Professionalism
The February 2025 Mailbag: Custodian Scares, Best Shoes, and Unreasonable Requests (Ep. 453)
February 4, 2025
Amanda Heyn joined Tim in Chicago to record this mailbag episode as they were preparing for the NOW Conference. As always, they take listener questions and share some of their best advice. Tim starts with stories about his favorite custodian before the conversation moves to how we can help our students experiment and how we can deal with all of the requests that come our way. Finally, they wrap up with some advice on the best (and most colorful!) shoes when you are teaching art on your feet all day. Full episode transcript below.
Resources and Links
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- Join the Art of Ed Community
- Art Lessons Inspired by Jim Dine
- Top 5 Hearts from the Tate Museum
- Art of Ed Community: The Best Shoes for Art Teachers
- Are you ready for the next NOW Conference in August?
Transcript
Tim:
Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for our teachers. The show is produced by The Art of Education, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. All right, welcome everyone to the February Mailbag. Amanda Hine is here with me. Amanda, how are you?
Amanda:
I’m so good, how are you?
Tim:
Doing great. Stress levels are getting up there at the moment. Just so everybody knows, we are recording this on Friday morning and we have the now conference starting in, I don’t know, a number of hours.
Amanda:
We are hours away.
Tim:
Soon as we record this, but we’ve been talking on this podcast for the last month about the now conference, so I assume everybody knows about it. By the time you listen, it will have passed, so we don’t need to spend too much time.
Amanda:
But you can sign up for the next one.
Tim:
That’s a good point.
Amanda:
We’ll link it in the show notes. There’s an early bird, a super early bird discount going on in the future.
Tim:
You save a lot of money, so you can come to the next one. We do them twice a year, they’re great, they’re a lot of fun. So we’re having a great time in Chicago. And while we are together setting up for the conference, we decided to do the Mailbag. And so for those of you who don’t know, I am Tim Bogatz, former high school art teacher, did a little bit of elementary art too, but a lot of high school and then now I work for the Art of Ed doing conferences twice a year and doing podcasts every single week. So Amanda, can you introduce yourself for new listeners?
Amanda:
Yeah. Hi, I am Amanda Hine. I’m a former elementary art teacher, and I also obviously work for the Art of Ed, and I’m the director of community engagement. So I oversee the conference and all of our media offerings and the Art of Ed community, which as I say every Mailbag, if you’re not there, why? You should come join us, you can go to community.theartofeducation.edu, it’s free to join and you should come hang out.
Tim:
Yeah. And speaking of community, we had a wonderful dinner last night.
Amanda:
We did.
Tim:
We’re in the Chicagoland area, and we met up with a ton of art teachers that we’ve worked with before and that are part of the community. And so we had a big gathering, it was a ton of fun to just kind of get together and talk shop and just enjoy each other’s company. And so that was a very cool experience.
Amanda:
Yeah, I would like to give a shout-out to Kara because she also hates condiments and so Tim and I have recruited another member of our group of condiment haters, and that was a really fun thing to discover. But it was also fun to hang out with everybody.
Tim:
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, for those of you don’t know, Amanda and I both hate condiments so much, and I’m sure that’ll work its way in the storytime sometime, but probably not today.
Amanda:
Not today.
Tim:
Okay, Amanda, my storytime I think is going to take a while so would you like to share whatever you have first?
Amanda:
Oh, sure. Well, I just had a funny experience… Well, it wasn’t funny, it was horrible. But like everyone in the entire world, my own children at home are very sick. We had norovirus and then influenza A just roll through our home for the last three weeks, which was perfect timing as we were heading into my busiest work season. But the kids were just laying on the couch, decrepit. It had been so long, they had watched all of the TV, all of the episodes of How it’s Made. And my younger kiddo, who’s eight, he was like, “I want to do crafts.” I was like, “What?” He was like, “I want to do crafts.” And I was like, “Okay, buddy.” So even though he was so sick, we had some really interesting crafts going on. We had these things called Squishies, your kids are probably… They’re definitely too old for them.
Tim:
I was going to say, not familiar with Squishies.
Amanda:
Do you remember Creepy Crawlers?
Tim:
Yes, I do remember those.
Amanda:
Okay, same concept, but they cure, for lack of a better word, in water in this solution.
Tim:
Oh, interesting, okay.
Amanda:
So you make these little sea creatures with this gel. And it was very fun, I also got into the Squishies because at that point I was also losing my mind and just needed some art in my life.
Tim:
I was going to say, three weeks of sick kids, yes.
Amanda:
Yes. So those are really fun if you haven’t tried them. The bad part is they have to live in water or they dry up so now there’s just a bucket of water with all these weird little things in our craft room. We also did some marbling.
Tim:
Oh, I saw that on Instagram from you. So that was cool.
Amanda:
Yes, very fun, very fun. And then my older kiddo sort of shuffled over to the craft room and he did some needle felting. So things we don’t pull out very often, and it was fun. It made the time go a little bit faster.
Tim:
All right, not bad.
Amanda:
So just empathizing with everyone who has missing students, if you are sick, your own kids are sick, it’s a rough time right now.
Tim:
It’s everywhere, it is everywhere. And I don’t know, I have, knock on wood, stayed healthy for the most part.
Amanda:
Yeah, knock on wood.
Tim:
Yeah, well, we’ll see how long that can last.
Amanda:
Okay, I’m excited for your story.
Tim:
So this takes a little bit of setup. When I was first moving to teaching high school art, there was a lot to do. I took over a program that just needed a lot of work. So this is before kids and I used to spend a lot of hours at school, a lot of evenings until late at night. And my custodian there, JW or J-Dub.
Amanda:
Shoutout to Dubs.
Tim:
Yeah, shout out J-Dub, I doubt he’ll listen to this, but I will probably have to tell him about it because he’ll appreciate the shine that I’m giving him. And I would just chat, whatever, he doesn’t want to clean floors, he’d rather talk to me. So we’d just hang out and chat about basketball, chat about whatever. And so we’d always just converse and great time. But then after a few months, he got into this habit of hiding and scaring me.
Amanda:
Extra shout out to J-Dub.
Tim:
Oh, just wait. And so it started fairly innocently, like hiding in the closet or in one of those big 55 gallon trash cans.
Amanda:
Oh my gosh.
Tim:
And he’d pop up and scared the crap out of me.
Amanda:
I both love this and hate it. I hate being scared.
Tim:
Exactly, that’s exactly how I felt. I loved it and I hated it. I hated being scared, but also it’s so funny, and he was so creative with stuff. We had a giant kiln, we had a huge kiln and he hid inside the kiln one time.
Amanda:
No, that sounds dangerous. I feel like we need a disclaimer, don’t do that.
Tim:
Yeah, please don’t hide it your kiln. Two more that I need to tell you about. There’s one time, these get a little more elaborate, I had gone to the bathroom and I was going to wash my hands and from above me I just hear, “Psst, Bogatz, Bogatz,” he had crawled up into the ceiling, removed ceiling tiles, waited for me to go to the bathroom, and then as I’m washing my hands, he removed the ceiling tile out of the way and started talking to me from above.
Amanda:
This is amazing.
Tim:
And then as soon as I tell you the setup for this you’ll know where it’s going, but I used to drive a really crappy car and I could not lock my doors. So there was one time that I was going and it was 9:30 or 10:00 at night, it was plenty dark and I was leaving and I started to back up and he just popped up out of the backseat and he is like, “Where are we going?” I’m like, “Oh-”
Amanda:
Oh my God, I would die.
Tim:
I almost did.
Amanda:
You don’t know this, I’ve never heard these stories before and I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this, I meticulously check the trunk of my car every time it’s dark out because I think what if someone’s in there?
Tim:
Yeah, I will.
Amanda:
Even if it’s been in my garage all night like I’m going to the gym early in the morning or something, I will open the trunk to ensure there’s no hiding people.
Tim:
That’s fair, because you never know, J-Dub could be in there.
Amanda:
Oh my gosh.
Tim:
Okay, so I was just thankful that he popped up before I had put it in reverse because God knows what I could have crashed into.
Amanda:
No, no, no, no, no.
Tim:
Anyway, so this went on for a few years and it was not like he was doing this all the time, he would get me really, really good and then just wait a couple months and just-
Amanda:
Was your anxiety… I mean, was this actually reinforcement to stop staying late at school for you? Did it help you overcome?
Tim:
That’s a good question.
Amanda:
Did it help you set a boundary?
Tim:
I feel like it should have.
Amanda:
I feel like there’s a parable in here.
Tim:
Unfortunately it did not. Yeah, so anyway, to bring this full circle, he had quit his job and he was working at CVS or something like that, but my kids go to the school now where I used to teach and I was up there for a band meeting for my son and guess who’s back?
JW is working as a custodian again. And so I gave him a big hug, we were chatting it up and he’s like, “Okay, well now that I know you’re going to be back for some evenings, look out for me.” I was like, “Oh. And so now I have to dread every time I’m going out for something for my daughter or my son in the evening, I need to be on the lookout for him.
Amanda:
Oh my gosh.
Tim:
And then the best part, as I was pulling out of the parking lot that night, I glanced up at the art room on the second floor and he’s in the window with binoculars and I look up at him and we kind of make eye contact and he tries to give this serious look, but he is just laughing so hard, just doubling over in laughter and I just have to shake my head and drive away, and now every time I have to go up for a performance or whatever at my kids’ to school, I have to watch my back.
Amanda:
We’re going to need a follow. I’m going to need to be kept aware.
Tim:
I will let you know next time he scares the crap out of me, we will let you know.
Amanda:
Okay, yeah, I thought you were going to say that he would watch for you on the CCTV and then scare you at CVS or I thought he was going to terrorize your kids.
Tim:
I don’t think he would do that.
Amanda:
Okay. Well, I don’t know what he would or wouldn’t do.
Tim:
I know it sounds incredibly creepy, but it was good natured.
Amanda:
Yeah, yeah, no, I get that.
Tim:
I don’t think he would do that to my kids. So anyway, yeah, I’ll let you know how that goes over the coming months and years.
Amanda:
Oh my gosh.
Tim:
Amanda, would you like to do the honors as we transition into questions?
Amanda:
Yes, let’s go ahead and open up the mailbag.
Tim:
We have two related questions. The first is from JP in Tennessee, the second came in a DM from the community.
So first from JP, “How can I get my students to take on challenges or try different things? My students are very technically skilled, but they only use subjects and techniques that they know they will have success with. They don’t want to take chances, they don’t want to do anything they don’t already know. I’m not sure if it’s a fear of failure or something else, but they don’t want to try if there’s even a chance that they might fail. Suggestions on how to approach this with them?” And that is from JP in Tennessee.
The second question, related, this person wanted to remain anonymous from the community, “How do you help a student who struggles with an extreme lack of self-confidence? The student does struggle with fine motor skills, but the main challenge is that they break down in tears frequently when they feel like something is too hard, they’re paralyzed with taking a step or trying something out. And when they do something and they don’t like how it looks, they break down even more. This will happen on open-ended projects too, but it is worse when there aren’t clear steps. I don’t feel like these projects are in general too hard for the age level as I’ve taught many years and never encountered this to this extent.”
Amanda:
Huh.
Tim:
Yeah, that is the correct reaction.
Amanda:
Great questions because these are issues I think a lot of people deal with and I used to find myself freezing when this would happen too. What do you do if you have an eight-year-old who just is sobbing in your classroom? What do you do?
Okay, so my inclination is that we’re kind of dealing with two different levels of the same issue. So first is more your run-of-the-mill motivation or perfectionist issues and then there’s something else.
So for level one, for those kids, JP’s kids, my suggestion would be completely take the pressure off. So I would spend a few class periods doing things that purposely get thrown away or recycled or put into collective supplies. So I’m thinking things like sculpting with modeling clay, right? You are practicing skills and then you’re rolling it into a ball at the end of class and there’s no pressure to make a finished piece. Experimenting with wet or dry media and maybe turning that paper into a source of future collage material for the class, sketches on newsprint where you ball them up and purposely play basketball with them at the end of class. The goal here is just to remove all of the pressure from the very beginning of the lesson, like, “We are just practicing.”
If you have one student in particular who is kind of struggling at this level, something that I found to work in my classroom was to really give them a lot of support. I think a lot of our inclination is to be like, “Buck up, you can do this, it’s not that hard, it’s art. You’ve got it.” But for some kids, they really, really need that handholding. So an ‘I do, we do, you do’ approach where you give the student a lot of support. You might draw part of their thing, which I am generally not a fan of, especially a correction or something, but sometimes those kids just need something to get started, or I had a couple of kiddos like this and if they were like, “I don’t know how to draw this,” I would give them some individualized attention and draw it for them on a sticky note and be like, “This is your personal thing, now you do it.” And that worked generally pretty well to get them started.
Sometimes it also works for perfectionist kids to work in groups, like big caveat on the sometimes because for some kids that’s actually their worst nightmare. But, again, sometimes if all of the pressure is off of them and they can kind of contribute how and where they want to, that can sometimes be helpful.
Tim:
I like those suggestions and I would echo that and just say you need to take the pressure off of those kids. And so I was thinking too what this looked like in my high school room and I would just send the message like, “Hey, we’re not keeping any of these drawings. We just want to practice today.” So it’s perfect with contour drawings or figure drawings or whatever, and just we’re working on our sketchbooks or we’re working in paper that we know we’re going to recycle and we just go for it. And then we build from there.
And I guess that can work too with ceramics, you can do different clay techniques, practice carving, practice smoothing, you can throw things on the wheel and immediately recycle them, let them practice until they feel a little bit more confident. And then we would do a lot of one day drawings like, “Here is a ballpoint pen, we’re going to draw portraits. You have 45 minutes. And then if it’s great when you’re done, we’ll put it in your portfolio. If not, we’ll recycle it. It doesn’t matter. It’s one day.”
And so you do enough of those things and maybe it’s abstract expressionism or maybe you’re working on expressionist techniques or, again, just like some figure drawing where people are posing and you’re only working on it for a little while. So if it’s great, that’s awesome, if it sucks, so what? No big deal. But then when you do find those things that are awesome, you really hype them up and be like, “Oh my gosh, you can do this. Where can we push this further? How can we build on that?” And just figure out where you’re finding those small successes and kind of build it from there.
But Amanda, I would love your more specific thoughts on the students who are just shutting down because in all honesty, I don’t know that I’ve ever found a good solution for that.
Amanda:
Yeah, yeah, so I think obviously that is more intense. That’s a different level. And if you haven’t tried some of the approaches we just talked about, I would start there. But in this case, I would probably call on reinforcements. I think a lot of times we think we have to do it alone, and I would just encourage us all to remember that we don’t. So I would first talk to the students’ other teachers to find out are they having this issue in other classes? Are they having trouble writing in language arts, for example? One of my own personal kiddos just has the hardest time getting started on writing assignments and once he’s going, he’s great, but it’s like this fear of getting started that is keeping him from that. So maybe there’s something similar going on in a different class where you can learn something about what works for them in that class.
On the flip side, I would also try to find out if there’s anywhere they’re really excelling or anywhere they’re not having trouble, and then digging into that, why? Is there a way that you can hook them? So for example, if they’re excellent at math, maybe they’d be interested in a project where there’s a right answer, like origami or perspective, something that they can know exactly what they’re doing.
You also talked about them struggling with motor skills. And so I think anything you can do to continue to develop those alongside that would be great. Again, maybe taking the pressure off kids love to roll Model Magic into a snake and then cut it up, something really fun that almost isn’t art.
Tim:
And those skills are good for everybody. Everybody can practice those.
Amanda:
Yes, Play-Doh, right? It’s more of a station or something. I also wonder if stations would be good for this student if they know they’re only at a spot for a little bit and then maybe they’re successful at some and have trouble at others, but maybe you can find some ones that way. I would also go to the guidance counselor, are they aware of this issue and do they have anything to offer from their expertise? And I would check in with the student’s family, approach it positively, of course, but you want the student to have a good time in art and do they have any suggestions for things that might work at home? But I think ultimately you just have to provide a safe supportive environment because that’s in your control and the student may come around and they may not, but that’s one thing you can always do is just be that space where they can feel free to feel their feelings.
Tim:
Yeah, that is great advice, so thank you. All right, our next question, this comes from Everett in Colorado and Everett says, “I’m a new art teacher in a military community and there’s an expectation for me to have students make Valentine’s Day cards for the veterans home here. I’m fine doing that, I support our veterans and I think it would be good for the kids to do. I guess I have two questions for you. First, are there any artists you can think of to relate to the project? Because I don’t want it to just be a craft project, I want my kids to learn something. But second, what do you do if your principal expects you to do something you don’t want do or something that doesn’t line up with your curriculum?” Amanda, thoughts?
Amanda:
Yeah. Was it the last Mailbag we talked about, one of the last couple Mailbags, we talked about setting boundaries with things that you don’t want to do so maybe we can link to that and we can dig into it a bit more.
I’m going to answer the first part of the question first though, which is artists for Valentine’s Day, which is a fun question. The old standby for me was Jim Dine. So if you don’t know Jim Dine, he’s an artist from the US and he was part of the pop art movement. Hearts were a very common motif for him. We actually have an article in the magazine called Three Fun Art Lessons Inspired by Jim Dine, so that might be great, we can link you to that. But it has two ideas that might work for cards, a printmaking project, and then a mixed media project. But for me, I think you can keep it even simpler. A lot of his hearts are kind of expressive and so I often had my kids do an oil pastel blending project where they would make a heart with blended colors and then paint the background with watercolors. And that was really successful for all of my kiddos.
Another idea is James Goldcrown. So you may have seen this, he creates all of these overlapping hearts with spray paint, and I think there’s a chalk pastel lesson in there somewhere. If you look at his work, that’s what it reminds me of. And then finally, Chris Uphues makes these really whimsical hearts with cartoon faces that I think could be a good jumping off point.
One more link I’d like to mention is something from the Tate Kids website, which is a page called Top Five Hearts, which we can link you to or you can Google it, and that might provide even more inspiration because it’s five museum-worthy artworks that have hearts as a motif. So Tim, do you have any additional thoughts for hearts?
Tim:
I feel like you covered it pretty comprehensively. I would add Keith Haring, I guess he’s got a lot of fun accessible artworks, and he does use hearts along with all of his other images. So if you just look up Keith Haring, you can probably find a few hearts. Like I said, that’s a super approachable style, it’s fun for kids to do things in that style. So that might be something that could give you a little bit of inspiration.
I guess I wanted to talk about the principal and their requests. And I would say if you’re getting those requests, just try and divide it into one of two buckets and just think about it is if that request is a reasonable request or an unreasonable request. And I would say this one is definitely reasonable, okay? And if the reasonable request comes through, I would do it. I think there are a lot of benefits to doing that, not only for you professionally. I’m not saying you need to suck up to your principal or whatever, but you want to be a team player, for lack of a better word. And part of being a professional is being part of that team. And so if you can help out in those ways, then I would definitely do that.
My whole teaching career was in a military community, and these are the types of things that are very important there. And I would say that is good for your kids to do that, you can talk about the bigger life lessons that come with it. And you said you want your kids to learn something, and not only can they learn about art history and famous artists, you can also learn about acts of service and service learning and being a part of your community and learning about history. And there are so many different directions you can take it depending on how you’re feeling or what you want to do.
Now, on the flip side, you’re going to get a lot of unreasonable requests, like Amanda’s-
Amanda:
“Make me a dragon boat by tomorrow.”
Tim:
The dragon boat. Or I had a principal who was not even at my school, this was not my principal, but they still asked me to make ceramic centerpieces 200 of them for a dinner they were doing.
Amanda:
Oh my gosh.
Tim:
Like, no, I absolutely cannot do that.
Amanda:
Absolutely not.
Tim:
And so when you get those unreasonable requests, it’s a good professional skill to learn how to say no. As Amanda said, we have kind of gotten into that before and we will share a couple of links and I was thinking way back one of the first episodes we recorded within the first few months of the podcast, we had one called How to Say No To All of Those Stupid Requests, which I think is a great title. And I’ll need to listen to it again to see if we actually want to link it. But no, I think there are lessons there where if you are getting those requests that are not reasonable or not feasible for you to do, you need to say no, you need to advocate for yourself and your curriculum and your kids, and there are a lot of good ways to do that. So we will find some good links to previous discussions or other pieces of advice or support, and hopefully those can help you. All right, Amanda, would you like to read this question from Brittany?
Amanda:
I would. “Hi, my name is Brittany. I’m an undergrad art education major, and my professor has us listening to your podcast.” Amazing professor, by the way.
Tim:
Thank you, Brittany, thank you unnamed professor.
Amanda:
“It’s super helpful. I’m going to be doing a practicum later this semester in student teaching at the end of the year. They talk to us a lot about professional dress, but I still want to have my colorful and cute shoes. What are good shoes that can look good and be on my feet all day, but also don’t make me look old? No offense.” Oh, I love it so much, Brittany.
Tim:
Oh, Brittany, thank you.
Amanda:
Thank you for telling us you prefer cool shoes and not old people shoes, way to give us your boundaries. We are going to try our best because honestly we think we’re cool and we are also old. And again, yeah, just thanks for listening. We love that art ed students are here.
Tim:
If I can just interrupt, I will say Amanda is still cool and still young.
Amanda:
Well, okay, I’ll take cool, but I turned 40 this year. That’s old, especially to a college student.
Tim:
Very true. Well, that used to be my litmus test when I first started teaching, the people I thought were old were the ones who had their own kids in high school.
Amanda:
Yes, yes.
Tim:
Like, “Oh my God, you’re ancient.” And now that I have my own kids in high school, I was like, “Oh, I’m that person now.” So I am neither cool nor young. But again, no offense taken, it’s fine. I will say, like you said, Amanda, I’m very excited about undergrads listening to the podcast.
Amanda:
Yes, all right. Okay, let’s get into this because I also really love this question because I also really love shoes. Okay, first you need to think about the dress code, okay? So there are schools where sneakers are permitted and there are schools where they are not. You also need to think about your price point. So again, first year teacher salary, that can be hard, but I would advocate if you spend money in one place on your wardrobe, this is the place to do it because it’s going to make a huge difference for you now and your future self will thank you when you are old. Okay, so for sneakers, let’s start there, Hokas are my favorite, although I would say they have a debatable coolness factor, but they are absolutely the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever put on my feet.
Tim:
Can I say something about Hoka?
Amanda:
You sure can.
Tim:
Questionable coolness factor for sure but they’re so widespread, they’re ubiquitous. Everybody’s wearing Hokas now.
Amanda:
And nurses are wearing Hokas and that’s when you know it’s good because they are not only on their feet for eight hours, it’s like 12 hours. And they also come in rainbow colors.
Tim:
I am going to talk about that. Hold that thought please.
Amanda:
Okay, all right. If you need something that is slightly dressier, but it can still be in the sneaker world, I really like Eccos, E-C-C-O-S, they are leather sneakers. They are pricey, I will warn you, but I have had pairs that lasted me five years. We could also talk about Birkenstocks because I think those might be cool again, like the clogs? I don’t know.
Tim:
Okay, so I want to talk in just a little bit about the community and suggestions are from the Art of Ed community. And a lot of people suggested Birkenstocks there, but, again, Brittany we’re old, so I don’t know.
Amanda:
We don’t know. But I’ve seen the youths wearing clogs, so I don’t know.
Tim:
All right, okay. So my pieces of advice here, I love running so I spend a lot of time with different types of shoes. Brooks Adrenaline are my go-to.
Amanda:
Yeah, those are also good.
Tim:
They make those for women as well. Hokas are great. I have never personally had Hokas, everyone I talk to loves Hokas. I put a text out to the group chat, Bondi 7 or Bondi 9 are the way to go. The Bondi 9s are brand new. Nobody likes the Bondi 8s, apparently that model is no good.
Amanda:
I might need to know, what am I wearing? I have Hokas on right now. I don’t know what they are.
Tim:
I think most people probably can’t tell the difference, but my runner friends.
Amanda:
They can.
Tim:
There’s some hate for the Bondi 8, but my wife, also a teacher, also on her feet all day, really swears by the Hokas. She has some that are actually super fun colors, there’s I don’t know if it’s rainbow, but it’s blue and pink and yellow and orange, super fun. She’s got some bright purple ones so if you just want a solid color, those work. And then she has a light purple, blue and pink color scheme, just this beautiful analogous color scheme on the shoes. So anyway, I would look into Hokas for sure.
Amanda:
Yeah. Okay, so let’s continue. Of course we are going to skip right past the perennial art teacher favorite, the Dansko clog, just don’t bother. So many teachers like these, they are not cool. They’re decidedly not cool. And I could never really get them to work for me. I tried, I did get a pair because I thought I had to, I was like, “Well, this is the teacher shoe, I must have this,” but not my fave.
Tim:
And I would just say it’s a big ask to go for cute and colorful and comfortable. You might have to pick two of the three.
Amanda:
That’s a really good, you could throw in cost-effective for a fourth.
Tim:
Yeah.
Amanda:
Oh my gosh, okay.
Tim:
A lot to consider.
Amanda:
All right, so then I think, Tim, you also have some recommendations from our community. Again, I’m not sure how cool these are, but our community members are cool, but again, I don’t know that they’re like 20 years old cool.
Tim:
I would just say it’s a starting point.
Amanda:
It’s a starting point, yes.
Tim:
Check out the list in the community, check out the discussion, we’ll link to it and you can look them up and you can decide for yourself. It taught me about a couple types of shoes that I didn’t even know existed so it was kind of fun. So as I said before, Birkenstocks were recommended by a lot of people. There are a couple teachers from Arizona and California like, “I don’t know, I just wear flip-flops every day.”
Amanda:
I think they’re fit-flops.
Tim:
Fit-flops? Okay.
Amanda:
Yeah, I think you misread that. They’re a kind of flip-flop that is more like a sneaker.
Tim:
Okay. See, again, I’m still learning this, it’s fantastic.
Amanda:
And, again, dress code, I couldn’t have my toes out at my school, but maybe you can.
Tim:
Also kind of dangerous. Anyway, that’s whole different discussion. Michelle Parvin agreed with us on the Hokas. Jessica Stuver likes Alegria, a lot of fun colors and styles. I went down the rabbit hole with that one.
Amanda:
Oh, me too.
Tim:
Bethany Hummer says UIN shoes, which I was not familiar with, but they also look pretty good too. And there are a lot more recommendations too, we can link to that post, like I said so you can read through the recommendations and decide if that is good for you. So Amanda, any closing thoughts on shoes?
Amanda:
No, I think we really got into it, I think we covered it.
Tim:
Brittany tuned out a while ago. She’s like, “This is more than I ever needed.” Cool, all right, any other closing thoughts? Because we need to wrap up here and get ready for a conference that’s starting very soon.
Amanda:
Yeah, I just want to say thanks to everybody who’s already joined the community, we crossed 4,200 members recently I think so just that’s amazing. Hundreds of people are joining between each Mailbag podcast. It’s really fun to see everybody in there. Thanks to everyone who is going to attend the conference, or by the time you’re listening to it, already attended, it’s our favorite time of year. And we’ll see you next month.
Tim:
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