Just Schools

From tornadoes to flourishing: Bobby Ott

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Dr. Bobby Ott, superintendent of Temple ISD and 2022 Texas Superintendent of the Year. They discuss integrating mental health services, special education needs, and innovative teaching practices.
Dr. Ott highlights the importance of developing a mental health services model in schools, addressing funding and expertise limitations. He also stresses retaining specialized teachers and improving preparatory models for special education and English language learner programsAdditionally, the conversation explores AI and technology's potential to transform education, advocating for proactive leadership to enhance personalized learning and prevent misuse.
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:Brave New Words by Sal Khan
1000 CEOs by Andrew Davidson
Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
Transcription:
Jon Eckert:
So today we're here with Bobby Ott, the superintendent of Temple ISD. He's the 2022 Superintendent of the Year for the state of Texas and a good friend of Baylor and our program. He always has a lot of wisdom to share. And so today we're going to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that he sees facing students in Temple and Texas in general and maybe just across the country because many of these issues transcend different places. Certainly they're context-specific, but broader issues. And Bobby has a pretty good handle on what's going on in Texas and has a wide network. So we're grateful to have Bobby here today. So Bobby, thanks for all you do. Just tell us a little bit about what you've been dealing with the last month or so. We'll roll in with that first and then jump into those bigger questions. But can you just update us on your world over the last month?
Bobby Ott:
Well, the last couple weeks for sure has been a little bit of a whirlwind, and I guess that's both figuratively and literally. But as you may know, we had three tornadoes in Temple touch down within about a 30-mile radius. And so the community really looked apocalyptic when you drove through it. Some places you couldn't drive because of debris. And of course we still had a week and a half of school left, so that caused some challenges at the 11th hour. But having a great team and a great community, number one, we were truly blessed to not have a single fatality in a natural disaster of that magnitude. So that was first and foremost. And as I shared earlier with others, to me that is certainly a divine hand being involved in that. I have never heard of a situation that had that type of catastrophe and not have a fatality.
But I did send a video out, kind of a peek behind the curtain of the things we had to plan for, and we were able to make it through the last week. We were able to meet the bureaucratic requirements, which in my mind are secondary compared to the human elements of graduation, kids being in a safe environment, staff feeling safe, displaced staff having a place to be and so forth. And so now we were able to make it through that. The stress level has gone way down. And at this point, I'm just dealing with insurance adjusters and trying to figure out how to close out a budget year with deductible payments that I didn't expect to have.
But anyway, we're working through it. The community is slowly getting back to normal and just blessed to have the partnerships that we do in the community and just the great hands and hearts that work together and pull together to get everybody through.
Jon Eckert:
No, and the video you shared was powerful because as we prepare superintendents and principals at Baylor, we try to help them anticipate every eventuality. You've taught in that. We have a number of sitting superintendents that teach in that. But until you've been through something like that, it's really hard to know what that looks like. And so I thought the video was helpful just as you went over the board and what's there.
As we talk today, I want to focus in on student-centered issues that you see. Obviously, your point about the divine providence that comes in and keeps people safe in a natural disaster, that's real. There are day in, day out challenges that our kids face and resilience that they have to display and community support that they need to be successful. And so you're talking to us as we launch Cohort 8 of our EDD that's preparing superintendents. And so they're going to do three years of research on a problem of practice that they care deeply about that matters in the context they're in.
And so what I'm interested in is hearing from superintendents about two or three of the biggest issues you see that need attention in the research, in data collection, but really in the practical day in and day out of how do we make life better for students? How do we do that in a way that's life-giving, that leads to flourishing, and makes sure that we're moving forward in useful ways when you're not dealing with insurance adjusters and all the budget pieces, which are real. And those have to be dealt with, otherwise you can't serve kids well.
But if you were to say, "Hey, these are the two or three things that I see." That as people think about what they might research and dedicate three years of their lives to research-wise, what would come to mind as you think about that right now?
Bobby Ott:
And this certainly isn't in rank order, but one would be a true model of integrating. And when I say model, something that's repeatable that you could replicate in any district size, but a true model for integrating mental health services in a school district.
I got to be honest with you, every year when we're sitting down as a group of superintendents, whether it's countywide or regionwide, there's always this discussion about how to truly integrate mental health services in a school system. And several districts have tried different things. They've tried some co-op services. They've tried to hire on regular counselors and get them trained in certain things and then they peel off.
But there's two limitations that we find ourselves in a lot of times, and one is expertise. Rightly or wrongly, school counselors a lot of times do not have that level of expertise that we're talking about. They maybe have a general background in how to work those issues, in particular social, but the mental health pieces we find some real limitations and expertise. And then of course funding because truth be told, people that have that level of expertise make more money outside of public schools and the private sector is far more attractive and pays a lot better.
So what we find ourselves doing is trying to find retirees from the private sector, people that only want to work part-time, people that really like the schedule of public schools. But people that are experts in that field could stand to make more money than the principal of the campus for sure. And so it just becomes very, very difficult.
There are some very specialized skills that are required to do those kinds of things. And counselors that come out of the traditional school education track they're really equipped only to a certain line and our students are needing beyond the line. And when they try to seek outside support, a lot of times the students that have those needs do not have the resources to secure the outside support, whether it's monetary or accessibility with parents being able to get them where they need to go and so forth.
So I think one, so what does that look like in terms of research? When you told me about this, I try to think about it in two lenses. One, what would be the problem? And maybe what is a approach in terms of resource or research? And I would say researching models to embed specialized counseling services, trauma-informed care, restorative practices, cognitive therapy into credentialing for counselors in their traditional track programs. Maybe therapy-specific coursework, maybe there's a way.
I think we're trying to address the problem after people are certified, but I wonder if there are models that can be done between a traditional public education track in grad school in partnership with the college of psychology or behavioral sciences or something like that. And I don't know the answer to that. That's a little bit outside of my expertise. But I think there's some different directions for students there. Cohort 8 could look at maybe a preparatory model or you could look at a service model in the school system. So that would be the first one.
Jon Eckert:
No, that's a powerful one. And we're working in Mississippi right now with five districts because there's high levels of opioid use and abuse. And the mental health piece is such a huge part of it because you're dealing with communities that are struggling with some of that and then that is bleeding into the kids and some of the trauma that comes with that. And trying to figure out ways to put universal interventions in place that get kids making better choices that lead to thriving communities so you're less likely to make those choices is hard.
But then when they've already made the choices, you need really specific interventions by highly trained people. And one of the things we've been doing in schools over the last few years is a lot of trying to fill in the gaps for people without training. And it gets really dangerous when you start trying to identify and diagnose and you have educators who are desperate for help and feel these urgent needs, but then they don't have the training. And so sometimes they can exacerbate the problem without that expertise. So I think that's tremendously insightful and needed.
So what would be the next one that you have? If you were to say, "Hey, tackle this," and you said not in order, but what would be something else you would say we should be tackling?
Bobby Ott:
Well, the other thing that we're seeing, and this really points to special program services in particular, English language learners and special education, but those numbers are going up across the state. And there's a couple of reasons for it. I mean, I think one is generational. We're seeing that more and more in the younger generations. You're seeing more students in kinder and first with not just disabilities, but language delay and also high needs, and I'll get into that piece in a second.
But the numbers go up and the funding has gone down. And so the ratios are a big problem in that mix because there are required ratios for very, very specialized programs. And when funding is going down, even the IDEA federal grant has reduced, what funds typically special education services. But the other piece is your qualifiers have expanded too. So for example, adding dyslexia to special ed has totally increased that number in every single school district. And so when those things happen, you start to pull apart the service in the program. It really starts to dilute. And so that's where we're at on that end.
The other piece is RFs or residential facilities. We are really struggling because one, there's not enough residential facilities in said communities, but two, they are very liberal about denying even if they have enough beds in long and short-term placement. It literally is one of the hardest things you can possibly do to get students to qualify for a residential facility. And so what happens is those students a lot of times in schools end up becoming what I call in and outs. They're in, and then the next episode they're out. And so they never really improve educationally or anything else because we are not equipped within the school system to appropriately deliver the services those students need.
And so when they're denied those services from the outside, even through referral processes, and there's a lot of complications with that, could be resources at home, it could be insurance, could be a lot of things. It could be that sometimes parents don't like to get them qualified because they'll lose some of their financial assistance. And I've run into that quite a bit too. So that's a real problem. That is a population in total that is growing, funding is not growing commensurate with the program, and specialized services are very selective for which students can be accepted and not accepted.
So what's the research angle there? I mean, that's a good question. And this sounds a little bit like maybe the first one, but maybe there are different models of partnerships that we can work with students that are denied residential. I mean, there's a zone of students that we don't know how to take care of appropriately and what do we do with those students? Are there transitory programs? Are there effective practices and how we can train people to work with higher ratios or to handle students that are episodic? We are so ill-equipped in that area. And when the students don't have anywhere else to go, the default is us. And at that point, we're really not doing them a justice. We're just not. And it's heartbreaking. It's really heartbreaking.
But that's something that I think would be very encouraging if there were some type of transitory model or something that can be put together. That's on the RF side. I think the other side of it, just regular special education and English language learner piece. What I find is that those are harder and harder to hire even if you do get the stipends up. I think there is an exodus of people leaving that were serving special education students.
And what I hear, or what's reported to me rather through exit interviews, documented exit interviews is a lot of times it's the paperwork piece that comes with it. And this is what I don't know. It almost appears like it's a surprise. And I don't know if in prep programs there's a lot of attention given to the detail of the paperwork piece that comes with teaching in a special program because there seems to be an element of surprise when teachers are leaving and they're explaining, "Well, I didn't realize I had to do all this for RDs, I had to do all this for IEPs, I had to do all this and computer systems," and this, that and the other. And it is heavy. I mean, certainly it does carry a different weight with regard to that piece than say the regular education teacher.
So that is something that I wonder at times. I don't know if that's something that's strong on the research side. I mean, obviously higher ed doesn't have the authority to minimize the bureaucratic requirements. But the time they spend with advocates, the time they spend in meetings and they walk, a lot of times they walk.
And so maybe a way that we can figure out how to help school districts put together very specific teacher retention programs for special education. What does that look like? Retaining a special education and bilingual teacher that's not like retaining a general ed teacher. What does that really look like? And what are some ideas that school districts could do with helping specialized teachers with higher ratios if it comes to that? And then how can we work with students that should be in a residential facility are denied or maybe there isn't bed space or they're in for a month and they're sent back when they should have been in longer? What can we do there?
So that'd be the second one. And that's probably not as succinct as the first one, but maybe there's enough directions you can go out of that.
Jon Eckert:
No, that's powerful and overlaps nicely with the first one. Obviously, mental health is going to weave through all of that. And so the mental health of special education teachers is also part of it. And I think you can tell people and you can prepare people say, "Hey, this is a lot of paperwork. Here's the way you're going to have to do this. These are legal contracts you're creating. This is not going to be a light lift." I think though the reality doesn't hit you until you're actually in it. Because I think most people drawn to special ed really care deeply about kids and that's what gets them... And I think it's true for teaching in general, but I think especially special ed. And then when you're hit with and you're going to have a lot more paperwork. And so you can say it, and then you live the reality and it feels different.
So if you have one other challenge that you see that could use some research, some deeper thought, do you have one more in mind or anything that builds off of these two? Otherwise, we can jump to a couple other questions.
Bobby Ott:
I think the other one would be the general idea of pacing. There is, and this has happened probably for the last 10 years, but there seems to be this growing amount of what needs to be taught in terms of standards and the level of intricacy, which whether it's multi-step problems, high-rigor written responses, you name it. I certainly agree with testing and rigor and depth, but I disagree with the idea that the timing that teachers have to truly get students to understand things at that level and then we're adding more and more standards. To me that starts to dilute the whole entire system of public education. It becomes kind of this mile wide, inch deep versus the inverse.
And so it really... I feel like as a system that we are heading toward a system of testing and minimal completion over true learning and engagement. And this is greatly because of the influence of a lot of the special interests that we're always trying to include in standards, bureaucratic systems, standard setting. And the kids really suffer greatly. And I don't know if teachers really get a handle on that piece of it because it continues to grow.
So research angle, innovative teaching practices that know how to maximize time engagement, content with a group of students that are on different parts of the continuum. I know that we have things like that in prep programs, but I just think that that's something we need more and more. And I do think that we probably ought to start really considering the use of technology in a way to minimize some of the basic steps in education. And that kind of gets to the question of what opportunities do you see for educators? And I can expand on that now or wait until you comment on the third area.
Jon Eckert:
No, that's great. We want to jump into opportunities. Where do you see some optimistic next steps? So certainly jump right into that and then we can expand on that a little bit.
Bobby Ott:
I think technology use. I know AI can be received in many different ways because I've seen it firsthand. Some people turn and walk. Some people think it's a great thing. But I would love to see AI used in a way that allows the teacher to be set up in a classroom in a more intimate way with instruction and allows them to go into depth. I'm wondering if AI in tandem with a classroom teacher could create an environment where the larger nominal content can be delivered in a way in masses and the teacher can become more of, I don't want to say tutor, but someone that goes in and can either provide the enrichment or remediation in smaller groups in a classroom.
I'd love to see AI shrink the classroom. And I think there's ways that that can be done. Now, I'm an administrator, so I wouldn't dare try to come up with ways without teachers being involved, but I think we almost have to get to that level. And I can't think of anything else cost-effective. I mean, you can always add more teachers in a classroom, but at some point in time that becomes a budget buster. I just wonder if there's a way to handle this through technology.
So I think there are opportunities with the development of AI. I think the main thing about it is we have to lead that. It can't be something done organically because if it is students will grab a hold of that and trust me they will lead it in their own way and sometimes in an abusive way that shortchanges learning. And if that happens, then they're going to be ill prepared, number one. And number two, we're going to be spending our time as administrators doing damage control.
So I think it's something we have to get ahead of. I'll tell you, we're looking as a district to have an AI conference, not this summer, but next summer, and invite school districts. We're really trying to do some things to lead the way in that. This summer is kind of a standup summer in terms of educating our staff and making sure that our network is set appropriately so we minimize abuse as much as possible. So we're doing that, but I don't see enough models out there that are something that are make take, you can grab a hold of and implement in a district. So I think there's probably some opportunity for educators there.
Jon Eckert:
Well, I just listened to a podcast, I haven't read the book yet, but Brave New Words by Sal Khan. He obviously with Khan Academy has influenced the learning of millions of kids, but he's super optimistic about what AI can do and creating this personalized and shrinking the classroom. And he certainly doesn't minimize the role of teachers, but it's fascinating. So I definitely need to read that. We hear about AI all the time, and you're right, you have this broad range of responses. And the challenge is going to be that is moving so rapidly that it's really hard to keep out in front. And I agree we have to.
But in a world where we have been doing mile wide, inch deep for forever, William Schmidt, I think he was at Michigan State, he coined that phrase about US curriculum 30, 40 years ago. And so we've been doing this because that's what I think we do a little bit in democracies. If you can't all agree, then just put it all in. Don't narrow, just add. And so you have your special interest groups, you have all these different people that are like, "Hey, this is important." And it is important, but it can't all be important. You have to figure out ways to master things. And maybe AI can be helpful there.
And I think being thoughtful about that and digging in what that means to really engage students well because Sal Khan says it, kids that are already motivated will learn really well with AI. It's the kids who are not. It's the kids with mental health issues. It's the fact that teaching is a very human endeavor. How do we make it even more human using tools? Because AI is just the newest range of tools. So it certainly doesn't replace the human being because ultimately large language models are just scraping what's on the internet. So it's consensus, not wisdom.
So you certainly can learn, but if you really want to become all of who you're created to be, that requires wisdom. And so that's where the humans are there. The problem is, to your point earlier, teachers are stretched so thin and so many demands are being placed on them it's really hard to have that one-on-one interaction. It's hard to really be seen, known, and loved in a system that's not set up for that. And so if AI can help with that, I certainly am excited to see where that goes. So love that you're thinking that way.
If you maybe have one other opportunity you see ahead for Temple specifically or for educators in general, what gives you some hope right now? Where do you see hopeful direction in what we're doing here in Texas?
Bobby Ott:
I am seeing more and more leaders leading authentically and with feeling. And I'm probably saying that in a odd way, but I see large district leaders, superintendents, and principals striking at being as personable as your smaller school. Ones are really, you don't have a choice because you're everywhere. But I see more of that and I see more of this, and I try to do it as much as... Just this shameless, this mobilizing of people to shamelessly remind others why they do it. They love children, they love staff.
And as bad as the political rhetoric has been against public ed generally, I think it's mobilized educators, in particular leaders, teachers have done this night and day, leaders to say, "Hey, that doesn't characterize the entire profession. We are human. We do love our children. This is what we do. This is why we do it." And I see more of that. I really see more of that. I hear more of that when I go to conferences, when I network with superintendents.
Yeah, our conversations could largely be dominated by budget and bonds and the newest innovative program and so forth. But I hear more of things like, "You know, you could get that done in your community if your community truly knows that you love their children, if your staff feels appreciated." And I think there are a lot of reasons for this effort. I think retaining people in the profession is one. But you can only go so far with money. You can only go so far with things. But positive culture, that is number one. I've always said people don't leave a job. They leave a boss because they're going to get the same job somewhere else.
So this idea of how you treat people and how you demonstrate appreciation and care, I think for me, I am seeing more and more of that. I'm seeing more and more of that in the people we hire in administrative positions. I'm seeing things like that on social media. Several years ago I'd see, "Hey, we graduated 653, congratulation to the graduates." And now I'm seeing videos of a student hugging their superintendent and lifting them up off the ground and the superintendent commenting saying, "This is what it's all about." I'm just seeing more of that, whether it's small or big. And I think there's been a void of that.
And I see this idea of when I get into administration, business and logistics taking over my life, that there's a real attempt to say, "It may take over my tasks, but I'm still going to put out in front my community, my students, my teachers, my school nutrition workers, and hold them up." And so that is giving me a lot of hope right now.
Jon Eckert:
That's great. And so these last two questions can be as short or as long as you need them to be, but on a daily basis now, given everything that you're managing, and you just highlighted a little of this, where do you find joy in the work you're doing on a daily basis? What do you go back to to maintain the joy that you seem to have in the midst of a lot of different pressures and challenges? And then the second one is is there a book that you've read in the last year that you're like, "Hey, every leader, every educator, this is a great book. This was helpful"? It doesn't even have to be in the last year. If it's something from earlier, that's great. But I always like to know those things. So where do you find your joy? What's a great book? And then we can wrap up.
Bobby Ott:
I find my joy in the idea that good people are still good people and they exist in the masses. So I try to make sure to connect people as much as possible to those situations. We do Mission Mondays. My entire central office every Monday is on a campus opening doors for kids that are going to school, walking in classrooms, helping to serve breakfast, do those kinds of things. I think that those kinds of things bring me joy because I see it bring them joy.
I see kids get excited when there's more than the same caring adult around them, but there's others that maybe they don't even know their names right away but they know that they're in the same system that they are. It brings me joy when I see people that are normally away from kids in their job reminded of why they got into this whole profession because we put together possibilities where they are around kids. I see teachers with smile on their faces because they see a genuine care from people that aren't doing their jobs but are asking to support them. We always support people behind the scenes in our various roles, but to do it right next to someone while they're real time and to see what they're actually doing. So those kinds of things bring me joy. Just watching great educators no matter where they're at in the system making the difference in each other's lives, in students lives. So that brings me joy.
And then a book that comes to my mind. I don't read a lot of educator books. I'm sorry, but I don't. I read a lot of... I do read leadership books. But there's a book called 1000s CEOs and it's by Andrew Davidson. And it really takes top CEOs and puts them in containers like visionaries, strategists, motivators, innovators, organizers, what have you. And these CEOs talk about their strategies in which the container that they're, I guess labeled in as being most effective. And so there's a lot of really good strategies in there. There was one called, a group called Startup Titans. And when we were going to implement blended learning for the first time, I wanted to hear some of the strategies of deployment from CEOs that startup companies because it was so brand new in our district.
So that for me was a really, really good book. I'll warn you, if it says 1000 anything, that means it's going to be a thick book because there's a lot of pages in it. But it could be a resource. You could look at a table of contents like I did and said, "Hey, we're going to start blended learning in Temple ISD, which container would make the most sense?" Well, innovator container would make sense, a visionary one, and maybe startup titans. So I would go and read some of the CEOs strategies in those areas and then try to formulate my thoughts around deployment and so forth. So that's a book that I read and am happy to pass on.
Jon Eckert:
No, that's super helpful. And I think sometimes in education, we get too caught up in naval gazing, just looking at what we can learn from education. And there's a lot of fields out there that have a lot of wisdom that we can glean. And especially in the role of a superintendent where you're a politician, you're a community organizer, you're a bureaucrat, you're a manager. There's so many different hats you wear, and a human being that finds joy in the good people that you work with and the community that you serve. That's super helpful because the CEO wears many of those hats. And so I think that's great wisdom.
Well, hey, Dr. Ott, thank you so much for the time. Thanks for all you do for us at Baylor, for students and staff in Temple, and then for everybody across the state of Texas. We're grateful to have you so close and your willingness to serve educators in this way. So thank you.
Bobby Ott:
You bet. Thank you. And I wish all the best to Cohort 8. You're entering a great program. And the one thing I would say, I don't know if this is going to them or not, but the one thing I would tell them is a lot of times when you start things like a program, people will start to ponder this idea of journey versus destination kind of thing. Which one's more important? Is it getting the doctorate? Do I try to enjoy it along the way? It's heavy, whatever it may be. And what I would pass on to you is this, anytime you find yourself being asked that question or contemplating it, the answer is neither. It should always be the company. The company is the most important thing. It's not the journey or the destination, it's the company. And so enjoy your professors, enjoy your cohort, get to know the people around you, and that will be the most important thing. And if you do that, I will tell you the journey and the destination will take care of itself.
Jon Eckert:
Such great advice. And that's true for everybody, not just people starting a doctoral cohort. But appreciate how you live that out, and I'm grateful that you're on the journey with us and you're part of the company that we get to keep. So thanks again.
Bobby Ott:
You bet. Take care.
 
 

Unlearning: Allison Posey

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Allison Posey. The discussion covers the importance of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the role of neuroscience in education. Allison emphasizes the need for a shift from a deficit mindset to one that recognizes the variability and potential in all learners.
Additionally, the conversation explores the challenges educators face, such as time constraints and the need for professional development that supports flexible and inclusive teaching practices.
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:Unlearning by Allison Posey & Katie Novak
Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
Transcription:
Jon Eckert:
We're excited to have Allison Posey in today. She is an amazing educator that, I just have to say this, I met in Paris just a week or so ago, and it was a great privilege to meet her at a UNESCO conference on inclusive education, how do we educate more kids around the world, which was a fascinating conference to be at. And so really excited to meet her and for you to meet her as well. So Allison, great to have you on today.
Allison Posey:
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Jon Eckert:
Can you just give us a little bit of your journey that brought you to CAST and Universal Design for Learning, which we'll get into what that is in a little bit, but what got you to the position that you're in now?
Allison Posey:
Well, I started to jump back one step and then I went two steps back. So I was teaching at a really cool program called, actually I don't like the title of it, the Center for Talented Youth because what youth is not talented, but there is a certain measure that was used to assess students on a kind of talent, one kind of talent. And they would come to Johns Hopkins for the summer and study one thing really intensely. So I got to teach neuroscience for six weeks in the summer to really interested students. And when I say interested, we had to take the books away from them after seven hours of being in the classroom, so they would have to go socialize and do kind of the camp thing. So a lot of neuroscience, a lot of learning, gifted and talented. Right.
Allison Posey:
And I had a student one year who we were having these incredible conversations about learning in the brain. He basically had read the college level textbook in a week, and this was a high school student. And yeah, at first I was like, I don't know about that. But the more we started talking, I thought, wow, he really is making sense of all. It took me six years to get through this textbook. He's really making sense of it all. And when I went to score his first assessment, it was completely blank and he didn't complete any of his assignments.
Allison Posey:
And I found out from his parent at the meetings at the end with the families that he was failing four out of his five high school courses and was severely depressed and at risk of dropping out. And I was so upset by this one, because I didn't know it as his teacher. I'd been working with him for these six weeks and I didn't realize it was at that level. And two, I realized I didn't know how to teach. So ironically, here I am teaching about the brain and I didn't feel like I knew how to reach the humans who had the brains with all the stuff that I was teaching. So I went to graduate school. I will get to the answer to your question.
Jon Eckert:
No, I love this path. I did not know where you were going with this. But again, you first, you start off with every teacher's dream, kids you have to take the books away from after seven hours. And then that realization that I don't really know what I'm doing when it's not actually working or the way that curriculum's being implemented, at least in those four of those five classes, it's not working. What do I do? So love that start.
Allison Posey:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
Keep going.
Allison Posey:
And I was 10 years into my teaching about. So I'd been doing this for a while, just this feeling of I actually don't know what I'm doing. So Harvard had this amazing program called Mind, Brain & Education, and I thought, well, I know about the brain and I've been an educator. Let me check it out. And I was so fortunate to have as an advisor, David Rose, who is the founder of CAST and Universal Design for Learning. He was my advisor. It was just such a gift. So I learned about this framework. Well, actually let me take a little tiptoe back. The first article we read in this program was that the connection between neuroscience research and classroom practice is a bridge too far, that what we're learning in neuroscience labs that are isolated, maybe one individual at a time doing one task in very controlled environments are completely different from what we would do in a classroom with dozens of students and fire alarms and all this stuff.
Allison Posey:
And I don't know how you felt when you heard me say that, but I was angry. I absolutely was like these two fields need to be talking to each other. And I have really literally made it my profession to try to bridge the gap. And there are a lot of times when I'm having conversations with educators that I've noticed, I'm like, well, the gap may be a little too far between neuroscience and the bridge between neuroscience and education, but we need to keep having the conversations. So Universal Design for Learning is a framework that really is trying to make connections between the neuroscience of learning and the best high leverage practices that there are in order to reach each and every individual. So I think I finally got to the answer to your question.
Jon Eckert:
But what a great journey to it. You got there because of a need you observed as a teacher. And to me, that's the whole benefit of why we go back to grad school. So I always tell people that are looking at a Master's or an EDD or a PhD, wait until you've taught a few years because you'll have plenty of questions that you're trying to figure out. I thought this, but when I worked with kids, I realized this or I worked with other adults, I realized this. And so what a brilliant reason to go to UDL and CAST. So I guess let's do this.
Allison Posey:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
Tell us a little bit about Universal Design for Learning in case people don't know what that is. I will say at the UNESCO conference, everybody there from around the world seemed to know what UDL was. So it may be very few of you don't know what it is, but talk about that as a way to connect neuroscience in the classroom because we get this all the time. If you want to sell a book, it feels like in education, throw neuroscience in there and it's like, oh, there's neuroscience in there. It must mean something. But talk about how UDL is that practical bridge to make sure each kid's needs are met and the talents that they have can flourish in a classroom.
Allison Posey:
It was actually very exciting to see. UDL talked about a lot at UNESCO without CAST, the originators of UDL needing to say anything about it. I mean, I wasn't the one presenting on it. So it was amazing to get to learn from folks how this framework is helping. It is a teaching and learning framework. So if your school or district doesn't have a common framework for teaching, this is a great framework because it gives a common language for learning that is grounded in the brain. So I don't have to label students as having disabilities. I don't have to take a deficit mindset. I can use UDL to proactively plan an environment that anticipates the variability of learning that we know will have in our classroom. And there are nine different dimensions that UDL explores through our UDL guidelines. And then under each of those dimensions of learning, there are a bunch of our tried and true strategies.
Allison Posey:
So I don't have, UDL is not, I always, I'll say to educators, I wish I had a magic wand and it was like the tool that engaged each learner in the learning. I don't have that tool, but I have a framework that can help you think about the design and how it's meeting or not meeting the needs of all the students. And it is liberating to not have to feel like I need to label each and every student with a deficit of what they can't do. Instead, I just look to make a creative, flexible learning space. And that space might include the methods that you're using, the materials that are there, the goals and the assessments. Even the assessments. As much as we love our standardized tests here in the US, really thinking deeply about how the assessments are universally designed and flexible to make sure you're able to get at the constructs that you're wanting to measure in the assessments as well. So we look at UDL across those four dimensions of curricula.
Jon Eckert:
Well, what I love about that as a 12-year teaching veteran of what I call real teaching, I've been in higher ed now 15 years, and I feel like that's fake teaching. You get some of those kids that you have to take the books away from, which as a middle school science teacher, it's like, yeah, that wasn't really a problem for most of the kids I was teaching, but I had a few. What I love about it is when you think about the RTI or MTSS, Multi-Tiered System of Support, UDL is a tier one support for each kid. So you do that so that you don't have to start labeling and elevating kids and you're trying to meet each kid's needs through materials that make them really interesting to teach. Teaching's infinitely interesting, but it becomes overwhelming when we don't have the tools in place to help us do it.
Jon Eckert:
The same thing I wanted to say about UDL. I first became aware of it when I was writing test items. I wrote test items for seven different states for Houghton Mifflin's testing company Riverside. And one of the things we always had to do is we had to use UDL principles in all the items that we wrote or they wouldn't be accepted. So you got paid per item that made it through the screeners, so you paid really close attention to those pieces. And if it didn't hit the UDL standards. Now I don't know that I always achieved exactly what CAST would say would be a UDL standard because you're still doing multiple choice tests with an open response. It's challenging sometimes to do this. They also wanted us writing the top levels of Bloom's taxonomy with multiple choice items, which I still argue is impossible, but I would do my best.
Jon Eckert:
But I love that about UDL because it couples the instruction with the assessment and I, however, we're assessing, I get frustrated in the US and people say, Hey, we don't want to teach to the test. Then what are you teaching to? The key is, is the test a good test? We're always teaching to an assessment. If we're not teaching to an assessment, then we're just performing. And so UDL says, here's the way we're going to deliver instruction, and here's also how we're going to assess. Because any good teacher wants to teach to an assessment. It's just we don't want to teach the bad assessments. And that's where I appreciate the critique that, hey, if it's not a good assessment, then what am I doing? But if I'm not assessing what the student's doing, then how do I know I taught anything?
Jon Eckert:
And so it goes back to that great quote. I don't know if you got exposed to the seven step lesson plan from Madeline Hunter. It was how I got taught to teach and it was not UDL, but there were elements of UDL in it before UDL existed. But she said this, "To say you've taught when no one has learned is to say you have sold when no one bought." And so to me, UDL can be that nice through line between instruction and assessment. Am I overstating anything? Is there anything you'd push back on there or anything you'd want to add?
Allison Posey:
The thing I would push back on is the goal of UDL isn't to be able to achieve an assessment, but the goal is to be able to develop expertise around learning about whatever it is you want to learn about. So we call it expert learning. Now, I think I would say a lot of the language at UNESCO was around even student agency, being able to know what you need to know to do your best learning, and whether that's to take a test so that you can now learn how to drive and that's your goal, or whether it's to become a scientist, or a musician, or whatever it is that you're wanting to do, and be, and the joy you find in life that you're pursuing, that you know how to be strategic to get what you need. You know how to build your background and importantly, you know how to sustain effort and persistence so that you can engage in a way that's meaningful.
Allison Posey:
And in that sentence, I just used the three UDL principles. So those three principles really do align with what we know about learning and the brain and you have be engaged in order to even pay attention and build the background you need to be able to do what you need to do. So those three principles really are broadly aligned to this model and this way of thinking. So yes to the assessments, but yes to pushing on assessments to really be meaningful and what we need to do in the communities and in the society so that they're connected a little bit tighter. And the other thing you said that I really appreciate is that you're never done. It's never like, there is one thing where I'm like, wow, we did it. Check UDL off the list. There are always more ways of thinking about those assessment questions, your resources, your materials to make sure that they're accessible and that folks can engage and take action strategically with them.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and I really appreciate that corrective because I came to UDL through the assessment and that was the filter. And I thought it was sometimes a little artificial, but the idea that you're building student agency, you're building cognitive endurance so that they can do meaningful things, that's what we want. And so I like to think of assessment much more broadly as saying, hey, how do we know that you have that agency? What are the markers that show that? And I think that's a much broader perspective than what I came to it with. And so I appreciate that and it gives that, feeds that you're never done. And that's why we're always learning, as educators we're always learning, and our students are always learning and they're growing, but they have to have a passion for what they're doing. So you have to be able to know them, see them, do that, to tap into that cognitive endurance so it doesn't become a compliance culture.
Jon Eckert:
And I think we've done that in a lot of schools, and I think UDL pushes back on that. I'll give you one example that is a compliance culture for teachers. I still walk in classrooms. I'm like, oh, there's the learning target dutifully written on the board. Well, that's fine, but that doesn't mean anything meaningful is happening for kids. And it becomes a checklist thing to the point you made. And if UDL becomes, oh, we're using UDL check, it's like, no, that's not the point. And so I feel like there's that culture sometimes in US schools where we want to make sure it's being done. So that becomes a checklist. And it's like, well, if you have a really bad teacher, it's better to have a learning target on the board. It's better to use UDL than not, but that doesn't actually mean meaningful learnings happening. And so I think there needs to be a better onboarding of educators, a real time, here's what this looks like, feedback for them as they use UDL. How does CAST, if at all, how do you engage in that kind of training and support for educators?
Allison Posey:
Oh, you are talking to the right person. I have been thinking about this for years.
Jon Eckert:
Good, good.
Allison Posey:
There is no easy answer, but I was actually on the team that worked to really try to develop credentials around UDL. How do you look for and measure what's largely a mindset? Because I do use all the same tools. As I was saying, it's not like all of a sudden you have UDL and there's a magic tool that's different and the classroom looks differently. What's different is my mindset in my mindset of the high expectations for all learners. And if there's a barrier, the barrier is framed in the design of the environment and reduced because I've co-constructed that with my students, with my learners. That is really hard to get a video of, to take a picture of, to gather data around. And so our credential process has tried to identify a minimum. So we have a mindset credential, we have an analysis credential, and then we have an application credential because we realize you don't just all of a sudden shift your mindset and start doing everything differently.
Allison Posey:
You actually, and I've written again, told you, I think about this a lot. I wrote a whole book on unlearning, how you actually have to unlearn a lot of your tried and true practices that you went through school doing, you went through teacher prep maybe even doing in order to trade up for this really different mindset. I would argue, at least in my experience in the US schools and the little bit that I've been internationally, we still are largely a deficit-based approach where we have kind of a pre-made lasagna lesson that I like to call it. And if a student doesn't do it in more or less the same way, at more or less the same time, we think there's something wrong and we have to fix the student as opposed to saying, wait a minute, it's probably this pre-made lasagna lesson that assumes incorrectly that there is going to be an average student.
Allison Posey:
And one thing we know from brain science, mathematicians don't like me to say this, one thing we know from brain science is there is no average learner. When you look at brain scans across hundreds of individuals and you look at their average, it matches no one. It's an amazing thing. So in education, we might say, oh, well we have the high group, as I was telling you that that's who they thought they had. They were so much variability in those learners across. And I ended up using UDL to think about nine different dimensions of that variability to really kind of get at the complexity of what educators are tasked to do. And that's to educate each and every student. I mean, it's such an underappreciated profession because it is so hard to do.
Jon Eckert:
Right. Well, and I just pulled up your book, Unlearning, which is a great title for the book. And what we have to do that. The thing that I worry about, two things. We will take this and turn it into a scripted curriculum, which is taking at least elementary schools by storm in the United States because we have de-professionalized education to where we don't have highly trained people in the classroom where it's like, well, let's give them a script and if a student responds this way, you respond this way. Or we're putting in front of a screen which can be adaptive and can do some of those things. I have that concern. And the second concern I have is that we make teaching seem so complex that very conscientious, hardworking, intelligent educators will say, I just can't do this. This is too much. How does UDL get you focused on the right things without making it so it's a script, but it simplifies it in a way that it feels doable because that's what I hear about UDL. How do you see that playing out, if at all, or are my concerns valid?
Allison Posey:
No, you say it so well. I think one, we need UDL for educators as well. They are learners and they have brains and they are interacting in these school systems and often do not have the tools and resources and flexibility they need to be able to do their jobs well and they are not paid enough. I would love, love for teachers to actually make what they deserve in wages and to find the difference that that might make. Okay. So UDL for educators as well.
Jon Eckert:
Get on your soapbox. Okay.
Allison Posey:
See, I got so into that. I forgot my second point that I was going to make. Oh, descriptiveness of UDL. Here's the secret to UDL. We can provide options. Right. A grocery store has options. It has lots of options. And if I just walk into the grocery store and I'm like, I have options. I don't know what I'm buying, I get frustrated, I'm confused, there all these things you can do. That's like education. We have all these tools, all these things. Often what we're lacking is a very clear goal. You mentioned goals earlier and goals are different from standards, but it's really breaking down, like for this moment in time, here's what I really want my learners to know, do, or care about. And when you have such a clear vision of that, like I know that I'm going to go grocery shopping for the hockey team dinner, I'm going to be so strategic in a different way than I'm shopping for the UNESCO picnic that we're going to have. Right.
Jon Eckert:
Right.
Allison Posey:
So depending on the goal, you make such different choices. And so those goals are often in my work with educators, and I've been in the UDL world for 12 years, so it's been a while now. We really end up returning to what's the goal? And very often we hear, here's the activity, or we hear, what's this chapter of the book? And it's like, no, but what's the goal? And once you identify the goal, then you can better identify how to be flexible within that. So it takes more work on the front end. It does. People don't always like to hear. It takes more work on the front end, but it saves you work on the back end. And more learners are able to get to that goal because it's clear, we've reduced some of the hidden biases that are in our like, well, don't you already know how to do that? And why don't you have that private tutor? And it just makes the process so much more transparent.
Allison Posey:
But it's again, largely not what we're doing in our schools and classrooms now. So you actively have to unlearn. And that takes energy and is hard. So do it small, start small, have teams and people working together with you to build that culture where the flexibility is valued because you recognize that learner variability.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah.
Allison Posey:
And the number of times, yeah, go ahead.
Jon Eckert:
No, I was going to say that's the life-giving part of teaching, when you see kids doing things that they didn't think they could do. And so that's where it keeps you coming back and it makes it worth the effort. And so it's way more fun to put the effort on the front end where kids can be successful and trying to give them feedback on ways that you're like, I clearly did not set this up. We did not have a clear target, we didn't have success criteria. We didn't... And so totally 100% agree. The effort on the front ends, way more rewarding than trying to clean up a bad assignment on the back end. So yeah.
Allison Posey:
Yeah, just like a bad dinner party. It's so much to say. Everyone didn't like my one lasagna I gave them. What?
Jon Eckert:
Good example. So let me wrap us up with our lightning round. So given all your experience with UDL and some of the misapplication of some of the research and the neuroscience that you know, what's the worst piece of advice you've ever heard? It doesn't have to be related to UDL, but it could be. But worst piece of advice you've gotten as an educator.
Allison Posey:
Oh, one of them was don't smile the first half of the year.
Jon Eckert:
I need to go back. We've done about 40 of these podcasts and I think in about 30 of them when I've asked it, that's the worst piece of advice that comes up every time.
Allison Posey:
No kidding. Yes. Right.
Jon Eckert:
It's horrible advice because it dehumanizes teaching.
Allison Posey:
It's all about the relationships and the community. So why would you not have that from the beginning?
Jon Eckert:
Right. I do not know. I hope that advice is not, I hope it's just because I'm old, that that feels like advice,-
Allison Posey:
Oh, I have a different one maybe. Maybe here's another one. Check your emotions at the door.
Jon Eckert:
Oh, similar, right? Ridiculous. And you've also written a book on emotions, right?
Allison Posey:
Yes.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. Yes.
Allison Posey:
Yes. You are never without those emotions. In fact, if you check them at the door, there's a problem.
Jon Eckert:
Right. And part of decision making includes emotions. I think emotions have kind of gotten a little bit, they've gotten a bad rap and now there's kind of a corrective coming. So super helpful. All right. Best piece of advice you've ever received?
Allison Posey:
Oh, this will be for my mentor David Rose. Oh, she just came to mind, but I'll stick to one. Anything worth doing will probably not be achieved in your lifetime.
Jon Eckert:
Oh, wow. That's, okay. And then give me the second one too because you said you had two.
Allison Posey:
Teaching's emotional work.
Jon Eckert:
Ah. All right. No. Hey, that's a good reminder. And I just read the Same as Ever by Morgan Housel. And he had this thing, he came out in November of 2023. He said, "We don't celebrate incremental improvement enough." So if you look at heart disease and the way it's been managed since the 1950s, we've made a one and a half percent improvement every year since the 1950s. And you're never going to get a headline, hey, we made a one and a half percent improvement in heart disease treatment.
Allison Posey:
Right.
Jon Eckert:
But over time, that compounding interest is huge. And I think as educators, we need to remember it's not, and I've quit talking about solutions and I focus on improvement because I think solutions indicate that we think that there's some place that we arrive at, which we talked about earlier. We don't. We just keep improving. And so that's where... Super helpful piece there. Okay. What's the biggest challenge you see for educators? We can go worldwide or in the US. You pick your audience. What's the biggest challenge you see?
Allison Posey:
I mean, the biggest challenge I hear over and over is time. We just don't have time to do the curriculum adaptation that we need to do, to have the conversations, to do the one-on-one. So we do hear repeatedly that time is a barrier. But I will say from my perspective, it's the mindset. It's really, the deficit mindset is still so pervasive and we pass that on to students. So they think they're not science students or they're just not good at math. I mean, they have these raw generalizations that, again, from a neuroscience perspective, we know is not true, so.
Jon Eckert:
That's good.
Allison Posey:
Yeah, I think that deficit mindset's our biggest challenge right now.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and John Hattie's work on mind frames reinforces that as well. I mean, very similar kinds of framing. And I do think, well, and Ronald Heifetz work on adaptive challenges. He's a Harvard guy. Your degrees from Harvard. The idea that technical challenges are real, but adaptive challenges require a change in mindset because the problem and solution are unclear. And so many of the issues that we deal with in education are adaptive and not technical. As we keep slapping more technical band aids on adaptive challenges, teachers get cynical as they should.
Allison Posey:
They should. Yes.
Jon Eckert:
As they should.
Allison Posey:
Yes.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. So what's your best hope for educators as you look ahead?
Allison Posey:
I just hope they see the impact. It's such an important profession and we need the best people in it. I thank teachers all the time for doing the work they do, because one student at a time makes a difference and it has such opportunity to promote change and to make that difference. It's our future, it's our collective future. So it's such an important profession.
Jon Eckert:
It's a good word Allison. Good word to end on. Well, hey, thank you for the work you do.
Allison Posey:
It's more than one word.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah.
Allison Posey:
I'm rarely down to one word.
Jon Eckert:
Hey, that's all right. That's all right. You did better than I would've done. But thanks for what you do and thanks you for the time that you gave us today.
Allison Posey:
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

Leading with Faith and Excellence: Joel Satterly

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Joel Satterly, head of school at Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The discussion covers Joel's diverse career journey, from teaching in an inner-city middle school in Lexington, Kentucky, to leading various Christian schools across the United States. Joel emphasizes the importance of integrating academic rigor with faith formation, highlighting Westminster Academy's commitment to this philosophy since its founding.Additionally, the conversation explores the unique cultural diversity of Fort Lauderdale and how Westminster Academy reflects and benefits from this diversity. Joel notes the school's commitment to maintaining a size that allows for individualized attention and the significance of understanding and supporting each student as an individual.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:Leadership by Henry KissingerConnect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
 
 
Transcript:
Jon:
Welcome back to Just Schools. Today we're here with Joel Satterly, head of school at Westminster Academy in Florida. Joel, great to have you with us.
Joel Satterly:
Thanks, Jon. Great to be here.
Jon:
Now, you've had quite an interesting career, so if you could just give us a quick travel through your career that got you to Westminster, that'd be a great place for us to start.
Joel Satterly:
Sure. Maybe I'm a little unique in there's some guys and women in this industry that have military background, which I do, but also have an MBA. Which is kind of interesting, and a theological doctorate of ministry. That from an educational side, it's kind of an interesting mix.
My professional journey, I started like a lot of people teaching in a public school. I was in an inner city middle school in my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. My job was to convince seventh graders who were poverty-stricken, that ancient world history mattered to their life, which was a great learning lab and I learned a ton. And through a whole series of events, wound up leaving that position and going to a growing Christian school, Lexington Christian Academy, where I taught and then moved into administration both at the junior high and high school level.
And in 1999, I took my first head of school position in Rock Hill, South Carolina. I journeyed from Rock Hill to rural central Florida, a little place called Crystal River where the manatees live-
Jon:
Wow, nice.
Joel Satterly:
...at a PCA church school there. A short stint outside Atlanta for a couple of years in another PCA church setting, and then up to Chicago where actually I think we met, Jon.
Jon:
That's right.
Joel Satterly:
When you were up there at Chicago Christian, a very old CSI Christian reform school system. And we have some mutual friends that are connected through that place. And then back down to Florida here, finishing my eighth year at Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale.
Jon:
Hey, well, you're definitely winning on the winters there.
Joel Satterly:
No doubt. Losing on the pizza though.
Jon:
Oh you are, but your body is grateful for that. I always say leaving Chicago was sad for me from what we get to eat, but it's probably added four or five years to life because everything I loved in Chicago was probably killing me. But the Chicago pizza is top on that list.
So love the journey you have and I think the shaping of your military background, the MBA, teaching in public school and leading in so many different contexts in independent schools, that certainly enriches you. But I want to talk a little bit about Westminster Academy because I was able to be there a few months ago and meet a lot of your team and do some work there. But I'm really curious about the thread that you see going through Westminster Academy since its founding to where you are now and what makes it distinctive in the climate that you're in, there in Florida right now?
Joel Satterly:
Fort Lauderdale, I think, was made famous by the movie Where The Boys Are, which captured the whole idea of Florida spring break.
Jon:
Yeah, that's a thing.
Joel Satterly:
And for a long time, Fort Lauderdale was the place and then it moved I think other places. So people have an image of Fort Lauderdale through that in a lot of ways. And it's not too far from being wrong. It tends to be a very secular place, a place of some international flavor. It's a very mixed, culturally diverse part of the United States. It can be very affluent, but they're wide ranges of affluence and poverty in this area. Very transient. So it's kind of interesting.
Westminster Academy was founded in 1971, birthed out of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, which was one of the largest and first founders in the PCA. But one of the first very famous for the Coral Ridge hour back in the eighties that people might recall. And so Westminster was formed out of that. I like to joke, sometimes I say there are several great ironies that are true here. One is a Calvinist started evangelism explosion. D. James Kennedy, founding pastor at Coral Ridge started Evangelism explosion, which has had a huge influence in the world.
One of the other great ironies is the school that he helped get started, and I think in those days they were pretty fundamentalist and pretty conservative, started at a horse track because there weren't permanent space anywhere. So it used to be a place where you don't dance because it could lead to card playing and awful things like that. Yet the school starts in a horse track. So God has a sense of humor about that, I think.
But through all of that, I think there are a couple of things about Westminster that have been through puts for it that have guided it. One is a commitment to recognizing that academic rigor and faith formation are one in the same. And Christians should not settle for anything less than that. And a commitment to being excellent in how it goes about that. The other it would follow. And that was working to legitimize the Evangelical Christian Day School. Because I think Westminster, its founding was distinct from some of the other foundings of similar schools in the South in that it was founded away from desegregation and some of those other issues that may have fueled some of that.
South Florida was kind of a different time in a different place, a different set of variables. So it's been a place that's cared about being legitimate, it's cared about advancing the kingdom and been very committed to putting deep roots in the community.
Jon:
Now you mentioned the diversity and the international flavor Lauderdale and the amazing group of community resources you have there. How do you see Westminster reflecting and benefiting from that? I think earlier you talked about it being kind of an organic process. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Joel Satterly:
Yeah, so this part of the country's interesting. There's an organic diversity that... I believe I recently read where Broward County is the most diverse county in the state of Florida now, which would make it one of the more diverse counties in areas in the United States. But it's a happy diversity. One that is complimentary. So it is not to say that there aren't some tensions from time to time, but generally speaking it's transient nature helps with that as well. But you just have, the entire world is here. You go to the beach and you can hear multiple languages being spoken on any given day, for example.
So it means our student body is fairly diverse, particularly by Christian Day school standards, mainly because we admit the families that live in our local area. And even on the geographical part of Fort Lauderdale, all of it is diverse. So we don't have to work very hard at it. The challenge for us though is, like a lot of other people, is on the faculty and staff side. Figuring that part of the equation out. One of the other things that's kind of funny when people come to visit, when we talk about cultural diversity too, it's very localized. So we kind of joke that Spanish speaking folks, that's not diverse here.
Jon:
Right. Yeah, I totally understand that. I was just in South Carolina and I was in schools that were 95% African American. And we would call those diverse schools, but you're not seeing a ton of diversity in the same way you're saying for Spanish speakers in Florida, that's probably not going to be outside the norm.
Joel Satterly:
Right. It is interesting though. I haven't been here long enough yet to differentiate among the Caribbean Islands, but there are people that can. And so I don't want to downplay the cultural distinction because I do think that there are some deeply held... Like anywhere else human beings are what we are. So there are some deeply held pressures, but generally speaking, it's really a cool place to do this work because of that.
Jon:
Well, and that's where I think the diversity conversation sometimes gets derailed because we get into group and identity politics. And really each individual I described, I just mentioned the South Carolina schools that were 95% African-American. Within that, there are so many differences ethnically within those groups.
Joel Satterly:
Right.
Jon:
And the food, I always love the food culture. So I love going to places like Fort Lauderdale and I love Chicago for that and I love a lot of other cities because you can find so many variations on things. And I think we really lose out on the richness of what we do in education when we lose the trees for the forest.
Joel Satterly:
That's right.
Jon:
Even if I have three or four groups at my school, we're missing all the individuals there. So how do we make sure we see the tree that's inside that forest because there's so much richness there. So when we reduce diversity to groups, we're just missing the fact that you're not seeing the individual. And if we believe that our job as educators is to walk alongside kids to help them to become more of who they were created to be, you don't do that as a group.
Joel Satterly:
Right.
Jon:
You do that individually within a group and all of that is part of a relationship that you build, but it is with individuals. So I appreciate you saying that. What do you think Westminster does well in that regard to see, know and love each student? I mean, how many students do you have first of all? And then how do you ensure that each kid is seen, known and loved well, in a way that honors the calling that the school has?
Joel Satterly:
So we're a little over a thousand students, preschool through 12th grade. And one of the things that we're committed to is a size culture. Westminster really sees itself as between 1100 and 1200 student school maximum, complete maximum capacity, if every single kid fit exactly in the right grade that we needed them. You know how that works.
Jon:
Right.
Joel Satterly:
But we're about where we want to be size-wise, because at a certain size it's very difficult for students to be known and loved. There are realities of size. So that's a commitment that the school has had more recently. I think when it's founded, it was on a growth curve like everybody else. But I mean, I think over time it's learned that the value in having a very distinctive size culture. So that would be one. I wonder too, if COVID taught us something. I was just thinking when you're talking about being individual focused for a minute, for us at least, that COVID experience gave us a chance to figure out what is it we're supposed to be doing.
And one of the takeaways we came out with is education is fundamentally a life on life endeavor. And because it is, that means there's certain things that we need to be in the same space with each other to accomplish. At least most effectively. So there's a commitment to that. There's a commitment to seeing students that way. A lot of schools talk about differentiating instruction and that sort of thing, and we take our hand at that. I think one of the reasons we had you come here and help us, talk to us, and Lynn Swanner and some others, is we want to get better at that and recognize that.
But I think it's more of a posture of our faculty that they just do kids. They just get into their lives. And I was with a family last night, we were talking about taking a leadership role, a voluntary leadership role in our school. A very high level executive in South Florida. And the dad just got teary talking about what the different people in the school had meant for their family. And he started asking, tell me about that. And it's really just the gift of time. It's just really being intentional and saying, your child matters and we're going to figure it out.
Jon:
One of the things I liked about what you said earlier was that formation and excellence go hand in hand. So many times Christian schools have been maligned or fundamentalist schools of being anti-learning when in the end, at the end of the day, we're called to maximize the gifts we're given.
Joel Satterly:
Right.
Jon:
In studying the world, our place in the world, how things work, we're actually getting a better glimpse of God and how the world was put in this created order. So I really appreciate that perspective that you bring. And when you then couple that with seeing the individual and making sure that the goal is to not just get bigger, but it's to go deeper with each student so that he or she can go deeper in their formation and the excellence, and maximizing the gifts that they've been given. Not for self-actualization or a humanistic reason, but because they're created beings who we get the privilege of walking and helping them become more of that. That's the true blessing. And when you see that, that's what makes parents like the one you described tear up, because what a gift that is to families.
Joel Satterly:
And I think another part of that, with that, you're talking about the individual image bearer, is our commitment to worldview, jon. I mean, I think it bears out of our theological grounding and founding. But this idea of in worldview is such a trite word today, I realize and hate to even use it. But it is really significant in this particularly becoming more and more critical.
So we actually talked with our students and our faculty about that topic around three questions that we try to frame. Who is God? What is the nature of man? And what do you do with freedom? And you can talk about what is the nature of man? You can talk around, well, what is the student like? What is the teacher? How do we deal with dignity? What do we do with the fallenness? And how do we figure all that out? And the issue of freedom might be the most pressing issue facing our high school age kids today. And helping them understand freedom in the context of how they were created and made is the ultimate freedom. And that's what gives us this fuel to have an of individual focus.
Jon:
Yeah. No, I appreciate that. We always wrap up with the lightning round. So I'm going to go through three or four questions here. And I'm curious about this first one. So these are always a word, phrase, or sentence. The first question is, what's the best book or one of the most memorable books you've read this past year?
Joel Satterly:
I think I would say Kissinger's book on leadership.
Jon:
Interesting.
Joel Satterly:
Simply it's a bunch of chapters around individual world leaders in the mid to late 20th century that some of them are a bit more obscure than others. Just fascinating.
Jon:
Love it. What do you see as the biggest challenge facing education currently in the US?
Joel Satterly:
How we define success. How do we think through, what does all that look like?
Jon:
So if that's the biggest challenge, what's your best piece of advice to school leaders as they think about defining success?
Joel Satterly:
Everybody can't get a trophy.
Jon:
Okay. Very good. All right. We don't celebrate mediocrity.
Joel Satterly:
Right.
Jon:
It's one of my favorite parts of the Incredibles when they lay into that. So, all right, good. And as you look ahead, what's your best hope for education in the US as you look ahead in the year ahead?
Joel Satterly:
It feels to me like we're on the precipice of some sort of spiritual revival in certain places. And so at least I see a renewed... And one of the things, I think that the culture swinging in certain directions for different times helps the people of God refocus and it just smells that way to me. I could be wrong, but it feels like there's a movement happening. I realize Aslan never sleeps, right? But it just feels different to me than it did say five or six years ago.
Jon:
Well, I hope you're right. And again, as we get to lead for joy through truth and love, that's the kind of movement that we want to see-
Joel Satterly:
Right.
Jon:
... as we hopefully become more of who we're created to be so that we can be better conduits of that and not get in the way of what the Lord wants to do through us. So Joel, I appreciate your time and the work you do at Westminster. Thanks for taking the time to be with us today.
Joel Satterly:
My pleasure, jon. Thanks so much.
 

Lead Learner: Dr. Ann Marie Taylor

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Dr. Ann Marie Taylor. The discussion covers various aspects of educational leadership and the unique approaches taken at Horse Creek Academy. Ann Marie emphasizes the importance of celebrating and honoring teachers to prevent the profession from declining and shares innovative practices at her school, such as on-site daycare and providing amenities like a coffee bar for staff.Additionally, the conversation explores the distinctions between joy and happiness, drawing on insights from books such as "The Book of Joy" by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, and "Dare to Lead" by Brené Brown. 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 Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama , Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton AbramsDare to Lead by Brene Brown
Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInTwitter: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
Transcript:
Jon Eckert:
Today we're here with Dr. Anne Marie Taylor. She is the lead learner, love that title, at Horse Creek Academy in South Carolina. I love the work that she does and the fact that she teaches a criminology course on top of being what most people would call a principal.
So Ann Marie, thanks for being with us today, and thanks for what you do at Horse Creek.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah, it's the best gig ever.
Jon Eckert:
Yes, I love that. I love the energy you bring. We got to be together just a couple of weeks ago as we talked to the Collective Leadership Initiative in South Carolina. We've been working on that for eight years. You've been a part of it with your school for five years. Talk to us a little bit about how your school approaches collective leadership and how it's part of what you talk about nicely, about the norms, that you have created at Horse Creek Academy. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah. First of all, I was fangirling a little bit when we saw each other a couple of weeks ago, so I just need to admit that just in case anyone's listening. But ...
Jon Eckert:
That's the first time that's ever happened, Ann Marie.
Ann Marie Taylor:
No, it's not. Okay, it's the nerd version. It's the nerd version of fangirl
Jon Eckert:
Okay. I'll accept nerd version
Ann Marie Taylor:
Okay, so I had never been a school leader previous to coming to Horse Creek Academy. I guess no one else interviewed that had any experience at all, so they picked me, which was a win. But the school had some amazing people and had so much potential. I remember walking in excited to see what I could do, but mostly realizing that in my previous leadership experience when I left, the work stopped and I was so ... Gosh, I was stuck by that a little bit. I was determined to not go into this new phase of leadership in my career with that same mindset.
We dove right in. It's a charter school. It's been in existence 20 years in South Carolina. I went back to the original charter and the staff and I picked out a couple words that really stuck in the 10, 15 years that had been in existence that really stuck and those three words kind of guided us. But what I knew is it was such a big job, I couldn't do it by myself. I also knew that I had spent 16, 17 years in the profession at that point and felt like I never really fit in a traditional system. I was always too big or moving too fast or making too much change, and kind of was put in the corner. I think about that Dirty Dancing movie about Baby in the corner. But anyway-
Jon Eckert:
You let baby be put in the corner. Ann Marie, no.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yes, so I was determined to think through how to do leadership different. Number one, selfishly, because I knew that there was a lot to offer and there was a lot of change ahead, and I knew it was going to be a ton of work. But mostly because I knew that the only thing I knew how to do maybe was build a team. I used that to my advantage and really found the best people around me that could help.
We had visited a school in South Carolina that was a part of this initiative already, and I fell in love with the idea that anyone could lead, and how I desperately wanted that as a teacher and I never could get it. We started by diving into norms and expectations and saying something that I've repeated millions of times, "Hey, I can almost guarantee I'll disappoint you, but I'll disappoint you a lot less if we set up norms and expectations."
When I talk about norms and expectations, I think about when I was a classroom teacher, most of my years have been in special education, and most of those years were in self-contained classrooms. I remember because of students with behavior disorders that I would work with, that they needed ownership and they wanted to say. If I could give them a choice, even if it was a forced choice, they would typically take me up on my offer. What I realized is adults are the same way, right? They just want to be heard. I wanted a voice and I wanted a choice, and so I bet other people felt that way too. To begin with, I used the same strategies I used with my students with behavior disorders, and honestly, that's where I started, norms and expectations and voice and choice. It's a crazy way to start, but it worked perfectly.
Jon Eckert:
Well, it's not crazy.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
You went in knowing that you couldn't do it on your own and that you came from a position where you had wanted to have more leadership and not just voice or buy-in, but you wanted ownership.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Right.
Jon Eckert:
You stepped in and said, "Hey, that's what we're going to give." And what I love is use DC and Ryan's work that Daniel Pink popularized in Drive where you said, "Hey, people want choices."
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
With increased competence comes the desire for more autonomy, but it has to be autonomy within the parameters of, "What's the mission of the school?" You mentioned there were three words that you chose at the school. What were those three words? I didn't hear you say them, did I? Did you share them?
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah. Yeah, so the three words that we kind of navigated through and found in the original charter were flexibility, service, and connection. We actually voted on those words as a new staff, and we voted then to create norms and expectations for each other.
I can't remember all five my first year, but I remember one was see a need, fill a need. Our norms we've created now five years in a row, and we have staff norms that we work on together on our first day back to school where we vote, make tallies. We do a whole lesson on norms and expectations. Then the expectation is that in every meeting, in every sit-down, in every coffee bar chat, we're going to talk about norms and expectations, including with our parents, with our students. It's become just, well, for a better word, a norm in our system where we just always start with expectations. I think that really started us and grounded us, maybe focusing on the work. Flexibility, service, connection, every decision we make runs through those three words, and obviously that goes so well with the work of collective leadership. It was a win for sure.
Jon Eckert:
Well, what I love there, you just described Bill Coon, who is principal at Meadow Glen, I don't know if-
Ann Marie Taylor:
Oh my God, by the way, I'm a fangirl for Dr. Coon as well.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. He talks about the three buckets, and if it doesn't fit in those three buckets, they don't do it. We need more of those three bucket principles.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
Flexibility, service, connection. I also love that you saw that you had the see a need, fill a need because that follows that tenet of collective leadership, that leadership's not about the position or the person, it's about the work.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Right.
Jon Eckert:
If you see that need and you fill that need and you do that with others, and others are following you and you're walking alongside, then you're leading.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Right, right.
Jon Eckert:
Why are we hung up on who's the official leader, who's not? See a need, fill a need. That's what leaders do, and that changes the culture of the school or builds the culture, in your case, because you all were starting from that place.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
That creates a very different dynamic where people aren't sitting around waiting for you as the lead learner to be telling them how they should be learning and what they should be leading. It's "We're doing this together." I think that's pretty powerful.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Well, and what's ironic about it is now they don't need me really. Sometimes I walk around and think, "God, the school board could fire me today and these guys would be just fine." But I guess that's what I've been trying to build, so I'm thankful that they don't necessarily need me in the same ways. Because their coaching skills have gotten so good over the years, I find myself a lot of times trying to copy them because they're just smarter than me now. I'm so thankful for that part.
Jon Eckert:
What you described, in my mind, is the ideal leader in a learning organization.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
You want them to not be dependent on you. You want to add value, but you want to have created these networks and webs that function regardless if you're there or not. Today you're home with a kid who needs you, and I'm sure Horse Creek Academy ran smoothly.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
That's powerful.
Ann Marie Taylor:
That's really a huge win. Honestly, that's what I'd worked towards because I knew what that looked like.
The other thing I think that's interesting is that we've kind of taken the work of CLI to a level that maybe even others haven't yet. Let me give you an example. We have three paraprofessionals on our leadership team that make just as many decisions as I do every day. These are people that don't necessarily have advanced degrees, but immediately when we got to know them, saw intense leadership capacity. It was like, "Let me get out of your way and figure out how you can do this." It's been so beautiful to watch folks that had always been, for example, a traditional teaching assistant in a special ed classroom, and would never move out of that pay grade or leadership level, to take on positions that are critical to the organization. Because of that, I can take a back burner with a lot of different things and spend an hour and a half of my day teaching students and reminding myself how hard it is and how intense it is and how important the relationship is.
When I have conversations with teachers, I can say, "Yeah, I totally get it," because I have 47 of them and they're pretty tough and most days I don't win. Some days I think I'm winning an Emmy and they're looking at me like they're not interested. That has been critical. It's not like I come into sub, it's like I have a credit-bearing course every single day that I show up to. What's even more ironic is that I teach it in an open area in our commons, so I get traffic throughout. I didn't cap the class. Most of our classes are 19 or less and I have 47, so I have to be on because I'm in front of everyone and they are watching me. It forces me to be a better version of myself as a teacher.
I learned that through the South Carolina Teacher of the Year program back in the day when people watched what we were doing, I innately got better. As a special ed teacher with no one ever watching you, you can really take a downward spiral in a lot of different ways. But because everybody was watching me because I was Teacher of the Year, I had to be on, and yeah, magically, it really made me a great teacher. That's how I feel now. Even when I want to be down and not really engaged and don't want to give it my all, I have to. That was on purpose too, so that's another strategy, but ...
Jon Eckert:
Yes. Well, the wisdom that comes, and I appreciate the humility in your description of why you do what you do, but having been Teacher of the Year and having had that recognition, clearly you know how to engage students and the best leaders that I know either really miss the classroom or they never leave it.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Right.
Jon Eckert:
You haven't left it and that's one of my favorite stories I've ever heard. 90 minutes a day in an open area with 47 students.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah, 9th through 12th, by the way.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah. That's going to challenge any educator and to put yourself out there for others to see it, it not only allows you to remember what it is to be in the classroom, it builds so much credibility that, "Our leader or one of our leaders is doing this work alongside of us and in a way that anybody can see it." I think that goes a long way to building culture.
One of the things you mentioned before we jumped on about is your idea about moving too fast. Sometimes you feel like maybe you move too fast, but then you question, well, maybe that's just part of the kind of innovating and iterating that you're doing. What do you mean you might've moved too fast?
Ann Marie Taylor:
Well, I think the first few years of this work, we lost some people along the way. They had to jump off because we were moving too fast. They had to take a break because change was happening too frequently or they just weren't a fit. I think there was this, as an educator, we have this weird guilt and shame over almost every decision we make. I don't know if that's typical, but for me it was like, "God, people are leaving. I'm not the favorite. This isn't the best." Those kinds of things.
We had significant growth. To give you perspective, we had like 467 students when I got there, and this year we're at 1400.
Jon Eckert:
Wow.
Ann Marie Taylor:
We had insane growth, right overshadowing what happened with COVID or happening at the same time. I was building buildings, adding a high school, adding a career center. It was like drinking from the water hose, just 90 miles an hour. We lost people along the way and so I had some guilt and shame about moving too fast. But then I look back and think, "My God, if I wasn't risk-taking or being innovative or forcing people to move, number one, people might've stayed that shouldn't have." That's a harsh, honest reality. And it was clear where we were going, and sometimes we had to paddle and hold our heads just right above water because it wasn't perfect the whole way because we were making so much change and growing so fast.
For six months I had all of our high school and middle schoolers, when our building wasn't finished, at a church in a sanctuary and in a common space where we were all teaching. I thought, "This is crazy. I don't know why we've moved this fast. We're six months and we don't have our building, blah, blah, blah." But it built so much culture and climate collectiveness, and we were weaved in a way that we hadn't been before. That's really a lot of where we got to know each other, in that sanctuary and in that main space.
Even though you look along the way and think, "Wow, it's been a wild ride," you can look back and think, "Well, that's what innovation looks like a little bit." If you want to be a risk-taker and be innovative, sometimes you have to feel like you're drowning just for a little bit.
Good news is it wasn't just me. I had a team of 30 people on a leadership team. At least we could hold each other while we were drowning instead of me being by myself, and so really don't know if we'd survive without collective leadership.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and I think that's right. I have one phrase in the Leading Together book, "It's not that many hands make light work, it's many hands make the work possible."
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
When you're going that fast, you can't go that fast on your own. You're going to lose some people on the way and while you're losing people, which is sad to lose people, maybe they were not the right people to be on the bus, as Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great. It may be that fast-moving, we have a lot of kids who need what we're providing and we're providing it in these awkward spaces, but we're going to do it, that makes you really appreciative when you get into a space that's not everybody in a sanctuary or in the-
Ann Marie Taylor:
Oh, gosh.
Jon Eckert:
... common space. I think that builds culture. You don't do it in order to build culture, but because of the work you did that created a very different dynamic for the people that were there at Horse Creek, that then feeds the people who come in because you know what you're coming into. This isn't a place to just sit back and relax.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Well, what's funny is now when I interview people, I've gotten to be blatantly honest. "Here's what it looks like." I'm like, "Hey, you'll probably never have a title that you're looking for and you might not even have an office. I know for sure we'll give you a desk and chair to sit somewhere at some point, but that's kind of how we roll." We have to be super-flexible because of the growth and so a lot of us don't have classrooms and share spaces and all those kinds of things. But I wouldn't have it any other way because when you walk in, there's an energy and a beauty and almost like it feels like a miracle to me just because I've been in so many schools and so many classrooms, and I know that it feels that way to other people because they tell me. I forget along the way until I visit somewhere else and come back. But it is very ... There's lots of movement, there's lots of energy, there's lots of relationship. Most nights I go to bed and pray that this will last just a little longer because I know it's not typical. Then the other side of me is like, "Oh my gosh, we have to announce this to the world because we are single-handedly going to save the profession. "
Jon Eckert:
Love that. Go with that to latter impulse there. I do think we need to trumpet these things because there are places like Horse Creek around that are doing these things, and the world has a great need for it.
I think I mentioned this when I was with you all. I was at a UNESCO conference where I was speaking and it was trying to address the fact that there are 250 million school age kids who do not have a school to go to. A place like Horse Creek is truly a blessing and so you need to lean into that and love the fact that that's what you've built. I think what I'd like to move to now is just our lightning round to see how well you can do this.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Uh-oh.
Jon Eckert:
Word, sentence, or phrase, we'll go with four or five questions here.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Okay.
Jon Eckert:
First one, what is the worst piece of advice you've either given or received?
Ann Marie Taylor:
Worst piece of advice I was ever given is, "Start the year in August like you hate them and then discipline will be in check by December."
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, no. Yeah.
Ann Marie Taylor:
That's not me. If I'm going to do the opposite of what they tell me, I'm going to make sure I'm good at it. The opposite of that, of course, would be, "Man, build relationships from the moment you get them so that they will eat from your hands," so to speak. That was definitely the worst advice I've ever been given. But man, old, veteran teachers always want to tell you that when you first start.
Jon Eckert:
I know. 80% of the people that come on our podcast, that's the piece of advice that they're given that's bad and it's so sad. I love in your bio that you have is the "Lead learner, Horse Creek Academy. Ann Marie is a hot mess, in a fabulous way of course." That's welcoming because we're all kind of a hot mess when we're honest and that welcomes people in and makes them feel that.
What's the best piece of advice you've either given or received?
Ann Marie Taylor:
My very first year going to get, so I have an undergraduate in criminal justice, and I have a master's in arts of teaching students with learning disabilities. I'm getting this master's degree. I've been to Catholic school my whole life, never been in a public school before. They don't have a classroom with kids with learning disabilities, but they have this little classroom in Florence, South Carolina with kids with severe and profound disabilities that I was going to do my student teaching in.
I walked in to ... I can pick on her because she knows I pick on her, but she would wear, Kathy, my mentor, long dresses, angry special ed teacher, been doing this forever, doesn't really make eye contact. I was scared to death. It's the advice I've lived with, she said, "My job as your teacher is to make you better than I was ever as a teacher." I think about Kathy all the time and think about the people I work with and just making them better. That was advice that I think, God, has been used in every facet of my life.
Jon Eckert:
I love that. That's a beautiful image for a teacher.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah, she's amazing.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah. What's one of your favorite books you've read in the last year? It could be education-related, it could be anything.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Oh, probably either a book called Joy.
Jon Eckert:
Mm.
Ann Marie Taylor:
It was the Dalai Lama, and I'm not remembering the other author, so forgive me, but I was doing some research because second semester I teach Psychology of Happiness. I was doing some research on joy, and that was pretty powerful. But a book that I just reread that is my all-time favorite book ever, at least right now, is Dare to Lead by Brene Brown.
Jon Eckert:
Oh, yeah. It's hard to beat that.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah, those two have been important. I've been reading a lot on happiness because here I am, I'm going to teach this class, and I really don't know anything other than what I heard on a happiness podcast by Dr. Laurie Santos. I had to read a whole bunch of happiness books to try to get my material together.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. Well, that's great. I always differentiate joy and happiness, that happiness is circumstantial, but joy is something that can be deep and profound and abiding. Yes, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yes, there you go.
Jon Eckert:
They wrote the Book of Joy. Yeah, it has to be fascinating to get that take.
The next thing, I guess two last questions. What's the biggest challenge you see ahead for educators? We've been in CLI, you've been in for five years, I've been studying you for eight years. I see your data every year because the one who writes it up and reports on it. There's a lot of great things going on at Horse Creek, but what do you see as the biggest challenge facing educators right now?
Ann Marie Taylor:
If we don't figure out a way to celebrate and honor our teachers, I have a fear that the profession is going to dwindle down to a room or a school full of substitutes. I feel so lucky that I have no positions for next year. I feel so lucky that we've already hired and done all that, but the only reason we're in that position is because we do things different. We have onsite daycare for our staff, babies and toddlers, which is such a huge win. No faculty meetings, podcasting. I spend $4,000 a month on our coffee bar to make sure that we have creamer and coffee and snacks at every building. Full-length pictures. I could go on and on with the little things, but I feel like if people don't do something drastically different, we are not going to be winning and I just think that there are way too many great educators out there to not be winning at this.
I don't mean winning just with test scores.
Jon Eckert:
No.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Test scores are important and we have been making gains, but to say that I'm not an excellent school, it's funny to me. Yeah, our report card's not excellent yet in South Carolina, and it will be at some point. But for me, if we don't as school leaders and school leadership teams and even districts start measuring other things, I think we're going to lose what we have. I think there's more to measure. I love to talk about our efficacy data. I love to talk about our student retention and our teacher retention rates. I love to talk about case studies and scenarios of kids and teachers and relationships and how things are different. I think there's so much more than the state-driven report card, and I think it's time to start talking about it because I don't think we're going to be around if we don't.
Jon Eckert:
Well, yeah, and your efficacy data is off the charts, and we know that's the single biggest factor John Hattie's team found for impacting those student learning outcomes, so totally agree. I definitely feel that challenge as well. I think that's real. But what's your greatest hope right now for education as you look at it through the lens of Horse Creek and your experience as South Carolina Teacher of the Year, all the different hats you've worn? What gives you the most hope?
Ann Marie Taylor:
The relationships that we have with our students and that they have with one another. I can think about our graduating class this year or our 400 high school students, and I think about their ability to work together and be creative and be innovative. There's great hope in that, that there's going to be a handful of people that really do expect voice and choice, and they're not going to stand for it otherwise. In my generation, teachers will stand for a whole lot that they shouldn't. We accept lack of autonomy, and we accept moving in a snail's pace sometimes and these kids won't. For that, amen. I feel like there could be some real innovation and change because they're not going to stand for it. They have boundaries set and good for them because I never did that.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. Love that, that's a great place to wrap up. I love that we focus on relationships and kids, and there's a lot of great stuff going on. We just need to highlight that and get off our negativity bias.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
Dr. Ann Marie Taylor, thank you for being with us today. Thanks for all you do.
Ann Marie Taylor:
Well, just lean in to the fact that you're a nerd fangirl situation here, and I'm so thankful for people that spend their time doing research to help us navigate what this looks like and to navigate it well, because your research and what you've done matters. I just am so thankful and I know everybody at Horse Creek is thankful as well.
Jon Eckert:
Oh, well, hey, thank you. It's great to highlight your work.

Fostering Flourishing: Ted Cockle

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert engages with Ted Cockle, a colleague and educator at Baylor University. Cockle shares insights from his experiences and philosophies on what it means to be human and how to foster meaningful education.The discussion also covers the importance of relationships in student success, emphasizing that students flourish when they have supportive relationships with non-parent adults who engage in meaningful conversations about purpose and transcendence.Additionally, the conversation explores practical classroom strategies, such as creating engaging and participatory environments, and the importance of viewing knowledge as a gift to be shared.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.Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipJon Eckert: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
 
 
Transcription:
Jon Eckert:
Hey, we're here today with Ted Cockle, a good friend and colleague who gets to teach in the leadership minor at Baylor University with me, has a great background. So Ted, thanks for being with us today.
Ted Cockle:
Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks so much.
Jon Eckert:
And could you just give us a quick 30,000 foot view of how you ended up in the office right next to mine at Baylor University teaching all different majors, leadership principles.
Ted Cockle:
Yeah, it's pretty wild. I usually go back to, I've always wanted to be a doctor. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor. I love figuring out how stuff works and what's more complicated than the human body? And it took me a little while, but then I realized that wasn't it. I needed more complicated systems. There were more other systems to look into. I was a systems guy. I wanted to figure out all those things. Ultimately led me to start climbing the philosophical ladder. And that got me up to the most complicated and most enduring questions of what does it mean to be human and what does it mean to flourish? And so I am a doctor, as my boys remind me, not the kind that can help people.
Jon Eckert:
That's right.
Ted Cockle:
But a doctor nonetheless, helping us think through what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to flourish? I think those are inherently leadership questions and ones that I help my students explore.
Jon Eckert:
So I'm so grateful that you're here. We both had the experience of being at Wheaton College, me a few years before you, but that formational liberal arts education that we got there plays out in the work that we get to do with kids today. And most of our audience that listens to just schools or K-twelve educators. So what do you see as some of the key themes that you think really matter for educators to keep in mind as they deal with the practical realities of the classroom that we exist in today?
Ted Cockle:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that liberal arts education really formed me. So going to Wheaton and then even the program that I did here helped really think through pulling on a number of different disciplines. And I think that's plays out in the classroom, helping students make connections, for me, that's my goal. So there's so many different specialties and so many different areas on campus in a college university setting, lots of different silos and things. I view my goal as creating a space for them to pull those threads together. So you're asking about practical implications. I just read something the other day that it was something to the effect of, I used to walk into the classroom and say, "All right, students, quiet down, quiet down. It's time for..." But now this educator was talking about how he walks into the classroom and he says, "All right, put your phones away. Let's talk." It's silent. The classroom's silent when you walk in.
And I find that is often the biggest challenge that I face in the classroom is how do you get students engaged? How do you get them to think? And that's why I love thinking about those things that pull the threads together because there's an immediate need. And I love seeing that moment when laptops get folded down, iPads get turned over or turned off. Phones get put back in pockets because students' eyes are now, wait, that's a question I've been asking. So how do I start with where the student is at to help engage them with a question that they've been perhaps wrestling with but didn't know and they're like, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, no. I don't know the answer to that. I don't always get it. I definitely don't always get it. But you know it when you see it. And those are those moments that are so life-giving as an instructor.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah. Early childhood teacher shared this quote I share it all the time. No profession can compete with the spark between souls that occurs between teachers and students. So those sparks are what keep you coming back.
Ted Cockle:
That's right.
Jon Eckert:
What I think, I always am very clear to our K through 12 sisters and brothers that our work is way easier than theirs is. These are students that made it all the way through high school, got admitted into Baylor, chose to be in our class and are paying tuition to be there. And so when I'm complaining about the challenges of engaging students, I realize that that really sometimes falls on deaf ears in a K through 12 world where they're dealing with so many of these issues with students that aren't as formed as ours are. They haven't been able to manage some of the impulses that they have. So I'm curious if there are a couple of mindset shifts that you think are important for us to think about what it really means, because I love where you started. What does it mean to be human as an educator? That's our job is to help students think about this. So what are a couple key things that you do or you think about, the ways you think about things that help you do the things that make it meaningful for kids?
Ted Cockle:
Just on your point about K-12 instructors, that's honestly where I go for most of my practical advice is my brother-in-law, who's a high school English teacher, visiting his class transformed the way that I teach in the classroom, even down to a recent text exchange we had last week where he suggested doing a speed dating or speed friending idea, talking through ideas and working through things. So I implemented that and it worked great. Great conversation. So thankful for him. Shout out to Jake Krogh there on the podcast.
Jon Eckert:
Another Wheaton grad. There we go.
Ted Cockle:
Another Wheaton grad indeed. So yeah, practical shifts there. I think this can be philosophical, but it then leads into a practical implication. What is actually happening in the classroom space? How are we actually fundamentally pursuing knowledge? If knowledge, this comes from a great book that I'm super thankful for called Intellectual Appetite. What is the pursuit of knowledge? It's an appetite. We are pursuing, learning about the nature of reality. But there's two ways that we can do that. There's an ordered way of pursuing knowledge and then a disordered way of pursuing knowledge. An ordered way of pursuing knowledge recognizes that knowledge is a gift that comes from above, comes from the Lord, and we are seeking to understand and better understand his world, how he's created us, what's going on and how we make order out of chaos in this world. A disordered way of pursuing knowledge sees it as something to be hoarded, something to be garnered for myself, for my own purposes so that I can effectively be God.
I'm controlling it, I'm grasping it, I'm squeezing. It's mine and my own. And then I set up barriers as to who can have access to it. That has massive implications. And that's how I start every single one of my classes the beginning of fall, what kind of classroom are we going to have here? What kind of classroom do we want to be? How do we want to be known as a class? Do we want to be hoarders of knowledge or are we wanting to be pursuing knowledge as stewards who are recognizing this is knowledge that's been passed on to us from someone else, and then we are seeking to steward it until we can pass it on to someone else. That then creates this multiplicative chain of knowledge. Me passing on knowledge does not diminish my knowledge, but enhances and expands our overall understanding of what knowledge is.
Practically in the classroom this means we're going to ask hard questions. We're running towards challenging questions. We're never shying away from them. And I want students to know that, particularly in this age where I think students at times are fearful to speak up. The reason why the one-on-one interactions or group discussions work so well is because they feel a little bit safer. They're nervous in a big group setting to articulate an idea that might be controversial, but it's amazing what we can get to. By the end of the semester they'll start saying things like, Oh, this is a studious space, which is the language that this author uses for the ordered pursuit of knowledge.
Studious space, is this right? Can I understand this? Am I understanding this correctly? Or Dr. Cockle, can you explain that to me for the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth time, I still don't get it. And being willing to see them as whole persons pursuing an ordered vision of knowledge, an ordered pursuit of knowledge. So those are just some of the practical ways that I see that. That's how I handle it in the classroom, start that way. And then I remind them of that language throughout the semester. I think that's been pretty helpful.
Jon Eckert:
Love that, because you and I both get to teach the capstone leadership class. And so we have about 15 to 20 people in that class, they are not huge classes, but trying to get the discussion going is challenging in an ordered way. And so, one of the things I did, and we've talked about this, I did this semester because I felt I needed to do it, was we printed out all the readings for the semester. There's about 25 different authors they read. It's about a 650-page course pack. We put it in a binder and we gave it to them at the beginning of the semester and said, Hey, for this class, all you will need is the text, a pen, paper, and each other.
Because we wanted the focus to be on these hard questions, these deep meaningful questions, some of which they've never wrestled with because I find one of the things that a lot of students have not done when they get to me when they're 21, 22, they haven't engaged deeply on these things because they're hard, and they haven't developed the cognitive endurance and Oh, I can just google that, or I can use AI. Well, AI is just consensus. It's not wisdom. How do we get to wisdom? And that's what we need humans for because we are made in the image of God and we can point each other toward those things. And in that relationship, there's that depth. So one of the things I love about you in your classes is you don't shy away from the hard questions, but then you also have this life-on-life perspective.
I know you've been meeting with one of a great student who's a junior here at Baylor. You've been meeting with him I think every week since freshman year in a mentoring role. So talk about how you live life with students, which I think as a huge blessing as a college professor that we get to do this. But talk a little bit about how you do that outside the classroom as well.
Ted Cockle:
Yeah, it starts in the classroom. In the classroom, but before class, I think a lot of times we can, even us professors are focused on ourselves. We're nervous before a lecture. Yes, we get nervous still before lectures, before discussions. Is this going to go well? Is this going to be a good one? Did I prepare enough? Did I read this? Do I understand this enough before the students? And so we can be introspective, we can be using that time. We're in the classroom maybe five, 10 minutes before to shuffle around. But I've really tried to make a commitment that I'm in the classroom no later than five minutes before class and hopefully 10 minutes before, and that's time where all my files are already set up. I'm ready to go and I can focus on students. So I come in, how's it going? I know their names.
I'm asking them, how was your weekend? What did you do? What made it great? What made it challenging? Or if a student is clearly in a state of a disarray or perhaps a little flustered or, "Oh, I'm only on four hours of sleep." "Oh, why?" So seeing them as humans outside of our classroom is the place it has to start. They're not just minds on sticks that come in, receive knowledge and then depart, but they're well-rounded students and whole persons. That's part of what it is to be a whole person, is that we're not just our minds, but we are everything else that's happening in our life.
Jon Eckert:
Which makes teaching a lot more interesting.
Ted Cockle:
It really does. It helps with illustrations too, because I've had a conversation with so-and-so, now I can bring this point home by illustrating something in an abstract sense in a way that doesn't reveal what's going on in their life, but can help speak directly to what's going on. Much like a sermon being given to a particular congregation at a particular moment. I think lectures in classrooms, discussions in classrooms are learning experiences that are given to a particular group at a particular time for a particular reason. And that's why AI can't be a professor. That's why AI can't be teachers. The teaching occupation, teaching profession is unique and it requires humans interacting with other humans in humanly ways. So now I've lost the thread of your question, but, no mentorship, life on life. So then those often lead to follow-up conversations. Students will pop in always asking the follow-up conversation, how's it going? What's going on? What are your thoughts on the class even? Giving them opportunities to evaluate and push back.
Some of my classes, I require time for them to come into office hours to get to know them. I know you do that as well. I've got a teaching vocation class this semester. We're dealing with some pretty big issues about what it means to be human and what it means to flourish. Go figure. And I want them to come in and we're going to talk about it. So I've had a couple of those meetings and I've got a couple more coming up in the next couple of weeks. I can't begin to tell you how fun it is to dive deep into those conversations in a one-on-one setting would make it easy. There's hospitality involved. I've got tea and coffee and hot chocolate, whatever they're wanting to drink, maybe some cookies or something. And we're having a conversation. It's not about a grade, it's about the ideas. So I think that's a huge part of it, and my topic lends itself to that. But other topics can as well, whether you're a math teacher, a physics teacher, or whatever.
Jon Eckert:
Well, because we are humans, so one of the things that we've been able to do over the last 15 years is have students into our home. And Jake, you're a brother-in-law and students for years at Wheaton and now at Baylor where they come in Sunday for lunch and they see our family and whatever status it's in. And we have plenty of food. I'm cooking, so it's one of six meals, but there's always plenty. And our kids that have grown, we now have a 2018 and 15-year-old. They've had college students that are a few steps ahead of them in our home for 15 years. And so it's not just, I think sometimes students think that teachers are just doing things for them, but we get great benefit from the relationships we have with students. So Tavis, the student that you meet with, he is a huge blessing. I had him in our leadership capstone class.
And so it's not just a one-way relationship where we're pouring into a student and we get nothing back. It's this reciprocal learning that we know our content, but seeing it through their eyes and the way they apply it to their context enriches the understanding. And that's why in my classroom where I said, all you need is the text in each other and this, you don't need devices in here. It wasn't a, we're not going to have in a punitive way. You have this rich humanity right here that'll allow you to understand these texts and these big ideas better if we're focused in that way. So again-
Ted Cockle:
That's brilliant-
Jon Eckert:
... I always say we have the best jobs in the world.
Ted Cockle:
Oh yeah.
Jon Eckert:
Because this is amazing. We get to tackle these questions. This is our job to tackle these questions.
Ted Cockle:
And the joy after years, Tavis is a junior, he's still a student, and I had him as a student, but now I view him almost more as a friend than anything. That's the primary identity that he's grown into. And we swap stories about fun movies that we've been watching, and then we'll talk about vocation and calling and meaning and purpose. And I'll share about things that I'm thinking about. He's sharing things he's... It's friendship. It was founded on intellectual friendship and community that then leads to full on.
Jon Eckert:
One of the things I wanted you to spend a little bit of time talking about, because you've worked on this instrument for K through 12 schools looking at faith formation in schools. So talk a little bit about the way you think about that. I think a little bit differently than a lot of the formation tools that are out there. We have, it's very difficult to observe what's happening internally in someone.
Ted Cockle:
That's right.
Jon Eckert:
So faith formation is challenging. So talk a little bit about how you think about that with K through 12 and even in college students, because I know you do a lot of thinking about this.
Ted Cockle:
Yeah. I'll start in saying you can't map the Holy Spirit. A friend of mine-
Jon Eckert:
Good caveat.
Ted Cockle:
Yes, a friend of mine is, he's a mechanical engineering guy, and he's telling me these stories about integrating faith with learning. And his primary one is that after decades and decades in technology and all these things, we still can't map the wind. And he goes, "I think that's the perfect image right there," because the spirit is like the wind. We cannot map it, we can't trace it. We can draw close to it. We get closer to the root, but we can't map it. We don't know where the wind is going to go. And I love that image. And yet I think we can get closer and closer to the root. What I mean by that is we often, when looking at faith, we start particularly in the K-12 spaces, we start with exemplars. We have models of what we'd like our graduates to be like, graduate profiles. They're this. They've got this virtue and that virtue, and they're exemplifying faith. They're reading their Bible every day. And these are wonderful visions of things to aim for.
And we should hold up exemplars. Exemplars inspire us to be like them. So I love that. But it can't stop there, because oftentimes those exemplars are known for either their belief or their behavior. And we're seeing faith evaluated on the base of their cognitive ascension to particular doctrines, important, or their ability to produce particular fruits, particular behaviors, particular practices of the Christian faith. Also very important. But the reality is our beliefs in our head, our behaviors in our hand, they come from somewhere. There's something closer to the root. A good tree bears good fruit. It's not that the fruit makes the tree good. In scripture the tree is always the source of the fruit. The good tree bears the good fruit.
So we need to be careful of the direction here because our behaviors could be, as one scholar writes, Paul Tripp, he writes, we could staple fruit to a tree, but stapling a plump apple to a dead tree does not make that tree come alive. So what if the faith practices that we're upholding is exemplary or measuring as an indicator of faith are actually just being fruit stapled, the right thing, but for the wrong reason. What happens? We've missed it then. Or what if they have the right knowledge, but again, for the wrong reason, maybe they have a disordered pursuit of knowledge and it's hoarding it and it's saying, look how amazing I am. I know all these theological truths, or look how amazing I am. I serve all these different things, but they're missing the key posture that's there. And so, one of the things I've been thinking about, and one of the things that we've been trying to wrestle with and think through is could we measure something that's a little bit closer to the root, so to speak, closer to the trunk of the tree that's bearing good fruit?
And I think the answer there is the heart. How can we measure the affections of a student? Now that's hard to do. It's a latent reality. Again, we're not mapping the spirit. You can't do that. But I think we can begin to get a semblance of understanding a student's posture. And we can do this in college. We can do this in K-12 settings. And we've done it by trying to ask how are they identifying? A lot of the psychological research is using matters of salience, things that are front of mind. If it's front of mind, it's part of the way that you're seeing yourself. It's part of the way that you're identifying yourself. It's part of the narrative identity that you are taking on as you begin to develop your sense of who you are. So if faith and identifying with the Christian narrative is close to their mind and salient, then it's often going to be close to their heart.
Those things that are close to our heart are usually the things that we talk about most. They are indicators of deeper senses of desire that are the source of motivation. So when we're talking about faith formation in a school setting, I think we need to be careful not to just focus on belief, not to just focus on behavior and not just to focus on the heart, but how can the three of those work together in tandem to know the good, to love the good, and to do the good. Knowledge, the head, love, the heart, do, the hands.
Jon Eckert:
Love that. Love that. Well, we're going to move into what's front of mind for you now-
Ted Cockle:
Sure. Sure.
Jon Eckert:
... which is our lightning round. So we generally ask for word, phrase, or sentence about a question that I will ask at random, which you've not been prepared for. So we'll start with this one. What's your favorite book you've read in the last year? I know you're always reading, but what's your favorite book that it just pops to mind? What's front of mind?
Ted Cockle:
Front of mind is probably the book Character Gap by Christian Miller. He talks about this idea that perhaps we're not as good as we think we are, and perhaps we're not as bad as we could be. We often live more often. We often live more often. Good. That's clear. We often live somewhere in that character gap, as he calls it. So what do we do?
Jon Eckert:
What's his background? Is he a-
Ted Cockle:
He's a psychologist at Wake Forest.
Jon Eckert:
All right, all right. Hey, that-
Ted Cockle:
Yeah. Great Christian guy.
Jon Eckert:
... sounds fascinating. Sounds fascinating. All right. Worst piece of advice you've ever received as an educator or a scholar?
Ted Cockle:
Let's see.
Jon Eckert:
Or as a dad or as a husband, you can go anywhere with this.
Ted Cockle:
Worst piece of advice in the academic setting I think is probably just survive.
Jon Eckert:
Okay. That's bleak.
Ted Cockle:
It's a little bleak. It's like, well, it's going to be so hard and you're going to do all these things. And rather than being proactive and thinking about what might lead to flourishing.
Jon Eckert:
That's good. Best piece of advice you've ever either given or received.
Ted Cockle:
Yeah. Rest in Christ.
Jon Eckert:
Good reminder. That's a lot better than survive.
Ted Cockle:
Yes, indeed it is. And I think it comes back to what I was talking about earlier where a lot of times we're focused in on ourself, but when we're resting in Christ, we are free from the preoccupation of the self. So the advice is a reminder for me always. And it's one that I'm constantly reminding myself to look up for my own naval gazing and see who needs the good works that the Lord's prepared for me.
Jon Eckert:
So we get to work with 18 to 22 year olds in general, what makes you most concerned about our students that are 18 to 22?
Ted Cockle:
We taught on ethics today. I asked the question, how do you know what's good? Crickets. How do you know and begin to evaluate what's good? They didn't have any answers. When I put them into small groups, still didn't have any answers. When I drummed up, I don't know if that's a proper term, but when I started asking, dredging for answers, it was things like the law, what people tell you, what you feel.
Jon Eckert:
That's what happens when you're in an unmoored society that's lost touch with what truth is, and especially truth in love. And it's very hard to exist in any kind of way because you live in this individualized relativistic, what's right for me may not be right for you. And so if that's the heuristic, you're in trouble. What makes you most optimistic?
Ted Cockle:
Oh, the fact that there are good people having good conversations with students. I think the number one thing that continues to be a determining factor of a student succeeding and flourishing in life, in college, is whether or not they have a relationship with somebody who's not their parent. And when in that relationship, they have conversations about meaning and purpose when they talk about transcendent things, this continues to be the number one indicator of a student flourishing, working towards success. All the numbers, students are often finding this in church settings. They're finding this in teachers, they're finding this in coaches. So the fact that there are people pouring into students all around the world, that gives me hope.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, the number two factor, according to Gallup in K through 12 education that indicates student engagement is I have an adult who makes me excited about the future. And that's it. It's those questions because we all have them.
Ted Cockle:
Totally. And I think sometimes we think it's more complicated than that. We want a new intervention, we want a new idea. We want the silver bullet. But you know what? It's showing up day after day and having a conversation, just saying, how are you doing today? And if the opportunity arises, sometimes it does. Students having a tough day, you can ask that next question. And then the next one and the next one. Probably then you're going to start talking about things of meaning and purpose.
Jon Eckert:
And it's not always convenient at the time that works best for you. In fact, it almost never is.
Ted Cockle:
Often not indeed.
Jon Eckert:
But thank you for taking the time to show up and talk today. Appreciated the conversation. Appreciate all you do, Ted.
Ted Cockle:
Yeah, it's my joy. Thank you so much for having me.
 
 

Messy Leadership for Schools: Alyssa Gallagher

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert engages with Alyssa Gallagher to discuss the intricacies of educational leadership and the importance of creating a culture of feedback. Alyssa highlights the optimism that persists among educational leaders despite high stress levels, noting the concept of "gritty optimism" as a key trait for effective leadership. Jon emphasizes the difference between naive and gritty optimism, celebrating the resilience of leaders who remain hopeful through challenges.Alyssa shares insights from her book "Messy Leadership for Schools," co-authored with Rosie Connor, and delves into the significance of collaborative problem-solving and shared decision-making in educational settings. She underscores the need for leaders to give themselves permission to pause and reflect, reducing burnout and enhancing their capacity to lead effectively.The discussion also covers practical strategies for fostering a feedback-rich environment, such as using the "www.evi" (what worked well, even better if) method to frame feedback positively. Alyssa stresses the value of frequent, constructive feedback and the importance of creating a neutral, non-defensive atmosphere for receiving feedback.Additionally, the conversation explores the Eisenhower Prioritization Matrix as a tool for helping leaders manage their time and prioritize tasks, distinguishing between urgent and important responsibilities. Alyssa and Jon advocate for a shift from a superhero mindset to one of shared leadership, where empowering others and co-creating solutions become central to effective educational leadership.To learn more, order Alyssa and Rosie’s book, "Embracing MESSY Leadership."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.Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipJon Eckert: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl

Great teachers are a gift: Jill Anderson and Jon Eckert

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jill Anderson and Dr. Jon Eckert engage in conversation about the profound impact of educators and the importance of recognizing their contributions. Jon tells us inspiring anecdotes of teachers who have made a lasting difference in students' lives, reflecting on the transformative power of kindness and support in education. Jon recounts a personal experience from his own schooling, to emphasize the enduring influence of a compassionate teacher. They explore the crucial role of validation and collaboration between educators and parents in nurturing children's well-being and development. While acknowledging the challenges educators face, such as burnout and high expectations, they also highlight the resilience and hope inherent in the teaching profession. The dialogue focuses on the significance of prioritizing joy, growth, and meaningful connections in education, beyond mere academic success. Ultimately, the conversation stands as a heartfelt tribute to educators, celebrating their tireless dedication and profound impact on shaping young lives.To learn more, order Jon's book, Just Teaching: Feedback, Engagement, and Well-Being for Each Student.
 
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.Connect with us:
Baylor MA in School Leadership
Jon Eckert: @eckertjon
Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcslMentioned:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan HaidtBad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up by Abigail Shrier 
 
Transcription:
Jill:Hi, my name is Jill Anderson and I'm the director of the Center for School Leadership. Jon is with me here, and we're going to flip the script today, and I will be asking the questions. Jon has heard and experienced so many incredible stories from educators across the world. And so to celebrate the Teacher Appreciation Week, we wanted to share some of those stories to encourage and to inspire the good work that each of the educators out there are doing to help each student flourish. So we'll go ahead and get started with the first question. Can you share a story or two of an inspiring teacher?Jon:Yeah. So as we always talk about, we have the best job in education because this is what we do. We just go all over the world and find good things that are happening and try to highlight those, elevate those, and spread those ideas. And they're always built around human beings. And so these stories of cool things happening, I have a ton of those and we'll share them throughout the episode today. But I have to go all the way back to my first grade because that's now I guess about 43 years ago, that would be, that I was in first grade, and this is still as memorable as something that happened yesterday to me. And that's where the power of an educator comes in into the life of a student, where that educator comes alongside and helps that kid become more of who they're created to be. So this happened.The first part of it, it's not such a great teaching example, the second part is good, so stick with me. So I'm in art class. I love art. It's one of my favorite parts of the day. We're getting ready for Halloween, so we're making witches and so we're having to cut out the circle part of the head. And Mrs. Fleshy, the art teacher who've been doing it for quite a while and was a little grumpy, but she's been managing elementary kids in art for probably 30 years, so that could wear anybody down. But she's going around and passing out the scissors. And I don't know if people that are listening, if you're old enough to remember this, but left-handed scissors were always green-handled scissors. And so I knew I was left-handed, but I'd also been diagnosed with dyslexia. And so I had a really hard time knowing which hand was which. I had a hard time reversing words, you could put was and saw on top of each other.And I knew they were different, I couldn't tell you how. Six and nine, B and D they felt like they were invented by Satan just to confuse me. And so I get the scissors and she's watching me because I think she didn't believe I was left-handed. And I put them on my right hand. She's like, she snatched them from me. She's like, "Oh, you're not left-handed." And she gave me the silver-handled scissors.Jill:So sad.Jon:And I was like, "Ah, but I..." And she's moved on to the next person. And so then we're trying to cut out these circles. And if you remember the old scissors at least, if you had them on the wrong hand they did not cut. And so I'm sitting there so frustrated because I cannot get the scissors to cut the paper with my right hand, which I know I'm supposed to have on my right hand and I can't cut with my right. So I try on my left and then they really don't work. And so I start to cry because I'm that frustrated. And Mrs. Fleshy from the front of the room, she says to me, and I can still hear her, I can still smell her too actually, "Jon, if you're going to be disruptive, you need to just get out of class." I'm like, oh. So I go out of the class, I sit in the hallway and just tears are pouring down. And fifth graders are walking by me and sixth graders, and I'm just completely mortified but I can't stop.My first grade teacher, Ms. Thayer comes walking by and she's also been teaching for 30 years. I always say the best teachers in a building and the worst teachers in the building are typically the most veteran teachers, because they're either amazing and they have all that expertise or they're kind of just waiting for retirement. So you have that. So Ms. Thayer comes by and she sees me and she grabs me by my hand. And she takes me back to the room and we sit knee-to-knee in those little first grade chairs. And she asked me to tell her what happened. And so through those halting sobby breaths, I get out what happened? And she just looks at me and she says, "Mrs. Frischi shouldn't have done that to you." And then she gives me this big hug. And from then on I would run through a wall for that woman.And 43 years later, I still get chills thinking about the way she saw me, knew me and loved me in that moment just by breaking adult code saying, "Hey, that was wrong. And I know you weren't trying to be disruptive." And she gave me that hug and I was like, "Hey, I am forever loyal to you, Mrs. Thayer." So many other stories we see all around the world but I just thought I'd start with that one, because I don't think I've ever told that story very publicly. And so I was like, hey, Ms. Thayer needs to get honored wherever she's at now. I'm sure she's up in heaven at this point listening to this podcast.Jill:Yeah, I definitely had not heard that story, but that's such an amazing story to share it because of the validation, it's all it took. It was just to sit at your level and understand what you were going through and that was it. So it's not very hard to do, but it takes some time and thought to say, "Okay, I need to take a minute and see what this kid's going through."Jon:Exactly.Jill:So how can we celebrate teachers?Jon:So I think at the center, you're the director. It's great by the way having somebody else ask the questions because that's usually my role. So thank you for doing that. I think what we do is we just keep elevating the good work that's happening all over the place. There are amazing things happening that we see in the US. I've been to Australia, to England, I go to New Zealand this summer, and we're seeing amazing things happening with educators in public schools and private schools. And so just honoring the work of the profession and taking the time to listen and observe. I'll give you two quick examples where there's this reinforcing cycle of this relational component. That's where the hope always is, is in relationship. Teaching's one of the most human things we do. And so, I was in South Carolina last year. I was in a rural school and was in an early childhood classroom for at-risk kids and walked into this room and in the corner there's this tiny little wheelchair, which there's not much more depressing than a tiny wheelchair.And then a little guy who's less than 30 pounds laying on this mat, and he was just recovering from a seizure. And so he was really exhausted. He's trying to make eye contact with this teacher and he's making this noise. He's not verbal and he's making this noise, and you can tell he just wants the teacher's attention. And she's working with a small group of kids in the other corner. And she notices and she goes over and she just scoops him up, gives him a big hug, his head is on her shoulder and he's looking at me and he is so happy. And so the teacher just kind of offhandedly looks at me and she said, "Hey, sometimes we just need some snuggles." And that kid in that moment was seen, known and loved in that really simple way. And so I've given you a first grade example. I've given you an early childhood example.I want to jump ahead to validating what a high school teacher did. So she's got seniors, I'm not sure, I think she was either an English or a history teacher. And she was sharing this story at one of our professional learning sessions that we were doing last year. And she was recounting the fact that the office had called down to her room to let her know that her father had fallen and had a brain bleed they thought. And she needed to get to him as soon as possible. And so her students that were with her, they heard this because it came through. And before they would let her go, they all got around her and put hands on her and prayed for her before they would let her leave to go be with her father.Jill:That's so amazing.Jon:So that loving relationship, that part that we do it's not just a one way street. That comes back to us. It's not why we love kids so that they will love us back and it's not our job to be their friends, but when we see them, know them and love them, that gets reciprocated for us in a way that's just truly life-giving. So I think anytime we can find those life-giving things and lean into those and then elevate those to let people know all the amazing things that are happening in schools. We hear all the negative stuff because media has a negativity bias to it. But there are amazing things happening in classrooms all over the place. And so how do we see those relationships and the way kids are becoming more of who they're created to be because of the work that's going on in the classroom?Jill:Yeah, absolutely. Those are great stories to be able to share. So on that note, how do we bring more joy to the profession?Jon:So I think part of it is celebrating the right things. So when we think about joy or wellbeing or flourishing, sometimes people think of that as meaning freedom from struggle. And that's not what it is. To me, joy isn't circumstantial. Joy is in this deep abiding hope that there is more. And that joy isn't freedom from struggle but it's the freedom to struggle well. So how do we help educators see what they're doing in the lives of students that allows them to have the energy and fuel to do more? What does that look like for them? And then how do we celebrate that, because I think we've oversold wellbeing over the last few years that like, "Okay, that's really hard for you. You don't have to do that right now." And when we do that, that robs kids of the joy that comes from doing something that they didn't think they could do. And then they do it and they do it well, and there's great joy in that. So if we rob kids the opportunity to struggle, we also rob them of the opportunity to have joy.And so if we think about happiness as being something that we want kids to always feel happy, they're not going to grow very much. And we know all the way back to Vygotsky's own approximate development, the distance between what you can do on your own and what you can do with assistants where you push and stretch is where learning is. So learning is productive struggle. So how do we build that in without making it be a burnout thing? And we don't avoid burnout by getting Jeans day on Friday. That's nice. But where we really find meaning and joy is in celebrating the growth that we see. So if you want an educator to stay in education, help them see what's happening in my view as a Christian that the Lord is doing through them in the lives of a student. That's what gets you up in the morning, how do we keep seeing that and keep building on that.Jill:Absolutely. So you've talked a lot about using the phrase just a teacher. Can you talk a little bit about that, how we avoid using it as just a teacher and how we can switch that around to just teaching?Jon:Yeah. So the book Just Teaching, Feedback, Inclusion and Well-being for Each Student, plays on that phrase that, oh, I'm just a teacher, or, oh, they're just a teacher. And as educators we 100% have to stop referring to ourselves as just a teacher. Education is the profession that makes all others possible. There is great power in that role, and everyone has experienced this. If they've had a good teacher or their child has had a good teacher, the difference that makes. There is huge power in that. And we steal ourselves, we rob ourselves of that when we refer to ourselves as just a teacher. And so when we talk about just teachers, we're talking about teachers that teach for justice and flourishing by making sure each kid is seen, known and loved. And you do that by making sure they're well, that they're engaged and they get feedback. That we give them the opportunity to stretch.It's not to work ourselves into oblivion. It's not just continuing to add more and more to our plates. I think in some places burnout has become a badge of honor and educators think everything requires the extra mile. That's not it. How do we put the work on students that allows them to do the work that will allow them to flourish? And we take the work that's ours, but our job is to coach them through that, not do it for them.Jill:Exactly. Yeah, and even as a parent, I'm not a teacher, I haven't been a teacher, but as a parent I can see that in my own kids. And it's so hard to watch them go through that struggle, but once they get to the other side you're like, okay, this is a good thing that I did to help them grow in that area.Jon:Yeah. Well, we all know nobody wants to be stretched. It's no fun to be, but we all appreciate the benefit of the stretching on the back end.Jill:Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of being a parent, how as a parent can we support teachers in the best way?Jon:Well, I think we need to view our role as teachers, I'll start there, as being a partner of the parent and helping that kid flourish because regardless, in my view there are parents that do bad things for kids. But no parent wants to do things that harm their kid. They care about that kid more than anything else on earth. And sometimes as a teacher you sometimes scratch your head, well, I don't know why we're doing that. And parent-teacher conferences are always this eye-opening moment of, I can't believe that kid gets to school every day because of some of the stuff that goes on. But 95% of parents want what's best for kids. And I would say teachers are there too, nobody really goes into teaching because they want to harm kids. That's not a thing. So if we can keep our child the focus of the interaction and not get on the defensive as teachers or parents about hey...Because it's sometimes hard, especially if parents didn't have great experiences in schools, it's hard for them to come back into school and hear feedback that feels critical because it feels like they're being judged as a parent. And nobody wants to be judged or evaluated, we all want to get better. So how do we make getting better for the kid be our joint mission as parents and educators? And I think I'll go back to the joy piece, if we want our kids to experience joy and be the kind of human beings we want them to be, then we have to give them opportunity to struggle well. How can they stretch? And so that's where parents and educators can be great partners in that, what's the extracurricular activity that you need to really shine? You're not great in math, great, work harder at math. You can't just not do that. You're going go-Jill:Not do it, yeah.Jon:But then, oh, you really love art. Well, lean into art. What can you do there? You don't do art instead of math. You want to be a well-rounded human being that does it. The other thing I would encourage parents to do and this'll come into, I think you'll probably ask me for a book recommendation at some point, but as you think about who your kid's becoming, don't try to parent and engineer all of the pain out of their lives. You can't do it.Jill:That's good.Jon:You can't do it. And so how do you put those guardrails on where they know you're safe, they know that they are loved and nothing they do will change that love. However, some things they do may change how much they please you. So it's not like everything you do is fine. We just love you. You're all great. No, you can make some bad decisions that I am not going to be pleased about and I'm going to tell you. And here is wisdom from an adult who's been through all these things too, and here are some thoughts. And so the one place when I said that I was like, we really have to be smart with smartphones and social media. That is an introduced thing that didn't affect us as parents, and I'm so grateful I didn't have it. That world that's introduced there, the more as parents we can partner with schools to figure out the best ways to use technology. And how to create some freedom from it because it is oppressive. And no matter how much we think we're training them how to use it, adults aren't good at using their smartphones.Jill:I definitely am not either. I have to use the focus feature to be able to avoid it when I'm trying to do work.Jon:Right. If you've caught yourself, and I know I've done it when you and I have been talking, if you catch yourself talking to someone who's an embodied human being right in front of you and you get a buzz on your phone and you're paying attention to that, what are we doing? We're saying that's more important than this human being. So if adults are doing that, we really need to think through what that's like for people with underdeveloped frontal cortexes that allow them to discipline themselves with it. And so I think we really need to be thoughtful about that as parents, how can we do that in a way that allow our kids to really enjoy being with each other and figure out how to navigate life with other people?Jill:Yeah, absolutely. And I was going to ask you about book recommendations. I feel like you're leading into Anxious Generation. Is that the one that you were going to talk about?Jon:Well, we've been talking about... I just read that book last week by Jonathan Haidt, and I've been citing his article in the Atlantic from last summer about schools should ban smartphones, like hard stop ban smartphones. He also has the recommendation that anybody under the age that's not in high school should not have a smartphone, flip phones. Other ways to communicate fine, but no smartphones till high school and no social media until you're 16. And it's really hard to disagree with that. From what I've seen, I feel like kids are so much freer when they have that. And he gives an example in his book about his six-year-old daughter who's on her iPad, and she can't figure out what's going on that there are engineers in a multi-billion dollar industry whose job is to keep her paying attention to the iPad no matter what, because the kid is the product. That's what they're selling to advertisers, that's what they're selling. And she says to her dad, "Dad, can you take this away from me? I can't get my eyes off of it."Jill:Wow, that's really powerful.Jon:Yeah, and so I think that's really where we're. So The Anxious Generation, he has a lot of reasons why we're anxious. It's not just smartphone's bad, it's smartphones disrupt and stunt development for kids because we're not having the human interactions, everything's mediated through social media which is not real. So instead of looking, when I grew up in the '70s and '80s, especially for girls, you walk by the checkout at the grocery store and you see these models that are airbrushed and they look perfect and all this. Now, girls go on and they see that and these are their competition at school, and it's not real but it feels real. And so they curate their lives to look like something they're not, which just breeds all kinds of anxiety because it's not an embodied interaction. They're saying, "Oh yeah, I know that person. That person's like this. They're not like they're real or what it looks like on Instagram." So it's devastating. And then for boys, it's less the social media, it's more the gaming and the pornography that kids are finding at ages 10 and 11 where it's just wide open for them.Jill:So young, yeah.Jon:And again, there are features that are meant to try to limit it but if you can put in a fake birthday, you can get to just about anything. And so there's a lot of responsibility in technology, but I don't see them making a change because the incentives aren't there for them to change. I think as parents, we have to be the parents and say, "Hey, collectively, we're not going to do this." Because if you're the only parent doing it, that's really hard. And in the book, he suggests that get 10 families together that are going to commit to this, that we're not going to jump on this boat of social media, early smartphones all the time. And I think as schools, we have to make the hard decision to say, "Hey, for eight hours a day we're giving you a break from these" and not just don't have them out, because that becomes really hard to enforce in schools.It's these get turned into a pouch that's locked for the day, or these go into a smartphone locker for the day and then you get them at the end of the day. And parents, I would just encourage you to support your schools if they do that. A lot of parents are fighting it because you want immediate access to your kids. You have it, call the office. There are adults charged with taking care of your kid. Trust them to do that. If you trust them for eight hours a day, you can trust them to get an important message to your kid.Jill:Right. I've seen the attitude change just with my own kids. I have an 11-year-old, and so she recently got in trouble and got her phone taken away for a week. And she was an amazing kid. She's creative, she was drawing, she was involved in conversations, engaging, and then she got her phone back and we're like, Where did Bella go? Look, we haven't seen her." So it totally changes who they are. So yeah, I've seen it myself. So what advice would you give educators out there?Jon:So you've already picked up on some of it, so I'll just try to sum it up into a sound bite. Lean into joy, but don't think of joy as being lacking struggle. Where are you seeing growth in yourself as an educator? Where are you seeing growth in your classroom? Lean into that, celebrate that, that's where joy is. And so even when you talk about smartphones, it's not banning something. It's inviting kids into deeper engagement, into that human... When kids get to a camp and they don't have phones for a week and they get to try new things and get to be with other people like, oh, this is great. It's like the veil has come off, the haze that they're in is gone. It's like, oh, they look around there's this amazing world and these amazing people. And so I think we need the same thing for our classrooms. We need to lean into really why we got into teaching in the first place, and that's to help other people grow and become more of who they're created to be.Jill:Yeah, absolutely. So on the flip side, what would be the worst advice that you've heard?Jon:This is hard to say. I got an article out called The Wellbeing Myth, and I think we have oversold wellbeing. And I think it's bad advice to say that kids can't learn if you don't make sure everything's okay. I think we need to focus less on some of those, even the SEL stuff, social emotional learning pieces have been oversold. It's like do hard things together, that works. There was another line, this again goes back to Haidt's book, it maybe Haidt's book or it may be Bad Therapy. I've got two books now coming together in my head. But that parents, adults, or whatever, can help kids learn how to make friends. The way you learn how to make friends is you try to make friends. And it's great to have somebody that you can talk to, "Hey, I tried this and this didn't work very well and whatever." But there's not a recipe for making friends. Okay, be kind, do unto others as you want them doing to you. There's some basic principles. But you know how kids learn those? By trying to do it.So I think teachers and parents, I think sometimes we need to step back a little bit and let kids play more and try stuff more. The average kid in elementary school in the US right now gets 27 minutes a day of recess. That is tragic. That was the height of my day. I would go home with my basketball and kickball stats every day for my three recesses. I look back and I was like, recess was the greatest thing ever. And I might've learned more at recess than I did in the classroom about how to interact with human beings. So like, hey, step back. Give them some space. That's wellbeing. So worry more about the virtual world and worry less about the real world. Let the kids... Haidt has this great line, let them get bruises, not scars.Jill:I love that. That's really great. So what would you say is one of the biggest challenges that you see for educators in the year ahead?Jon:We have a really hard job as educators because so much is expected of educators. Every policy decision, every government action is like, we'll do this through schools because there are schools in every community. So more and more it gets layered on top of educators all the time. And it makes sense from a policy perspective. It's like you have a beach head into every neighborhood, but educators can't do everything. And when we try, we don't do any of it very well and we end up burned out. And so we are seeing amazing educators leave the profession and other people not wanting to go into the profession because teachers aren't making education look like a very appealing job, even though it's the greatest job ever. It doesn't look like that to students. And so that's a challenge and it's a vicious cycle that's continuing. So much is asked, I burn out, it doesn't look like an appealing profession and that's a challenge.Jill:Absolutely. So I want to end on a positive note, what's the thing that makes you the most optimistic as you look ahead?Jon:So our whole deal at the center is to focus on adaptive challenges and improvement that we can make. And so these are short cycle data collections, what can you do in 90 days that makes a difference for kids? And we're seeing teams of educators in schools literally all over the world, we're in 45 plus countries and all 50 states. And we're seeing people make improvement. Now, I don't like talking about solutions because I think solutions are often too pat and too oversimplified where improvement is, well, if you've got a dumpster fire, put the fire out first. You're not building the Taj Mahal while the fire is burning. So it's how do we make those gains and then that builds momentum, especially when you see teachers and students doing together. So I'll end with this really encouraging note that I saw last week. Well, I'll give you a specific example of something that just was super inspiring to me and then a system example. Is that okay?Jill:Okay. Yeah, that sounds great.Jon:All right. So the system example was in South Carolina, we've been working with these schools that are doing collective leadership all over the state for eight years. I'm the program evaluator and researcher so I've been studying this high school, Blythewood High School. And this year when they had their showcase of the progress they've made each year, they brought the students to do it. So I was in a session where juniors and seniors in high school were talking about the collective leadership of their educators, and the way that was affecting their system as students. And the way they were leading alongside educators. I was like, Oh-Jill:That's really cool.Jon:This is the dream. The kids own it. It's not buy-in, they own it. The other story I'll give, and this was maybe my favorite classroom visit from the last year where this makes me optimistic. Brad Livingstone, who's our first gent, he's the husband of our president, Linda Livingstone and I was in his history classroom. And he's an amazing history teacher. He teaches World War II history and Vietnam War history at a local school. And the teaching's amazing, I was there for the Do-little raids. It was amazing World War II, so I enjoyed that. But at the beginning of the class, he's having students report out how many veterans they thanked the past week. So every Monday morning they report in how many veterans they thanked for what they did. And he got them doing this, and he's done this for years in all the different schools he's been in. He drives a van full of them to HEB in the middle of the day at the beginning of the semester.And he said, "Go out and find people that are my age or older and ask them if they served in the military. And if they do, introduce yourself, thank them for their service."Jill:That's awesome.Jon:And so they go out in teams and do that, and then he's like, "Now it's on you. You got to do this." And you got to get 50 this semester. And if you get 50, the goal is to get 1000 thank-yous in the course of the semester. That fundamentally changes the community. It doesn't just change the classroom. It doesn't just change the kids, that changes the community. Once you get to 50, you get a vial of sand from Normandy that he's collected. The kid who has the most thank-yous in a semester gets a vial of sand from Iwo Jima, which is in his way of saying it is the most difficult soil to get in the world because the only way you're allowed to go to Iwo Jima is if you are connected to Japan or you're a military liaison to Japan for the United States. That's the only way you get on that island. And so a veteran brought him back some sand from Iwo Jima. So one kid each semester gets that sand.And I'm sitting in there and this kid has thanked 75 veterans that past week. I was like, "How did you do it?" And he said, "Well, I go to football games and I watch for how people stand up and salute the flag during the national anthem. And then I go find them." I was like-Jill:That's awesome.Jon:...how amazing is that? So those kinds of small changes are the kinds of things that change our community in a society that feels like it's super broken and polarized, that changes people. And so that's the hope.Jill:That is such a cool story. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for sharing all the other stories, and I really hope that it was an encouragement to all the educators out there. We are so grateful for the work that you do on a daily basis and making a difference in the lives of each student.Jon:Yeah, thanks for all you do, Jill. It's great. We have a great job.Jill:Yeah, we do.

Passion for Learning: Krystle Moos

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, host Jon Eckert interviews Krystle Moos, an award-winning science teacher known for her innovative and engaging teaching methods. The discussion revolves around Krystle's approach to creating a dynamic learning environment that fosters curiosity, belonging, and genuine learning experiences for her students. Krystle emphasizes the importance of addressing distractions and creating a sense of belonging in the classroom, regardless of the evolving landscape of technology. She shares her strategy of making science hands-on and exploratory, moving away from traditional labs towards phenomenon-based learning to spark wonder and curiosity in her students.To learn more, order Jon's book, Just Teaching: Feedback, Engagement, and Well-Being for Each Student.
 
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.Connect with us:
Baylor MA in School Leadership
Jon Eckert: @eckertjon
Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcslMentioned:Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers by Jo Boaler
 
 
Transcription:
Jon Eckert:
Welcome back to the Just Schools Podcast. We're really excited today because in our podcast studio/my office, we have the award-winning amazing science teacher, Krystle Moos. A huge blessing to be able to work with her through our master's program. She's also a local educator that's impacted many, many kids' lives over the last several years. So, Krystle, thank you for being here first of all.
Krystle Moos:
Oh, it's honestly an honor and a joy to share education and our experiences with everybody we can.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah. Oh, and I should mention you're also... My kids got to pick one teacher that they dedicated the book just teaching to, and so one of my daughters picked Ms. Moos as her most just teacher. So teacher that leads to justice and flourishing, not just a teacher, but the most impactful teacher that she had. So she had selected Ms. Moos. And now my other daughter is getting the benefit from Ms. Moos as well. So I think this is the first educator that I've been able to interview that's taught my own children. So you can feel free to share any shortcomings as a parent that I have that you see through my children. But really, what I want to talk to you today about is you've been teaching for a while, and you've won these awards and these accolades for being a great teacher, which are well deserved. But I'm curious, what do you see that's different about kids today than when you first started teaching?
Krystle Moos:
Yeah, I don't think there's much that's different, honestly. They have different distractions. And so I started my first five years at Waco ISD. It was a title one school, and their distractions were very different than when I moved to Midway ISD. It's more of a suburban school. They didn't have as many phones back then. Not everybody had a phone. We weren't assigning digital assignments when I first went to Midway, but they still had other distractions.
I had distractions when I was a student. It was writing notes and finding cute ways to fold them and sneak them along, and we still... I would leave and go to the library to write a paper. And so, I think they're the same. They're still distracted. They still have the same fundamental belonging in the classroom. And when we look at students and we look at what they're facing, and I do think they're facing more, everything's just way more visible in their life and way more connected, which can be really distracting. But then I think about sitting in my course, three math class, and writing notes to my friends and folding them, and I definitely was not engaged.
I think that sense of belonging in any classes where that teacher really made me feel like things were meaningful, they really cared about what I was doing, and what I was learning, and where I was going really were the most impactful classrooms that helped me center. And so, whether it was 17 years ago when I started or today before I get to the content, you have to get to the belonging and why we're doing things, and then the distractions fade away.
Jon Eckert:
Well, I like that you went back to the part that makes us human, which we all have this desire to belong. We want to be seen and known by other people, and that's an innate need. I think that's true. I think the distraction is also true, depending on how engaged we are in the classroom. We're looking for distraction. I think the challenge that I see is I don't think kids are different. I would agree, and I hope that's an encouragement to educators today that the kids aren't different. I do think the ability to distract them has increased significantly because we didn't walk around in our pocket with this device that engineers are paying billions of dollars to turn us as kids into the product. Their attention is that we didn't have that. You had the paper and pencil and the pen and the origami folding, which you could distract yourself, but nobody's being paid to distract you.
Krystle Moos:
Yeah. And I think that is something that we battle in my classroom. I make you grab your phone and show me it on days where I notice that things are going to be a little bit harder and I need them all in. I'll say, "Grab your phone. If you're not reaching in your bag, you're doing something wrong. Get your phone in your bag." When I walked in here today, I took my watch off. And so I think it's training people on when it's appropriate to use devices and when we need to put it away and really focus on what we're learning on each other, so that way the experience is more meaningful.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and I think in your classroom... Again, as a middle school science teacher, I never rose to the level of high school teacher, but I was a middle school science teacher. What I loved about middle school science is it's hands-on. You're doing things. You're experimenting. You're demonstrating. You're seeing how this works, and you did it this way this time, and now you do it this other way, this other time, and what's different, and you're recording it, and you're observing. And so it's designed to capture your attention. It requires your attention. So talk about some of the ways you make science come alive through the ways you make it hands-on in your class.
Krystle Moos:
So I went to school, where I loved all my teachers. I was a very compliant student, and I just did what I was told to do, and I was horrible at lab. I was the student that would finish a lab, have all the numbers, and then go sit and bother the teacher until they told me exactly what step to do to get the result.
When I started teaching, I took all labs and took the instructions away. I would do all the labs first. And I really made it more about exploring and modeling and less about manipulation of equipment. And so, I felt like a lot of labs were cookie-cutter labs. You just followed the instructions, and then it kind of connected to the content, but not at all. For me, it wasn't until I started teaching that I understood all the big connections.
As I rewrite labs, I take away the instructions. I make them target labs, or we'll spend multiple days or minutes, even just minutes, looking at a phenomenon, something as simple as ice melting on a block of plastic versus a block of metal. And then we draw, and we discuss, and we show transfer of energy. And so a lot more of the class is discussing revising models. And then I can drive the conversation of what's happening based on student misconceptions, and it makes it less paper pencil working through practice problems and more relatable, so I can say things like, "Do you remember in class when we did this thing? What did you learn, and how can you apply it to this problem?"
Jon Eckert:
Why do you think more teachers don't do this? Again, science lends itself to this, but a lot of science teachers, it's all procedures. It's all trying to track what you did when you did it. Be very careful in your observations, but it's not this exploration of the bigger concepts. Why do you think teachers don't do that more in whatever discipline they're in?
Krystle Moos:
Yeah, I think we do what we were taught. And so I think for a lot of people, it's just really easy to take what's out there and do it, and it worked. And so why change it? And for me, it didn't work for me. And I hated that I spent hours in college in lab, not understanding why I was doing it. And I wanted my students to have a different experience. And I wanted them to see the science around them coming to life so that when they walk outside and it's snowing, they're thinking about the transfer of energy and what's actually happening with the individual water molecules. And I just know I have to change what happened to me so that my students could see all the things that I'm seeing now.
We were just driving down the road. I drove from Denver to New York. And I looked out the window and saw a huge solar panel, a whole field, really, of solar panels. And I got this incredible idea that when I do a topic, I could actually have the students do those little... You know the car where this has a little solar panel, and when light strikes it, it bobbles its head? Well, I could have them explore with different color light on the end of flashlights to figure out a new relationship, a new lab that might make a little bit more sense to the students than the way I had been doing it by just discussing it.
Jon Eckert:
So what I love about what you've described already is you talked about this human piece that we want to belong. And then I think you also are tapping into this idea of wonder. How do we create a sense of awe and wonder about how things work? Not just, "Oh, that's amazing and that's beautiful," but what makes that work?
And when kids start doing that, I think that's how five-year-olds are. They have this curiosity that somehow school rings out of them. And I do think you're right that sometimes we just replicate what we experience as students. But I also think there's a fear of turning over control to students, where it's a lot easier to bore kids into compliance or make sure they follow these steps. And you can see, "Oh, they're not following the steps. They're not complying," where someone might walk into your classroom and be like, "What is going on here?" There's so much happening, there's so much energy. And that creates a sense of loss of control. And if I did that in my classroom, it would just get out of hand. And they fear that loss of control. Do you think that's true, or am I overstating what some teachers might be feeling?
Krystle Moos:
I think it's a little bit of that, and I think it's having those procedures in place. I go everywhere and in populations of adults, obviously, if you can hear me clap once, and it works every single time. But it's also that awkwardness and that a willingness to try something new. Science is about experimentation. I think education is about experimentation. So today, you said wonder. One of the things that I ask my students to do when they model or when they observe a phenomenon, the first thing I ask them is to write down two things they notice and then two things they wonder. And when we start to do that, we start to get them to think. And today, I even messed up in class. I said, "What do you guys notice?" And instead of giving them time to talk to each other first, I asked that question to the whole class complete in utter silence.
And so in the next class period I was like, "I got to do this better," so I gave them some time to talk together, "and I need three answers. I need three people to respond when you're done." I had eight people that just... I had to let them answer all eight of them. And so it's looking at what works and what doesn't work. It also is getting together with other educators. And so, so much of what I do has been revised by talking to teachers across the nation, not just in chemistry, also in biology, and really driving those conversations about, "What do you do? My students struggle with this. Do you have a lab or an activity or a way to teach it? Tell me how you teach it." And being okay, saying, "My students are struggling. What I'm doing is not working. I need some new ideas so that I can get my students to the point of wonder."
Jon Eckert:
Well, I think isn't that ultimately the goal for each of us is that whatever our subject is to get them to wonder. Because if we really want to tap into intrinsic motivation, we can intrinsically motivate them. That's, by definition, impossible. But if you can create the conditions like you did in the second class period where you set it up where it wasn't about you, it was about what they wanted to share, that creates conditions where they might be intrinsically motivated by the concept that they're studying. Because again, intrinsic motivation isn't "I want to be good at science so that I can get into college and then become a doctor." That's all delayed extrinsic motivation. It's, "Do I really have this awe and wonder about what I'm doing?" And I think that's more likely to happen in a class where they feel like they belong.
I will say too, my daughters have both said they love Ms. Moos because of your kind of nerdy love for so many things. And I think that's great because I think you've done a great job modeling that you're not trying to be cool, as whatever an 18-year-old thinks is cool. It's, "No, I think this is amazing," and that passion comes across to them. It's like, "Wow, I've never known anybody quite like that." And then that makes it okay for them to be excited about things that really get them going.
Have you seen that pay dividends? Do you ever struggle with that? I mean, I was clearly not a cool person by the standards of middle school kids, but I felt like I tried to make it okay to be quirky and be a little different and weird. Have you seen that pay dividends for you?
Krystle Moos:
I think I'm just quirky and weird. I'm okay. Just I am who I am, and I don't want my students to think that they have to be anything different than what they are. And having that belonging means that they get to see my weird. They get to see me on my best days when I'm just so excited, and they get to see me on some days that are a little bit harder. And so I really... I guess I didn't think I was that quirky, but I like it. I tell them, "I run science UIL. We're the nerd herd, and we are going to embrace it and love it." And the thing is that science and math and those are the places that I live and breathe. And man, if you want to come with me, great. If not, just appreciate the fact that I'm really excited about something, and I'm happy to hear about what you're excited about too.
Jon Eckert:
And I think that's part of the belonging you create in your classroom. And I may still remember you were talking to us about the eclipse that's coming.
Krystle Moos:
Path of totality.
Jon Eckert:
We've been talking about the path of totality in our house ever since, and-
Krystle Moos:
I'm not even a space person. Just you know, I've never taken a day of a space science class, but I am so excited. I didn't know when we had the annual eclipse. I don't know if you saw the pictures. But when the annual eclipse shines through the trees, the shadow is actually representative of what's happening in the sky because you're not supposed to look at it directly.
Jon Eckert:
Interesting.
Krystle Moos:
And so I didn't know that. And that stuff, what I didn't know, I didn't know. And what I've learned, I'm just so excited to share. It's path of totality on April 8th. I'm so excited.
Jon Eckert:
Space science, I never took anything in space science. I never taught it. And again, if you haven't taught something, it's hard to really know it. So I'm with you, but it is fascinating. And I just love that the energy you bring to that, but it's not just for the subject because sometimes people say, "Oh, elementary teachers teach the kids, and high school teachers teach the subject." It's like, no, you still teach kids, but you teach them to be passionate about what they're interested in. And you bring a passion to the science that I think is it effervesces in a way that it draws people in.
So one of the things you talked about before we jumped on is the way you give feedback based on this. So again, it's really way easier to give meaningful feedback when you have kids who are deeply engaged. But how do you give feedback in a way that helps kids grow and stretch in ways that are hard and uncomfortable but pays big dividends in the end?
Krystle Moos:
Yeah, I think anytime something's tied to a grade, you have a chance of not seeing what students really know and don't know. When we start deducting points for showing what you don't know, I just feel like it's asking students to copy from someone else because it has a stake in it, even if it's just a practice grade, especially when we get to evaluation grades. I don't want to be surprised on a test if a student didn't know something that I thought that they knew because they completed all their assignments. So I like to frequently stop, give the questions, give two or three questions to the students, and say, "Take it like a test. Take it like a quiz. Go in a corner. Don't get help from anybody. Just get as far as you can." And so we do this once or twice a week.
In AP chemistry, we do it all the time. I'm like, "Okay, you're going to do a CF..." We call it a CFU, a check for understanding. And what I do is they are low-stakes, very low-stakes, or no-stakes grades. And so, I'll get someone that turns it in completely blank, and they tried. They read the question. They'll have circled things, but they don't even know where to get started. I know that when I hand it back the next day, I'm going to pull that kid for a small group and work with them. It takes six weeks to drive out from students. That's okay to not know. It's not okay to not ask for help. And I'm still slowly getting the kids to kind of get rid of that. I would rather have you turn in assignments late. I would rather have you learn it later than now if you're not ready for it now, as long as you're willing to work on it later. And it has just been incredible. Students will get...
The class average on a CFA will be 50%. And I will feel so bad about myself because that means I taught it horribly the first time. But maybe I'll do peer-to-peer tutoring, or maybe I'll pull small group, or maybe I'll go over the CFA together. And it was the way the question was worded. And then on the test, the class average is a 90. So at first, I was like, "Maybe my tests aren't hard enough." But that feedback that constantly having students do it low-stakes, working with them, conferencing with them, and then having them learn from their mistakes has just been so impactful on their overall grades. They don't freak out for tests like they used to.
Jon Eckert:
And I know you don't teach for an AP score. I know that's not what motivates you, but your kids do well on AP exams. And that's the kind of teacher that I like to see because that AP exam is validation that, "Hey, they learned a lot." And it's not about grade inflation because we have this really problematic thing going on in high schools right now where there's a ton of cheating going on. There's a tacit endorsement among some teachers like, "Hey, I don't care how you get the answers, just get the answers and let's move on." So you have graduation rates that are off the charts because kids are moving through, and the National Assessment of Education Progress, ACT, SAT they're all showing these declines in actual learning.
And so what I loved in what you described was this check for understanding is not a throwaway grade. This is a true formative check for me and you to know what you do and don't know. And so then, when you get to the summative assessment, you have these high scores because you and your student know what you didn't know, and then you figure out ways because you are one of the most tireless teachers I've seen for reteaching, figuring out ways to show it a different way, and have an unbelievable amount of energy for that. And that's what gets them over that bar. So it's not about grade inflation. They've truly earned that. And that is, to me, the goal of any teacher.
I don't understand teachers that are okay with a class average of 60% that they then curve and bump up because I really want to know what's the 40% of what you taught that you don't care that your kids don't know. I would hope in most classes, the class average is 90% are higher because I want to know if I'm the teacher that's going to get those kids they learn those things. And coming out of your class, they know that. Now, that's not the way most educators work. Why do you think that is?
Krystle Moos:
It's hard. It is really hard to get the students to take ownership over their own learning because we have just passed them on. And so, if in second grade they struggle with one aspect of math, we pass them on. We're in a very heavy math unit right now, and it involves solving proportions. I can teach them the chemistry. They know all the units. But when it gets to the math, I had to spend a half a class period pulling out small groups of students, that when I said, "Look, it's a proportion. You cross multiply and divide." I had kids honest enough. Let's just be real there. Teenagers being honest enough to say, "I don't know how to do that." They said... An exact quote was, "Teachers have been saying this to me. Cross multiply and divide for the past three years, and I don't know what they mean."
And these are students in honors chemistry. And so I've broken down this wall of it's okay to not know, but you have to ask. And if I don't explain it well the first time, I put a lot of the blame on me. If I didn't explain it well the first time because you didn't get it, ask me again, and we'll come up with something else. Or let's go ask one of your friends, because your friend may have been through the same exact system you were. Something I said clicked for them. And so we just do a lot of peer-to-peer tutoring too.
Jon Eckert:
No, that's great. And I do think sometimes you take too much of the responsibility on yourself as an educator. And I think, as educators, we need to know it's a partnership. And kids have to ask, and they have to do the work. I think, sometimes kids, and I don't think this is true in your class, they'll say, "Well, I don't get it." It's like, "No. You have to articulate what you don't understand because I don't get it is basically saying, 'I'm not even going to try to articulate what I don't know.'" Your example with the proportions is a good example. "Teachers have told me this over and over again, and I don't know what that means." That's a really helpful place because then you can step in and say, "Oh, here's what this is." And you shouldn't have to be teaching that in honors chemistry, but...
Krystle Moos:
I'm going to. If we look at... You're talking about the learning connection, what our students know. I think for me, honors chemistry, the big thing is I can support our students in ACT, SAT, and just general knowledge. And if that's the hole they're missing, I'm going to jump in and fill it because do I want them to learn chemistry? Yes. But how many of them are going to use ideal gas law later on in life? And so if I can teach them proportion, I'm good for the day.
Jon Eckert:
Right, right. No. And I really appreciate that about the way you approach, and that's what a lot of great teachers do, and we need to just continue to highlight that. So we always wrap up with a lightning round. So here's your chance in a word, phrase, or sentence to answer a few. And I have a few common ones I go back to, so I'll ask some of those, and we'll see if I come up with anything random. Feel free to take a pause if you need to, because a lot of times these are the first times you've heard these questions, but what's your favorite book that you've read in this past year? It could be education-related, or it could be anything else. I always want a good book recommendation.
Krystle Moos:
I always go to Limitless Mind by Jo Boaler, Productive Struggle, just that grit, that tenacity, that it's okay to not know. I would recommend it for any math, really. Any science teacher.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah, you recommended that to me early on when a friend, Jo Boaler, does great stuff. Great, great example for educators. Okay. What is the worst piece of advice you've ever received?
Krystle Moos:
Yeah. I've watched a lot of the podcasts, and so I know the repeat ones, but I had someone recommend. And I thought it was a great idea to separate all the loud students that talk from each other. And I very quickly learned that they still talk just across the classroom. And so I'm a little bit more intentional about that. And I provide them opportunities to work with their louder friends, but gosh, that was just horrible. The one here, I separated, and they were screaming across the room.
Jon Eckert:
Well, with my middle schoolers, what I would do in the lab is I would let them choose who they got to sit with for the quarter, and then they get to pick their seats again the next quarter. They said to pick, they couldn't sit with anybody they sat with that quarter, so their group of four would get broken up, and so they had to move those around. But what I found was they so badly wanted to be together that if you put them together and said, "Hey, if this isn't a good choice for you, I'm going to intercede, and we're going to move you," I found that that was my best way to control some of the off-task behavior that they would get. Sometimes, putting them together was the best thing I could do. Not always, but sometimes.
Krystle Moos:
And their conversations are just so much cooler when they're willing to talk to one another.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. And hilarious.
Krystle Moos:
Oh, hilarious.
Jon Eckert:
And hilarious. All right. Best piece of advice you've ever received.
Krystle Moos:
Yeah. Support the support staff. My secretaries, custodians, they are the backbone behind the school. I support my leaders, support everybody, but those custodians and secretaries really can get overlooked. And their impact is very powerful at the school.
Jon Eckert:
Well said. Good thing to remember. Love that. What's the biggest challenge you see for educators in the year ahead?
Krystle Moos:
Anticipating gaps in learning. As a secondary teacher, I used to know what the students weren't, and were going to know, and where they were. And it seems like each year, planning for those misconceptions is getting a little bit more challenging, but I think it's also really fun to look at the first period and go, 'That did not work. Let's scrap it and try again."
Jon Eckert:
Yep. No, well said. What's the thing that makes you most optimistic as you look ahead?
Krystle Moos:
The kids. They're absolutely just doing incredible things. My students are trying and working with me and growing and building. And really, this move to a standards-based learning. Learning to learn and not learning for a grade has changed so much of my students' perspective on learning. They're willing to try things and ask questions in a way that I haven't seen in a while.
Jon Eckert:
Well, I really appreciate you coming on today. And also, just thank you for helping kids become more of who they're created to be. I think sometimes kids don't even have a vision for who the Lord has made them to be. Obviously, God's never surprised by who that kid, what they can do, but I feel teachers like you help speak into kids' lives, share that with them explicitly, but then implicitly, through the way you teach, give feedback, and push them, allows them to do things that they probably didn't imagine they could do. And you have a lot of kids at Midway High School who consider chemistry and the sciences because they feel like they can do it coming out of your class. So it's a huge blessing to my own children but also to the community. And again, it's what great teachers do. So thanks for being on, and thanks for all you do.
Krystle Moos:
Of course. Thank you.