The conversation explores the role of joy in education and how it connects to feedback, engagement, and well-being (FEW). Jon shares how his research builds on past work, emphasizing that joy isn’t something artificially created—it comes from a deep understanding of our identity and purpose. He reflects on how students today often equate happiness with well-being and why educators must help them see joy as something deeper and more enduring. This conversation offers insight into how teachers can cultivate meaningful engagement and resilience in their classrooms.
The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership.
Be encouraged.
Mentioned:
How to Know A Person by David Brooks
Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
Baylor MA in School Leadership
EdD in K-12 Educational Leadership
Jon Eckert LinkedIn
BCSL LinkedIn
Jon Eckert:
Welcome back to Just Schools. We have a treat for you today. We have a guest host in the studio all the way from Brisbane, Australia. We have Beck Iselin. She's a returning Just Schools podcast person, but the last time she was the person I got to interview along with her dad about the work that she does as a school teacher in Brisbane, and so she listens to Just Schools and we were discussing this over the weekend and she said, there's so many questions I would like to ask you as someone who listens, and she said, "Do you ever do the podcast where someone interviews you?" So I said, "Well, why don't you take that role?" So we have our first ever guest host, so take it away Beck, you get to be the interviewer.
Beck Iselin:
Thank you, Jon. I'm so grateful for the one and only Dr. Jon Eckert joining us on the other side of the podcast today. Yeah, I guess I wanted to really start off by asking you, I know that you're involved in a lot of current research at the moment, stemming out of your real passion for kids and for the educational leadership space. So can you speak to a little bit about what your current research looks like?
Jon Eckert:
No, I'd love to do that. So all of my research always builds on previous research. So the collective leadership work became the feedback, engagement, and wellbeing for each educator and each student work. That was what animated Just Teaching, and now what I've realized is our profession needs more joy and it can't be artificially cultivated. It comes from the deep joy that comes from our knowledge that we are created in the image of God and we're broken and flawed, and out of that brokenness comes joy and so when we think about FEW, feedback, engagement, wellbeing for each kid, we need to make sure they understand what joy is because I'm not sure kids do understand that right now. I think they think if they don't feel happy that they aren't well, and if they aren't well, then they don't feel like they should show up and our happiness is circumstantial.
Beck Iselin:
It's not contingent.
Jon Eckert:
Right, it's this self-focused thing where joy should effervesce through struggle and in the Bible you see this over and over again. Joy is always connected to adversity and suffering, and we don't wish adversity and suffering on people. We certainly don't wish trauma on people, but there is this idea that in a classroom, we have to be able to move through adversity with others and as we do that, that builds that gritty optimism that we can do more.
Beck Iselin:
That's where the joy is, some would say.
Jon Eckert:
That's it. That's where the joy is, well said. So that's what we're researching right now. We've gotten about 20,000 surveys in from around the world on what that looks like in classrooms and so that's the next book that we're working on, Joy Over Happiness and what that looks like.
Beck Iselin:
How fantastic. Yeah, great and so what are you then seeing in the schools, I guess challenges or trends or insights that you're noticing? You mentioned children not quite grasping that concept of joy. Is there any other things that you're noticing in the schools at the moment?
Jon Eckert:
So teachers that understand this and administrators that understand this are cultivating this in their students, and so students are doing amazing things all around the world and in contexts that you couldn't even imagine joy effervescing through. So we're going to have a couple of guests on in the next couple of months from around the world who are doing amazing things. So one educator I was speaking to last week at an international conference of Christian leaders from all over the world, she led a school of 250 students, 80% of whom had either been trafficked or were children of prostitutes, and they stick with those kids in a residential model all the way through internships and job placement.
Beck Iselin:
Wow.
Jon Eckert:
And that's joy to be able to step into that work. It's really hard and that is trauma, and we do not wish trauma on anyone, but to see God at work and that is amazing, and other woman shared the story of her sister who was six years old, it was her twin and she passed away when she was six and that educator didn't speak for five years, and so at 11, she began to speak again when she was reading aloud with a teacher, it just happened and now she fierce advocate for giving students' voice and she's the most eloquent, articulate, succinct speaker of profound truths, I think largely because she had five years where she just listened and watched.
Beck Iselin:
Something we could all gain a lot from, right?
Jon Eckert:
Right, and you don't wish that trauma on anyone and that adversity, even not speaking for five years, but somebody reminded me just today, Maya Angelou went through a long period of not speaking as well after trauma, and so there is this joy that comes from really horrible, hard things, not because of the hard thing, but because hey, we're made to be resilient and that brokenness leads us to be able to see others in different ways that I think is powerful and is a lot of the why behind what those leaders are doing. So I get really excited when I get to see that, and I always say I have the best job in the world because I just go around and find those things that are working even in really hard places through adversity in these really meaningful ways. So excited about that.
Beck Iselin:
Yeah, and I think what a blessing it is to be able to be in classrooms and school contexts that don't look like what you have previously taught in yourself. You would gain so much from the joy that you see in these countries like you said, India and overseas in the UK or back in Australia. There's so much to be gained from that, and so I think for me as a teacher, what I see in the research space is everything is at our fingertips these days, and so one article that you read can be completely contradictory to the next and book that you read, and so is there anything that I guess you've read recently or research that you've been looking into that you could recommend for teachers where we're just swarmed with everything at the moment?
Jon Eckert:
I love the way you frame that. And so here's the challenge with recommending books. Part of my job is to read, and that is a huge blessing, and I realize that and when you're in the hard work of meeting individual kids' needs every day, you don't have time and space for that. So take all this with a grain of salt and there are great ways to get summaries of these things.
Beck Iselin:
Yeah, podcasts.
Jon Eckert:
Right, yes, but what I'd say is always use the filter of your own experience for what is true. So when I talk to educators like you, when we were talking about your classroom and where joy is and where the hard things are and where it leads to joy and some of these breakthroughs you've seen in kids that struggle to read and write, but they know everybody in the classroom when you play the game where the missing student is out of the classroom and they have to figure out who's out of the classroom, and that's the kid who gets it. Each kid is uniquely created, and so when we read books, read articles, put that always through the lens of your lens as a teacher,
Beck Iselin:
Like the human-ness part of it.
Jon Eckert:
That's right, and so I think there's wisdom and this is your seventh year of teaching?
Beck Iselin:
Correct.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, so you've gained a lot of wisdom. So use everything through that filter. So three books. My favorite book of last year was How to Know A Person by David Brooks. It's how do you listen well, how do you ask questions? How do you elicit stories from people? And he does a beautiful job writing about that and I think it's really a beautiful book for being a better human being, not just a better teacher. So love that. Then the one I just finished was Reset by Dan Heath. It's how do we do meaningful work in better ways? And so some really good ideas about before you try to make a change, really dig in and look at the work. So it's great to read research, but they don't know your context.
Beck Iselin:
Correct.
Jon Eckert:
How do you get in and find the bright spots in what's happening and where are you finding resistance and how do you get through that resistance? And we want autonomy, but we want it within constraints. We don't want just full-blown, everybody does what's right in their own eyes. That's the time of the judges, we don't need that. It's like how do we do good work that we're suited for? And so I thought Reset was very helpful. The last book right before I read that was Lincoln Versus Davis. It's The War of the President. So it looked at the US civil war, and I've read a lot of civil war history, but what I liked about this, especially in our current time is looking at things from two leaders' perspectives that were on opposite sides and the hardest point in the history of the United States where Lincoln is coming into just horrific circumstances and he has to lead through that against another leader who is actively trying to break up the country.
And it was so hard to read and see the pain and the families that were spread apart and this fight over slavery, which is just one of the most horrific sins of our country, and to see the brokenness of that, but the encouragement was, as this is part of the reason why I read history. When I get depressed about where we're at as a nation now, I can't say, "Oh, I wish we could go back to that." It's like, "No, we've had flaws." I love our country. I think we have a great country, but we have things that have not been great and we haven't always treated marginalized populations well. We haven't always done things in a just way, but I do think there is great potential for things being better and not getting so down on how polarized our society is now.
Because certainly civil war when your families are polarized and you're literally fighting on other sides of this and killing each other, that would've felt horrific, but Lincoln led with hope through that even though he lost hope at points, but there was an undergirding. I think it was a God-given providential piece of hope. It's not like we need to hold onto that as leaders. So those are three books. Sorry, I can never just recommend one.
Beck Iselin:
No, it's fantastic. I love what you said, just touching back on that first book by David Brooks, How to Know a Person about this craft in storytelling, and I think that's so essential to us as teachers and educators. I remember I had a student a few years ago and he said to his mom one morning, I wonder what story Ms. Iselin is going to tell us today because there's vulnerability in telling a story, right? And I think that that then is going to build trust within your classroom communities and I guess that then brings me to your book, Jon, that you've written. Just feel free to humblebrag as much as you want to, Just Teaching, which is, let me get it up, feedback, engagement and Well-being for each student.
It was a bestseller for its publisher and something I really loved about reading your book was that it wasn't I guess a set of definitive strategies that are going to guarantee success with any student that you come across, and neither was it a book full of buzzwords that seemingly meaningless after five minutes in the classroom. So can you tell us about why you chose to write a book in the first place?
Jon Eckert:
So I felt like it was a book that we had to write because at the center, we'd been working with schools all around the world in response to COVID because we shifted school in a way that never have in the history of the world, but we still had to make sure kids were well, if they were engaged, if they were receiving feedback. So in 2020 that summer, we were helping schools figure out how they were going to roll out school, where they still maintain those three pieces, and so from 2020 to 2023, we were collecting evidence of how that was happening and so that formed the book.
So some of the things were things I had done when I taught and things I was doing with college students, but largely it was what's working around the world in these three categories, and so Just Teaching is kind of a tongue in cheek title that many teachers in the US refer to themselves as just a teacher. We should never do that because that disempowers us and if we are the profession that makes all others possible, there's no such thing as just a teacher, but how do you teach for justice and flourishing and what does that look like? Well, you do that by making sure that you've addressed well-being, engagement, and feedback. The acronym is a nice easy FEW. That's why we start with feedback. You do those few things, not for some kids or all kids, but for each kid. That's how God sees us, that's how we're called to see them, and that's what leads to justice and flourishing. It's a really fun book to write because I was just harvesting stories from the work we were doing with schools all over.
Beck Iselin:
Almost like a collection, right?
Jon Eckert:
And then the key is though, you have to make it so that it feels doable, because there's amazing educators doing things that it just can overwhelm people, and hey, it's only those three things. That's it. Now, doing that for each kid makes teaching infinitely interesting, but also hard, but that's what we're called to and that's why I taught some science labs 16 times. It's not about the lab, it's about the way each kid comes to the lab, and so every time you do that, you have to see it through his or her eyes, and that's fascinating. How a does a 13-year-old see that chemical reaction for the first time. What does that look like? And the same thing for college students and for graduate students, you're not teaching a book. You're teaching individuals how to better understand their context and be more of who they're created to be through a great resource. So that's the beauty of Just Teaching at whatever level you're at.
Beck Iselin:
And so where to next then for Author Dr. Jon Eckert, is there another book in the works? Can you tell us?
Jon Eckert:
So yeah, the next book is a Joy Over Happiness and it's for parents and educators this time because it's anybody that works with kids, and I had to find kids from anywhere from toddler to 21 years old because I couldn't find a better term, but how do we engage a more joyful generation? So it's joy over happiness, engaging a more joyful generation through gritty optimism. Now, we'll see, publishers may change that title, who knows? But that's the idea that everyone has a story. It's worth telling and we can do this in ways that build optimism through evidence and experience. So naive optimism is just the belief we can become more of who we're created to be. Gritty optimism is the belief we can become more of who we're created to be through evidence and experience.
So in order to do that, you got to do hard things with other people, and then you've got to be able to articulate them in your own story, and then great leaders elicit stories from others. So there's story seeking even more so than storytelling. How do you seek those stories and bring those and those in ways that privilege engagement over comfort and others over self and grittiness over naivete? Humility over arrogance.
Beck Iselin:
Or pride, yeah.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. Hospitality over service. What does that look like? So each chapter lays out how we get to joy through those vehicles, and so that's been a fun one. Again, gathering stories and evidence and data from all over and now it's just packaging it into okay, how do we get to joy?
Beck Iselin:
And I think parents are asking those same questions too, right? They're also inundated with voices that are telling them which way they should go and just hearing I think from lived experience from stories and that connect people from different nations and different contexts and different spaces, I think, yeah, there's something really special about that. I can't wait to read it.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and so I would be curious to hear from you because you are an educator right now. How are you seeing joy percolating in your classroom or in your school? What is that looking like in 2025?
Beck Iselin:
For me, I've just moved up to what is middle school. Life in the middle at my school, and I think joy in my classroom looks like kids becoming more independent and I think there's this joy in seeing, yeah, that thing of going, everything is new to them. Their uniforms are two sizes too big. They've got lockers and they've got to learn locker combinations for the first time. They've got to make sure they've got all their stationery and organization ready for each class. So there's a lot going on for their little brains and bodies, but to see just the sweetness of just a smile when they know, "Okay, I did it. It was really hard week one, but I finally got my locker combination." And it's funny, you see what would be our seniors, our year 12 students go, "Oh, I can do mine in five seconds."
And I see my little year six shoulders just shrink a little more, but it's celebrating the little wins and I think that's where the joy is for me at the moment in my classroom context I guess in particular in just celebrating little success, because I think as well as kids get older and into those teen years, we stopped doing that. A lot of the play is just pushed to the wayside. A lot of nurture is pushed to the wayside and it becomes a lot about conformity, and we've got to shape you so that you're following these rules, but I think that there's something to be said about little wins that are celebrated as a whole classroom community, and furthermore, a school community. That's what I'm loving.
Jon Eckert:
No, that's good. I think that's what we do as educators, fan those small successes into big flames, and that is joy, and that's gritty optimism and when you've seen that year after year, it's not this belief that isn't grounded in reality. It is reality and the more kids can see that and articulate that story for themselves, that's where they find joy, and we find our greatest joy when our students find joy.
Beck Iselin:
Correct.
Jon Eckert:
And that's real and I definitely have appreciated that about you.
Beck Iselin:
Yeah, Mr. Eckert, I think it is time for our lightning round, something we do at the end of every podcast, but we'll ask a few questions. This is one of my favorite parts of podcasts to listen, to be very honest. I feel like you can learn a lot about a person through some of these answers. So I'd love to start with my favorite one. What is the worst piece of advice you have ever been given?
Jon Eckert:
That's good. This really stinks that I'm on this side because I always say, I'm terrible at this part.
Beck Iselin:
At least you're prepared.
Jon Eckert:
I did have some sense of the questions this time, which is good. Don't go into teaching.
Beck Iselin:
Oh, really?
Jon Eckert:
Yes, you're too smart to go into teaching.
Beck Iselin:
And who told you this?
Jon Eckert:
Multiple people. When I was graduating from high school, when I was starting, I always say it was a huge blessing to me. I graduated from a small rural school in West Virginia, and so I got a federal scholarship because I looked like Appalachian poverty to go into teaching, and it required me to teach for two years every year I took the scholarship, and I took it for three years. So I had to teach six years.
Beck Iselin:
You were forced into it.
Jon Eckert:
And so it was so good for me because my pride and arrogance might have said that I don't think I want to be an education major because people look down on education majors.
Beck Iselin:
And do you think as a young male, you found that as well?
Jon Eckert:
Oh, absolutely. I am quite certain. There are many reasons why women would not have dated me in college, but being a teacher was not a strong endorsement of that's somebody I want to date, and even friends would openly mock that in ways that were kind of good-natured, but would also sting a little bit. So yeah, don't go into teaching. Worst piece of advice I've gotten.
Beck Iselin:
Which is so hard when you have a gift and no matter what context you're in, you're going to teach, whether it's called being a teacher and you've got an education major or not. Do you think that times have changed and that still would be the case for our young men that are looking at studying education?
Jon Eckert:
Well, 77% of educators in the US are female. So 23% are male, really don't go into elementary education, which I started in fifth grade. So love that. I had them all day, got to know them as a family, and it was just a beautiful thing, but yeah, I think it's still a problem. I actually think we've gotten worse. I think administrators have made administration look unappealing to teachers, so nobody wants to go into it.
Beck Iselin:
As a whole.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, then only go into administration, and then teachers have made teaching look pretty miserable to students and some of their best students I had don't do this go into something else. Even good teachers are telling students to do that. I know I've heard that multiple times that I don't want my child to go into this profession, and so we're cannibalizing a profession, and I understand where that comes from, but I don't think that's going to help our society.
Beck Iselin:
That's not the answer, right?
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, that's a tough place to be. So I just did a horrific job on the first lightning round question, Beck.
Beck Iselin:
Yeah, lightning, come on. Okay, best piece of advice you've ever been given.
Jon Eckert:
So it's on my wall in my office. It's Parker Palmer's quote, "Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique. Good teaching comes down to the identity and integrity of the teacher." And so that's either super encouraging to you or super like, "Oh, that's it." It can't just be a series of techniques, but that is the encouragement. It's who we are in Christ.
Beck Iselin:
It's about the heart.
Jon Eckert:
That is animating what we do. Now, techniques help. It can't be reduced to it, but it's the identity integrity of the teacher, which to me is like, "Oh yeah, that's what it is. I get to live life alongside these kids."
Beck Iselin:
Yeah, it's reassuring.
Jon Eckert:
Right.
Beck Iselin:
Great. A fun one, if you could invite two people over for dinner, dead or a life, who would it be and why?
Jon Eckert:
Well, thank you for not eliminating Jesus from that. I've done this multiple times.
Beck Iselin:
Always, it's assumed.
Jon Eckert:
But how could you not invite Jesus over to find out what that was like?
Beck Iselin:
Be unreal.
Jon Eckert:
To be God in human form on earth. That would be amazing, and then the other one, whenever people eliminate Bible characters if they do that, which I think is mean, it's Abraham Lincoln. I mentioned the book that I just read, but I find him to be one of the most fascinating leaders ever because of what he led through and the way he had to think through unbelievably hard things. So I think it would've been fascinating to hear what that experience was like.
Beck Iselin:
That's great, and do you have a word for this year? I feel like we're kind of in March now, aren't we? So I feel like it's past the time where all the New Year's resolutions, they're well and truly up and running or well and truly, completely faded away into the abyss, but do you have a word that you're holding onto for this year?
Jon Eckert:
Yes, so the word is joy and it's a word that obviously we've talked a lot about today that I journal every morning and I write five things every morning that I'm grateful for, and then I just pray like, "Hey, Lord, what's your word for me today?" And whether that's just my conscience, it's just on the mind or it's really a supernatural intervention, joy has been that word 95% of the mornings for the last six months. That's been what it is and I'm so grateful for that and then I jump into my Bible and read, and then I spend a little more time praying, but I want my life to be marked by joy. That doesn't mean life is easy, but that means that there's going to be joy through hard things because there are hard things. Teachers see this, administrators see this. If your eyes are open, you see hard things and meaningful work in front of you all the time.
Beck Iselin:
And so what would you say? Would you then say that one of the greatest challenges you are seeing in education is that lack of joy in that same way?
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, I think it's the lack of understanding of what joy is. I think we've lost sight of it. We think if there's adversity that there's not joy, and so to me, I want educators to grab onto joy because that's what we pursue is joy and recognize that yeah, this is a hard job, but it's meaningful, and I have all these friends who are worried about AI taking their jobs or the way their jobs are shifting, and they get paid a lot more money because they have to be paid a lot more money because their work a lot of times is hollow and doesn't feel very meaningful. We have meaningful work to do with human beings every day, and there's great joy in that, and so I think that is the biggest challenge I think for society right now, but I think for educators that there is great joy in this profession. We just have to see it.
Beck Iselin:
And your greatest hope then for education as well, looking into the future?
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, I think it's what I've seen through the center, we get to work with educators all over the world is the hope that comes from seeing people lead with each other through adversity. We certainly can celebrate the easy wins, but the hard wins when they come, and the successes that come when you see a kid become more of who they're created to be, or a leader more of who they're created to be. It's just huge blessing.
Beck Iselin:
Yeah, special. Well, thank you so much, Jon. It's been such a blessing to have this conversation with you today. I know so many people are going to gain so much from you. You're just a wealth of wisdom and I'm grateful for our time.
Jon Eckert:
Well, thank you for that kind overstatement at the end and for allowing me to talk to you and be on the other side of the microphone.
Beck Iselin:
Yeah, it's great, thank you.