had this, I'm still doing the YouTube channel and it's, it's grown. It's not, so it wasn't like it was now and it's not huge, but it's, It was decent. Yeah. It was fun, most importantly. It was me and the music teacher. We were like, okay, we have this opportunity. He didn't want any part of it. It was his personality type.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
If you had offered him the chance to swap places with me, I really think he would have declined it. It's just too much.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
There's a lot that comes with that. Mm-hmm. You're in the unknown, and it's on you when you're entering this. But every Friday after school, we set up a little studio downstairs in my house, and every Friday after school, we would just sit down, record something, talk about whatever we wanted to talk about for an hour, and then edit it in an hour and post it. Mm-hmm.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So that's the voice you hear in those early, if you ever look at those videos, that's the voice you hear off camera. And he didn't want to show his face, which is understandable. Mm-hmm. And all those perspectives in there are his genuine perspectives, and he's very liberal. So it was interesting. It was an interesting dynamic.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It was like this classic... It was so stereotypical, people thought it was fake. They were like, this is a clearly staged, which I take as a compliment. It's like, really, you think the only way we could achieve this outcome would be to script it? Well, that means we're doing something right. So we were making these, and things just at the school...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I decided that I would start practicing not saying things that would make me weak. And what happened was that I had to stop saying almost everything that I was saying.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I noticed I stopped being invited to certain things. There was like a wedding I wasn't invited to. My whole Site One team was. Everyone goes out for drinks on Friday. There's the bar nearby.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
That's a good point.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
That's how it felt, yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And that's how it felt. You practiced with that, have you? To say that you had an impact on my life, which is why this is surreal, to say you had an impact on my life would be an understatement. And we can get into that if you'd like. That was in graduate school. Okay. but I was feeling that in those conversations, trying to live up to something in a way.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It was interesting because this opportunity came along where I was presented with the decision, do I leave the herd, go into the unknown on this journey and see where it takes me, or do I go back to the safety path?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I think that the staff went to great lengths to insulate the students. That student that was the voice in the video, he loved it. He was aware of it. And I went in that meeting with the lawyers. I was like, look, so-and-so, I'd be happy to talk to his... I think he's going to be fine with it. No one expected this, but he's a good kid. They were like, no, we don't want you anywhere near this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
We'll talk to the parents. And the parents were fine with it. He already had the releases. It was...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So long story short, a few months later, I had another conversation with that student around communism.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
we were continuously doing what we had always been doing with the video production but i was feeling more and more like i gotta be careful and the music teacher was telling me he's like look man i you got it you've got a lot of eyes on you and it made logical sense that they would they were that they were looking for any slip up anything that i i got the sense that they wanted
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It would have been easier to get rid of me when that video came out. But there was so much attention around it that it would have put them at risk to do so. Right. I'm not saying that there was a plan to wait and let that blow over and then... But I think they needed it good enough. I thought they were just not going to renew my contract over the summer, which is usually what they do.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It's very common. And you thought that might happen? I thought with 90% certainty that that's what would happen. It would make sense. As you said, it would be the logical thing to do. It's in their best interest. There's no good to having one of your teachers out there with a growing audience, small but growing audience, saying certain things or examining certain ideas.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
There's no benefit to that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I mean, it was, you're kind of saying that what people want to hear not trying to sound intelligent, but something like that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
That would require them to go public, though, which they were not going to do. They don't want that spotlight. That would require people to know what the name is.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So I did see huge potential in that. Suddenly the students, but there's a lot of potential downside and risk to this too. And the students suddenly have the ability to create content that can reach a large audience. I mean, I haven't thought this out in a clear plan, but it was an opportunity.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And I never expected anything like this to happen, but I did tell myself, if I ever, by some miracle, had the chance to speak to you, I would allow myself permission to allow my words to have that vulnerability and to go to that place that I have not allowed myself to go to because I think there is value there. But the reason I bring that, because that is kind of,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
If this had occurred at that first high school, Neshoba, we were already putting things on Twitter.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
They would have, I remember the head of my department, we would have, who knows what we could have done with this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I need to run with this opportunity, grow if I can with this platform in case something happens. It seems like that's a really bad, logically, that sounds like a really bad backup plan. I'm going to make a YouTube channel, but it is something and it's, again, I would have been a fool not to run with that ball as far as I could take it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It's like suddenly, I mean, who knows what I could do with this? Right. So, but to put a button on this, what happened? I uploaded, I did the same thing. I uploaded a video with a different student who hadn't seen that video. And I thought... because it was just from another conversation, but it was identical. The pattern was so identical. I thought, this might be worth sharing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
It's identical to the last one, so what could go wrong? He was a new student, so I was like, we need to get permission from your parents if you want to have, after it was done. I was like, look, we could upload this. It's identical. I need permission from your parents, like written confirmation. I need your permission because you're new, so we don't have the releases.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And so I got that, uploaded, told the music teacher, and he was like, You know, just because we've been going back and forth on what to do with the channel because we knew people wanted that kind of, you know, that's what the audience wanted to see real students. Yeah, right. But I was, and I had toyed with it. I alluded to the communist conversation with that other student.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And so I had posted that previously. Two weeks go by. In the middle of the day, I get calls into a meeting and they say, we've decided to part ways. Because you uploaded a video to YouTube against policy. We told you not to do that. I said, you told me not to do that? You congratulated me. I was like, how was it okay the first time?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I could tell, though, when I walked in the room, their mind was already made up. It didn't matter what I said, so I didn't really say much. And I said, are you alluding to this student? I spoke to the parents. And I said, have you spoken to his parents? Yeah. And they said... no, we're happy to do an investigation and reach out to him if that's what you'd like, or you can just agree to leave now.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And they said, could you check with his parents? Like, it seems like a factor to take in. So I said, for sure, we'll just do the investigation. You know, there's like, okay, go home and HR will be in touch in three days. But I couldn't touch anything. They took my computer, everything. I was like escorted like a criminal out.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I've never spoken about the reality of the school where I was teaching. Yeah, okay. Let's go down that path. So these are kids with behavioral challenges that other schools could not handle. So they put them all together. It's a last line of defense, sort of. So they're specialized. It's funded through... public school system.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Yeah, yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So a student is so challenging, it could be for any reason, some are involved with gangs, substance abuse challenges, some are bullies, some are the bullied. For whatever reason, that school can't, they're just not equipped. They pay, I think it's $50,000 a head, something along those lines, to send them to this school, which is governed by a board and an executive director. And here I am.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
No.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I interviewed well. I'm going to strive to be as honest as I can throughout this. So I interviewed well. I think they saw potential. They were... I think they were looking for young teachers that could weather that kind of storm. Were they mostly boys in the school?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
High school age, whether there are some middle school. It was interesting the way the building is divided to where a subset of middle school specialized with one group. But because of COVID, it was divided up into pods because they were worried about cross-contamination of COVID. So there was 10 students approximately to one site.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And I was assigned to one site as the multimedia teacher, teaching the same thing I've always taught. And there was no crossover. And then there was three teachers assigned to one site to manage those 10 students, which ratio of teacher to student is quite high. That's what their needs were. How long did you teach at that school? Up until losing my job, so four years. Four years.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Okay, so you stuck it out too. Well, I remember when the first speech they gave, the principal that hired me, I'm very fond of, and the assistant principal, they are no longer there. They were dismissed a year prior to me, but they are the ones that hired me. So when you ask why they hire you, he's the only person that could answer that. I remember I was in the interview.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And this assistant principal walks in and he's like dressed, there was really no dress code. And he walks in and he's like, blow my mind in eight seconds. And then I forget what I said. And then he just walked out and didn't say a single word. And I left thinking, I just blew that interview, but I got the job.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So anyways, we're there on the first day and he's like, look guys, if you're still teaching at this school in four years, Something's probably wrong with you, or you have some sadomasochistic, or you just have some, I think he was alluding to, there's some reason you have that, like, this is not your typical pathway for educators. He's trying to...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
illustrate the reality that most times they get traditional educators that realize where they are and it's too late at that point and then they just vanish and they're like i mean they last a week if that we've had teachers come in and last a day one day and just get in their car and leave what happens to them they just they're like this is chaos this is I can't survive this for a year.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
We were walking around with walkie-talkies so that you can respond quickly. We're trained in safety care so that you can go hands-on if needed. I mean, fights breaking out. It's not juvie, but it's one step away from juvie. Though you also have students that are not headed to juvie, but they're the ones that get bullied. Or for whatever reason, they have an IEP plan that... And what's that?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
An individualized education plan. Yeah. I have dyslexia, though some students would have dyslexia to a degree where they need... It was a special education school, and it's designed so that we can accommodate...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
everything right so and so the students that are hyper aggressive are put in one so there's going to be flaws to this logically are put in one um like quadrant one site they were divided into sites one two three four whatnot so that there's no you can't put the bullies with the bullied right but then you have hyper aggressive people yeah a lot of fights right that's the site i was on
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So it changed, the landscape transformed.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Those first two years were the most chaotic, perhaps that had something to do with COVID. So I arrived during COVID, suddenly there's a kind of an outbreak at the school. I remember driving into the parking lot one morning, half the staff are coming out of the parking lot, getting into the cars, and they're like, they're telling us to leave.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
So I'm on site one for whatever reason, all the teachers were sent home on site one, except me. Now there was no students in the building though, for three or four weeks, this went on. And so I was teaching remotely in my classroom, on my computer. And I kind of expanded the curriculum to like help. They needed me to fill in with other things. I remember that distinctly.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And so then we get through that. That might have happened. It was like every few months there was an outbreak on this site and they're gone. And so, you know, and you can't walk through these doors for contamination and COVID ends.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And over the course of the next two years, it changed because originally multimedia, I was able to grow the program to where I was able to work with the entire building. It was no longer just limited to one site, which was remarkable because in Upstairs, they have students with severe physical challenges. Down syndrome, challenges such as that. And that requires a completely different specialty.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Let's try and learn how to critically think. So let's analyze the tweet ourselves. So that statement, do you see anything problematic?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
No doubt. And a different type of staff and professionalism even, because you can't afford a mistake. It's life or death. And I began to work with those students as well. And you're always going to have inner politics, office place politics and whatnot and certain clicks form. And I mentioned the principal and assistant principal both just got fired in the middle of the day, same day.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
And they put out a reason, you know, they're like, oh, they just, they keep it vague. And it was clearly, it was kind of a, in the first year, the school tried to unionize. There was a movement to unionize. And that principal that hired me was very against it. And I voted against it because my previous experience with the unions was starting to wake up to the reality of the drawbacks.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
I understand the motivation behind unions, but. So there was, my point is that interplay is politics and it took them out. but I was able to, this new principal arose who was a very nice guy. There was originally two assistant principals and one was the kind of the guy who