Keeping Your Light

Keeping Your Light is a teacher well-being podcast from Meredith Newlin, and its steady argument is that educators need soul care, not only self-care. Several episodes introduce it as the Transformed Teacher Podcast. Keeping Your Light is also the title of her book on soul care for educators, which she mentions in openings and closings. The strongest material is personal. In one solo talk she describes a fear intense enough that her heart raced and she could not feel her feet, and says she could not bring herself to the top level of a parking garage in Hillsborough, North Carolina, the small town where she lives. She frames her progress through the twelve sparks of her book Wake Up Diva, in particular the one she calls claim, and credits help from a power greater than herself. Another story comes from her own classroom. She admits she once believed strict control would fix a class whose dynamic had gone wrong, then describes a frank class discussion after which she and her students moved away from packets and worksheets toward more creative, collaborative work. She calls the shift vulnerability and humility, and says she changed as a teacher that day. Some episodes turn to the profession itself. One uses The Jetsons, set in 2062, to question pundits who suggest artificial intelligence could make teachers unnecessary, with a quick joke about leaving the subtraction to the math teachers. A new-year episode gives permission to ignore outside pressure to be perfect and to follow an inner desire to be purposeful instead. Guests broaden the range. Kiyoko Nakano, an author, educator and coach, talks about her book Still, I Teach and the isolation she sees among teachers today, noting that the job she was doing last year is not the one she interviewed for 20 years earlier. She calls the pull back into education a siren song. Kim Fischer, a women's entrepreneurial coach, author, speaker and voice guide whom Meredith met when both spoke at a retreat for writers, makes the case that slowing down, even putting the phone away for a while, builds the self-trust that makes spontaneous moments land. The tone across all of it is warm, affirming and openly spiritual, with talk of purpose, joy and looking upward for guidance. Some episodes are streamed live on Instagram or inside a Facebook group for educators, so openings often invite viewers to say hello and share how their month is going. Closings circle back to one refrain: if nobody else tells you today, you rock. A listener weighing whether to stay in teaching might start with the Kiyoko Nakano conversation, and one who wants Meredith's own story could start with 3 Ways Mistakes Can Become Miracles.