#85 The Biology of Trust with Dr. Katherine M. Heavers
In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Dr. Katherine M. Heavers — a high school biology teacher, evolutionary biologist, and co-author of Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In — about what it actually takes to build authentic relationships in a classroom. Heavers draws on her doctoral theory of the "telling break" and 12 years of research conducted while teaching full-time to argue that the relational work great teachers do is learnable by anyone.
Together, Seth and Kate explore the biology of trust — why authenticity isn't soft or sentimental, but a survival mechanism the mammalian brain has been running for 200,000 years. They talk through Kate's theory of the telling break, the moment a teacher's personal disclosure cracks open a shared space of curiosity in the room, and why that moment is at the center of learning rather than on its margins. Kate makes the case that vulnerability, emotional safety, honest feedback, and the willingness to name your own failures in front of students are all trainable skills — not personality traits — and that any teacher can be brought to them given the right conditions and inner work. The conversation ends with a genuine surprise: after three and a half years of exploring AI tools, Kate recently deleted her ChatGPT account because her teenage niece's ethics teacher changed her mind.
Key topics:
- The telling break — what happens when a teacher steps out of instruction and becomes a person in the room
- Teaching as a learnable craft vs. an innate gift
- The biology of trust and why authenticity is an evolutionary strategy
- Emotional safety and productive struggle — how to hold both at once
- Self-reflection and inner work as professional practice, not personal disclosure
- Confronting bias as an ongoing relational obligation
- AI, cognitive offloading, and what we give up when we stop thinking for ourselves
Links & Resources:
- Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In — Katherine M. Heavers & Valerie Kearns, Routledge, 2024. https://www.routledge.com/Transforming-Teaching-Through-Relationship-Building-and-Self-Reflection-Finding-Our-Way-In/Heavers-Kearns/p/book/9781032798103
- Daring Greatly — Brené Brown (mentioned by Kate as essential reading for teachers)
- The Atlas of the Heart — Brené Brown (mentioned)
- Adam Grant and Brené Brown's collaborative content - The Curiosity Shop Podcast
- Grace and Frankie — Netflix series (Kate's media recommendation)
- "Toward a Theory of the Educational Interruption: A Conceptual Model of the Telling Break" — Katherine M. Heavers, doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 2012. https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/37293/
Guest Bio: Dr. Katherine M. Heavers
Dr. Katherine M. Heavers is a high school biology teacher at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in New Jersey and an adjunct professor in teacher education at Rutgers University and The College of New Jersey. Her work sits at the intersection of evolutionary biology, the philosophy of education, and classroom practice — she spent 12 years earning her EdD in Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Rutgers while teaching science full-time, developing her theory of the "telling break" along the way. She is co-author, with Valerie Kearns, of Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In (Routledge, 2024).
About the Host:
Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered learning the podcast explores. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts
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