Just Schools

Faith, Sports, and Education: Paul Putz

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Paul Putz, director of the Faith & Sports Institute at Baylor University, where he helps to lead and develop online programming and curriculum as well as assisting with communications and strategic planning.
They discuss his journey from high school teacher and coach to historian, diving into insights from his new book, The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports. Putz reflects on the role of sports in K-12 education and the importance of of resilience, collaboration, and integrating faith into leadership in both education and sports.
The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.The Center for School Leadership and Faith & Sports Institute are partnering together for a summer professional event! Join us for the FIT (faith-integration-transformation) Sports Leadership Summit! We will gather at Baylor to empower and equip Christian sports leaders in K-12 schools to lead, serve, and educate well as they pursue competitive excellence.Be encouraged.Mentioned:The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports by Paul PutzPath Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss.Faith & Sports Institute Youth Sports Summit 
Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInX: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
Jon Eckert:All right, so we've got Paul Putz here in the podcast studio and we get to talk about a new book. We get to talk about coaching, we get to talk about teaching. So Paul, it's a huge blessing to have you here today. Can you just give us a little bit of your background about how you got to this office today, where you came through as a student and professionally?Paul Putz:Yeah. Well, I started, we'll start with I'm a teacher at heart and was a teacher, a high school teacher. So I grew up in small town Nebraska and playing all the sports thinking that I'm going to become a coach. So I went off and played small college basketball and then wanted to hang around sports. And so I got my secondary ed degree, was a social studies teacher. And as I started teaching in Omaha, Nebraska, I had a sense of how important sports were to me in terms of forming me. I was a pretty good student too, but sports mattered to me on a deeper level. And so I was really intrigued about learning more about sports. As I'm teaching social studies classes, I'm thinking about, man, how historically did we get to a place where sports are part of a school curriculum where sports are actually seen as educational or sports are seen as formative?I was just so curious about that. So instead of becoming a coach as a high school teacher, I get my master's in history and I start exploring these questions about the history of sports and as connections with Christianity. So those sort of questions I was wrestling with as a high school teacher lead me to applying to Baylor, coming to Baylor to get a PhD teaching at Messiah University for a year, and then coming back to Truett Seminary where I lead the Faith & Sports Institute and have been involved with FSI for the past five years.Jon Eckert:So love the work you do. I also understand from guys who still are able to play basketball with you, I have not been able to, as my knee no longer allows it, but you have a nice mid-range game still.Paul Putz:Old school. We keep it old school. Yeah.Jon Eckert:That's great. That makes Nebraska and Indiana boys proud. So love that. And I love the journey that you took. You go into education thinking you're going to coach and you're going to teach, and then you go down this history path, which then leads you to leading a Faith & Sports Institute. So it's kind of funny the way the Lord weaves us through these paths. And then to this book that's been published by Oxford University Press, really nice book by the way.Paul Putz:Thank you.Jon Eckert:Much nicer production than I typically get in the books that I write. So I'm impressed with what Oxford's done with it. The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports. It says it's this fascinating look at the overlap and the way Christianity and major college sports and professional sports have been woven together starting in the 1920s. So tell us how you got to this book from that journey you just described.Paul Putz:Yeah, I think so many authors say their book is in some sense autobiographical. You have a question that you want to think about and in the process of exploring your own questions, you kind of realize, hey, other people might be asking these questions too. So that's how it started for me. I mentioned I'm growing up in Nebraska, I was a pastor's kid, I was also loving sports. And so this idea of being a Christian and being an athlete were so central to how I saw myself. And so when I did pursue the PhD and became a historian exploring sports in Christianity, it was my desire to figure out where did I come from? How was my high school basketball coach, Joel Heeser, who's a friend of mine now still coaching high school basketball? How did he learn what it means to be a Christian athlete, a Christian coach? And so out of that kind of sense of curiosity and a sense of where's my own place in this story, I went and do what historians do.So we go back to the archives and we try to look at the origins and we look at the cultural context and we try to figure out cause and change over time and how did this happen and how did it influence culture and how did culture influence what was going on? And so that's what I got to spend five years doing. It started as a PhD doctoral project. I'm going to archives across the US and I'm looking at memos and documents, and going to the libraries and just trying to tease out how this space to bring together sports and faith developed and then how it evolved and advanced to the place where it shaped my life and shaped the lives of so many others in America.Jon Eckert:That's well said and a great setup to the book. And one of the things that kind of blew my mind, and it's just in the introduction to your book, you have this comment here, "Compared with 100 years ago, there are far more athletes and coaches today willing to publicly champion Christianity as a formative influence in their lives." So I think sometimes in the US we feel like we're in this post-Christian world. And in some ways it's a very different world, especially when you hear athletes as soon as they're interviewed after a game, immediately giving credit to God and giving glory to God and the Steph Currys of the world and any number of football players. And you see this over and over and over again. And that wasn't the case a hundred years ago, probably because sports weren't as, they didn't have the platform that they do now. But as you've written the book, what do you attribute that to the most? I know that's the point of the whole book, but can you distill that down to two or three points for the people listening and why you think that's the case?Paul Putz:Yeah, what I try to suggest in the book is the blending of sports and Christianity kind of happens in two phases. And so I start in the 1920s, but there's this era before the 1920s, we'll say goes from after the Civil War until the 1920s. And it's during this era there's a movement called, muscular Christianity. And what muscular Christianity does is it helps Christians see the value of the body, the value of physical activity to moral formation. And it's out of muscular Christianity, which is a movement that starts in England and then it comes to the United States. It's out of muscular Christianity that a lot of these ideas about character formation in sports are developed. And it's why sports become connected to schools and education because people and school leaders are trying to figure out how do we channel this interest that our students have in athletic activity into productive ways so we can use it to form and shape them as good citizens.So muscular Christianity is kind of the first stage, which again connects sports to Christian mission with this character building way. And it has a profound effect. I mean, some of the sports we play today are products of muscular Christianity. And the classic example is basketball, 1891, James Naismith enrolls at a Christian college in Springfield, part of the YMCA. And when he enrolls at the school, he said his desire was to win men for the master through the gym. So he has a Christian purpose, a Christian mission at a Christian school, and he creates basketball to advance these muscular Christian ideas.Jon Eckert:And I didn't realize this, but in the book you highlight, Naismith is the only coach in Kansas history that has a losing record.Paul Putz:Only coach with a losing record.Jon Eckert:Because he didn't care.Paul Putz:He didn't... And this is such an important point because in that first era there were some real idealistic people like Naysmith who thought sport legitimately as first and foremost for moral formation, it's about developing people. Win or lose doesn't matter. So that's the first era. 1920s comes along and it's pretty clear that sports has developed into something else. Sports is connected to commercialization, winning comes first. Even at colleges it was supposed to be educational, but it's clear that at the college level, if you're a coach, you might be a great molder of young men, but if you don't win games, you're getting fired.Jon Eckert:Right.Paul Putz:So there's this sense in the 1920s, this reality sets in that sport is now commercialized. It's big time. And even though it's still connected to say college, at the big time level, that muscular Christian mission isn't there. So what my book tries to do is say, okay, when muscular Christianity is sort of on the back burner because we now have this big time sports structure in the 1920s where it's all commercialized, it's all celebrity, how do Christians still engage in that? How do they wrestle with that tension of a, when at all cost atmosphere, a space where Christians don't determine the culture of sports they're guests in this culture and how do they create a space to still cultivate and nurture Christian athletes and coaches there? And that's where we see in the 1920s, very few Christians able to navigate that. There's just a handful of them who can be in major league baseball or can be in big time college athletics and still feel strong about their Christian commitments.But a hundred years later, we now see all sorts of Christian athletes and coaches who are comfortable in those spaces. And you kind of asked what drove that. What I would say drives that is the formation of a community that was embedded within sports institutions, that creates a sense of shared mission, shared purpose, and that over generations continue to invite more people in, continue to develop and just kind of under the radar, ministry of presence was just there and available to help athletes and coaches identify as Christians in that space. So it really comes down to the creation of these networks and organizations like the Fellowship of Christian athletes, like athletes in action, like Pro Athletes Outreach, like Baseball Chapel, people starting something new and then sustaining it over time and seeing the ripple effects years later.Jon Eckert:The beautiful example and what I had just finished this summer, this, Path Lit by Lightning, it's the Jim Thorpe book. Have you read this?Paul Putz:Yes, I have. Fantastic book.Jon Eckert:Such a fascinating read, because it's in this, leading up to the 1920s, his career is this amateur versus professional, which he gets caught and just treated so poorly and Pop Warner, the king of amateur child sports that we have Pop Warner leagues all over, kind of a horrific human being in the way they exploited people and they did it through sports. But he started his career at the Carlisle Indian School, which was one of the horrific experiments in US history when we took students off from their families off of reservations to try to quote, unquote civilize them into these things. And sports were a major part of it. So in our conversation, I'd love to pivot a little bit, well maybe not even pivot, but integrate sports into what K-12 education has been because still most places other than maybe Friday night lights in Texas football, most K-12 sports are not big time sports yet that most of the athletes playing sports there.You would make the case that the extracurricular there is to support the moral development. It's not a huge money sport until you get into the AAU stuff and some of those things where you have revenue, but K-12 systems, it's still more about that and it's been used for a lot of good things. And then in some cases, in Jim Thorpe's example, it was good kind of. So could you integrate those a little bit and how you see K-12 sports still having an influence and where Christian coaches and Christian athletes have a spot in that?Paul Putz:Yeah, yeah, you're right. There is a difference. And that muscular Christian ideal still continues in some ways, certainly even at the big time sports level. There's elements of it, but especially I think when we get into K-12 or if we get into division three small colleges.Jon Eckert:Yes.Paul Putz:There's a better chance to I think fully integrate the sports experience with the mission of the school. And at the same time, I would say the trends that we see at the highest levels of sports, your professional leagues, those do filter down because kids are looking to athletes as celebrities and heroes. So they're emulating them in some ways. So even though at the K-12 level and the small college level, there's a difference structurally and financially, you still have people who are formed and shaped by what they're seeing in these images in this culture. Now at the same time, I do think in terms of the growth of sports in what we've seen, I think we saw really a century from the 1920s until the last 10 years of continual development of sports as a central part of education in the United States. And this was done intentionally through organizations and networks like coaches associations, high school athletic associations.These develop in the 1920s and after the 1940s and 1950s, they sort of take on this professional identity. There was a period in time where to be a coach at a high school, you were seen as like, well, you're not really part of what's going on at the school. And so it took time for coaches to establish a professional identity linking it with education. And that evolved over the course of, again, a hundred years from the 1920s into the present. But these coaches and athletic directors, I have a quote in my book where I mentioned this, they intentionally had this vision for cultivating in young people a love of sports, because they thought through sports we can instill good values for American citizens or if you're at a Christian school you can instill Christian values. And so at the K-12 level, sports were always connected with some sort of vision beyond just the game.It was more than a game. It was about who you're becoming as a person. It was about learning life lessons and it sounds like a platitude. We've all heard this and we've also, I'm sure seen hypocrisy where we know of a coach who says this, but it doesn't seem like it plays out that way. But there's also some deep truth to that. I think anyone listening to this, if you've played a sport at the high school level that formed and shaped you, maybe in some bad ways, but in some good ways too. And so I think there is a power to sports that continues to have relevance and resonance today. I will say in more recent years we're seeing some really big shifts with K-12 school. With club sports, with travel sports. And there's some ways that that sense of community identity that was tied into the school level, it doesn't exist everywhere.There's pockets where it does. But in some places, some of the best athletes are now not connected to their school. And so for the future, I worry about what will it look like in 40, 50, 60 years where sports could be such an important part of a community and neighborhood identity at a school level. Will that go away as more and more athletes maybe turn to different models to pursue their dreams and goals? Some people in education might say that's healthy. They might say we need to separate education from sports. For me, and maybe I'm naive, but I think there's something important and beautiful about linking sports to education. But we do have to have guard rails and we do have to have people fighting to do it the right way.Jon Eckert:I completely agree. I want to see sports, I want to see all extracurriculars integrated well into what's going on in the classroom. I think that provides more holistic place for kids to learn is where kids can be more engaged and kids can flourish in areas where they may not flourish in one classroom, but they might flourish with an instrument they might flourish in a club or with sports. And I think sports are a powerful place for that. I do know with some states moving to NIL deals for high school athletes, that completely changes the dynamic and is really disconcerting for me because in that case, unlike colleges where that athlete is generating revenue for the school, it's hard to argue that the gate attendance at the high school game is really that much impacted by an individual athlete. But that's coming and that is the world we're living in.And that's some of that trickle-down effect that you described. I never want to be the sky is falling person. I'm thrilled that we have a 12 team playoff system in college football. I'm also not ignorant of the fact that, that completely changes the dynamics of the economics of the sport. So what I'd like to say is Christian leaders, because our set in the Interfaith Sports Institute and the Center, we overlap in some really good ways. What I'd like to see is what you described about the athletes in the twenties and thirties, creating these associations and these communities that fly under the radar of just inviting people in because I think that's what as Christians we should be doing in whatever we're called to. So do you see overlap for Christian administrators and teachers for how we can represent Christ well in the platforms big or small that we have? Do you see any lessons that we can take away as educators from what you found from your athletes in the book?Paul Putz:I think so. I think probably one of the most important, or I guess if I were to highlight two things. One is I would say there's lots of different ways to do it.Jon Eckert:Yes.Paul Putz:I think sometimes a certain person or a certain organization, they come up with a way that works really well for them and then they hold fast to that as if this is the way, this is the biblical way, this is the Christian way. And what I would want to say is it's a part of a conversation. Different contexts need different resources, different methods. And the way God made us as a community talks about the diversity of strengths we have in giftings and callings. And so I think one thing to learn is you can learn from other people who have methods and approaches when it comes to integrating faith in sports. And you probably also have something to offer to that conversation too.So if we can hold what we do loosely, but also not in a way that shies away from the calling to step up as Christian leaders and to say there is a way to engage in sports that reflects my convictions, but then also in a way where there's a sense of humility that I can learn from others. I don't have it all figured out. A bunch of Christians before me have messed up as they're trying to do this, but they've also done some good stuff along the way. And I think that can give us freedom to try, probably to fail, but to maybe advance the conversation forward. So that's one piece. And the other piece is I think it's simply expect tension, expect that there's not an easy overlap between the culture of sports and Christianity. I think there are certain elements to sports that I'm really drawn to. I'm competitive. I love the competitiveness of sports. I want to have the winner. For me, there's a drive for all of that.Jon Eckert:You're not James Naismith, is that what you're saying?Paul Putz:I'm not. I love James Naismith, but for me, boy, I want to, I'm kind of like, I want to win.Jon Eckert:You can be John Wooden. He wanted win too.Paul Putz:There you go. That's right. He did it. The quiet winner. But biblically, there are all sorts of messages, passages, commands from Jesus that tell us that his kingdom is upside down. It's different than the way the world works. And sports culture so often has a certain way where we prioritize the winner. We maybe give our attention to the star athlete. And that type of culture, it's really difficult to fully, fully integrate that into this full-fledged view of Christian faith. And especially because sports is also a pluralistic space where you're going to have people of all different faith, traditions, race, ethnicity, backgrounds, which is beautiful.But it also means let's just have some realistic expectations for what we can accomplish in sports, realizing tension's going to exist. It's the already not yet tension. We live after Jesus's life, death and resurrection before he comes to make it fully complete. And so in the midst of that, we can witness to Christ's way right now and point to glimpses of his coming kingdom. But let's not have this sense of maybe an idealistic perfectionist bent that insists or expects that we're going to round out all the sharp edges of sports. There's going to be tension there.Jon Eckert:And so as educators, the beautiful thing, I got to teach coach for years and what I loved about it was I love basketball, but it wasn't going over the same play for the fourth year in a row. And the 50th practice that I've done it was seeing how individuals came to that and what skills you had and how you could put them in place to be successful. And so when I taught a science lab the 16th time I taught the science lab, I knew what was going to happen with the chemical reaction, but it was fun to see through the eyes of the kids that were there. So the more diverse and pluralistic the classroom of the team is, the more interesting it is to see that through all those different perspectives.And I think that's really how God sees us anyway. And so there's beauty in that and it's not a challenge to be overcome. It's the beauty of being in the world that every person is made in the image of God, whether they're the guy on the end of the bench or the best player on the team, or the kid that struggles in the science lab and flourishes in the art classroom. That kid is fascinating. And then you can't give up on that kid. And so the great coaches don't give up on players. It's why I'm super curious to see how Bill Belichick does at University of North Carolina, having been a pro coach for so many years where it is like, yeah, you've got to recruit well, but you also have to build a culture where your team, and that's harder to do now than ever because of what's going on in the transfer portal.And I don't like this, so I'm going to leave. And at least in the classroom, for the most part, we get a kid for the year and we get to be with them. We get to walk alongside them for a time and help them become more of who they're created to be and then pass them off to the next person. So I know in the Faith and Sports Institute, this is a lot of what you're trying to do through sports and how you integrate faith well. So talk a little bit about any events you have coming up or what you hope to do through that.Paul Putz:Yeah, well one thing we are excited about is the stuff we get to do with you, the Center for School Leadership. I think just over the past couple of years we've connected and collaborated. We've hung out and [inaudible 00:22:43]Jon Eckert:Board, you're on our advisory board board.Paul Putz:I often tell people, CSL think is one of the best things Baylor has going for it. And that's because I was a high school teacher and I see the sort of leaders that are developed through CSL. And so I immediately wanted to get connected and to see some overlap. I also knew sports is so central to education, and I know you have many coaches and athletic directors who come through your degree programs. And so it's been fun just to explore together some of the ways we can partner. So we do have, in June, we're actually going to be putting on at Baylor in conjunction with Baylor Athletics Center for School Leadership, faith and Sports Institute. We're going to have a little Christian Leadership Summit event. We're going to gather people together who are interested in these questions of faith and sport integration and how do you compete with excellence, but with Christian values and perspective.And so we're real excited about that. We have other events that we're doing in February, we're hosting a youth sports event, thinking about how the church navigates youth sports issues. And that's going to be February 7th and eighth here at Truett Seminary in Waco. And then in next summer, July, late July, we're hosting the Global Congress on Sport and Christianity. This is more of an academic gathering. We're bringing in scholars who do research on sports and Christianity, but we're also bringing in some thoughtful practitioners, some chaplains, some coaches, some athletic directors, people who have thought deeply about sports and faith. And it's a shared conversation. So a lot of what we try to do with the Faith and Sports Institute, convene people, have conversations, collaborate, bring people together. And we do have some grad programs and online certificate programs. So we have some educational pieces that are foundational to what we do, but also we have these just public facing programs and collaboration opportunities that I'm real excited about.Jon Eckert:Love that. And I love being at a place like Baylor where there's so many good things going on. As a center, we get to partner with you, we get to partner with Baylor Athletics. Anything Coach Drew does, I will happily support.Paul Putz:100%.Jon Eckert:So we have so many great people like that. So that's a blessing. And I know we're almost out of time, so I'm going to do our lightning round because we really need to do the lightning round. But I want to start with this. What's the biggest challenge you see facing Christian coaches and educators right now?Paul Putz:I think it's margin and time, and the demands of the job. It seems there's more and more responsibility, and for good reasons. It's because there's these issues. It's mental health. We want to care for the kids. And there's all these challenges kids face now you need to figure that out, because if you're going to teach the kid, you better know what you're doing. And it just seems like I was last a high school teacher 11 years ago. I don't know that that world exists now 10 years later. It's totally different when I hear what educators are going through. I think for coaches as well, you've talked about it with NIL, it feels so new. I would just say some margin, some grace, some space, some sense of community. And then through that, maybe we can figure out some healthier rhythms because it's unsustainable with the way it is now. So that's one thing I see just with the people I've been around, and I know we've talked a little bit about this too, it's something... We need each other. At the end of the day, we need each other for this.Jon Eckert:Yeah. Best advice you've ever received?Paul Putz:I would say, I'm going to, boy, here's what I'll go with. John Wilson said this, "Let a thousand flowers bloom," was what he said. And he was talking about in the context of academics who kind of try to claim their territory, their space, and kind of own it. And his perspective was, let's encourage it all. Let's let it all grow. Don't try to cultivate your little space, a little thousand flowers bloom. It's going to look more beautiful and let's encourage one another along the way. And so that's the first thing that to mind. If I were to think more, I might have something else, but that's something I've been continually reminded of is how much we need each other and how much we need to encourage one another. And how much there is when we look out from ourselves and see the other work that's being accomplished. There's so much to support and encourage.Jon Eckert:That's good. I always like what comes to mind first. So that's good. Worst advice you've ever received?Paul Putz:Worst advice...Jon Eckert:Or given?Paul Putz:Or given? I've probably given some bad advice. I cannot think of... There's nothing specific that's coming to mind. That's for worst advice probably because sort of just went in one ear and out the other.Jon Eckert:That's good.Paul Putz:Gosh, I've run a total blank. You stumped me. [inaudible 00:27:39] Yeah. I'll circle back. I'm going to email you, if I can think of one after.Jon Eckert:You have to have gotten bad advice from a coach or from about coaching. That's where some of the worst advice I've ever received about coaching.Paul Putz:Well, I'll tell you. So this isn't necessarily advice, but I have heard a coach say, and this is about being a Christian, basically it was, "Hey, when you're a Christian, when you step onto that field, you're someone else. You're totally someone else. You can become whatever you want to be there." So there you go. That's some bad advice.Jon Eckert:Yeah. That's good.Paul Putz:As Christians, sports are part of life. So we don't separate who we are as Christians, we don't compartmentalize. So there you go. Worst advice is that you can separate who you are in the field to play.Jon Eckert:So if you had to distill down into a sentence your one takeaway piece of advice for somebody who wants to write a book, I talk to a lot of educators who run to write a book, you've now written a book. Any nugget that as an encouragement or as a discouragement, like, "Hey, think about this." What would you say?Paul Putz:I would say you got to write it for yourself. You got to care about it. And it's got to be important for you that you put this out because there's a ton of great books out there. You're not going to get rich off writing books. It's got to be because you're passionate about it. For yourself, not in the sense of to glorify yourself, for yourself in the sense that I have these words that I think could be helpful if I get it out. And the other thing is resilience. You got to be willing to sit down in that chair and write when you don't feel like it. Get that draft out, edit, revise. So it's resilience. And it's also a real calling that these words need to be out there.Jon Eckert:Yeah. Well, you said you were not going to make money on this. I've heard you refer to yourself as the John Grisham of sports historians.Paul Putz:There's only... Yeah, of sports and Christianity in America. Historians. There's like two of us.Jon Eckert:That's good. No, no, that's good. It's so true about the books and not getting rich, and you do have to have something that you feel so deeply that you need to get out there that it's going to drive you on those days you don't want to do it. So that's good advice. Last question, what makes you most hopeful as you look ahead, as an educator, as somebody who's interested in sports, what makes you most encouraged?Paul Putz:I think it's being around people who we're in this with, it's about the people we're in it with. There's a lot that I can get discouraged about when I see the news and it feels like there's so much that's changing. But then I'm around people who are saying, "You know what? This is a time we lived in. We didn't choose this time, but here we are, and what are we going to give up? We're going to say, oh, it's hopeless." No, it's the people. It's looking for people who want to find solutions and who realize young people are growing up. They're being shaped and formed right now. And if we're not in that work, what are we doing to shape the future? So that's more than anything. It's just being around people who are willing to put in the work, even in the face of the struggles.Jon Eckert:Well, until wrap up, I'm grateful that you decided not to take your talents to the NBA, but you brought them into academia and you brought those loves together. So I really appreciate your partnership and you being here today.Paul Putz:Thanks so much. Really appreciate you and the work you do.

Constraints Breed Creativity: Stephen Carter

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Stephen Carter, founder of the Seed Tree Group and director of the entrepreneurial program at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy. They explore how constraints breed creativity and how fostering an entrepreneurial mindset transforms education.Carter works with schools across the country to help them start similar entrepreneurship programs that focus on transforming student and teacher engagement rather than just adding new programs or tools.The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.Be encouraged.Books Mentioned:Teaching the Entrepreneurial Mindset: Innovative Education for K-12 Schools by Stephen CarterThe Seed Tree: Money Management and Wealth Building Lessons for Teens by Stephen CarterThe Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
 
Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInX: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
 
 
Jon Eckert:
All right, Stephen, welcome to the Just Schools podcast. Really excited to have you on. We've been wanting to have you on for quite a while as I think you're leading some of the most interesting work in schools right now. So tell us a little bit about your background and what got you to the point that you're at right now in your career.
Stephen Carter:
Jon, thank you. I'm pleased to be on this podcast, and love following your work and what you're doing as well.
Really, the journey was a journey through Christian education. I started in 10th grade in Christian education, graduated from a Christian school, went to a Christian college, started teaching at a Christian school, landed at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy in Cincinnati, Ohio when I was 24 years old. So that means they took on a teacher who had no idea what he was doing, and they took a risk, right? And I cut my teeth on those early years as an English teacher. And I made a discovery early on, which was if you say yes to things, you will get a lot of awesome opportunities.
I should also point out, Jon, you'll get some not so awesome opportunities, i.e., let's start a debate team at the school. Let's coach cross country. Let's get involved with the fine arts, different aspects of writing, critical reviews for plays. I said yes to everything. And that meant that 11 years ago when Dean Nicholas, who at the time was our principal, came to me and said, "Stephen, we've got this idea for this coffee shop for students. You should help run it," of course my answer was yes, never mind the fact that we are about to welcome our second child and we had all kinds of irons in the fire. The answer was yes.
What I didn't know, Jon, is that would completely change my life. I talk a lot about transformation. That was the defining moment of transformation, when it was here's an English teacher who in my mind had no business starting an entrepreneurship program, stepping into this space, discovering a passion that came alive through student engagement, and now 11 years later, just to borrow one of your favorite words, flourishing, a flourishing program that has now enabled me to help impact schools around the nation as they start programs that enable students to thrive and then flourish through just meaningful engagement. So it's been a journey of discovering what it means to truly engage students around the entrepreneurial mindset.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and I'm curious, and I've never asked you this but did you have an entrepreneurial bent prior to taking this on? It feels like to just jump into what you've done and saying yes as a form of being somewhat entrepreneurial, but did you have that in your background at all?
Stephen Carter:
Well, Jon, I did, but I had repressed it because I thought you had to repress that to be a teacher, right?
Jon Eckert:
Oh, right, yeah.
Stephen Carter:
Because if you're a teacher, you're the academic. You're the person who contains the knowledge. You can't have an entrepreneurial bent. I had a lawn mowing business when I was in school, a babysitting business. I would go door to door passing out flyers to do anything around a house to get some money. I even sold my lawn mowing business when I went to college, not for much money, but the point was I had just repressed it. And when I stepped into this space, it just all came flooding back and it took me on a journey of discovery into what does a renewed mindset really mean? I talk a lot about Romans 12:2 when Paul says, "Don't conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." I experienced it that first year starting an entrepreneurship program in real-time, and then I saw students do that as well and it's just been a journey ever since.
Jon Eckert:
Well, I think it's fascinating and maybe a sad commentary on our profession that it feels like you have to set aside that entrepreneurial mindset to be a teacher. And so I've worked with a group that was the Center for Teaching Quality, now it's Mira Education, but they wrote a book a number of years ago called Teacherpreneurs, and how do we get educators to think more in a more entrepreneurial way about this really human task that we do with students. And so I think that's why I've had such an affinity for your work. You're literally working on entrepreneurship with kids.
But I think even just in the way you've built out what you've done at CHCA and now working with schools all over the country, I've seen that mindset in you as I know you've had to overcome some challenges. So what were some of the biggest hurdles for you getting to where you're at now? Because I think there are a lot of schools out there looking at entrepreneurial programs, and obviously there are going to be different challenges, but I would imagine there would be some similar obstacles people might have to get over. So what were two or three of the biggest challenges you had getting this going?
Stephen Carter:
Hindsight is a beautiful thing. I can look back on it and say they were formative, and I would almost call them constraints more than challenges. And the principle that I now realize I operate out of is that constraints breed creativity. So now I seek them out, Jon. I'm like, "Yes, give me a constraint."
So for me, there were a couple big ones. Budget was huge. I'm remembering this. I document this in the book. I went to Dean Nicholas early on. This was a motif in the story. I go asking for money and I leave with very little money or none. That's a constraint. Here's what I've told him multiple times. "If I had gotten the money for the program that I asked for, it wouldn't have grown like it did." The constraint was budget.
Another constraint, time. Time is the number one thing. You talk to school leaders all the time. Time is the biggest constraint. Our teachers are strapped. There's no bandwidth. There's no time. And I would just say the beauty of this is it helps us understand how to better manage our time so that we begin investing it.
And I think the third, this is one I don't talk about a lot, but it was getting over the sense of being almost hypocritical in a space where I didn't have an MBA. I wasn't an entrepreneur technically at the time, and I felt like an imposter. And I'm in a school, like many schools listening, of business leaders where the parents own businesses and they have MBAs and they have these degrees. And I just decided in that moment, I would own it and ask for advice and ask for help and what should I be reading? Who should I be talking to? And it opened up more doors than I ever possibly imagined.
Jon Eckert:
So you mentioned the book, and it's a great book teaching the entrepreneurial mindset, innovative education for K-12 schools. I love it that you built... Because the SeedTree Group is your... That's your group, right? So you've published it that way. Again, it's a great blueprint for it. But I have to have you share a little bit, I don't know if I have the name quite right, but was it the Leaning Eagle Coffee Cart? Wasn't that-
Stephen Carter:
The Leaning Eagle Coffee Bar.
Jon Eckert:
Can you give a... That story just makes me laugh every time I hear it. Can you just give us a little bit-
Stephen Carter:
Oh, my goodness. Well, so we're-
Jon Eckert:
... the genesis of the... Yeah, go ahead.
Stephen Carter:
So Jon, you're referencing our flagship business. And when we launched this whole program in Cincinnati, we started with a rolling coffee cart and three little rolling carts and we're not... This was Jason Oden was a teacher at the time who was instrumental in this. And we built the permanent location and we were going through some naming pieces. Well, the school was going through one of these big rebranding campaigns and had hired all the consultants and all the things. And they had just released this big idea, and it was, "Hey, at CHCA, students lean in."
And so I remember, I'm sitting there as a teacher, we're in the big assembly room, and every teacher turns and you just get this look of like, "Oh, here we go. Where are we going to have to implement this? Oh, another one of these branding campaigns." So I remember the discussion then went into the naming of the coffee bar, and our mascot is the eagle. So it was this tongue in cheek approach of, "Hey, we're the Leaning Eagle because we lean in and take a sip at the coffee bar." And it was really funny for the first two or three years, then the school changes its branding campaign. So now it's like, "Why is the Eagle leaning?" So we have the old school people who remember the why, and it's rooted in that.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. Well, and speaking of constraints breeding creativity, didn't your cart get shut down due to health concerns? Wasn't that-
Stephen Carter:
Oh, Jon, you're getting-
Jon Eckert:
That right?
Stephen Carter:
... all of our dirty laundry out there. And yeah, you're absolutely right. Oh my gosh, those early years, it's so much funny. That's why I tell schools when I work with them. I'm like, "Look, we've been doing this 11 years. I can start you at year seven because you're going to overcome a lot of what we learned the hard way." And I'm telling, this is embarrassing, Jon, but I guess we'll just put it out there. We didn't know we needed a health license. No one told us. We're just selling coffee. We didn't know.
And so we've got the student there and he's serving coffee. Well, here comes the health inspector, walks up to him and says, "Hey, where do you wash hands?" And this is probably not the best kid to answer that question. Let's face it, Jon, this is the one kid where you're like, "Please don't ask him anything." So this kid says, "Why would we need to wash hands?" And it's like, "Are you kidding me right now?" I'm teaching an English class and I get called down and it's like, "Why is this conversation even happening? Couldn't you have had a better answer than why do we need to wash hands?" We did not get shut down. But I will tell you this, we had a hand sink in no time, a license at a record pace, and we learned a lot of lessons along the way.
Jon Eckert:
So I love it. Page 188 and 189, they have people saying, you walk into CHCA now, we should talk a little bit about where you're at now with the teaching kitchen and the greenhouse and all those pieces, and people are like, "Well, we don't have that. We don't have the resources for that. But you can do this with $150 and an innovative idea. And I think that's what the Leaning Eagle was. And then that blew up into these things. And then you've had a number of businesses. I remember the... Was it a smoothie business that you're like, "Hey, we didn't have it placed right. We didn't..." And the kids learn so much from that failure about what does work and what doesn't work. And so you want some of that because as an entrepreneur, you have to try things. And the benefit of risk-taking isn't that you're going to be successful. It's learning from that. And so I feel like you have built that in well.
And I want to know how you have built what you've built at CHCA, but then give schools what they need where they have the constraints that are going to be real, but they learn the lessons that you learned in those first seven years because I feel like those are super valuable for you and for the students that you've been leading with. So talk a little bit about what you've built and some of the ways you've built it, even how you got the pizza ovens. I think that's an amazing story where you found state money that allowed you to buy pizza ovens. So I would love to hear a little bit about the current state at CHCA.
Stephen Carter:
So currently when you step into our school on our campus where we are PK-12, over a thousand students, right around 1,200, several campuses, you're going to see a fully fledged program, six full-time faculty members running it, six on-campus businesses, 15 elective courses, a certificate track. It's fully baked, but you're seeing the product of what we learned along the way. Because I will tell you this, as we've already illustrated, when we started, we were living that entrepreneurial mindset. And by that, I mean that famous saying of we had jumped off the cliff and we were building the plane on our way down in real-time with students.
And that's the beauty of it, is the students were experiencing all of these different aspects and having an awesome time. We now have to seek out failure. I hate to say it that way because early on, failure is easy. Now, we have to create it because learning from that is so pivotal. It's one of our four attributes we teach. We built these businesses and then we discovered we needed curriculum and we needed learnings. And so all of this was built along the way as we were going. And we discovered there's four attributes that truly embody the entrepreneurial mindset. And that is truly understanding a directed growth mindset, tethered to mission, vision and values, understanding the why and the purpose and the compass of direction, then developing grit. And that's the goal-setting piece that's been instrumental in all of our business.
I'll give you a little anecdote here. You mentioned our pizza oven business. That started because we had a goal. We wanted to build this teaching kitchen. We had no money. And I'll second your point, Jon. People walk in our campus and they say, "Wow." Well, you should have seen it when we were building these things. It was nothing, okay? So we're building this, we don't even have enough money for the drywall. So we were going to build it without drywall. It was going to be an extra $20,000. And we had a senior at the time who now is at a three Michelin star restaurant who said, "No, we're going to do that drywall, Mr. Carter." And I'm like, "Oh, really?" He's like, "We're going to start a business using that pizza oven and we're going to sell pizzas until we have enough money to finish building that drywall." And that's how it started. It was a goal. And that pizza business is still an operation. And so it's teaching these attributes through the experience of these hands-on businesses.
And I'll end this point on this note. What we discovered in hindsight is it's not a business as much as it is a laboratory, and it's a laboratory to experience in real-time problem-solving via systems. Hey, we're out of cups at the coffee bar. That's an awesome problem. Why? Because it means something failed in our system, which means we need to address that failure, which means we need a better system so that we can replicate the success in the future. That's the learning. You're going to have kids graduating with this program. I don't care if they start a coffee bar. Frankly, I don't think they should. You lose a lot of money unless you open 15 of them. Don't start a coffee bar, listeners, okay? At your school, it's fine. But you've got kids leaving who know how to solve problems and create systems to prevent future problems, I guarantee you every business owner in the country would hire that kid on the spot.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, that's well said. I think sometimes we get caught up in the product and where we get to and we miss the whole point of it, which is the learning that goes on and the problem solving, which is so key. And so you having to seek out opportunities for failure, that's a great place to be in. But I do think it's important that we don't miss that, that kids need a chance to try some things that as adults, we're like, "Ugh." And you have been doing it for 12 years. That's probably not going to work but at some level, you need to let them learn that lesson or better yet, prove you wrong. Because that's what entrepreneurs do. They see something, they see a hole, they figure out a way to solve the problem. And then in doing that, they're solving all kinds of problems. So I love the mindset that you're teaching because I think that's what's so integral.
What opportunities do you have do you see for schools who want to partner with you? I know you're with 25 schools now. You want to get to 50 schools in fairly short order. What opportunities do you see for that? Because I think there's been a huge interest as I've heard people talk about you and to you about the opportunities they have.
Stephen Carter:
So when I talk to heads of school, typically I hear problems. I used to hear problems around enrollment and things have changed to where there's not a lot of that anymore but engagement is huge. And it's teacher engagement, student engagement, and parent engagement. And here's what I'm really seeing as a massive opportunity. Parents are now coming to school saying, "We want this. We want this. We want this." But they don't exactly know what they want, just that they want this. And the same often at schools. And schools have the problem of we've got a lot of programs, a lot of great programs, and often you can get program fatigue. It's like, well, we're going to launch this other program. Well, does it have a long shelf life? Is it just going to be another maker space idea that turns into a storage room?
So for me, the opportunity is transformation over tools, or I could even put it as skills over content. We are at a defining point in education when it comes to shifting to meaningful real-world skill building for our students. Think about what Malcolm Gladwell said last summer on stage at an event. He said that collaboration is the skill of the 21st century. We've been doing collaboration in schools for as long as we can remember, but when you collaborate with a group of students to build a brand new venture on the campus that is still going to be there 10 years later, you're collaborating around a legacy. You're collaborating in real-time to learn leadership skills, effective communication, all these core skills, even emotional intelligence.
So I'll answer your question like this. The opportunity is parents want this kind of programming. Students are engaged by this kind of programming. And here's something really cool. Donors come alive with this programming. When I work with private, I mostly work with private Christian K-12 schools around the nation, and here's what I'll tell them. 60% of our program here in Cincinnati, Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy, 60% is funded by donors who are alumni parents that had stopped giving to the school. That to me, we're not talking about robbing, giving to other programs. We're talking about new interest. So the opportunity is low barrier to entry with massive ROI around engagement and true transformation.
One of the big areas of this business, it's not just starting a program. It's training teachers to then engage the students through the program toward a certificate that demonstrates key learnings in the entrepreneurial mindset. So it's student-facing and teacher-facing with the mindset to transform the entire school culture. So Jon, I am pumped.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, and I feel that for you. I should say full disclosure here, I'm on the Cincinnati Hills board because I love what Dean Nicholas is doing as head, and I love the entrepreneurial program. And we went and studied your school as part of a book project we were doing several years ago. I walked away thinking this was some of the most interesting work that I've seen in schools, particularly because of the engagement piece. And I think your point about donors getting excited about it and people seeing the value in it, it's when you see kids truly engaged and doing meaningful work together in this collaborative way, not this cheesy artificial collaboration that happens in schools where we give kid, "Now, this is your role and this is your role," and you lead the discussion. It's like this is real money and you now have six businesses that are flourishing. That's really powerful.
I wanted to circle back and then we'll do our lightning round. I wanted to circle back to this initial thing, you saying yes to so many things. We have a lot of people who are educators, and some of them are in their first four or five years of teaching. And I'm always citing this David Brooks quote, "A life of commitment requires saying thousands of no's for the sake of a few precious yeses." And I really worry about people saying yes too often. I'm a people pleaser. I say yes too often all the time, and I don't treat my yeses as precious enough. But I wonder, your comment, constraints breed creativity, is there a way to balance those yeses with that constraints breeding creativity mindset? Do you see any through line there? Because I think you cannot be saying yes to everything anymore-
Stephen Carter:
Right, right.
Jon Eckert:
... because I know you can't manage that. So how do you see those two things in tension, constraints breeding creativity and saying yes to cool opportunities?
Stephen Carter:
Oh my goodness, this is the best question I've heard this month. This is awesome, and I'll answer it with a little bit of Greek mythology. There's a character in Greek mythology who's considered the god of opportunity, and his defining characteristic is he has a lock of hair in the front of his head and the rest of his head is bald. And the idea is he's got winged feet, he comes running by, and if you want to grab onto opportunity, you got to be ready to grab that lock of hair or all you get is the bald back of his head.
So for me, it's not just about like, "Oh, when opportunity comes, I'm going to get up off my seat and open the door and I'll begrudgingly... I'll put my coffee cup down and go." No, I'm already outside the door and I'm going to see him running down the street. And in that moment, I'm going to decide if that is an opportunity that is within my why and my vision and my mission. And to me, that's why we always start with a directed growth mindset.
If you come into our greenhouse, you're going to see these tomato plants, Jon, that are 20, 30 feet tall. You don't get to be a 25-foot tall tomato plant unless you do some pruning, and you've got to prune those leaves and you've got to prune those suckers. And that means you have to know where you're going and why. So I would answer your question by saying I would never chase opportunity until I knew where I was going and why, and that is what we're teaching to our students in real-time.
Jon Eckert:
Love that. That's so needed for all of us, not just our K-12 students. So we always wrap up with a lightning round just to get quick, short burst answers. These are the ones I'm the worst at always. But what would be the best advice you've ever received as an entrepreneur, as an educator, or just as a human being?
Stephen Carter:
Kaizen, the Japanese word for continuous improvement. Never stop learning or improving. Best advice I ever got. In fact, I even have temporary tattoos I pass out that say kaizen on them.
Jon Eckert:
I love that. Love that. What's the worst advice you've ever received as a teacher or entrepreneur?
Stephen Carter:
Probably I would say every single idea has validity for you. And that led into chasing opportunities I shouldn't have chased.
Jon Eckert:
Yes, good bit of wisdom there. Best book you've read in the last year? This could be education-related, business-related, or just being a human being.
Stephen Carter:
I read 52 books a year, and there's one of those that I reread every single year, every year. And that is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I'm telling you, this book has changed every part of my life.
Jon Eckert:
All right, that's been popular for quite a while, so...
Stephen Carter:
Yes, it has.
Jon Eckert:
It's good.
Stephen Carter:
It's old-school.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. But hey, when there's wisdom, there's wisdom. So that's great. All right. And then what would you say your greatest hope? If you were to distill down your greatest hope for what's ahead in education into a sentence, what would you say it is?
Stephen Carter:
This is the time for education to experience true transformation, and we as educators get to be part of that leading toward impact. And to me, impact is refusing to stay in the same place but committing to the same path.
Jon Eckert:
That's well said. That's a great place to wrap things up. So if you're interested in knowing more about Stephen, his work is out there. He's part of the SeedTree Group, and he has written the book Teaching the Entrepreneurial Mindset. He's put out a number of other pieces. I've heard him speak. He's great. You can always hear the energy and the passion in what he's sharing. But it's a blessing to have you on, and I'm so grateful for the work you're doing in schools at Cincinnati Hills and now all over the place. So thanks for being with us.
Stephen Carter:
Thank you, Jon. Appreciate what you're doing and appreciate the opportunity.
 

Leading Leaders: Max Silverman

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Max Silverman from the Center for Educational Leadership (CEL) at the University of Washington. Silverman shares his journey from a high school principal to leading CEL, where he supports district and school leaders nationwide.
A key takeaway is the power of student voice in creating meaningful change, emphasizing the importance of listening, fostering belonging, and staying collaborative as leaders.
The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.Be encouraged.Books Mentioned:The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves by Shawn Ginwright
Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
Dr. Jon Eckert:
All right. Welcome back to [Jeff 00:00:05] Schools. Today we're here with Max Silverman from the University of Washington. He has been doing work that we really aspire to do in so many ways, in supporting school leaders and education leaders in all different kinds of places through the Center for Educational Leadership. So Max, if you would share a little bit about, what brought you into this work? Maybe we'll start there and then just take the conversation from there.
Max Silverman:
It's a funny story, I was a high school principal ... I was a high school assistant principal here in Washington State, at a school that, however you would characterize a school or measure a school, it was struggling. I think the students would tell you that, the staff, and I got the opportunity to be the principal. I quickly found out that as a former high school basketball coach and former social studies teacher, I was actually pretty good at getting people coalesced around a vision of what could be. I was pretty good at working with folks and us agreeing that the kids were fine, that we were the problem, and then we hit a wall. We actually didn't know how to improve the quality of teaching and student experience. That beyond our really wonderful intentions towards our students, that we needed to drastically change what teaching looked like, what school culture and environment looked like. And my school district, just by chance and luck for me, contracted with the Center for Educational Leadership. This is about 2004 maybe, 2005, and I immediately went through the most rigorous program around how to be an instructional leader. I went from saying really stupid things to teachers like, "Oh, I was just in your classroom, and I noticed you called on more girls than boys. Maybe that's something you want to work on."
So knowing how to talk to a teacher and ask questions around, "Tell me a little bit more about what you're working on in your practice. What was your intent for student engagement today?" I just learned how to be in language arts classes and math classes and not be a waste of time to the teachers, to actually be a value add. So that started my journey with CEL, and I was a client of CEL for probably five years and then in 2009 had the opportunity to join the CEL team, begin to build out our work with central office leaders.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Yes. I love the confident humility that you just led into with that, the example that you gave on the who's being called on. My other favorite thing that principals always like to point out is, "Oh, I didn't see a learning target on the board." I didn't see ... It's like, okay, if you're a really bad teacher, then having that learning target on the board might give the kids some idea of what the teacher is trying to do. But for any average educator that learning target is not doing a whole lot for kids, but that's always a go-to one.
Max Silverman:
It's pretty funny to watch a group of leaders walk into a classroom, see a learning target, check the box on their checklist and not think about, oh, is it standard space, is it rigorous? Is that actually what the teacher is doing that day?
Dr. Jon Eckert:
That's right. I can't tell you how many times I've walked into learning targets and I'm like, I feel like that learning target may have been up for the last four or five days because whatever is happening here seems completely unrelated to that. But hey, it's on there, that checks the box, complete compliance exercise. So I do love that research out there that the people who benefit the most from evaluations are the people doing the evaluating, because you're the one getting all the expertise as you see all these different contexts. So I appreciate the humility that you had saying, hey, I could do a lot of the things a leader needs to do, but when we actually wanted to move the needle, I needed this expertise from CEL to figure that out. So I'm curious, the program that you went into, was it a degree program? Was it a support? Was it a part of a cohort? What did that look like?
Max Silverman:
No. So when CEL started ... and more formally, when the Center for Educational Leadership University of Washington, but CEL, we are very unique in that we are a fee-for-service center from a tier-one research university. So we contract with school systems across the country to provide leader professional learning. Even back then, my school district hired CEL and instead of going to a district-led leader professional development, CEL led it. They brought in the most brilliant people from District Two in New York City, from San Diego Unified School District. We had whole group professional development. But even then, Jon, it was fascinating, they would model for us by bringing a whole elementary classroom to our professional development. We'd see a model lesson and then learn how to give feedback to the teacher right there. And then I got coaching in my school, so it was both really good professional development as well as embedded coaching.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
I love that, and I love that an R1 is doing that. Because so often we leave that behind for the research, so then we don't actually apply any of the good research that we're finding, so that feels like a great relationship. How many districts do you all currently work with at CEL? What's the scope of the work? So let's talk about breadth and then we'll talk a little bit more about depth.
Max Silverman:
Yeah. We have a fascinating scope, in that we work with approximately 40 school systems a year as large as Chicago Public Schools and Metro National Public schools, and then as small as Nooksack, Washington. We tend to be in urban districts and rural districts. For many years we lead or facilitate the South Central Washington Superintendents' Network. We've done that for about 15 plus years, and that's out in the Yakima Valley of Washington. Once a month we're in classrooms with superintendents, so we have a pretty wide, pretty good breadth. We also lead the National Principal Supervisor Academy for AASA.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Okay. So with that breadth ... I love the urban/rural because those challenges are different because of different contexts, but there are commonalities. I'm interested, as you've been able to see that and you've gone deeper with these districts, what are some of the commonalities you find across districts, particularly post-COVID? Because my sense of COVID is, it exposed a lot of issues that were already there,, it just exacerbated them. So I'm curious to see if that's been your experience and then, what's been common across these pretty diverse contexts you've been? Because that's a pretty unique perspective that you all have.
Max Silverman:
Yeah. I think it was, Rand just put out a study of superintendents and they compared where large district and small district superintendents spend their time. They're a little bit different, but what was striking to me is how little time they spend on the quality of teaching and learning. That really I think confirmed for me something that we're seeing is ... and leader surveys bear this out, school leaders and district leaders are spending a lot of time now particularly on mental health, both for students and staff. They're dealing with staff shortages, certificated, leader and classified staff. I think they're still putting things back together from COVID, so we find again and again that the bandwidth isn't there yet for leaders at scale. We still find plenty of leaders who can focus really intently, but the bandwidth of individual leaders in school systems isn't quite there yet to really focus on what's happening in classrooms, how do people get better?
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Well, and we were talking about this briefly before we jumped on the conversation, the conversation with Pixel out of the United Kingdom and the work they're doing. The two books they've written are Time to Think and Time to Think 2. I love that because so many educators I talk to, whatever role they're in, they don't have space to think. Or at least they don't feel like they do because the urgency of what they have to deal with and the mental health issues that are exacerbated by learning loss. So that's what I see. You had this learning loss happen over COVID, depending on how long you were out of in-person school because we know the online delivery just didn't work as well for so many kids. So you have these gaps and those gaps then feed the lack of worthiness, the lack of mattering, the lack of belonging, that then exacerbates the mental health, which then exacerbates the learning loss. So it's this thing. And then when you have staff shortages and you might actually get an adult, a human being in a classroom but they're not really trained, their background is not in the area they're teaching, that then exacerbates the mental health of that teacher. That exacerbates the mental health of the kids.
And then the other veteran faculty who know what needs to be done, they're then carrying a larger burden, because they're trying to help these new people that are coming in with good intentions but they're under-prepared for what they're going to do. So I wonder with all of that, that feels like a pretty bleak picture, where are you seeing some signs of hope in some of the districts that you're working with?
Max Silverman:
Yeah, thanks. We're lucky, we get to see hope all the time. The hope we see is that actually when we are with leaders, they want to dig in. They want to learn and get better, and they believe that getting better is a way to improving what happens for students. In most of our work we bring students into the learning in different ways. When leaders get to hear from students about what they want and need, it instigates their learning in a different way. It's really fascinating, the difference between a group of school leaders or district leaders looking at student climate survey data ... even if they do the most elegant analysis, it's still all intellectual. If we can bring in a student panel and have students talk about, how do they know they matter at school, what's a good day at school, what's a bad day? All of a sudden that instigates leader learning in a different way, because there's real kids right there in front of them. So that always makes me hopeful. The other space, I work primarily with central office leaders, and we've been working on this idea that students will have no more of something than adults in the system have.
So if we want students to be seen and heard, they actually won't be unless teachers and principals are. If we want students to have a sense of belonging, they won't unless teachers and principals have that as well. I've been really amazed at the willingness of central office leaders across the country, their willingness to slow down and go out and even interview principals about principal experience and use that as actual data. They all have to put in an Excel for it to become data to them. The willingness of people to really change their epistemology on what is true and knowledge, I do see a shift in that when people are afforded the time or make the time, and that's really hopeful.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Yes. I love that, and people that are still in education right now obviously have to have some element of gritty optimism. So that's the next book I'm working on, where do you get that optimism that's born out of experience, where you've seen kids become more of who they were created to be over and over and over again? What I love about what you said is the way you bring students into it. This is one of the challenges we've been dealing with in our center. So we have a leadership conference, it's a one-day thing in February. One of the things we're working on right now is having the leaders go through using a tool all day for what they're going to do differently, and then they check in over the next three months to make sure that's happening. But before they can actually finalize what that plan is have a student consulting panel where they're meeting with them and running their idea by a panel of students ... who are not at their school but are at the grade level they serve, who can give them feedback on yeah, that would work, no, that wouldn't work. Or here's what I think about that, so that they're the advisory board to the leaders.
Because we've done a lot of student panels and I think you're totally right, they get lost in the data. But when they hear the voices and they hear the lived experiences of the kids, that's different. So now we're trying to do this advisory board piece. I don't know, we've never tried it, it could completely blow up on us. I love that because I agree, if we miss the fact that students need to be leading with us ... I think that's a powerful insight that you all have had. Any advice for us as leaders as we try to bring students in? Any cautions or any, just based on that idea I just shared with you, bad idea, good idea, try something else?
Max Silverman:
Well, so what we keep coming up against is how hard it is for people to listen. So one thing, my colleague Jen McDermott had a project, really which started a lot of our student-centered work, where she interviewed students and met with students and just asked them, "What's a good day at school? What's a bad day at school?" They actually wrote stories or drew pictures, and she made this brilliant move of having them analyze the stories. So it was their data, they kept the data and they came to some conclusions about what they saw. Basically they told us, well, it looks like school's a place that we want to be happy and proud. But the other thing that they then helped us develop was a tool that helps leaders listen. I think my big takeaway, it's called the Student Experience Story Guide, and your listeners can get on our website. It's pretty cool because students came up with the use of the metaphor of heroes and villains. So leaders might ask, "Tell me about, who are the heroes in your school day, who are the villains?"
And one thing as I make sense of this, I think why that works for students is because what they hear is, tell me a story. As opposed to, "When are you most engaged," or "What part of the school day is most rigorous?" Students know that's for us, but tell me a story and then prove to me you're listening by asking really curious, thoughtful questions. So I don't know if I have any cautionary tales for you, but just keep thinking about, how would students ask each other's questions, or they talk to each other about school?
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Yeah. I think that's a super helpful idea and clear that you all listen to kids a lot, because I think we lose sight of that in academia. We lose sight of that in administration. One interesting thing, I had a conversation last year with Jon Hattie, he's from the Kiwi, from New ... But we were sitting and talking and he said, "Equity is a good example. Everybody, we care about equity. That's an important concept and that really matters. But kids don't think about equity, they think about fairness. So how do they talk about what's fair and how do you ask questions they understand?" I love the heroes and villains piece because that's thinking about things in the form of story, the way kids think about stuff. Because kids will all talk about teachers who are fair and who are not fair, they're not necessarily talking about those who are equitable and inequitable. But in their minds those are the same things. I'm sure philosophically you could find some nuances between them.
But at the end of the day, what matters most for kids is what matters most for kids, and therefore, what matters most for educators. So I think that's a good reminder.
Max Silverman:
That square [inaudible 00:18:41]? So that Superintendent's' Network I mentioned that I facilitate in the Yakima Valley and Washington, we were at an elementary school getting ready to observe classrooms. We brought students in, and one of the questions is, "How do you know you matter at school," or "How would you know you matter?" A young girl, I think a fourth grader said, "Oh, that's easy. All those walls in the halls wouldn't be white and there would be rainbows at my eye level."
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Wow.
Max Silverman:
What happened was, the superintendents decided as they were walking around, they saw the school differently. They hypothesized the question, they asked the question of what they saw, who is this school for? The bulletin boards looked, they saw all these beautiful bulletin boards. Oh, a teacher made that for other teachers or for parents. And by bringing student voice in like that, it just changed-
Dr. Jon Eckert:
That's beautiful.
Max Silverman:
... both their focus and their analysis.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Oh, beautiful example. So I always like to ask before we wrap up ... You've been in education a long time. You're actually looking at the end of your time at CEL, and you have this time to look back. But I'm curious, best advice you've ever either given or received and worst advice you've either given or received. You can take it in whatever order you want.
Max Silverman:
Oh, that's a good question because I've given lots of bad advice, so we don't have to go there.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
So have I.
Max Silverman:
I think the best advice that I've most recently been given is by my colleague Casey Warden, who reminded me about moving at the speed of trust.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Yeah, that's good.
Max Silverman:
I use that with central office leaders all the time now and you can just see their heads, the nods across a room. It just helps us all because we all have this sense of urgency. So moving at the speed of trust, it's tricky, but that's probably the best advice. I use that in my internal leadership itself and in my external work. I think some bad advice that I've given in my own leadership at times, when I have a sense of urgency and a sense of, there's certain things we have to get done, in and of itself that behavior is bad advice. I think when I ... and my colleagues will probably affirm this, those moments when I lose my curiosity about the ideas they have and fall back on either things like, "Oh, that's not how we do it," or "We've tried that in the past." So it's not necessarily bad advice, but it's very unleaderly behavior on my part that I really try to pay attention to now.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
No, that's good. That's helpful. All right, last two questions. What's a good book you've read in the last year that you would recommend? It can be education related or otherwise. I always find books to be ... I enjoy books so this may be a selfish question, but what would you say?
Max Silverman:
I think a book I'm just about done with, The Four Pivots by Sean Ginwright. It's The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves. It's a fabulous book about how to be transformational rather than transactional with ourselves and then in our work.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Okay, that sounds like-
Max Silverman:
I highly recommend it, highly.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
Love it. I've not read it. I've got it written down though, so that's great.
Max Silverman:
Yeah, and Dr. Ginwright is a wonderful writer.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
That always helps. That always helps. Some people have great ideas, they just don't always know how to get them out there. So when they can do both, that's a gift. Last question, what makes you most hopeful as you wrap up your time at CEL? You already gave us, you've seen some hopeful things even in challenging contexts. But if you had to say, this is what makes me most hopeful, what would that be?
Max Silverman:
I think that I get to, because of the work I do with central office leaders around belonging and inclusion, I think there's a real, once we get beyond the ... and it's funny, we're talking on election day. It's easy to see partisan divide. Underneath that, it's hard to find somebody who doesn't want to make sure all kids have a sense of belonging. I find that across the country, across the political spectrum, it's hard to find people who in practice want to deny other people's humanity. The pessimistic side of it is, we all get them caught up in these policy and other debates that ultimately do that. But there are a lot, there's probably hundreds if not more spaces in the country today where educators are talking about very real issues of humanness and humanity for the people they serve. Again, I find that across geography, across district size, across partisan divides.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
What a great place to wrap that up. And I have to say, I appreciate your conversation because we started our time, before we jumped on officially, talking about Gonzaga absolutely dump trucking Baylor by 38 points last night. You did it in such a kind way. We broke down where some of the breakdowns were for Baylor, that was kind. And then the other piece ... and I fly to Vancouver tomorrow, so I get to go to Canada and try to explain whatever has happened in our election process.
Max Silverman:
Oh, good luck.
Dr. Jon Eckert:
So yes, I'm going to be seeking belonging and mattering in some good ways.
Max Silverman:
I think the Canadians are more nervous about what's going to happen than ...
Dr. Jon Eckert:
I was just in Toronto the week before this, and I would absolutely affirm that. But I wanted to say, one of the worst pieces of advice I received is that leadership is lonely. I find these kinds of conversations to be super helpful because leaders do make lonely decisions. But I think we have to stop that narrative that leadership is lonely because then nobody wants to step into it. Ultimately there are lonely decisions, there's no way around that. But by having colleagues and what you described with your experience with CEL ... how you got brought into it, and then for you to then step into that role and then provide that for leaders all across the country, that's a tremendous gift. So thanks for what you do.
Max Silverman:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
 

Catalyze: Patti Goforth

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Patti Goforth, principal at Robinson Elementary. Goforth shares insights from her journey as an educator, including the importance of building connections with students and fostering a culture where every child is seen and valued. The conversation also highlights the impact of collaboration through improvement communities and the transformative work being done to enhance student engagement and well-being.The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.Be encouraged.Mentioned:Ron Clark Academy 
Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcslJoin us at Catalyze (formerly Just Schools Academy) July 28-30 at the Hurd Welcome Center at Baylor University, where your team of teachers and administrators will have the opportunity to address a problem of practice related to your campus improvement plan focusing on feedback, engagement, or well-being. This is not a conference. This is a retreat that offers your team a collaborative environment where you’ll work alongside a network of educators and the BCSL team to develop a plan of action using our improvement science tools. With ongoing monthly support from our team, you will be equipped with strategies to catalyze lasting improvement in what we like to call “catalytic improvement communities” that will benefit your school. You will improve an aspect of your campus improvement plan, develop leaders, and enhance collective teacher efficacy. Gather a team of 2-10 teachers and administrators because we do this work best together.

Moving at the Speed of Trust: Dustin Benac

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Dustin Benac, co-founder of Baylor's Program for the Future Church. They discuss the connection between schools, churches, and communities in fostering flourishing environments. Benac shares insights on leadership that moves at the speed of trust, the power of belonging, and the importance of taking strategic risks. The conversation also highlights how collaboration and shared language can drive meaningful connections and create spaces where individuals and institutions thrive together.The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.Be encouraged.Books Mentioned:Adaptive Church by Dustin D. BenacBelonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. CohenMan's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
Transcript:
Jon:
Welcome back to the Just Schools podcast. Today we are here with Dustin Benac. Excited to have him here. He's a little different kind of guest than we usually have, so we're going to start with Dustin telling us a little bit what he does here at Baylor, and then we'll get into how it connects to what we do as educators. Dustin, welcome in.
Dustin Benac:
Thanks Jon. Thrilled to be here. Love what you guys do in the School of Ed.
Jon:
Can you tell us a little bit about what you do here at Baylor? We overlap some because we're interested in leadership, we're interested in education and institutions, but can you talk a little bit about what you do here?
Dustin Benac:
Absolutely. I am the director and co-founder of the Program for the Future Church. We are a research, resource and relationship hub that's devoted to engaging the complex and emerging challenges between current and emerging Christian leaders. We do that through curriculum. We do that through convenings or gatherings, and we do that through contextual research. And one of the things that we're seeing is that even as the church and our communities are changing in incredible and dramatic ways, there is a remarkable future and we're committed to supporting that and pursuing that together.
Jon:
Love that. My question for you, obviously we care deeply about the church. That's one of the primary institutions that really supports what goes on in our country and around the world. And we have the global flourishing study that's a partnership of Harvard and Baylor, looking at what flourishing looks like, and certainly churches and faith are a big part of that, but another big part of it is schools. Where do you see K-12 schools fitting into the work that you're doing?
Dustin Benac:
I think they are an essential aspect of the flourishing of our communities and the flourishing of churches. Because one of the things we see is that the faith formation of people who inhabit churches, particularly inhabit churches over their life course emerges in those first 10 to 12 years. That certainly happens in families, but that also happens in spaces well beyond families. Sunday school classrooms, camps, schools, after school programs, baseball fields, athletic fields, gyms, art rooms, all of those are spaces where people are being formed. And a flourishing church, particularly a flourishing future church requires flourishing generations. And then secondly, it requires connections across different communities of faith. We think about our work happening at the level of the system or the ecology where we think communities need thriving congregations. They also need thriving schools, they need thriving nonprofit sectors, they need thriving entrepreneurs and the health of those realities, those sectors will only contribute to the thriving of the local church.
Jon:
A lot of that focus on community because we don't do any of these things in isolation. And so as educators, we have this great role of walking alongside people as they become more of who they're created to be as we become more of who we're created to be in the work that we do as we are formed. My question for you especially is your vantage point largely focused on the church, but also then looking at the ecology, as you use your term, which I love that term as well. What does a healthy school look like in your opinion, either currently or in the future, or maybe those are the same thing, but what's it look like to you?
Dustin Benac:
I think there are several markers of a healthy school. One, I think healthy schools require healthy leadership, and that's one of the reasons I appreciate the work you and your colleagues do is you all are equipping, resourcing and engaging healthy leaders and supporting healthy leaders across the country. That's the first thing. I think the second thing is a connection to and commitment to place. One of the things I love about education is it's one of the increasingly few institutions that still have a geographic designation. We have ISDs that are connected to particular places. And schools are places that bring people from their surrounding community to a shared gathering. Third, I think healthy schools require a healthy balance of diversity and similarity.
You have to have something that you have in common, which I think is the education of our children. And you also have to have environments where people gather around and from the various differences and particularities that they bring to these spaces. Third, you've got to have matters of trust, justice, equity. Schools are only as strong as the virtues that carry them, and our leaders are only as strong as the virtues that they possess, so you've got to have schools that are marked by integrity. And fifth and finally, I think a healthy school requires a hopeful vision for the future. We can't have a hopeful vision for our children if the leaders and the communities don't have a hopeful vision for the future.
Jon:
The country right now is somewhat polarized as we're in an election year and you hear a lot of things about separation of church and state. And a lot of times that comes into play in schools where what's allowed, what isn't allowed? In Oklahoma right now, there's mandated Bible teaching going on in public schools with a hope that that will lead to better virtue development. And that's getting a lot of push back and possibly not really being implemented because that's not been traditionally what's gone on in public schools in Oklahoma at least over the last several decades.
I'm curious to have you talk a little bit about the way you think churches and schools can work together effectively, because we also have the model of churches coming in and reading with kids and providing tutoring with kids and afterschool programs and this kind of ecology that we're all in this together and that both schools and churches serve the community. Do you have any sense of what that might look like? Not in the church state, separation wars that are out there, but in we're all part of a community, leadership as service. How do we lead in a way that serves each member of the community well?
Dustin Benac:
Yep. I love that question. I think that's part of one of the things that gets me really hopeful about the future schools and the future of churches because I think there's opportunities for real partnership here. Just a quick anecdote, I found my way into this work after doing several years of research in the Pacific Northwest. And the Pacific Northwest is a context where there's a marginal position for religious organizations. They're on the edges of society, but there's also a real history of religious entrepreneurship, that people of faith are doing new things.
Entrepreneurship is the water they swim in. And one of the things I saw there is that people of faith and churches in the Pacific Northwest, they found a way to exist on the margins of society in ways that are not anxious. They're not trying to reclaim power, they're just trying to be faithfully present. And I think that's the first step to find this meaningful partnership, is churches and people of faith can pursue meaningful partnerships with schools, public or private, not trying to control the content or control the outcome or set the table, but simply show up and be a good partner and be present. Second, that takes a lot of time.
Jon:
You're right.
Dustin Benac:
You can't just parachute in a community and expect change to happen. You've got to keep showing up. Go to the football games, go to the band concerts, show up, show up over and over and over again. And when you do that, you begin to, one, see the needs of the community and they might be different than what you think. And then secondly, you begin to earn trust. The third thing I say is be prepared to be surprised by the encounter. When I've shown up in spaces, when I've tried to be relationally, faithfully present, I go in expecting knowingly or unknowingly something from that connection. And I'm always surprised. And as a person of faith, I like to think that surprise is part of the gift of God.
Jon:
That's beautifully put. I would say I think it overlaps with our view of leadership in general, but I would go all the way back to teaching middle school students. You can't just hit middle school kids over the head with truth if you don't do it with love because they're not listening until they know that you love them and you show them that you love them by spending time with them when you're not contractually obligated to spend that time with them. And so it is that showing up. And I think that's true with adults that we lead and we work with the educators we serve all over the world. It does coming alongside listening first, being surprised by what we might learn, not coming in with solutions for people. We don't know the context.
We come in with processes. We come in with ideas for improvement. We come in with networks of people that we connect. That's Eric Ellison's main job at the Center of School Leadership. He does that even on Baylor's campus for us. And so how do we do that better? Because ultimately in the time we're in now, I don't think anybody can be that superhero solo leader. We write a lot about collective leadership at the center and what that looks like to do the work that moves towards shared goals. You do a lot of work on collaborative leadership. What kind of leadership do you see working at Baylor in churches in the ecologies? What kind of leadership do you see working? What are some attributes of that that you're encouraged by as we move forward?
Dustin Benac:
There's several different attributes. One is it's leadership that moves at the speed of trust. Collective collaborative leadership is leadership that it can't be engineered, it can't be manufactured. It takes time and it moves at the speed of trust. The second thing is this type of leadership is leadership that's carried by shared language. And I think that's one of the values of a place like Baylor or a place like the Center for School Leadership is I think one of the things you all offer are some shared language. And that allows people to partner around shared work by using the shared language because we can't assume that we mean the same thing when we talk about community or education or formation or faith.
You have to have shared language because that's the point of contact where the shared work begins. The third thing that I think is required is an ability to recognize and celebrate a diversity of leadership expressions. Leadership, particularly collaborative leadership, is carried by teams. In order to have a strong team, you need to have people who lead in different ways. In my book, Adaptive Church, I talk about this across six different modes of leading, leading as the caretaker, leading as the catalyst, leading as the connector convener, leading as the surveyor, leading as the champion, leading as the guide. An effective collaboration requires people and teams who have the diversity, the dexterity, and the variety of gifts to lead in different ways in order to respond the needs of their community.
Jon:
You talk about diversity, dexterity, and variety, and a lot of people will hear that, and say it sounds messy.
Dustin Benac:
It is.
Jon:
And my argument is leadership's always going to be messy. It's whether it's going to be messy on the front end or the back end. I'd much rather it be hashed out with diverse thinkers that bring this variety to what we do so that we better represent the communities we serve. If you're thinking in ecologies, you certainly can't, as a single person know what's going to work best for everyone in that ecosystem. That is just not going to be possible. But it takes time, which you already mentioned about relationships, but it also takes time to process things. But then at the back end, you have something that actually might work as opposed to you implementing something which churches do this all the time, "Oh, we got to grow attendance, we got to grow the budget. We got to do..." And so it just becomes this hamster wheel we jump on and then we're spinning off crazy. And in churches, you are burning human beings who get run over by that hamster wheel.
Dustin Benac:
That's exactly right. And I think it's important to make a difference between the messiness of shared and collaborative leadership and sloppiness because-
Jon:
Yes. That's a good point.
Dustin Benac:
... we don't have an excuse for being sloppy. The responsibility of leadership requires that we do it as well as we can. And part of not being sloppy is having shared language, knowing your lane, and also having good and effective strategy. It's going to be messy, it's going to be improvisational. It's not going to turn out like you thought or hoped it would, but you can be purposeful, you can be intentional, you can be strategic, you can be patient. And when those ingredients are there, the outcome is oftentimes far better than we could ever hope or imagine.
Jon:
The sloppy piece is such a great point. I think in schools, we have oversold the idea of failing forward. We've taken this Silicon Valley idea that fail fast, fail forward. No one wants to fail. And so you don't take haphazard risks, that's sloppy. You take strategic risks and Chip and Dan Heath write that the promise of risk taking is not, I don't have the exact quote, but the promise of risk taking is not success. It's learning. All right. If success were always promised for taking risks, it wouldn't be a risk. And so ultimately, how do we take the right risks? How do we take them with the right people?
How do we take them in the way that we're actually going to learn from them and then revise and improve? I've certainly taken many risks in my career where I'm like, "I'm never doing that again." That was just a flat mistake. But most of the time, whatever it is, I figure out ways that we can improve and do better the next time. And then that's where leadership is fun because you're constantly iterating and you know don't have to have it right the first time ever because we probably aren't. But it's like all we got to do is get better. And so I've quit talking about solutions because solutions sound too neat, sound too prepackaged. It's not about solutions. It's about improving, so if you are leading a dumpster fire, just put the fire out. You don't have to build the Taj Mahal yet. Get the dumpster fire out first.
Dustin Benac:
I love it.
Jon:
As we think about that, what's your greatest fear as you look ahead to churches and schools? What's the greatest fear you have right now? I know there are many fears out there. What would you say is the thing that keeps you up at night about churches and schools?
Dustin Benac:
You actually teed this up so well, Jon, because I think my greatest fear is that we wouldn't take the risk. I think we are in a moment of significant and dramatic change. The world is changing, the church is changing, how we gather is changing, what education looks like and feels like is changing. And that can be a moment of real anxiety and uncertainty. It can also be a real moment of opportunity. And my hope is that in this moment of incredible change, we will do the thoughtful, the strategic, maybe even the prayerful work of considering what are the risks that are ours to take and take them with other people. We don't have to take these risks alone, but I do think we are in a unique moment of time where there's things that we can do together that are going to build the structures, the schools, the churches that our children inhabit for a generation. And if we don't do that, I think we've missed an opportunity.
Jon:
That's well said. Before we jumped on, you mentioned a couple of books that you were reading, which I think tie into this fear and also to the hope that we can have. Would you mind sharing a couple of books? I always like for our listeners to get a couple of recommendations that might be useful that may or may not be part of a typical educator's reading list. But do you have a couple for us?
Dustin Benac:
Yeah. One of the very best books I read in the last year is a book by a Stanford psychologist, Geoffrey Cohen's Belonging, a brilliant book about the structure of connection and how to understand the need for belonging and also the strategies that can help us build cultures of belonging. Brilliant work, data-driven, translatable across cultures and across contexts, so, that's the first one. The second one is a book by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning that is about his experience surviving a concentration camp and also his theory of purpose that emerged out of his work there as a clinical psychologist. And one of the things Frankl says is that those who survived, survived because they found purpose, even purpose in suffering. And it's precisely this purpose that gave them meaning and ultimately gave them a future hope that they could imagine. Even if the circumstances were such, that it was very unlikely that they would live to see that future hope, the purpose carried them forward and gave them a reason to live.
Jon:
Well, I like the way those two books fit together in that if we're going to belong, we have to have a purpose.
Dustin Benac:
Yes.
Jon:
And that's part of what we do. And when we have a purpose, we are willing to struggle well with each other. And ultimately that's where joy is found. It's not the freedom from the struggle, it's the fuel to struggle well. And our joy comes from something deeper than our circumstances because that's where happiness lies and certainly Viktor Frankl is not talking about happiness. He's talking about where purpose can lead to joy because there's a life of meaning. And we don't have wellbeing if we don't have a purpose. And so I think the belonging piece doesn't happen unless we can do that with others because we serve a relational God and we reflect that in the ways that we interact with each other. We don't thrive by ourselves. That just doesn't happen. Love those two books. You shared your greatest fear, not taking risks, so what's your greatest hope as you look ahead for schools and churches?
Dustin Benac:
That new connections will form? I think the future of schools, the future of the church is carried by the work we do together. And one of the things that gives me great hope is that in a time of isolation, in a time of polarization, in a time where so many people do not feel like they belong, new connections are being formed every day. And that gives me great hope. That gives me great hope for the work that we do in the program where people come through our events, come through our courses, come through our programs, and they come out saying, "I'm more connected with other people." That's my hope about Baylor, is we have incredible students who come through our classes, and they certainly leave with a degree, but they also leave with a lot of connections. And that's my hope for churches, is that churches are finding a way to be faithfully present right where they are that is simply holding out the space for connection. Connection with others, connections with themselves, and connection with God.
Jon:
And that's why it's such a blessing to be part of Christian Research One University where we can convene these things, create those connections across communities, study them, and try to amplify the good work that schools and churches are doing, because there's a lot of great work going on out there. We just don't always hear about it. And so how do we accelerate that? Well, let's bring people together. Let's do it together in a way that creates connection and joy and then amplify it.
Dustin Benac:
That's right.
Jon:
And so that's the blessing. Well, thank you for all you do at Baylor through this, the program for the Future Church. Thanks for being with us and always love allies like you at Baylor, so thanks for taking the time.
Dustin Benac:
Thanks, Jon. Thrilled to be here.

Universal Design for Learning: Lindsay Jones

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Lindsay Jones from CAST to discuss her work in inclusive education and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Jones shares insights into how UDL transforms learning environments by focusing on student agency and creating flexible, supportive spaces for all learners. The conversation covers practical examples of UDL in action. Jones also reflects on the opportunities and challenges for UDL globally and her optimism about its impact on education.The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.Be encouraged.Books Mentioned:Radical Inclusion by Ori BrafmanConnect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
Transcript:
Jon Eckert:
All right, today we're here with Lindsay Jones from CAST. She is one of the more interesting people I've met in the last couple of years, and so I wanted to just jump in. First of all, welcome, Lindsay.
Lindsay Jones:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Jon Eckert:
I want to start with a new question that I've never asked anybody, and I'm going to kick it off here, but I always think it's interesting since most of our listeners are educators to ground who you are in your first, last, best, worst experience in schools. So you spend a lot of time in schools and supporting schools. So what's your first memory, your last memory, your best memory, and your worst memory. So we'll do that by way of introduction. Take it away, Lindsay.
Lindsay Jones:
Wow. Okay, so you may have to help remind me of that order.
Jon Eckert:
Sure.
Lindsay Jones:
My first memory and a lot of my memories are going to center around my mom, who was an educator, a special educator for many, many years, special ed director. My first memory was when she came in and started... I was in a public school in Avon Lake, Ohio. I was in second grade, and she came in and started helping and teaching some extra content. And so it was a huge memory for me because she was there and it felt so special and I felt very special that my mom was there and I felt like I got a little viewpoint in the behind the scenes and that was exciting. So that was first.
Best was eighth grade. I had a phenomenal history teacher, and I can still remember the project that I wrote, and it makes me now think of Universal Design for Learning. I had a lot of choice in the project. I wrote it on the history of vigilantism in the United States. It was part of American history and going west, and it's amazing to me. I remember so vividly. So many parts of that I don't remember, but I remember the paper. I remember some of the materials that we did and seeing a play about it and all of the ways that that teacher really brought it to life. So let's see, first, best, worst, and that, and last?
Jon Eckert:
Yes. Yeah, that's what you have left, worst and last.
Lindsay Jones:
Okay. Worst, I'll say two things. Being bored a lot. Not engaging, that's worst. Just feeling like I'm just going through the paces. But a really formative worst one for me is my mother, when I was in third through fifth grade, also living in Ohio, she was teaching in Lakewood, Ohio, and I was going to school near there and she was teaching in a self-contained preschool special ed program in a public school. And I can remember I would go there before school every day after school every day. I met all the students in that room. I was probably in third grade when I started going there. There were different multi-ages. And I then went, I had a day off at my school and like many other kids, my mom let me hang around her school that day. And with a teacher in regular ed at that time, general ed. This would've been a long time ago, the early '80s.
And I can remember hanging around in a regular ed third grade classroom for the whole day and never seeing my mom's students, never seeing my mom, never seeing anyone with a disability. And that really struck me. Where are they? They are not here. They were not a part of that community. And I think that was a really formative experience that drives why I do the work I do today focused on inclusion. So that's probably also my worst because it wasn't ideal. It wasn't the way it should be, but it really, really formed me. So in some ways it's my best in many ways too, I guess. And then my last is law school. I went to law school. That was my last.
Jon Eckert:
That puts an imprint on you.
Lindsay Jones:
I practiced as an attorney for many years in Arizona. And my last schooling experience personally was law school. And it was a shock. It was like being dropped into an ice bath. But I loved it. Actually, I really learned a lot. It was such an interesting... The Socratic method itself has interesting parts to it. It can be really very engaging, but it's a challenging setting.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. Well, and I think one of the things that law school does that I've always admired is it teaches you how to think. And so I think there's some value in that. Now, the process of learning that can be pretty painful and you can get some tough professors who are maybe not that skilled at how to teach or how to make it accessible, but if you navigate through it, you come out with a set of skills that are pretty valuable. So it's pretty great. Well, hey, I actually enjoyed that because there's a lot of jumping off points there for what you do now. So you've already hit on what is normally my next question is what brought you to this work? So talk a little bit about what you do now, why you got out of the legal profession and into the work you're doing now based on some of the things that you experienced with your mother in schools and some of the other pieces that you've already discussed.
Lindsay Jones:
Yeah, so my mom, who, as I said, special ed teacher, local special ed director, all the things, special ed member of the Council for Exceptional Children, spoke, ended up working as a independent consultant, expert on ADHD, writing books and said to me always, "Don't become a teacher. Don't do it. Be a lawyer." And thinking now back on that, I think that was largely because she was a real activist as a person for inclusion, a real activist for social justice around disability and felt powerless sometimes with the limitations put on her position. So loved educators, was a model in my mind, a wonderful educator, a teacher's teacher, but just really felt like there were limits and she wanted to make a bigger difference.
So I actually ultimately, did go to law school and thought, "I'm never getting into education. I'm staying out of the family business. What in the world?" But when I got my first job at a law firm, I happened to join a firm in Phoenix, Arizona that represented most of the school districts in the state. And I had sat my uncle and my aunt, also special educators, lifelong. I'd sat at so many tables listening to like IEP, behavior implementation plan, all of it, that I knew it. I knew those things. I don't even know how I knew those things. I never took an education law class. So I started though, being drawn into that work. I represented public school districts and I focused a lot on special education matters. I took lots of cases all the way, and I've been in three day IEP meetings and that was a challenging... I did the first 504 due process hearing in the state of Arizona because they just didn't really have those before the 2000s.
And then I saw lots of the same problems over and over, and I thought, "Boy, I'd really like to work on these from a national level." And that drew me to go to work for the Council for Exceptional Children in DC where I live now. That is the organization of the professional learning association of special educators across the US. And that was a phenomenal experience. I worked there for four years. And then I decided to move to the National Center for Learning Disabilities, also working with parents and families, again, from a national role on legislation.
And then I was so excited to be able to join CAST where I work today, a nonprofit organization that invented something called Universal Design for Learning, UDL. And it's a way for me to influence policy and try to make a difference in the way our laws are created, but also to, in a more real, tangible way, we work with educators in classrooms around the world. And we work with authors to push the field forward, and we have research that we're conducting. So it's just a deeper way to be able to work on inclusion and those issues.
Jon Eckert:
Such a great introduction. And I do have to say the three-day IEP meeting, I don't think I've been in a three-hour one. And those are painful. So the individualized education plan, great idea, but when they get down on paper or try to get them to paper, it's tough. I also have to say that what you do with UDL is so transformative all around the world. And so I know we were at an international convening where they were discussing the 250 million kids worldwide that don't have access to schools and how many people knew UDL and knew you in so many different countries. It was pretty powerful to see the people coming up and talking to you about how that we do this well because at the Center, we're all about supporting education leaders so that they can serve each student well. And that feels like the whole mission of UDL.
How do we reach each kid? Not all kids, but each kid, because each kid comes to the learning differently. And that's the beauty of education I've been in for 29 years. I did not avoid education, but I didn't have a parent who was an educator. So who knows what would've happened if that would've been the... And I would say our work is infinitely interesting and always challenging because the only thing we know when we're standing in a classroom with a bunch of students is we're the only one that learns the way we do. And so that's where UDL is so powerful because it gives you principles for how to think through it. And you're vigilante project that you did in eighth grade had so many of the hallmarks of UDL. So I'd love for you to just dig a little bit deeper into some of the opportunities and challenges you see right now for UDL around the world and maybe particularly the United States as well, if you want to dive down there.
Lindsay Jones:
Sure. I would say around the world, the number one challenge really is some basic access, as you would know better than I do, Jon, but in terms of at the core of UDL is assistive technology that's started by nine Harvard neuroscientists, working with nine students with really significant cognitive disabilities and saying, "Maybe tech and being flexible... Maybe the person isn't broken, maybe it's the system." And in fact, they proved that's right. And now that system and some of the drawbacks of the system for people in different places around the world is probably the biggest challenge. The biggest opportunity though, I think especially in the United States right now is EdTech is throughout schools. It's overwhelming. It's almost too much in schools, but it does that same principle of it gives us more of an inherent understanding that we all use it differently. The way I use my iPhone or whatever my device is, is probably different than yours, and you don't judge me for that. I don't judge you. I don't even know how... And so that is a freeing thing that I think is a big opportunity.
And UDL, it's a design thinking framework. It just helps you think, "How can I find barriers to leaning that I don't see?" And I think that tech is a way to help us make environments more flexible. It's not the only way, we don't need it, but it can make that environment more flexible and it can also reduce the stigma of difference. The stigma that I saw when I felt my mother's class was down a dark hall. They weren't included. They were very separate. Tech, we're all using it. And that's, I think, a great opportunity for us to think about universal design for learning and how we can create those environments that are flexible and dynamic and individualized.
Jon Eckert:
And I love the connection to design thinking because at the end of the day, that's using technology to humanize interaction. It's not replacing the human, it's accentuating the human connection we can make through it as we design solutions that move us all further forward. And that has to be individualized. So I still think, and I think this is potentially something that's really prevalent in US schools, people believe that struggle is a sign of weakness where in fact, struggle is part of learning. And learning is productive struggle. So everybody needs different tools to help them struggle well. And so I think particularly coming out of Covid, we've had this shift in that well-being is freedom from struggle, and that can't be the case. And what I love about UDL is it gets kids into that zone of proximal development where, here's what I can do on my own, here's what I can do with some assistive technology, here's what I can do with some choice, here's what I can do with a more advanced peer.
There's all these places where there are these supports that come in that humanize the interaction. So that's where I'm most hopeful about UDL and where I see things going because we have more tools than we ever have. Now, if we just use those tools in this cast a wide net, throw at every kid, hopefully we catch every kid and you know kids are going to fall through the net, that's a problem. But where we have educators who are deployed with these tools to meet kids' needs, who are then allowing kids' choice, allowing kids opportunities to collaborate and making sure each kid is able to contribute, that's where I see things being hopeful. Do you have any of those kinds of stories where you're like, "Yeah, here I've seen UDL really make a difference in the lives of kids." Is there anything that jumps to mind?
Lindsay Jones:
Absolutely, and that's exactly what it is. So we just updated our guideline. Guidelines are a tool we use to help people implement it. There's just things to prompt your thinking about as design your environment. We updated them and the focus now is agency, learner agency. It's always been about what you just described. We know the kids are leaving school. And right now today, you and I probably are having to learn more about artificial intelligence than we ever... Maybe you knew a lot. I know nothing. So now I'm completely learning about it and I'm relying on all the ways I learned how to learn. And that is what we're trying to make sure those kids are learning so that when they leave, they know, "Oh, I feel confident. I may not know it. I'm going to struggle, but here's what I can do to learn it." That's the goal. That's learner agency.
And so what I would say, there's a lot of great examples of that around, but one of the ones that I think really just resonates for me, there's a school here in the District of Columbia that we've been working with. They have a model UDL demonstration classroom, which they're showing to others, and they're bringing UDL throughout that school and hopefully through the other schools in the District of Columbia schools. And when you go in, there's a part of you, I think... I'm a parent. I'm not a teacher, as you know, I'm a parent though. And there's a part of me that I will say, I was like, "We're just going to let fifth graders make choices about what they want? I've had a fifth grader. That seems scary to me. I'm not sure. What is this going to look like?"
And I went into this fifth grade classroom, and it is so interesting to see what and how that's really intentionally designed by those educators. Several different areas are happening in the room. And one of the things that stood out to me, Jon, is those kids in that room know if they're asked a question... I watched an interaction between a teacher and a student where the teacher asked the student a question about the material, and the student kept trying to answer it and was struggling. The teacher was not giving the answer. And then finally the student said, "Oh, I'm going to go to my resources. I'm going to go get... And they walked over to several different resources they had available, got the answer, came back so proud, so confident.
And it was so painful for those moments of watching that child struggle, that teachers maybe call it "wait time." It is painful to sit there and watch that. You want to just say, "Lincoln, it's Abe Lincoln." But my God, when I saw that student be really actualized, find something, come back. And that is a very micro way of talking about what was a really complex interaction with some really skilled educators and just incredible kids, but it wasn't out of the norm, and it did more than one thing at once. It taught the student the answer, and it made that student engaged in a way of like, "I am proud. I did this." And that's good. We need that because it won't always be easy, so you got to draw on something. So yeah, I think there's a lot of examples like that that are exciting and empowering.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, that's great. I love that example. And I love the idea that it's in a model classroom because I think for educators, they need to be able to see it happening. And we need educators who are doing this well to be able to spread their expertise. And so in our research, we find one of the most powerful predictors of how a school will improve is whether or not a lot of peer observation's happening. It's not evaluation or judgment, but it's learning from other educators who are doing this hard work and letting kids, requiring kids, giving them the opportunity to struggle because there's so much more joy in finding out it's Abraham Lincoln when you go with your own agency and find those in the sources than having someone else just tell you the answer. And that just breeds learned helplessness. Just like, "Hey, somebody's going to tell me anyway, so why would I have any agency in the first place?"
The other thing I wanted to say, I teach a class in a half an hour. And so anytime I go in, even to my undergrad or grad classes that I'm teaching, when I am the least well prepared, I lecture. When I am the best prepared, it's this interactive engagement where student agency is part of it, and there's meaning. And I always pull in student responses from the night before. I always read the responses that come in by 10:00 PM and I put those in and I let that direct the class. But that takes a lot of time. And so it's just, if somehow that time hasn't been set aside, the class just isn't as good. I can manage it. I can control it. I did this as a fifth grade teacher, as a seventh grade science teacher. You can control it, but that's sometimes by boring kids into submission, which is what you mentioned. I mean, just because a class is quiet doesn't mean any learning's happening. And so that's not the goal.
Now, obviously a class that's in chaos where kids aren't safe and all that, but those baselines have to be set up. But in that model classroom, I'm sure so much work has gone into how to help students make good choices, that I would 100% trust those kids to make good choices. And when they're not, you just say, "Hey, we're outside the parameters we set. Now, move back in". Is that an accurate read of that classroom or other model classrooms you see?
Lindsay Jones:
Yes. And I think your critical point is it's not about vertigo of possibility to students. It's about scaffolding. You start to make choices. You have a smaller number. What are they? You're learning about them, you're reflecting on them. I think that's really critical. You said that and you talked about it, and I just wanted to pull it out because yeah, that's right. That's right.
Jon Eckert:
I love that.
Lindsay Jones:
That classroom was fun. It was amazing. Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah. I love that. I never heard that. I've never heard that phrase vertigo of possibility. But yes, that sounds like anarchy, what we want. And I think kids feel safer where they know where the boundaries are, and then they know how to move, and then they scaffold and they build, and then they can do amazing stuff. And that's when teaching gets really fun because it's not about the teacher anymore, it's about the learner. And we're all learning together. So I always like to end with a lightning round. So I know you're super busy, so if you've taken time to read a book that you would recommend, it's got to be pretty good because busy people don't just read beach reads all the time. So is there a great book that you would recommend? It could be education related or not, but is there anything you've read in the last year that you would recommend to those listening?
Lindsay Jones:
It is. And it's called Radical Inclusion. And yeah, have you read it?
Jon Eckert:
I've heard of it. I have not read it yet, but it's been recommended to me already, but go ahead.
Lindsay Jones:
It's so interesting, and I'm so sorry, I have to follow up with the name of the author. He's an education minister in Sierra Leone.
Jon Eckert:
Wow.
Lindsay Jones:
And it is phenomenal. It is super interesting. It is well written. It's thought provoking. Yeah, he spoke actually, we saw-
Jon Eckert:
I was going to say he was at the convening. Yeah, he was on a panel. Yeah, so his name is Ori Brafman.
Lindsay Jones:
Thank you, yes.
Jon Eckert:
And it's What the Post-9/11 World Should Have Taught Us About Leadership. It came out in 2018. Is that it?
Lindsay Jones:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah?
Lindsay Jones:
Radical Inclusion. And it's about the way they're reframing in Sierra Leone, including individual... They're starting with everything in terms of radical inclusion, voting, everything.
Jon Eckert:
I love that.
Lindsay Jones:
People with disabilities and a barrier-free environments.
Jon Eckert:
Wow. That's beautiful. All right, so then what is the worst piece of advice you've ever given or received in your work?
Lindsay Jones:
Oh, my God, so many.
Jon Eckert:
I'm sorry.
Lindsay Jones:
I know, it's terrible. But I actually think one of the worst pieces of advice that I was ever given was that you could not be a parent and a full-time attorney.
Jon Eckert:
Oh, wow.
Lindsay Jones:
Or a full-time anything.
Jon Eckert:
Wow.
Lindsay Jones:
And that has not proven to be true. And it was a really bad piece of advice because it made me worry for years. And it was silly that I did that, so.
Jon Eckert:
Wow. All right, that's helpful. That's a helpful reframe of bad advice. What's the best piece of advice you've either given or received?
Lindsay Jones:
A wonderful attorney I worked with, the best piece of advice was, "Be bold." This amazing guy, Dick Siegel. And then my other favorite one is a Matisse quote, Henry Matisse the painter. I have it on my board over here. "Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while working."
Jon Eckert:
Well said. I love that. I did not know that Matisse quote, but that's a great add and obviously, you got to be bold to do the work, so those two reminders go well together. All right, so as we wrap up, what's your most hopeful perspective on where we're heading in education makes you most optimistic?
Lindsay Jones:
I am incredibly optimistic about inclusive education. I meet people every single day who want to make that happen. And they see, when they use Universal Design for Learning or whatever method they're using to make learning more inclusive, they get to something you just referred to, which I call the magic moments. They come up to me and tell me, "Oh, my God, this happened. I saw learning. I remembered why I went into teaching." That experience of watching someone really learn, learning with them, that I am so lucky because so many people share those types of things with me. And it just means I feel like I'm so hopeful I want to tell everyone about this and help them to be using it.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, what a beautiful example. I think it's what gets educators up every morning. It's not the paycheck. It's going to be those magic moments. And once you've had a couple, they're addictive. You keep coming back for more. And that's a beautiful way to wrap up. Well, Lindsay, thank you for the great work you do at CAST, for UDL, for your leadership and just taking the time to be with us.
Lindsay Jones:
Yeah, thank you so much.

People Pleasing, Thinking, and Listening: Rachel Johnson

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Rachel Johnson, the CEO of PiXL in the UK. They discuss PiXL's mission to improve student outcomes by supporting leaders in schools and highlight key challenges faced by school leaders today. Johnson shares insights into overcoming people-pleasing tendencies, setting boundaries, and creating ownership. The conversation covers practical tools for healthy communication and empowering leaders to think deeply and make transformative changes in their schools.
The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.Be encouraged.Join us for Just Leadership on February 3rd at Baylor University, a one-day professional learning event for school administrators – from instructional coaches to superintendents – that focuses on catalyzing change as a leadership team.Register Now!Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
Jon Eckert:
Today we are here with Rachel Johnson, a friend that we've made through mutual friends in the UK who's doing amazing work. And I just want to jump right in to what you're learning and then we'll back into more of what you do. So what are you learning through PiXL? So you can give us a quick introduction to what PiXL is and then what you're learning from the leaders that you're supporting.
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah. So PiXL stands for Partners in Excellence. We work with two and a half thousand schools across the UK. And what we're learning is how important leadership is in the conversation in school improvement. So we believe in improving life chances and outcomes for every young person irrespective of background or status or finance.
But behind all of that is the ability for brilliant people in schools to lead well. And that's the conversation people want to have now more and more than perhaps they ever have because people are fascinated with how they can be better, how they can thrive, what's stopping them thrive. And that is the attention that I've been giving a lot of my work recently around that issue.
Jon Eckert:
So love that mission. We always push at the center for moving from some students to all students and now to each student, what does it mean to do that for each student so that thriving for each student is powerful. In order to have those thriving students, you have to have thriving leaders. So what are some of the things, I think you mentioned you have 3,200 people in leadership courses, what are some of those takeaways that are keeping people from thriving that you're finding?
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah, we're finding a lot of very common things. And actually it doesn't matter what level they are in school leadership, it's the same issues. So things like people pleasing, which is getting in the way of leadership and decision-making, not being able to hold a boundary, sometimes not having a boundary. So there is no difference between work and life. There is no stopping. We just carry on going. I think that's a real issue.
We're finding people not really knowing are structured to have difficult conversations or as I like to call them, crucial conversations. They shouldn't be difficult, but the lack of confidence in having those conversations. And then I think other things like how to create buy-in, how to get momentum, how to have that very delicate balance as Jim Collins calls it, between the brutal facts and the unwavering hope.
So what does that actually look like on the ground? How can I do both at the same time without going for hopium where you're drugging people on things that can't actually happen or being so honest and brutal that nobody wants to follow you because it sounds so depressing? So what does the reality of that look like in school leadership? And what we are finding is across nearly three and a half thousand people on our leadership courses, they're all struggling with those kind of issues.
Jon Eckert:
No, that's powerful. I think one of the questions that I'm always asking leaders because it's a hard one is, and I think it comes from Patrick Lencioni, but I'm not sure. It could be from another theorist, they all start to run together a bit. I don't think it's John Maxwell, I don't think it's Jim Collins, but is for who are you willing to make enemies? What ideas are you willing to make enemies over? So what are those things that like, "Hey, this is a non-negotiable for me."
And I think a lot of educators don't think about that because we have a people pleasing sense of what we want to do. And so that's a really hard conversation to have because I agree, we tend to lean toward hopium. I think that's a great term for what we do. And so how do you get people into those crucial conversations? I like that reframe as well. But how do you get them into that when you know that there's kind of a natural resistance among a lot of educators to those kinds of conversations?
Rachel Johnson:
It is really difficult, but not having the conversation doesn't make the issue go away. And I think as soon as people realize, "It's actually making me miserable. My department is underperforming, therefore young people are underperforming all because I'm not courageous enough to have the conversation." And what we find using Susan Scott's model of fierce conversations is when you give them that seven-part model of how to have the conversation in one minute where you say your peace but you stay in adult, as Transactional Analysis would call it.
So you're not giving it a kind of sly interpretation. You're not giving a mean tone to your voice. You're being absolutely clear and absolutely kind, but absolutely straight, then people respond usually really well. But I think one of the things that is most disconcerting for leaders and educators is you have to listen to what the other person says. It isn't just about us delivering our truth and how we perceive things.
It's about being quiet long enough to hear what they're saying and maybe more importantly what they're not saying. And so it's fascinating to me that what is stopping us sometimes is the courage. But this is really affecting our schools. And certainly in the UK, in a recent survey that one of our big agencies did called Teacher Tapp, 64% of teachers said they had worked or did work in a toxic environment in school. That's a lot of people calling their environment where we should be seeing young people thrive, and our leaders and our teachers are saying it's toxic.
So something's going wrong somewhere. And what stops us dealing with this I think is the lack of courage and the lack of tools to be able to know how to approach it, which is why that's where we put our weight in the practical tools that can help people unlock this. And people say things like, "We feel liberated, transformed. It's like a weight off and we feel like we can do it." And that is the kind of feedback we get regularly. And I think that is really very, very important that people are helped to do these difficult things.
Jon Eckert:
Really, really good stuff there. It reminded me of two things in what you said because you've shared a lot. And I love how much we've into right here off the bat. The book High Conflict by Amanda Ripley. I don't know if you've seen that book. It came out in 2021, so it's been out for a while. She introduces this concept, which I think is what you're getting at in that one minute conversation a little bit in the way we listen.
So it's not her idea again, but this is where I came to the idea. It's the idea of looping, that when you're in conflict with someone, the key is when you're receiving the feedback from the person where they're telling you how they feel, where they're upset, where they're disagreeing with you, you have to listen, then you have to distill what's being said.
Then you have to check for understanding and then question, "Did I get it right?" So that you're repeating back. Because I think sometimes, at least in the United States, some of the conflict is due to poor communication, and that looping provides an opportunity to correct that communication error and it's a form of empathy because it's taking on that perspective, did I hear you right?
Now, just active listening, you can really alienate people with active listening skills without being genuinely curious. So that's one of the things when you're doing that, you can't do it in a formulaic way that feels like you're just jumping through hoops because that's really alienating to the person doing it. Does that square with what you found or am I thinking about something differently than you are?
Rachel Johnson:
I think what's fascinating is that, and this is what I do really for my job now, is I take lots of different things like that from High Conflict from Chris Voss and his hostage negotiation techniques, crisis communication that we have over here with a fierce conversation and I kind of mush it all together in one model.
And so what all of these people are saying, including Nancy Kline who's written brilliant work on listening and thinking is we mustn't overdo it when we talk to people. We mustn't kind of interpret what they're saying and then tell them what they're thinking. We have to ask great questions. We have to be comfortable with silence and let the silence do the heavy lifting. Most of us are not comfortable with that. We have to summarize like you've said and say at the end, "Is that right?"
And if the person says, "No, that's not right," that's the opening of the conversation, not the end of it. That's when we say, "Okay, great. What did I not summarize well? What have I not understood? Tell me?" We've got to be more curious and less judgmental. But because I think educators are so used to making judgments, because that's literally our job a lot of the time is making judgments on grades, on behavior, on progress, to not make judgments on fellow adults, it's sometimes really hard.
Jon Eckert:
I always say educators are way more gracious with students than they are with each other. And-
Rachel Johnson:
Or themselves.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah. Oh. And typically that lack of graciousness to others is because of the lack of graciousness to self. I think one of the key points you said, and you mentioned earlier in tone when you asked that question, "What did I not get right?" You can say, "What did I not get right?" In a very curious way. Or, "What did I not get right?" With the eye roll.
And then you've either closed off the conversation or you've opened it. And I think the tone and the facial expression goes a long way to that, which is why I think we have to have this interpersonal connection. If you're doing this over text or you're doing it over email, it's pretty doomed to fail. I don't know. Would you agree with that, that this has to be kind of face-to-face as much as possible?
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah. I think a lot happens on Zoom these days or on Teams, which is difficult. And I think that is manageable if you get your tone right, if you get your eye contact right. I think one of the most damaging things in communication with anybody is the not listening, as you've mentioned, and the tone. So making it sound like a judgment. But the other thing I think is really difficult is when we speak in ulterior transactions. So the conversation we're having is not the conversation we're thinking. And people can smell it a mile off, can't they?
I think of all kinds of situations at home where I say to my children like, "Oh, did you not have time to tidy your bedroom?" And what I'm actually saying is, "You're absolute slobs. You round here making a mess of my house." And they can hear the criticism and then they say, "Are you having a go at me mum?" And then I go, "No, I don't know what you're talking about." And that's dishonest. And I think we fall into that a few times when we are not courageous enough to have the real conversation. So I think that's another trap we can fall into.
Jon Eckert:
Right. I think I had a couple of those conversations with a daughter and a wife this weekend potentially, so that I need to go back and do some correcting. So thank you for that. One other thing you mentioned earlier was, and I think it's a chapter in, I think it's in your first book, about getting buy-in. One of the things that I've been pushing on here, and I'm curious to hear if there's a cultural difference here potentially.
I found Gen Zs and millennials in the US, they do not want to buy-in to things because it sounds like an idea is being sold that they're just supposed to get on board with. And they don't do that. And I almost say that to their credit because they want to co-own what they're doing. And so buy-in is not something that they're interested in. They want to own it with you sometimes in ways that make it way better if we do that. Do you find that in the UK that there's less interest in buying in and more of an interest in kind of co-owning the work? Or is that still something that works relatively well in the UK, trying to get buy-in?
Rachel Johnson:
I think you're absolutely right, and I think this new generation are very different and I think they don't want to do it the way we did it. We wore tiredness and exhaustion like a trophy, like a medal. "Look how knackered I am, look how late I was up doing all my work." They look at that and go, "I don't want that. I want to have a sabbatical. I want to have a life. I want to go to the gym. I want to do what I want to do." So I think the way we are talking about buy-in needs to change. But I also think the way we get buy-in needs to change.
We, I think have thought buy-in means, "Here's my idea, here's what we are doing, join me in what I'm doing." And that isn't really genuine buy-in. Buy-in is saying, "What is the problem we're trying to solve? Let's get people around the table, listen to really healthy conflict within a boundary where we feel safe to be able to disagree." All that psychological safety stuff by Amy Edmondson, it's crucial. It's not easy, but it's crucial. And then I think people do buy-in when they're heard. I think all these things we're talking about are linked. If I'm ignored, I'm not going to buy-in whether it's a great idea or not, because you're not hearing me. So I think we have to create more time to be heard and to hear.
But I think one of the issues we have in leadership, particularly in education is we're always in such a rush. That hurry-up driver like, "Let's get everything done yesterday driver," can stop us really engaging and listening. And so where we can go fast, we sometimes do, and I think we lose a lot in that, especially this new generation who want to be heard, want to think things through, want to be well-researched. Great, that can really benefit us, but we have to give it time.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and again, leadership's always going to be messy and it can either be messy on the front end where you all own, where you're going together or it's going to be messy on the back end. So I'd much rather have it be messy on the front end.
That just takes some patience and some ability to avoid falling victim to the tyranny of the urgent where we constantly throw one change after another at people in a way that doesn't actually produce what we want because we're too impatient to see it happen.
So I'm curious how you got to this work. So this amazing work that you're doing through PiXL, which we can get more into PiXL in a little bit, but you personally, how did you end up writing these books, doing the podcasts, building out being a catalyst at PiXL to do this kind of work with leaders, but where did that come from?
Rachel Johnson:
So I think it started fairly young really when I was, my dad led a church and he was a leader in schools and so was my mom. So I watched all of that all of my life. But I was kind of old before my age really, and I always wanted to lead something. So I did Sunday school when I was 10, teaching three-year olds. I always took on more responsibility. And so what I wanted when I was 13 and 14 was to work out what does leadership look like? How can I be a better version of me?
How can I make change happen? And apart from reading people that you've mentioned, like John Maxwell, there wasn't an awful lot for people my age. And so I never had anything age appropriate. So I read all the adult stuff. And I was looking back at my old journals actually yesterday. I was clearing out the loft and I look in my journals at me at 13 and go, "There she is, there's the person I am now.
There, I can see her so clearly when I look." But it wasn't usual back then. And so I was a bit different and did different things, but I was absolutely committed to leadership. And so from that point on really, wherever I was I wanted to lead. And it wasn't that I was bothered about promotion or position or title or money. I'm not bothered about any of those things.
I want to go where I can be to make the biggest difference. And so for me, leadership is where you make the biggest difference, where you could have the agency to make the difference. And for me, that has become the driving force really to try and do good in the world, to try and help people create their own change. So yes, that's where it started, very young.
Jon Eckert:
Love that. And so now at PiXL, what do you try to do organizationally? You gave us a little bit of what PiXL stands for, but how are you doing that and what different avenues in different countries? I know you have a number of ways you're trying to serve leaders who want to become the kind of leaders you wanted to become as a young person.
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah. So we do conferences, we did big conferences in the UK and those are hugely attended. We work with different types of leaders. We have two podcasts, PiXL Pearls, which are just 10 minutes leadership reflection. So not heavy, but just a moment of reflection to think about our own leadership. And then we have the PiXL leadership book club where we take non-educational school books because that's another really important thing of mine, to look outside of education, not always within.
And so I interviewed two school leaders about a non-educational leadership book and how they've applied those messages into their context. And that's the kind of thing I'm interested in. I'm interested in looking at what other people in the world are doing and how we can take that from marketing or that from branding or that from hostage negotiation and how we can turn our schools around based on the lessons that've been learned elsewhere.
So that's become a really big thing. Now I write all kinds of things on that. The books which I wrote that two have come out already, the chapters in those are all of the things that I asked our leaders, "What do you struggle with?" And that's what they said. And so I wrote the chapters for them really to try and help us all get a little bit more unstuck. Because we all get stuck and sometimes it's too difficult to find a great big book and read all the way through it when you haven't got time.
So it's really short, bite-sized chunks to help get us unstuck. And so with that and working and with how we have resources and strategies, a whole range of things to help school leaders get the support they need. But I think one of the most important things we've just started doing is named after the book, we have something called Time to Think where leaders are able to book time with my team to just think a few ideas.
We're not going to talk, they're going to book 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And that time is for them to talk through their ideas, for us to ask questions to help them get clarity, but for them to leave more empowered than they came in. And what school leaders are telling us is they don't have enough time to think.
It happens on holidays, in the mornings, in the middle of the night. And it shouldn't happen then, it should happen in working hours too. But sometimes people need a bit of a helping hand to get there. So that's one of the most exciting things we're doing at the minute, creating that time to think and walking with people as they do that.
Jon Eckert:
I love that. I tell people when they start masters or doctoral programs at Baylor that the biggest gift we're giving you is time to think through what you're doing with the kinds of books that you're talking about. I totally agree, we need to look at education, but we need to look beyond education. So I love that conversation you're having with school leaders about books.
Everything you described from the PiXL Pearls to everything else is trying to give people this catalyzing force to spend more time thinking and just carving out that space is a huge gift. So I think you mentioned that you primarily work in the UK, but that you have some connection into 46 different countries. Are there things you're seeing that feel like they work cross-culturally, like, "Hey, everyone is dealing with this." Because I know most of our listeners are in the United States and we can spend way too much time navel-gazing at our challenges and opportunities here.
I'm wondering those conversations that you've had where they identify challenges that leaders have, are there any things there that you're like, "Hey, this feels like a common challenge. It does not matter where it is. This is..." Maybe it's the Time to Think, but if it's something other than that as well. What are some of those challenges you're seeing that cut across contexts?
Rachel Johnson:
Well, how I would kind of evidence that really is it's the podcasts that have gone all over the world in different countries. And we haven't really pushed those out. We've had them in the UK and they've gone everywhere through Apple or Spotify. But the ones that are most listened to, that's what's really fascinating. The biggest episodes are Dare to Lead with Brené Brown. So clearly if that's our leading episode, it's because people don't have courage like we've touched upon.
The other one that is massive is the People Pleasing one, which is based on a book by Emma Reid Terrell called Please Yourself and is around the real problems of people pleasing. That's been another massive hitter. And then the third one, which has been a really big hitter, is based on Cal Newport's work on Deep Work and Time To Think.
So if that's the three places where people are going across all of the people who listen to our podcasts. And I think in total there's about 195,000 downloads now maybe. I think that says something about where people's attention is, that's what they're craving. And I think we should listen to that because I think these things are quite deep-rooted and I think people don't find solutions to how to handle those three things either.
Jon Eckert:
Well, I love Brené Brown, I love Cal Newport. I need to read the people pleasing book, so.
Rachel Johnson:
Wonderful.
Jon Eckert:
I'm getting good recommendations. Yeah. The Slow Productivity by Cal Newport that just came out is kind of the latest manifestation. I still think Deep Work is his best book, but Slow Productivity I've worked into some of my classes because I do think this idea and his premise there is that we do less things, work at a natural pace and obsess over quality.
That's how we provide the human value that is going to become increasingly value as AI and other things automate other pieces. It's what are we uniquely suited to build and do? And that's really to me, the extension of deep work. That's the critical component. And you have to have time to think because-
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah, you have to have time to think. And then you kind of think, why are we not doing deep work? Why are we overstretched? And I think it comes down to what I would call now toxic productivity. I think when you have a profession full of people who love to be efficient and love to-do lists and tick things off and feel great about themselves, the danger is we become addicted to productivity.
We can't rest, we can't stop, we can't switch off. We have to be doing something productive. We even monetize our hobbies for goodness's sake because we can't do them for free, because that's a waste of time. It is quite astonishing. And we are obsessed with adding things, not taking things away. So I don't speak to many leaders who say, "We're reducing our efforts by half because we don't think it's working. So these five things are going and these five things will replace them." They should add more things. No wonder we're all frazzled, so.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and social media has turned us into the product. So our attention is what is demanded and that is what is being sold. And that's new and I think devastating for especially adolescents who are coming into leadership, those 13-year-olds that dreamed about leading the way you do. "Oh, I can do that through my followership on this as I sell products for someone else." And so you become a conduit for other corporations to grab other people through you.
It's not real leadership. And so I worry about, I do not want this to happen, but my email box, I worry that I will be getting AI-generated emails into the box. I will then have AI-generating responses, and I'll just be a spectator watching AI talk to AI which by definition, Darren Speaksma says this all the time. AI is consensus because all it is scraping from large language models.
It is not wisdom. To get wisdom, you need the human. And that's the point of deep work. How do we pursue joy through truth and love? How do we do this and this? And AI just, that's not what AI is designed to do. It can summarize, it can collect, it can scrape. But that's the part that I'm like, "Oh." And that's the life-giving work.
And so Greg McCown, UK guy, Essentialism, that was the book. And then it became how do I? I've reduced all the small rocks out of the jar and I've just got big rocks and now the rocks are too much. And I feel like that's where we're at. So I love his work as well. So based on all that, those common challenges that we see, where do you see hope? Where are you most hopeful?
Rachel Johnson:
I'm hopeful that people want the conversation. I'm hopeful that in a room of thousands of leaders, I can say, "Put your hand up if you're a people pleaser." I've been a recovering people pleaser since 2020. I often say to people, I went into recovery in March 2020 when I read that book, Please Yourself by Emma Reid Terrell. And thought, "Oh my goodness, I don't want to be that." She says, you can either be an authentic person or a people pleaser.
You cannot be both. And I was really convicted by it because I thought, I want to be the best kind of leader, but if I'm people pleasing, I can't be. This has got to change. And I am with roomfuls of people now virtually and in person who are embracing this, who say, "I want to go in recovery too. Enough. I realize it's holding me back." And wherever there are people who are willing to change and are up for the work and up for the debate about it all, I think there's always hope.
And when we face our own brutal facts and we believe we can change, then I think there's always hope. And that is the kind of message we want to talk about in education in the UK and further afield, that we are not stuck. We don't have to be stuck. Human connection, human understanding, human wisdom, as you mentioned, these things that we can learn to be better and overcome our stuckness can change our lives first and foremost before we change anybody else's, but then help other people to change.
And I think there is a great deal of hope. I think sometimes we have to look hard for it because social media and the news don't talk hope, they talk despair. And so we have to be very open and vocal about the hope. But that's one of the things that I hope to always be, the voice of hope. Not ignoring the brutal facts. We mustn't do that, but always saying, "We'll find a way if we think about this. If we invest, we will find a way." Because I believe we will.
Jon Eckert:
Love that. The next book I'm working on right now is "Gritty Optimism: Catalyzing Joy in Just Schools." How do we build on what we know can change in schools and what they can be? Because there's so many great stories out there and there's so many ways to do it. So this conversation has been super encouraging that way.
So I'm just going to end us with a quick lightning round here. You've already given me at least one book recommendation I need to read. I'm just curious, in the last year, what's a book that you've read from any field? It doesn't have to be from education, that you would recommend to me and to us?
Rachel Johnson:
I'll give you two, Ruthlessly Caring by Amy Walters Cohen about the paradoxes in leadership and the Friction Project by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. So I have been reading pieces of the Friction Project, remarkable. Have not read Ruthlessly Caring, so I've got to get on that. Thank you. All right. What is the worst advice you've received or given as a leader? And then follow that up with the best advice you've either given or received.
Rachel Johnson:
The worst advice I've ever been given is that humility is putting yourself last. Because it's not true.
Jon Eckert:
That's good.
Rachel Johnson:
That's a very blunt and terrible definition. The worst advice that I've probably given would be in my early years of leadership when I was first new and basically said to people, "Maybe don't cause a fuss about that." Because I was a people pleaser, I didn't want to make a fuss. And so sometimes I told other people not to make a fuss and that was a mistake.
Jon Eckert:
That's good. So if you were, oh, so I had a quick break on the connection. So our connection broke there a minute. So don't make a fuss, that's also bad advice. Correct? Yeah.
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
So what's the good advice that you've received or given, what's the best advice you've either given or received?
Rachel Johnson:
The best advice I think I would give is make sure when you have any interaction that you are okay and you're seeing the other person as okay. And what I mean by that is that we're not coming with an attitude of judgment or superiority or anything that someone can sniff, which is going to put their back against the wall immediately. So be an adult, be in control of yourself. And if you're not in control of yourself, be vulnerable, but don't do it and create a mess in front of somebody else when it's going to damage them. I think that is unfair.
Jon Eckert:
That's great advice. Love that. What is one word, if you had to describe the schools you work with right now, what would be one word you'd use to describe the schools or the leaders of the schools that you serve?
Rachel Johnson:
Resilient.
Jon Eckert:
Love that. Love that. No, that's right. If we're still in education right now, we're resilient people, so good word. And then what would be one word you would hope would describe the next year in the schools that you serve?
Rachel Johnson:
I'd hope, it's a dramatic word, but I'd say transformational. Because I think if people can grasp this stuff, if they can make the time to think, if they can put themselves on their thinking tank first, I honestly believe we'll overcome challenges that we didn't think were possible. And I hope that in turn doesn't transform PiXL. It's not about that. It's about transforming them first and then transforming the way that they lead because that, I believe, unlocks everything else.
Jon Eckert:
That's a great word to end on. Well, Rachel, this conversation has been great for me. Huge encouragement. Thank you for the work you're doing and thanks for spending the time with us.
Rachel Johnson:
Thank you so much. I have loved speaking to you.
 

Humanizing Conversations: George Yancey

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Dr. George Yancey, a Baylor University professor. Hear them discus his collaborative conversations model for addressing racial issues. He proposes goal-oriented dialogues that prioritize listening, empathy, and building on others' ideas. Yancey believes these conversations can foster deeper understanding and more productive solutions to racial and societal conflicts.The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.Be encouraged.Join us for Just Leadership on February 3rd at Baylor University, a one-day professional learning event for school administrators – from instructional coaches to superintendents – that focuses on catalyzing change as a leadership team.Register Now!Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl