Engagement Isn’t Compliance
A podcast—and a community—for people schools were never built for.
Schools often say they want engagement. What they usually mean is quiet, compliant, and easy to manage.
This podcast starts from a different truth.
Engagement Isn’t Compliance is a reflective, narrative-driven podcast about school, language, disability, and poverty—told from lived experience at the margins. Hosted by David Schmidt, a late-diagnosed autistic, Cuban-American ESOL teacher and advocate, the show explores what happens when we stop confusing obedience with learning, masking with professionalism, and “rigor” with harm.
These episodes are not how-to lessons or quick takes. They’re slower conversations about:
What it means to teach and learn while autistic, multilingual, and poor
How masking shows up in classrooms, staff meetings, and “professionalism”
Why multilingual learners and disabled students are disciplined, mislabeled, and misunderstood
How Self-Determination (autonomy, competence, belonging) gets crushed by control-based systems
And why so many students—and educators—burn out while being told they just need more grit
If you’ve ever felt like school demanded you perform instead of exist— If you’ve been told you were “capable” but never actually supported— If you’re tired of fixing kids instead of fixing systems—
You’re in the right place.
This isn’t about compliance. It’s about dignity, access, and self-determination.
