Captain of the Class With Eric Austin | Ship's Log 16

Guest Quote:

“Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.” — Mark Twain

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Project Candor, host Jeanne Andersen sits down with Eric Austin — a lifelong educator with more than 30 years in the classroom across North Carolina and South Carolina. Eric has been named Teacher of the Year and earned multiple Teacher of the Month awards, but the real story has never been about the trophies. It’s about the thirty kids who chose to spend their free time in his room.

Eric and Jeanne explore what it means to show up for students the way a good coach shows up for an athlete — especially for kids who are quietly struggling. Eric lost his father to ALS at the start of ninth grade, and that experience shaped everything about the kind of teacher — and the kind of man — he became. He talks about three boys learning to cook for themselves, the neighbor who checked in, the coaches who kept them out of trouble, and how he went on to be that presence for thousands of kids who needed it.

The episode closes with a lively Two Truths and a Lie — including whether Eric really competed as a Division I lacrosse player, whether he’s on a quest to visit every South Carolina state park, and whether Citizen Kane is truly his all-time favorite film. Plus: a heartfelt shoutout to K9s For Warriors, a Northeast Florida organization that pairs rescued dogs with veterans facing PTSD.

Guest Bio:

Eric Austin is a lifelong educator with more than 30 years of teaching experience in North Carolina and South Carolina. Known for his humor, his honesty, and his deep investment in young people, Eric built a career around showing up consistently — in the classroom, on the wrestling mat, and in the lives of students who needed someone in their corner.

Connect with Eric Austin:

Eric doesn’t have an offering to promote — his work has always been about investing in people. If this conversation meant something to you, leave a comment or find a way to serve in your own community.

Eric’s Call to Action:

One organization Project Candor would love to highlight is K9s For Warriors, based right here in Northeast Florida. They pair rescued dogs with veterans facing PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and military sexual trauma — and volunteers are a vital part of that mission. Learn more at K9sForWarriors.org.

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Transcript

Jeanne 0:02

Welcome to Project Candor, where ordinary people share the most unexpected stories. I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen. Today's conversation opens the door to the experiences that shape not just an educator, but the man behind the classroom. Eric Austin is a lifelong educator with more than 20 years of experience teaching in Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina and nearly a decade with Greenbull County Schools in South Carolina. He has been honored as Teacher of the Year and received multiple Teacher of the Month awards. But what truly defines Eric is how deeply he cares about his students and their learning. Coming from humble beginnings and having lost

Meet Eric Austin

Jeanne 0:43

his father during his teenage years, Eric understands firsthand how much a steady, caring presence can matter. Whether in the classroom or simply showing up consistently, he's known for investing in young people, pushing them to grow, believe in themselves, and become more than they thought possible. And today's guest is also a little special to me because Eric is my first cousin. Eric, I'm really glad you're here today.

Eric 1:10

Well, thanks for inviting me. I've never, this is the first time for me.

Jeanne 1:14

Well, I'm sure you're going to do great because I know we talked earlier and you were pointing out technology things to me in our first conversation. So I want to go into some questions, but I want to just go first and start in a very simple human place. If your students had to describe you using only three words, what do you hope they'd say?

Eric 1:40

I would like to think they're funny, even the dad jokes. They like that even though they say they hate them.

Jeanne 1:46

What are the dad jokes? I don't even know what they are.

Eric 1:49

All kinds of stuff. All kinds of stuff. I can't think of any right now. My wife was actually looking at some pictures that I've took from my it's a whiteboard now. I started with a blackboard, then

Three Words Your Students Would Use

Eric 2:04

we wrote with chalk. And now the whiteboard, erasebo, they were writing stuff on there about dad jokes, and like we enjoy them even though they're dumb, but we still laugh at them or something like that. But so I I hope humor, because I mean learning is a serious business, but you gotta be able to laugh at yourself, laugh at your teacher, and I'd much rather them laugh at me than laugh at other kids in a in a bad way, you know.

Jeanne 2:30

Honestly.

Eric 2:31

That's such a tough age. I'm serious, and sometimes I tell them, don't confuse my humor with me being serious or not.

Jeanne 2:40

That's confusing, Eric.

Eric 2:42

It is confusing. But I'll I'll tell them I'm like, look, okay, now we gotta get serious. You know, we had our jokes, and this is serious. And they they know when I say that, you know, okay, everything else aside. But so humorous, serious, and I guess probably caring without really thinking about it. You know, if I see a kid who needs something, I would get that to them. And I bonded with a lot of my kids that didn't have fathers or good home situations through wrestling. And I met them, I got to know them more, but I realized there was a whole lot more kids I was teaching than I was coaching that were in very similar situations as well. So caring, fun, or humorous and serious. Serious about uh school, yeah.

Jeanne 3:27

Well, when you're talking, you sound a lot like your dad, who uh I'll have to mention was a wonderful man and a great uncle. I mean, he was very serious at times, but he was very humorous. We used to love to hang out with him. I mean, he was kind of a person that as kids we would go, you weren't even born yet, but we would go over there as really young kids and spend the night. And two o'clock in the morning, he'd wake us up and say, Let's cook some eggs and brains, pork brains, which I could not eat that now if you gave me money. But um, we get up and we had so much fun with him. He was so much fun. So I can see that in you um with your students. It's it's something you know you lost young, and I was also his sister, my mom, when I was young. But they were very humorous and fun to be around, so I can see that being a good word for you, humorous. So anything else on that?

Eric 4:31

About dad. Um, well, you know, dad was a I guess he was a Southern Baptist preacher, and I guess that's the denomination he was in. And uh we uh lived in St. Louis, Missouri, while he went to seminary out there, and then we moved back here where he had a couple churches. But yeah, we we lost him when I I was just starting in the ninth grade. I was about maybe one week into my ninth grade year when he passed.

Jeanne 5:01

Yeah, and what is that with him? I I think I was in my tenth year and mom passed, and then so we just need to ask them when we see them again. Why'd you have to go so young?

Eric 5:11

Right, right.

Jeanne 5:12

I really needed you. I remember writing your father. You can ask your mom, but um, I remember writing them when I was in the Navy, and they had the biggest joke on me because instead of saying Mr. Austin, you know, like and sending it to their, I just said Uncle David on the letter and addressed it to them. And they thought that was so funny, but that's who he was. He was my uncle.

Eric 5:40

Hey, since we broached that subject, you had a a thing on you sent to me about anything you want to talk about specifically. And I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but as you know, that my my dad contracted ALS and

Losing His Father

Eric 5:56

passed away. And he um I was last summer I was talking to a friend that I used to be a neighbor to, and um that person works for the VA hospital. I mean the I'm sorry, the Veterans Affairs. And um we would never have that conversation, but that person's significant other was talking to me, and I first time I met that person, and we were talking about dad being in Korea and having ALS, and that person's mom uh contracted ALS as well and passed away. But right after that, you know, like in the military, if you have a cancer or you have some ailment of like trauma or PTSD, there's VA money out there for you and it's pretty significant. And they just added ALS to that, and I think in the like 2010, I didn't know that, and that conversation never would have come up with my old neighbor, but you know, betting the boyfriend, you know, not really, just getting to know him, that came up and he said, Well, you know, you can get money for that, and we applied for it and got it. Um it's for widows or spouses of people that die with one of those ailments. And um they only know people who served in the military, they only know like less than 10% of the spouses you I mean if you were in Korea, you know, my mom's 80, getting ready well, she just turned 86, so you know, they're not ones like getting the emails and looking at their own mail, but you know, there's movie out there for people with ALS that's probably a much lesser known thing.

Jeanne 7:48

So he was the only one in our family that had ALS, so that was odd. Do you think it was military related? I don't even know.

Eric 7:56

They don't know either, but problem with ALS is it would be extreme it's extremely rare to get. It's even more extreme if it's within the same family, so that would like never happen. But they don't really know what causes it. They never have known what causes it. They're still researching it, but so they just put it in there with all the other things that I mean you could get cancer and it not be related to military service, but they go ahead and you know help people out with that. So they just eventually put ALS in that category as well. I just thought that was something neat that most people don't know.

Jeanne 8:39

Right. If someone's listening, that would be great information for them if this is happening in their family, and they have veterans that are associated. Was your dad in the army, I believe?

Eric 8:50

He was in the army.

Jeanne 8:51

Yeah.

Eric 8:52

From what I understand, he went in at 17 and um I think he got out at 21. I think that's right. And so he was born in f 1940, so he started in 1957. I think he was the last years in Korea.

Jeanne 9:10

Oh, okay.

Eric 9:11

He didn't actually go to Korea. From what I understand, he was stationed in Germany where they were still watching you know, Germany after the fall of the Nazi party. They still had to have some people patrolling there.

Jeanne 9:24

Okay.

Eric 9:25

Just for safety reasons, I guess. That's something I never was able to ask him because, you know, at 13, 14 years old, I didn't really have any interest in that. And he'd been sick since I was like 11 or 12, so there was a lot more pressing issues, I would say, for a 12-year-old than going back into your parents' past.

Jeanne 9:46

I know. It's like sometimes I talk to my kids and I'm just thinking, you don't really care at all, do you? I try to tell them some things that happened, but oh well. But it's all relative. They'll learn for themselves, I guess. But um, yeah, it would be nice now to go back and ask all these things. I mean, I went over there and we could go in a whole big scenario about him, but um, he and his brother, uh Don, would always hang out and play on those C B radios. People probably listening out probably don't know anything about C B radios, but he would always be on there, break a breaker or whatever, and then come back, come back. And I was just like, what is this lingo you're talking? I didn't even have a clue. And he would spend hours on that talking to people after he got back um for the military, but that's before he got married and before you. And I was so young then, I was just like, I'm not gonna say I was like in my cognizant years because I was just hanging out with my uncle as a kid, getting babysit.

Eric 10:54

Just being a teenager.

Jeanne 10:55

Yeah.

Eric 10:56

What's funny is um I don't know if you do Pandora, the music stations, something great music stations. But on my radio, it's like, oh, if you if you like these songs, you might like this station. And it was like a country 1970s vinyl. So I got like some Merle Haggard and I got some Neil Diamond and Olivia Newton John on there. Um, not the disco stuff, but just the that I honestly love you and type stuff like that. And you mentioned CB radios, and I swear, the first time CW McCall came on with uh was that Convoy, that song. Oh, right, right, yes. Every time I start the car up, it's almost always played in the first two songs.

Jeanne 11:43

You must be listening to some satellite radio CB trucker.

Eric 11:50

That was just a funny little scenario that you mentioned that.

Jeanne 11:55

Yeah, but this is a our family is a musical family, though. Cause you know, when you're thinking about things like that, they always like to sing. Your dad had a great voice. And I don't know if you sing at all, but um then your brother's a musician. I don't know about your younger brother. I don't know. Does he sing? Do you guys sing or play anything?

Eric 12:14

Not publicly. Maybe some karaoke in the when it's just family members, but Oh, okay. Yeah, you don't, you know. I usually have a couple go-to songs for my my karaoke, and uh probably the easiest one to pull off for a non-singer is um Oak Ridge Boys Elvira. Because you can do that mm pop-a-mm pop a mouth.

Jeanne 12:37

Oh, yeah, that's fine.

Eric 12:39

I can get by with that.

Jeanne 12:41

Do you have a bass voice? Uh your dad had a bass voice.

Eric 12:45

I think my voice has just gotten deeper over the last couple years. Last maybe the last decade or whatever.

Jeanne 12:51

But yeah, but this whole family uh are your side, my mom and your whole family on that side is just music crazy. You know, if you ever visit Uncle Don and you know, you had to put on some headphones because his stereo was usually going with something.

Eric 13:07

Always. Always. I remember when he got married to his last wife. Uh I guess it doesn't matter. We said her name.

Jeanne 13:15

It doesn't matter.

Eric 13:16

We're but um anyway, we were the three of us were all like his groomsmen. I mean, me and my brothers, and uh I think we were probably ages eight to eleven or something like that. And I remember going over to his apartment, he had the stereo cranked up. We're trying to talk to him, and the radio's blaring. It's that um what was that song? Baker Street.

Jeanne 13:41

Oh, okay.

Eric 13:43

With the saxophone, I'd never heard that before. So every time I hear that song, I think of him.

Jeanne 13:47

Yeah, he was funny because he would send me on chases to find songs. He was incredibly diligent one day that I find a song about some people were made for each other, some people, but it's how about us, you know, that was the name of the song. And I had to go digging for that song. And I found it on a CD, and he's like, give me it, give me it. I want that. But I love the music aspect of our family, I really do, and I still play and peddle around with music, but it's made life fun, and music was a way to get over some of the trauma loss, you know. I think. Well, let's go back to other questions about you.

Eric 14:27

Sure.

Jeanne 14:28

So this is a fun one. What subject or class would people be shocked to learn that you struggled with growing up?

Eric 14:35

Growing up.

Jeanne 14:36

Mm-hmm. When you were in school.

Eric 14:38

Well, I always loved history and PE. I was not great at math. I was not really good at English. I did uh horrible in the um the SAT portion of that. I actually did good in math and not so great in English, and I majored in history, and you're writing three 20-page papers for every class you take when I got to college. And why did I take this again? So I think I got pretty good at writing and started working on my national boards, and that was a lot of writing, a lot of reflecting. I had to change the way I approach writing when I got to college because what I got by on writing in high school wasn't, you know, I wrote it all in one night. I didn't reflect about things, I didn't really put the time into it, but it's probably why I didn't do very well at English.

Jeanne 15:37

Well, I did okay. I thought I would do better when I took like national exams, but um I always did better in math, which I was always surprised. But I think it's because I wrote like I talked, and we came from country. Like, you know, it they used to have that Jeff Fox worthy, and I totally related to him because he'd say used to could and all that stuff. I still say that. I can't help it. It's just part of the way we spoke in that area of North Carolina.

Eric 16:11

I'm guilty as well.

Jeanne 16:12

Yeah. So when I write, sometimes I fall into that, you know, double verbs and so forth to try to explain myself. And so I think that's what tripped me up, is just the way we communicated wasn't standard British English or whatever. But that was your worst subject, though, English. Okay.

Eric 16:32

I guess I tried to go the music route. I Alan did it, so I started playing violin as well. I did that for four years, and then once I hit um high school, I I started playing sports and I didn't have any time for practicing on a musical instrument.

Jeanne 16:48

Yeah, it takes a lot of practice, I gotta say.

Eric 16:50

Yeah.

Jeanne 16:52

Well, you've taught in two different states and school systems. What's something that stayed the same no matter where you taught?

Eric 17:00

Kids were kids, and uh I taught in challenging schools in both states, and they were very similar in population-wise. That was the you know, the where I taught in North Carolina was basically where I grew up. So it was real easy. I had a lot of

The Subject He Struggled With

Eric 17:19

references, and we talked about, you know, restaurants and we knew the same people, and I came down here as a little different because I had to I had to up my game. I didn't know the area, and I I couldn't relate to the kids the same way I could relate to them there, so I had to find other things. But one of the things was kids are always looking for something that will make adults mad. What? For example, it's usually technology related. For example, um when I first started teaching in '94, pagers were a big deal. Nobody had a cell phone, no one had TV in the classroom, nobody had computers. And the kids would get a page from somebody, and we only had two payphones in the school, and they were like by the front. And so they'd ask to go to the bathroom, but they would never make it to the bathroom. They'd run up there and make a phone call when they got a pager. Well, then pagers became the the little toys, the Tamagotchis or things like that, where you have to keep touching it and keeping it alive. Sort of like the they do in the when they get that baby in high school. Oh, right. That they have to carry around and pretend it's right. Yeah. But um, but when phones came out, that really that was a game changer. Um, I will tell you, one of the main reasons I left teaching after 30 years was um mainly because of cell phones. When I say cell phones, I mean my cell phone. I used to feel like I taught and I talked to kids and I got to know them. And now everything we put on computer online, every kid had a computer now, is like they said one-to-one, but every kid had a computer and they'd down they'd spend all this time downloading their playlist and music on that computer. And uh some kids would sit there and I I'd put out like five assignments for the week on a computer uh the week before, and some of them would spend that weekend doing all the assignments. Or they would do just enough and hit enter. So I turned them all in. I'm like, yeah, but this is garbage right here. And they're like, You said my work was garbage. I said, It's garbage. You know, parents don't like to hear when you tell their kids that work is not good and they're not going to get a good grade.

Jeanne 19:43

Yeah, everybody's everybody's so sensitive these days. But uh, if somebody hadn't told me this paper is terrible or this is just not your best effort or whatever they would say, then I would have just not learned anything.

Eric 19:58

Well, you know, a couple years ago, I gave uh somebody a a 97 and they just kept on and on. Well, what's

What Stays the Same in Every Classroom

Eric 20:05

wrong with this paper? I'm like, well, right here, what you wrote this sentence. I'm like, well, you could have used a couple other words. You made like a three-word sentence. Well, a 97? And I'm like, well, I had I picked like three things off there I took out. She goes, Well, can I redo it? I'm like, no, it's a 97. And I'm like, 97's good. They're like, but and they just kept on, it would not stop. And I finally said, Okay, look, your paper's good, but 3% of it sucks. Yeah. And I wouldn't say that today, obviously. Right. Um, but you you could get by with stuff like that years ago, and some of the kids would respect you if you were like brutally honest at times. And but anyway, my phone, this thing right here, I used to keep it locked in my car. And then I have to bring it in school because you might need it from time to time. And then we had class management. I've taken those off my phone, but you would give kids points when they did something good, you would take points off when they did something bad, and it kept a running tally of how many points they got, and the school was giving out prizes if you got like 500 points that month or something, and so kids were like, Did you give me my points? Did you give me my points? And it got so bad we had to do like haul passes on this, we had to do bathroom passes on this, which were two separate things. So we had to have the app on there, we had to have the kid on there, we had seating charts on there, and it just got real tedious, you know, like Tuesday when it was Taco Tuesday, and that takes a little longer in the cafeteria. We wouldn't leave at the regular time. They would text us when we could come. So I'm walking around with this phone, I can't lay down. And I'm like, I'm not even teaching anymore. 'Cause the kids just did the work online and you know Yeah, you're managing your phone. Yeah, I'm I'm managing with my phone.

Jeanne 21:56

Yeah, I I don't know. I get frustrated w whether The schools when our kids were in high school, they um they were not making the best of grades. And I would our punishment was, you know, you can't have a smartphone. But then the school started saying, Oh, well, they have to have the smartphone because they need to take a picture of this page in the book because we don't have enough books for them to take home. So they need to take their homework home by taking a picture. And I'm like, Well, so you're taking all that out of discipline away from me. What am I gonna do to make them do the work once they take the picture? They're not gonna do it. I know it. I know it. So, well, it is a battle.

Eric 22:37

Now that I'm sure a lot of that's because I was in the game for 30 years. Now, I'm sure new teachers are coming in and all the stuff, technology, they grew up with it, so they're real proficient. I always made friends with some of the younger people on my hallway, and they were my IT pe go-to people. So they would help me out a lot. But I mean, I was working really hard just to keep pace. Like when they did the online textbook, we didn't give out textbooks anymore. I had to learn how to use that system. And that can be quite challenging if I never even was on a computer until I was probably almost 30. Sounds crazy. Now, I mean, other than like an Atari video game system or something.

Jeanne 23:25

Right, right.

Eric 23:26

But I think part of the problem is when we were kids, this computer right here Well, I guess when we were not kids, we were in college age or a little older, computers were you did work on a computer. Computer was to get work done. We didn't have internet and you wrote papers on there and you did spreadsheets. But now computers are games and music and entertainment. Oh well, you can do all these other things, but they don't see it as a work tool first. They see it as like, oh, games, and I don't really want to use this thing to do work on.

Jeanne 24:02

I want to play games, but yeah, you got a lot of competing uh agendas on the phones and also once they're in these phones, then um, like you said, they get into this tunnel effect of going into these games and they just want to keep doing the games. But you don't really distance yourself from them, and then you end up, like you said, burning out, and then they don't want to do the work that they're supposed to do on the phones. So, but it's necessary to have the phones nowadays in the school system because you need to coordinate, they need to coordinate their ride home, they need to coordinate what they got to go to the doctor and who's picking them up and all this other stuff. So I don't think we can go back. That's the problem.

Eric 24:46

Yeah, it's a struggle.

Jeanne 24:48

I wonder why how we got along without all this stuff, actually.

Eric 24:53

We must have had way lower expectations. I find out that with all the things you're capable of doing technology-wise and quicker and time savers, they just want you to pack more things in there.

Jeanne 25:06

Oh, that's true. That's true. Well, getting off to um your awards, awards are nice, and I know you've had some really great ones. So they're not why you stayed in education. So, what moment with a student still sticks with you years later?

Eric 25:22

I have a box of like handwritten notes that kids have given me over the years. Like through a card or is really neat. Like I put on there, I don't really do much social media. I mean, I'll look and see what my friends are doing, and that's kind of about it. My best friend from fourth grade, I reunited with through Facebook when it came out. Uh, I think I started in like late 90s, and we hadn't heard each from each other in years. Uh, but I'm friends with a lot of my former students, you know, not while they were students, but mainly my my athletes, my wrestlers, my soccer players, my cross-country kids. Just seeing what they're doing, going going to some weddings, seeing pictures of their kids. And I had a f a guy, and I don't think it was a nod to me or anything, but I've had quite a few kids name their child Austin.

Jeanne 26:20

Oh, nice. Yeah.

Eric 26:21

Austin's the first name now, so Right.

Jeanne 26:23

Well, actually, our son is Austin. But I came by it honestly.

Eric 26:29

I'll go up to uh get my medicine at CVS and I'll like name them like Austin. They're like the and then they'll say, Oh, what's your last name? I'm like, that is my last name. Sometime about 15 years ago, Austin became a first name.

Jeanne 26:43

Yeah, well, if you go to our DNA, uh, you remember um, I don't know if you were on Ancestry, but your cousin, my brother, he did a lot of ancestry research. And there was um a Joseph Austin, was it Joseph Austin or John Austin that got a land grant from King George III and came down and had a huge chunk of land in Virginia, North Carolina. And then he had tons of sons, and then it just went out from there. So there's a lot of Austins out there.

Eric 27:13

All that that big lands uh split up, didn't it?

Jeanne 27:16

Yeah, yep. All those lands. We have an uncle still out there with a mountain in Asheville, or his family still has it. As far as I know, they might have sold it now. I don't know. But um, yeah, that was um a lot of Austins, and yeah, that's why, and then all the people had kids and kept get having kids, and then they started naming their kids Austin.

Eric 27:37

That's kind of neat seeing them here and just seeing what they're doing these days, you know. And I I still keep in touch with a lot of them.

Jeanne 27:43

Yeah, that's good. That's good. And that's gotta be hard. I mean, you don't see the ones from North Carolina, obviously, but so do you think students learn more from what you say or from how you show up when things get hard?

Eric 27:57

Uh they really get a sense of you when you know it could be easier to do something halfway or the wrong way, and but just doing it right every single day. And they'll they'll call you out on it if, you know, like if you tell a kid not to chew gum in class and then they catch you chewing gum, they let you know it. But always they're like, Can we chew gum in here? And I I said, I'm I'm gonna chew gum in here. I said, you know, the only thing worse than a teacher with bad breath is a bunch of students with bad breath. And I said, just don't put it under the desk and you know, don't drop it on the floor and don't put it in anybody's hair, because you know if no other teachers let you do it, you can do it in here.

Jeanne 28:41

Well, that's good.

Eric 28:42

That was my personal thing, but I guess modeling it and I didn't just say, yeah, you can chew gum or no, you can't chew gum. I I sort of made a humorous statement out of it, I guess.

Jeanne 28:53

Right, right. So I shift the gears a little bit back to I know we already talked a little bit about you losing your dad early. When that happened, was there someone who stepped in for you during that time, or did you have to figure things out mostly on your own?

Eric 29:07

Um, mom was not

The Moments That Stick

Eric 29:09

working at that point because I guess she was taking care of dad. And she went back to work full time, leaving a 15-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a 12-year-old. We had to catch the bus in the mornings. We had to one thing I tell my students is I said, uh, can your mom cook? And they're like, Yeah, mom cooks really well. I said, Can you cook? And they're like, No. I said, Before you leave your mama's house, you better learn every trick she has in that kitchen. And um I remember um mom, we learned a lot of stuff from her and we kind of took over the cooking. She would take us to the store and she would, you know, until we started driving, she would take us to the store and we would help shop. But we were responsible for the food day to day. And Brad the youngest, he always had a pot of tea boiling on the stove and he always had burgers frying in the pan. He would save those burgers and bring them out throughout the week. And Alan was really good with the fancy stuff. I could make a sandwich. I could make a sandwich, but uh you met DC and Doris, didn't you? Mm-hmm. Yes. We would always I I did some of those little snap peas the other night, stringing them, you know.

Jeanne 30:30

I haven't done that in I don't know how long. Oh, I haven't done any of that. Popping those pea pods too to pull out those um field peas or whatever. I haven't done that either.

Eric 30:40

Wow. Mom went back full time to work uh while we did our thing, and I think um as far as someone stepping in, um our neighbor next door was one of dad's friends. He he passed away a couple years ago. He would look in on us. Me and Brad were in Boy Scouts, we would have you know, our scout master kept pretty good tabs on us and coaching our coaches looked out for us. I guess that's why I think coaches, you know, fill such a big spot for these young people, because if I wasn't at home and I was with three sports a year, I was with a particular coach every every day after school, you know. So they did occupy a lot of my a lot of my life and kept me out of a lot more trouble I could have gotten into with that. So I mean I'd come home from wrestling practice, I was exhausted. I'd come in, have a little bite to eat, and I'd go to bed, and that was it.

Jeanne 31:36

Right. That's good though. I mean, we had things in uh after school activities that we were involved in, and you would come home and be exhausted. So do your homework, go to bed. It's like no time to get in trouble.

Eric 31:48

Right, right.

Jeanne 31:49

So do you think that experience changed how you see kids who are struggling quietly? I mean, you've had probably students that you recognize you in.

Eric 32:00

Yeah. Um I won't name the school, but I I taught here in a high school before I moved to uh middle school. Uh after I did 21 years in North Carolina, and then I came here in two years I did a high school, and then I left there in seven years I did in a middle school. I got to that high school and it was very different. You know, we had people that parents worked at hospitals or they worked at let's see, we got

Do Kids Learn From What You Say or How You Show Up?

Eric 32:28

Michelin here, a big Michelin plant. We got a big, a big BMW plant.

Jeanne 32:33

I'm gonna say I was gonna say, was it an Audi or a BMW down there?

Eric 32:38

I I don't think it matter. I mean, I'm not stepping on anybody's toes if I've missed a lot of things.

Jeanne 32:42

No, they know they know they're there.

Eric 32:45

BMW, I didn't want to say the wrong one, but anyway, uh so a lot of these kids came from these affluent families, but there is a much smaller minority than I'm used to. Uh kids of all uh colors and kids of um very poor backgrounds, and that's what I I was used to teaching, so that was common for me. You know, I could talk to the poor kids, I could talk to all the other kids, and they started flocking to my classroom and I had an assistant principal come by and look around, and I might have had like 30 kids in my classroom after school or wow. We had uh we had this thing where you had 30 minutes for remediation, you had 30 minutes for lunch, you had an hour in there. And like some we always had like the first half hour, so the kids would come in my room and make up work and get missing assignments. Well, I had a lot of these kids coming in there. It was the alternative crowd, had a lot of emo kids, a lot of kids with green

Who Stepped in After Dad Died

Eric 33:49

or yellow hair and different ethnicities, different um nationalities. And I had an assistant principal that came by and he said, Eric, you got a very diverse crowd in that. And I looked around, I said, Well, this is pretty much the kids I taught at my last school for 21 years. And he goes, That's great. There's a big need for that here at this school. And uh I was like, Wow, you know, I I didn't really notice that anybody noticed. I wasn't trying to get noticed. I mean, those are just the kids that would come in because they felt comfortable around me. And you know, I meet him in class first, and they felt comfortable about how I treated them in class to come back and spend their free time in my room.

Jeanne 34:40

That's fantastic.

Eric 34:41

That was pretty cool.

Jeanne 34:42

Yeah, I love that. I love that about you. Oh, well, okay, so before we wrap up, we're going to switch gears and play our signature game, Two Truth and a Lie. So are you ready for it?

Eric 34:58

I am. We'll see how that goes.

Jeanne 35:02

So you have provided me with three stories. Uh, we know that two are true and one is a lie or kind of twisted a little bit. So I'm going to read them out loud and share my screen. Um, and then we're going to have you explain. Well, actually, I'm going to guess which one I think is the lie. And then you're going to explain these um stories to us, and then everybody will play along, and at the end, you'll tell us which one's the lie.

Eric 35:31

Sounds good.

Jeanne 35:35

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Seeing Yourself in Quiet Kids

Jeanne 37:14

the number three story is a surprising favorite. Eric's all-time favorite movie is Citizen Kane, and he's watched it six or seven times. If it's your favorite, is that enough times? I don't know. Um, but anyway, I'm gonna guess. I might be at a disadvantage here. I sort of think that number one is incorrect, but I'll let you tell us each of these stories and then at the end tell us which one's the truth. So start with number one.

Eric 37:40

Well, you you were saying we'd play that, and I said, well, let's see how that goes. Because one of the words you said are you used a word twisted in there. So, you know, I started to put in um I don't like or I like sushi. Sushi's my favorite food, which it is not. I mean, most people would say, Oh, yeah, I love sushi. I'm like, how but anyway, I didn't put that in. Uh, you took out the one where I put my brother is has been nominated for a Grammy.

Jeanne 38:09

That was he's gonna be on the show. You can't take his story. One of these days when I track him down.

Eric 38:16

One of these days. So uh, you know, most kids are like, Grammy, uh tell I don't want to give away too much here. Yeah, do not. Yeah, okay. Never mind, moving on. Yes, I've never played lacrosse in my life. I did play uh sports in college. I was I was a wrestler on the team there for two years, and then my grades got pretty bad. I was on probation, off probation, on probation, off probation for um academics, and then I met my wife and Ooh, she straightened you out. She straightened me out pretty good. I I just didn't know how to study. And I remember after I met her, I said, Can I come see, come by your dorm Wednesday? And she's like, Yeah, but I'm studying for a test. And I'm like, Yeah, right, whatever. I get over there and she is studying. I said, When's your test? She goes, in two weeks. I was like, Two weeks.

Jeanne 39:06

Concept unknown.

Eric 39:08

And then um I learned real quick if I wanted to see her at all during the the week, I better bring some books to study. And so after I met her, I started getting really good grades and um I started making Dean's list. And uh my last semester there, I I made a all A's 4.0.

Jeanne 39:29

Oh wow.

Eric 39:29

With uh with uh about And you were at Can You Say Your College? Oh yeah, I was at NC State in Raleigh. That's where we met. The Wolf Pack. The Wolf Pack, yeah, she actually wanted to go to NC State because she heard that she was from a little small town in North Carolina, and um she heard that the ratio was like five to one men to women. So she didn't want to go to a school like Meredith, which was all women. She wanted to go to some and I wasn't want to go there either. I was a lucky winner. So I ended up we we ended up together. We dated uh six years before we got married, and we're on this will be year 31.

Jeanne 40:10

Oh, very nice. Congratulations. So you told us to lie anyway, so that's okay. We already know now. You were a wrestler and not a lacrosse player.

Eric 40:21

Right, as my mother-in-law would put it. Long story dull.

Jeanne 40:26

All right, number two. Are you really going out looking for

Two Truths and a Lie

Jeanne 40:31

every state park?

Eric 40:32

Actually, I am. They they have this book here in South Carolina. You get a little stamp every time you go someplace. I guess it's not really a quest. Yeah, it's not really a quest with my wife. It's a quest for me, but she goes on a lot of them. But I've been to a lot she doesn't go to, so I try to either hike or fish or do like a nature walk every every which one of them I go to. There's two here that have golf courses on those, but I haven't played those. I haven't been to their those places yet.

Jeanne 41:05

But well, that sounds like fun.

Eric 41:07

Oh, uh the problem is there's 47 state parks in my passport. Oh. I got like six left.

Jeanne 41:16

Don't they all look alike?

Eric 41:18

Uh some of them do, some of them do. Uh the um they're getting ready to add I think seven or eight new parks. But I'm going on my old passport book. If I get that filled up, then you're good. I get my free t-shirt.

Jeanne 41:33

Oh, that's cool.

Eric 41:34

You know, Austin will do anything for a free t-shirt.

Jeanne 41:39

You're funny. What about Citizen K? Why do you like that?

Eric 41:43

Why do I like that? Um, about five years ago, I discovered Turner Classic movies, and I never cared about old movies at all. And so that's like No, you're not like me.

Jeanne 41:56

I did a lot of old movies. I loved them.

Eric 41:58

Well, I'm gonna watch every Humphrey Bogart movie there is just to see what the fuss is about. And he's good, but I I don't I still don't know what the fuss is about. But I always heard Citizen King was the best movie ever. I'm like. So the first time I tried to watch it, I couldn't get through it. Second time I watched it, I got through it, I'm like, you know, that might be worth seeing again. So I saw it a third time, and then I just every time I watch it, it gets better and better.

Jeanne 42:31

Really? I have to watch it now because I don't remember it, but it wasn't it Orson Wells?

Eric 42:36

It is Orson Wells. Um, in fact, I don't know if that was a lie or not. Uh he has another movie called The Stranger that's even better. He was this Nazi that escaped from the persect of the Nuremberg trials or whatever, and he's hiding in a New England town at a boys' prep school. He's an English teacher, cross-country coach, and the kids just absolutely love him. They follow him around like a Pied Piper. But there's this guy, and all I can think of is um Goober on Andrew Griffiths, Edward G. Robinson, Judy, Judy, Judy. Yeah. I've never seen that movie, but that's my reference. He plays a guy trying to track him down, and he doesn't know who he is. But and there's also that third movie called Brother Orchid, which um Edward G. Robinson's the main character, and um he's a mob boss, and they push him out, and he hides in a monastery somewhere in California or whatever, and um becomes part of the monastery at the end. He's his mobster. But anyway, Citizen Kane um had to plug those other two movies because originally I was like, Citizen King's my favorite, but you know, ask me on another day, and it my favorite will be Dumb and Dumber.

Jeanne 43:49

Well, I'm not gonna say anything negative on who's in Dumb and Dumber, but there's one person I don't like to watch. So anyway, well, I won't say anything else. Just weirdness and I mean, we were all weird when we grew up. I don't need to watch June Carey. I did say that. Maybe that's what I meant, but maybe weirdness is just something I don't like to watch because we were weird enough as we grew up. So I don't need more weird.

Eric 44:16

My favorite genre is horror films. I could watch Slasher Mood. Oh yeah. Anyway, uh the Citizen King, um, he's this guy who had everything. And no matter what he acquired, he got like the number one Hollywood actress as his wife, and he was never happy. He was never content. And his whole life, I mean, he ran for president, he acquired all this wealth, and at the end, they're just do you remember in um I guess it was um what's the um Harrison Ford movie where they had the oh the Ark of the Covenant? Oh, yeah, yeah, right as on the lost ark. You know how they were like boxing everything up on pallets and they're just putting it in a room at the end? Well, that's what they did to this whole guy's mansion at the end. I mean, when you die and you have all this stuff, it's just stuff. You know, he didn't have any good relationships with people, and um it was kind of a downer, but it sort of makes you look at life differently, I guess.

Jeanne 45:21

Yeah, and then at the end he uttered the he uttered the famous words rosebud. You know what that was, right?

Eric 45:27

Yeah, yeah.

Jeanne 45:28

Rosebud was supposed to be his little sleigh or his like um the name on his sleigh when he was a kid.

Eric 45:36

Right. That's I mean, I I guess spoiler alerts out the window. If you haven't seen it since 1940.

Jeanne 45:42

Yeah, right.

Eric 45:42

Well shame on you for not.

Jeanne 45:45

I know I can't be responsible for keeping a secret from back then.

Eric 45:50

After after about five years, you know, you could spoiler alerts are gone for certain things. But so the the last time he was happy was he was with his mom and dad. And I I I can't remember if he had a brother or there was kids that were playing and riding the sled, and he was never happy again because his mom and dad basically were trying to run a boarding house and he was just another mouth to feed in the way she sold him to like some wealthy man who had no heir. And uh if you ever seen that movie, um Oh gosh, There Will Be Blood. Daniel Day Lewis was the main guy, and he basically had a kid that he could raise to take over his empire. And it's very similar to Citizen Kane. He was never happy, too much was never enough, you know. He was always trying to find something that would make him happy. And most times you can't buy that.

Jeanne 46:53

No. Yeah, what's that bumper sticker? You remember the bumper sticker that like whoever dies with all the toys still dies or something like that.

Eric 47:02

I know there's one he who dies with the most toys wins, but your stickers would say it's a counter to that. Do you win? Did you take it with you?

Jeanne 47:11

Yeah, you can't take it with you. So we need to wrap it up. And so I appreciate you playing the game with us. I wanted to share my screen again and give folks a little bit more information. You told me I always like to get quotes from people. So instead of a quote from you, you gave me a quote from Mark Twain. So I like this quote: Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from making bad decisions. That's a really good quote.

Eric 47:39

I love that quote. And the first time I saw it, it was in a Chinese fortune cookie. I didn't know Mark Twain said it, and I was actually looking for the other one on there about travel that travel is uh the enemy of bigotry, and I can't remember exactly how it goes, but I saw that one too, and I'm like, that was from that fortune cookie, so I put that in there too.

Jeanne 48:02

That other one is too long to be in a fortune cookie. Wow. That was a long one. We'll have to look that one up.

Eric 48:09

Oh, that one, the good is the this one, the good decisions, that was in a fortune cookie, but the other one was not.

Jeanne 48:16

Oh, okay. That's like the other one you sent me with long.

Eric 48:19

It said I don't promote something, an offering to promote. I love kittens and puppies and stray animals, and we don't have any pets. My my wife, we're we're no kids, no pets, family, and so I'll take all of our old blankets, pillows, sheets, and towels over to the animal shelter and just donate them, and they love it, they love anything you can take over there.

Jeanne 48:47

Oh, well, that's good because you you asked me, you said I uh, you know, you didn't really have an offering because you're semi-retired, you're not really trying to work a big business or anything, but your uh value and experience and being a teacher is so important on this podcast. I just like the honest truth on how you've made it such a success for you and for the kids that you've served. So you don't have anything to promote, but you really will be happy if people make comments and you know can find a way to serve in their own community. So you asked me to to put a way for the listeners to actually give back and something that Project Candor supports. So it goes along with what you're just saying about uh taking all your sheets and blankets. So one organization Project Candor would love to highlight is the Canines for Warriors. Um, it's based right here in Northeast Florida. They pair rescued dogs with veterans facing PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and military sexual trauma. And volunteers are a vital part of this mission and money as well. So uh, whether it's helping care for the dogs or supporting training or simply showing up consistently, volunteering uh for K9s for warriors is a part of a healing journey for both the veteran and the dog. So if that resonates with you, you can learn more at K94Warriors.org. Sometimes the most meaningful impact starts with one steady presence and four loyal paws. So thank you for asking us to highlight that, Eric, and thank you very much for being on the show.

Eric 50:29

Yeah, that's really that's really cool. I like that. Yeah.

Jeanne 50:33

All right, well, thanks. It's been such a pleasure and love you, my cousin.

Eric 50:37

So sure. So good to see you again.

Jeanne 50:40

Talk to you soon. Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories are unexpected, and the treasure is always real. If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew. Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck. I'm Jeanne Andersen, your Admiral of the Unexpected. See you on the next Voyage.