Isral DeBruin

In this episode, Isral DeBruin, a passionate education advocate, opens up about a year of heartbreaking loss and unexpected, overwhelming love. In less than twelve months, his family transformed from three to seven, and amid uncertainty and transformation, he discovers hope and leads with an open, generous heart.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is Shonda Causer, and you're listening to Kos Reaction. Thank you for being here. I'm excited for this segment where we talk with Israel De Bruin. He's a father of five, but that is a recent change from just one year ago. In this segment, we talk about transitions, parenting, education, and what it means to be consistent in a time of constant change. Thank you for being here. Don't forget to like, follow, and share. Let's get into the conversation. Hey, Israel.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Hey, Shonda, how's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

It's going well. Look, we're on a podcast together.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Crazy.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome to my podcast. I know who you are, but um our listeners don't know who you are. Who are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, my name is Israel DeBruin. I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I'm a father of five. Um, and I've been working here uh in education in different ways pretty much since I graduated from college. First as a education reporter working for a newspaper here, and then later as a teacher by way of the Teach for America program. And then for the past uh wow, almost I think 13 years now, um, I've been doing uh communications and advocacy and nonprofit operations and a bunch of different roles for uh nonprofit organizations that are working to um build more great uh schools for the families who deserve them most.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Thank you for sharing that. You know, I didn't realize that you started out as a reporter, which helps me understand how you unpack so many different things in the way that you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure if um what came first, if it was the being a reporter and being trained as a reporter that kind of built that mindset in me, or if or if the mindset and the personality type are what attracted me to that work.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Well, and uh on that theme, I'm curious. I've been asking folks I'm talking with, you know, change we've gone through rapid change in a lot of time.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah, to say the least.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

But you have also gone there personally rapid change, and yeah, I'm curious, what's keeping you up at night?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

What's keeping me up at night? Um, let's see. So my children are all very small, and I'm I'm newly a father of five. So I think what you're alluding to is the fact that uh oh egg exactly a year ago, actually, to the day, um, I lost my late wife to breast cancer. And uh we had one daughter together. And in the time since then, I met another widow and we fell in love and got married, and so together we have five kids, um, which is very exciting. It's all very new. So um I am new to thinking about a whole bunch of kids instead of just one. Um and their ages currently range from two to seven, so they're all very small and they're all kind of clustered in the same age range. And so right now, a lot of what keeps me up at night is just thinking through how to troubleshoot their development and to build character and to set them up so that they've got the stuff inside their hearts and their minds and their souls, so that no matter what the world looks like in the future, they're gonna be able to navigate it. Um that's thing number one. And that that also includes faith formation and education and a whole bunch of stuff. But um, I would say the other thing kind of related to that is just thinking about what the world is gonna look like when they reach adulthood. Um, you know, just in the past year, two years, um the so many things about the world have changed, um, so many things about what different things cost. You know, I'm thinking it's specifically of housing costs. Um and of course, uh it feels a cliche to bring it up, but how can you not um the the continuing development of uh large language model generative AI products that are changing the way that a lot of jobs are done, and I think very seriously threaten to completely eliminate entire categories of work in a way that I don't think we've ever seen before, maybe. Um it's hard to separate the hype from the reality, but um I think at least some of the hype is legit. Uh and so there's a part of me raising small kids that wonders how many of the things that feel very important to me to bring up in them and to develop in them and to prepare them for are gonna be pretty irrelevant by the time that they get old enough to use it. Um so of course I think the character stuff that I started off with is gonna be evergreen and probably more important. But some of the other stuff that that has always felt really important to me, um, you know, I'm a former teacher, like I said, so academic achievement is really important to me. Um and I I don't know if that how much of that will continue to be important or which parts of it. And I don't know if we can tell. So I don't know what to do about that now as a parent.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

You know, I I think one, first of all, one year to the day I didn't realize that Mike and go with us again.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

That's a journey. Yeah. And so thank you for taking this space this morning to share with me. Yeah. Two to seven. Um that's a lot. And I think what I would be thinking about is you know, trying to see which kid was particularly challenged talented. So um they would have to do tryouts because I can't invest into that much education. That would just keep me up at night, and I would be thinking that I'll be working until I was dead. Uh the cost of education.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Um when I think about achievement, my uh daughter this morning told me that she got into this program. Um she previously had said that she was interested in being an optometrist for a while. Um got into a food and service uh uh specialty program at school, and she's excited about it. And then I was stressed a little bit about because my knee-jerk was reaction was like, Well, I don't know how that's gonna put you on the path to become an optometrist. Um but what you're saying about AI and and and uh but maybe she should have a backup thing that she just really loves and she just loves to cook. And I I was stressed about how to uh separate achievement, um, to your point about you know academics and the pursuit of education. Yeah. Such an intellectual girl, and uh I think I flubbed that a little bit this morning.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah, it's it's really hard to navigate that kind of thing. I I understand. And I think um there's been such a push in I think like with this generation, especially of children, and maybe the prior generation of children, um there's been such a push for parents to be constantly optimizing kids' development, starting before they're even born, um to make sure that you're maximizing uh every way that they can be developing and growing and um becoming more prepared for their future. Um, and that somehow, if you're not doing that, if you're not you know using every available minute and resource to push them in that direction, that um whatever they're unable to do or whatever they whatever they don't achieve as an adult is gonna be ultimately on you, and that you'll have like failed somehow as a parent to give them what they ought to have had. And that's a really new concept in the large span of humanity. I think what's not new is you know people wanting what's best for their kids and feeling protective of their kids, but this like d feeling as if it you have to do this optimization and everything has to be pointed toward their future. I think that's pretty new. Um and I think it kind of shows up there, there's this social pressure um that that shows up in the kinds of reactions that you described uh having. I think that's so understandable. I I find myself feeling that way at times too.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah, and I guess I felt like a snob in a lot of ways. Yeah. And I know my mom didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about my future and the ways that I think about my children's future. What about your parents?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

You know, they did, but I I I want to say that their approach to it was broader. So by which I mean I remember being told as a very young kid that I was gonna go to college. And I was told that with like a total certainty. You know, it was not presented as, oh, maybe you'll choose to go to college or something like that. It was, it was always presented to me as like a non-negotiable and not in a way that felt bad to me, just in a way that honestly, when I when I reached like later in high school and realized how many of the not just like you know, kids in my graduating class, but but close friends were you know not sure if they were gonna go to college or they were thinking about not going to go to college. I was astonished because I just assumed that everybody kind of came up with that same message and therefore that same assumption that of course that's what I'm gonna do. Um and you know, there was some pressure. Like I remember having some hard conversations with my dad in even in elementary school, where, you know, I I remember I got um what was, you know, I guess a report card, a progress report or whatever. It didn't have you know letter grades on it, but it had marks, you know. And uh I had a bunch of the the like sort of meeting expectations level was called satisfactory, um, which my understanding then and my understanding even now, having been a teacher, is I I think that that's basically just what you were supposed to get. You know, just sort of they were trying to take the like grading out of elementary school at that point. And so when they said satisfactory, it was just supposed to be a neutral term. Um, but I remember my dad took that very seriously, um, pretty over the top, honestly. But and and I remember some parts of the conversation, or maybe it's multiple conversations that I'm kind of knitting together. But one of them, I remember him saying, you know, but what you gotta uh you gotta know here is like look at that word satisfactory. What do you see in there? You see the word factory. And you know, that's what you might you know find yourself doing if you don't start to get serious. And the thing is, is he he was not approaching that as a uh from the perspective of a snob. Like he he himself had worked in manufacturing for most of my childhood.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

And it was something that he had felt um trapped into for a bunch of reasons. Um, and eventually, you know, sort of got was able to get out of into a profession that he he really enjoyed. Um, and so that's what the direction that he was coming to from it. Um but that was honestly the exception. I think in general, my parents let me pursue my interests. They didn't put a lot of pressure. They they weren't like, oh, why are you doing this? How does that align with your goals? It was more just this broad sense of you're gonna go to college, you're gonna graduate from college, and that's what's gonna set you up to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Wow. And were your parents both educated? I I wasn't full of.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

No. No. Uh they my they my mom had a technical college, like two-year degree.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Um my dad almost completed a two-year degree. And my dad went to one semester of four-year college and then withdrew.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

I think, you know, when you reminded me of those the conduct reporting from elementary school, I remember always getting really high marks. Um but I got what they call an end in conduct. I don't know if that meant non-compliant or something like that. I can't remember what the end stood for, but I would find ways to entertain the class the whole time. And um I was incredibly distracted by everything. And then the teacher pulled my desk out and put it by the door, like far away from everyone. Yeah, started drawing pictures to hold up to people and see. Um, but I think that's like what sometimes is lost on especially you know, black children, kids of color, is like uh I don't even want to say this. I don't know if that's right, because I but I just think about uh like maybe I was showing signs of ADHD or um uh neurodivergent pretty early that um that people uh really never picked up on and just assumed it's just zany and how like yeah um like racial markers, you know, show an identity. And something I know about uh your family is that your family is um your blended family now. Yes. And I am curious of how you're thinking about race and education, and I'm assuming a majority white education system with your children. Is that a factor for you and your family?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, um, so we we live in Milwaukee, um, which is a majority-minority city. Um and and we live in the city itself. Um the school we go to, well, so so my daughter is still in her original school. She'll be joining her siblings at their school just as soon as there's a spot available for that. Uh both of them are part of the Milwaukee Public Schools uh district. Um they're both Montessori programs. Um and I would say that the two schools are um probably whiter than the typical MPS school. Um, but because Milwaukee is a majority-minority city, there they're still pretty diverse um school populations. Um that said, you know, my daughter is white, um, my wife's biological children are um Hmong and Jewish. And uh I I do think that there's a relatively small number of Hmong children in this particular school, though there is a sizable Hmong population in Milwaukee in general. Um so I I would say it's a factor. It's something that I thought a lot about and my late wife thought a lot about when we were choosing my daughter's school. Um there was a school that we considered um that was a little bit closer to our house that was similar in a lot of ways to the one we chose. But um, one of the ways in which it differed um was that it was a wider and and more affluent school. And that that was it wasn't the deciding factor, but it was something that we weighed uh alongside some other factors. So I think um we're early on in our school journey. Uh we're taking a pretty holistic view of what is best for our kids and and how they're engaging in school. Um, and certainly the way that their identities show up at school, the way that their experience is shaped by their identities, all of those things are gonna be big factors. Um so far, uh everything around identity at school has been pretty good. Um I don't think there's been any issues related to that that have given us pause or made us rethink our decisions. But it's something that we're gonna be paying really close attention to because uh as with the experience that you shared, um, those early experiences are really formative. They're really impactful. They can really shape the way that you think about yourself and the the way that you talk to yourself. Um so those are things that we we care a lot about that we're gonna be paying really close attention to.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Yeah. I mean, I think the way that race shows up, especially even around like homogeneous groups of people, just around colorism. I think that you kind of talked about this a little bit, uh kind of gave a pick-aboo around faith. Um I have you know, I have twins who are in sixth grade and they've, you know, kind of danced around some of these things. And I I want to like relocate them to a different school, but then I feel like they're learning some things, especially about society, that I I guess I couldn't teach them without having experiential knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah. Yeah. I your last point was something that I began thinking about sort of as you were saying it, that I I think we would hope that the you know, public school ideal of um a whole bunch of people with different backgrounds and different household incomes and you know, different histories, family histories, uh ethnicities, races, all that coming together and um having this shared common experience um that sets them up for to be successful adults, that the we would hope that that would go really smoothly and that it would be a great experience and it would be universally positive. Um I think that's probably not very realistic. And I wonder to some extent, and this is I think the very last thing you were you were saying is um I think some amount of the friction that's gonna be inevitable in a in a situation like that is probably net positive. I think that that tension, to borrow a phrase that a friend of mine uses, some actually a mutual friend, our friend Callestin, um he he taught me this phrase productive tension, where you know sometimes sitting in discomfort, disagreeing with someone, having a conflict is there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing bad about it, even though it doesn't feel great. Um that there's things don't things don't always fall into like it was good or it was bad. You know, there's plenty of gray in the middle. And I sometimes wonder, yeah, if some of these kind of situations, there's growth that comes out of it that you can't get any other way.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah, I mean, I and I think that's it. I think when I go back to my childhood, I just had some hardened up experiences. Sometimes I unpacked it with my mom, sometimes I didn't. But one thing I know is that she definitely didn't intervene much. And with my old older child who's now 15, I did do a lot of intervening. You know, when things would come up, I would schedule a you know a parent-teacher conference, let's talk to the kid, let's talk to the other parents, let's get this done. Um, and then I don't know if I'm just tired or that didn't really work out the way that I thought about it. But with the twins, I'm just like, yeah, that's she that sucks. I want to hear about their days, but I'm not going to um unless it's something serious. Yeah, I'm not going to uh make a big scene about it because it's not it's gonna take something away from their ability to navigate complicated and I thought about uh I shared this with another friend of mine. Um a colleague, a work colleague, had an adult son in his freshman year of college and she was checking on his grades every week, um, and felt like that he wasn't doing his best. And I said to her, I was like, gosh, my freshman year, my mom didn't even know where I was, you know, not let alone knew my grades. And uh she decided before the end of the first semester that she wanted to pull him out of school, and I thought, wow, she's really involved in his day-to-day life to the point where she knew his girlfriend was coming. I just thought that was so odd. And I said, You're gonna pull him out, and she said, Yeah, he's doing all right, but he's not thriving and he needs to come back home. And this idea of that our kids just have to be at sailing, um, enjoying life. Um and I think there's room for sadness, and there's room for like um failure um in ways that I think that we have maybe coddled so many generations of children. And going back to like how do they connect it to the top of the call, like find careers, especially when things are changing so rapidly when when they haven't really uh you know, I'm making big general statements.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

But yeah, I I agree with you. I think I think I I have I've had a pretty great life so far. I've also had some profound difficulties, uh, you know, principally the one that I already referenced, the long-term terminal illness of my uh wife who, you know, got got diagnosed in her mid-30s, you know, right, right after we had our daughter, just a couple months after our daughter was born, she was re-diagnosed. Um that's there's a lot of things I haven't experienced. I'm sure there are much harder things out there, but it's pretty hard. Uh life is not just thriving, you know, and and to say that anytime that you're not someone isn't thriving, they ought to yank themselves out of a given circumstance. I just I don't think that that's a realistic way to move through life. Um and I think that that kids and especially emerging adults, they need to encounter some adversity. Um there's something that my I learned from my late wife, who's a psychologist from her practice, that there's such a thing as an adversity gap, um, that in kids, especially who grew up in really privileged backgrounds who don't experience a lot of hardship as young people, when they reach adulthood, um, one of the things that they struggle with is navigating sub-optimal circumstances. You know, they they get a job that they don't love, you know, and their boss is a little bit of a jerk and and they hit these what are kind of just mild um run-of-the-mill everyday difficulties, and it totally, you know, uh it's it's pretty rough for their mental health because they've never um had experiences that help them build up to tolerating difficulty, tolerating something that is not even necessarily difficult, it's just a little bit less than what you would, it's a little less than thriving, you know?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Yeah. Yeah. I I like to, if I can, um I wouldn't Like to talk a little bit about Joanna?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yeah, sure. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Um Yeah, we all had a a bit of a year of 25, you know, our country changed in a lot of ways. And I was you've shared that yours changed, and you know, I I I'm not good at dealing with change. I really am not. I go through it, but I complain a lot, you know. I just like like I'm on loop complaining about the change and I have to go through it. But honestly, in our conversations, you seem to have your shit together. And I should not say the word, but you did. You had it together in ways that I just like, wow, I would be falling apart. And I guess I'm curious about I don't know, maybe it's your parents of how you've been able to cope and keep, you know, keep moving forward over the last year.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Yeah. Um I want to think about the best way to answer that. I think I'll start with another thing that I learned from my late wife Joanna. Um, her a big part of her personal philosophy and her pro approach to her work as a a psychologist, um, and to share a little more of her background. She began uh with a focus on um early childhood trauma, and she worked with very young kids and their parents, which um usually meant their mothers, um, who had experienced traumatic things um during those very early years of a child's life. Um, and then that shows up later in the toddler years or early preschool years as you know, difficult behaviors at home and at school and things like that. Um and so a really um major uh theme in her work was the idea of hope. Um and her sort of personal catchphrase was there's always hope for healing. Um she would say that over and over again, uh, to the to the point where there were there's a friend of ours who put it on a t-shirt for her. Um and uh she also introduced me to uh the work of another psychologist, uh, the late Dr. Shane Lopez, um, whose whole entire practice was focused on hope. And he um he studied what this is, you know, where does it come from? How do you build more of it? And his definition of hope has always stuck with me. Um and he said that that hope is a positive memory of the future, which I've always found to be um one of those ideas that you have to really think about it to even get to the point where you're like, I think I understand this. Because okay, how can you have a memory of the future? You know, memory aren't memories by definition uh something related to a thing that happened to you before. Um but I think when you sit with it, you can start to kind of wrap your mind around it. And I really believe that that for me is the answer to your question. That that for me, I just kept thinking, I'm a young man, you know, I just turned 40 a couple months ago. Um, I've got a lot of life in front of me. And do, you know, as much as this is difficult, and my response to it is sadness, frustration, anger, discouragement, you know, I experienced all those things. Um, but to me, it always felt like, what do I want for myself? And what do I want for my daughter now and in the future? Do I want to be an angry person? You know, do I want to be um somebody who's just debilitated by the way that I'm reacting to my circumstances? Um and you know, the answer is no, I don't want that for myself. I don't want that for my daughter. Um, I've got a lot of positive memories of the future that I I I hope to achieve for me and for her. And so um I I don't know how understandable or helpful that response is, but that was always the thing for me was just what is it that I want for myself and what does that mean right now? And I I that didn't mean um avoiding my my feelings and my honest reaction to my circumstances. Um it didn't mean avoiding grief or or um you know shoving down feelings or anything like that. I I experienced the deepest feelings that I've ever experienced in my entire life um over the course of the last five years. Uh but it just meant, you know, I I guess to me, anything that sort of felt like wallowing, um, that that feels like such a judgmental word, but I don't mean it that way. But but to me, anything that felt like just sitting in, not sitting with my feelings, and especially, you know, I experienced self-pity, I will admit that. But I I and I I had a lot of grace for myself in that. Um I guess that's another piece of this is that I never felt self-judgment about my reactions and my feelings. I kind of just recognized them, acknowledged them, gave myself a lot of grace for the things in my head and in my heart, and then, you know, tried to move on from them in that day or that season or whatever. Um so I don't know if there's a I don't know how I would teach someone to do this uh or to tell them how to how I did it in a way that's gonna help them do it. Um I feel like that's what I'm trying to do, and I don't feel like I'm being very successful in it. But I know that those are the the pieces of it that that as I was going through it, and I would find myself wondering why am I not having a harder time with this. That that's what I felt like was the answer.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

I think that that's okay. And I think that that's also our time. Um, and I really appreciate our conversation today. Um, thank you for your generosity of spirit and just going on that journey with us.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Yeah. Yeah, happy to. Thanks for having me. Thank you.