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Namita Prasad is a confidence educator. When times were tough in her life she has had to rely on the “why not” or “Confident Mindset” approach that her father instilled in her as a child. She and her team created a school program so that all children understand how to become confident. Today, we talk about her approach to teaching confidence!
The Big Dream Educators and caretakers will believe and adopt the approach that, “No one is born confident, but anyone can become confident.” She’s excited for this dream to turn into a reality within a few years! Namita found confidence means different things to different people. So, she and her team define confidence as: A feeling that you don’t start out with. You get the feeling after actions of practice. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content A culture of relationship-building is a good foundation for this work. Namita suggests a quick, powerful practice called the One-Word Check-In. Adults can ask each child as they enter the school or class or home how they feel in one word. Additionally, the culture should foster 3 pillars: courage, character, and commitment. Student voice is a major part of Namita’s ACM (A Confident Mindset) Program. In the program, students self-evaluate and tell adults their strengths, areas for growth, and fears. They develop their action plan and create their own Circle of Confidence (in step 6), which includes identifying people who are their “rocks” and “champions” and asking if each of those people are willing to be part of their Circle of Confidence. ACM’s 6 Steps:
Namita’s tip for giving feedback: In 2 minutes:
Namita believes A Confident Mindset is critical for us to be able to face the challenging realities of the world. She says it’s most effective when we all take this approach as adults and children in all areas of our lives. Challenges Adults often put lots of pressure on ourselves and think we can’t help children be confident if we are not confident ourselves. That’s not required! We can learn with our children. Another challenge is thinking we are too busy to do this work, but it’s actually a one-time “forever change,” in our mindset that we can keep practicing in all the things we regularly do. One Step to Get Started Ask yourself: What is YOUR “Why not?” Then, go practice! Remember: Mindset comes before skill set. First, have a confident mindset or a mindset that’s positive and then try to learn a skill set. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on her website and Facebook. To help you implement A Confident Mindset, Namita is sharing tons of free resources with you. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 103 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT Today's guest has a super interesting take on confidence. Now Prasad is a confident educator, author and speaker and she wasn't born with confidence. It was a mindset that she developed when times were tough, where she was at a crossroads in her life. She had relied on the why not approach that. Her father, a soldier had instilled in her as a child. This approach to life is called a confident mindset and has had a deep impact on her life as a single parent and entrepreneur. Understanding how a mindset of confidence can change the trajectory of one's life, led her to become a confident educator and along with her team comprises of educators, they created a year long school program so that all Children can understand how to become confident. Her mission in life is the why not movement so that the whole world has a cohesive understanding of the meaning of confidence and the steps to develop it. She believes mindset before skill set and that nobody is born confident but anyone can become confident. Let's get to our conversation with Prasad. Educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for teacher ship podcast we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. 00:01:04 I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal Assistant Superintendent curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to the time for teacher ship podcast. Thank you lindsey, thank you for inviting me of course. So at the front of the episode I will just read your, your bio and I am curious to know, you know, beyond all that professional kind of like stuff that we do. Um what is it important for listeners to know about you or keep in mind as we jump into our conversation today? Absolutely. So Lindsay, I'm an educator and an evolving mother. I call myself evolving mother because I feel like I'm trying to better myself every day. Um we um and have a confidence educator. So this is a term I coined um several years ago, I focus on how to instill confidence in Children and in adults. 00:02:16 I love that. So I think this is is really connected to all the work that we do, but I I don't think we've ever had a guest actually talk about this specifically. So I am very excited for our conversation today and we'll move right to that, that first core question that I always start with, where dr Bettina Love talks about freedom dreaming and she describes his dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so considering that considering what you even just said, you know, what's that big dream that you hold for curriculum and instruction for education for students. You know, my dream. um I think will come true. So it won't be a dream after a few years because we're going to spread the word to educators, to parents, to Children, to professionals that no one, no one Lindsay is born confident, but anyone can become confident. So that's my dream, that's going to come true. I love that. I love the whole idea of becoming right and and learning and growing and evolving as people. I think this is, this is so good and so in within this episode we'll get to exactly how we do that, how we support ourselves and our Children to, to do that work. 00:03:25 I am curious to know in your work and the work that you do, I often talk about, you know, in the curriculum that I helped to co create. How do we embed things like mindset relationships with students? How do we embed student voice in our pedagogy? How do we inspire student creation and how do we affirm student identities and experiences. So I'm curious to know if one of those or more than one of those resonates with you and the work you do. Um it's interesting you say that because it sort of follows the path of our program, so we have a program called a confident mindset program um that within a school can change the culture of the school with how Children approach anything it's called the why not approach? So the first thing you talk about is like mindset and relationships, right? So for example, one of the things that we do in and we say the program to to implement in school is called a one word check in. So when a child walks in you just ask them, tell me in one word, how do you feel right now? You know, if it's a very talkative child, they're going to spend 10 minutes if it's a child that's a teenager there adam, but if you say one word, usually you'll get something out of them and in the line of work we've noticed that we really connect to a child's energy and where their mind is over the course of time. 00:04:37 Like you can map it if a child, I'm tired, you know, sleepy. So one word check. It has been a huge, great way of building relationships between teachers and students and also between teachers and teachers, like you're coming in and you want, you know, mrs Suzy to help you with something, but she's just had a child that's sick all night. How do you feel right now in this moment, in one word tired, that's not the day to, you know, put that extra. So so having that connection is very important for just developing, starting the development of relationship as far as student voice. I really believe that mindset comes before skill set. Um it's that it's that one thing that I really feel that our movement is a lot about Lindsay is instilling the mindset and then they can learn anything right and to do a mindset, you really need to hear what a child's thinking right? Like what are your strengths? You know we think we know a child strength, we really don't when they do a self evaluation and they're able to talk about what they think they're good at and the areas for growth because nobody has a weakness, it's just an area for growth. 00:05:47 They're able to have a voice of their own, they're able to say like this person cares about me, this is where I am. These are the fears that I'm facing. Another thing that our program talks a lot about Lindsay is students need to understand they don't need to overcome fears. Um but they can face fears right? A personal fear of minus I'm afraid of cats, but I'm working on overcoming that fear right? I may never totally overcome it, but I know how to face it. Um The third thing you talk about a student creation, right? Student creation means when a child feels ownership, right? They go this is what I'm feeling and my teachers receiving. So our program to build confidence in through the A. C. M. Or a confident mindset program is six steps first is believe in yourself. Second is face your fears. Could be good to yourself be good to others practice because we will focus a lot on practice and then get better at your practice by getting feedback. So the student really becomes in charge if you may and the teacher becomes more like a guide or a coach? 00:07:00 I love that. Do you mind saying those six steps? One more time for our listeners? Because I was trying to chop them down and I'm imagining listeners are two. Absolutely. And I just expand briefly. A need step. Right? So, first of all, before I talk about steps to confidence, can we just unpack what confidence is? Absolutely. So Lindsay, how do you feel? What is confidence? What is your understanding of it? Oh wow. I feel like in every conversation I've had with you so far. My definition, my old definitions kind of get scrapped and it evolves further. So I can't wait to hear what you have to say, but I will say right now um the ability to kind of do something scary and feel good about myself in doing it. Wonderful, Thank you for sharing. And my second question to you, I know it's your podcast is do you believe it's important for Children and adults to be confident? Yes, I think the energy that we bring to a conversation to anything that we do when we are confident is a very different, more creative, more like energetic, more connected energy than when we're not confident. 00:08:12 Thank you, Thank you. So it's interesting, you know when I started teaching confidence building back in 2014 and 15 I would talk to people and say like, what does confidence mean to you to teach us at? You know, principals at the school programmers and everybody had a different definition and I began thinking if everybody has a different definition, what is his child hearing? Is mom saying something is, you know, Miss Lindsay in classroom saying something is the principal saying something in my soccer coach is telling me something totally different. So now I'm really confused, but everybody's telling me it's important, right? So we agree that it's pivotal and we agree that's important, but we don't have a cohesive understanding. So the first thing we did in the ACM program is define what confidences. So as a world we can get on the same page, right? So the way we define confidences, confidences, a feeling that you don't start out with, it's a feeling that you get after actions of practice. 00:09:14 So Lindsay, I'm on your show today, I don't have to be confident. But if I do enough of this podcast, I can become confident. It takes the pressure off of me for performance right now and I'm just in the moment focused on being the best guess that I can be right. So that's what we want Children to know is that you I don't have to be confident anything. And what a child's hearing is, you're at the pool and your mom says just get in the pool and be confident and the child goes, but how, like, I don't know how to swim. I know I have this snazzy little swimsuit, but I don't know how to swim, what do I do? And if mom would just say, you don't even have to be confident, you don't have to know anything, but you'll become confident with every class you take, and the child's gonna go, okay, why not? So we really instill in people and, and Children the why not approach. That's what the book is called, The power of Why not? Um, but that's a little bit about confidence. Are we? Now, I can go to the six steps if you're okay. 00:10:18 So it's really important to kind of put a stake in the ground to understand what confidence is, right? So, as I started teaching confidence building, I realized that if something is so important, it's so pivotal, can we please come up with a way that every single child can learn it step by step. So we have a six step program that we teach in schools, We do start with professional development, we have a whole onboarding and then the teachers can kind of become confidence coaches, and this does not matter what their personal confidences. A teacher's personal confidence does not matter because it's a step by step program and any well meaning adult can teach it right? Because sometimes I'll have moms and dads and teachers, but I don't feel confident and now you want me to teach my students to be confident. And I'm like, look, it's a step by step process, anybody can do it, right? So the steps are as follows, Number one, believe in yourself, right? Each of us have a lot of strengths that we need to just focus on, right? 00:11:19 And we have things that we need to work on which are areas for growth. This is where the student sort of mindset feeling, voice comes in. Let's talk about that. You know, let's let's talk about what you're really, really good at. The second thing is about, you know, facing your fears, there's a lot of pressure in society and Children to be like just overcome your fear. I just told you I'm not going to overcome my fear for cats, but I'm hoping that over time I learned how to face it now, kind of just stepping back for a second. ACM also has three pillars of courage, character and commitment. The first two steps are about courage. When you define what confidence meant to you Lindsay it was all courage, right? If I believe in myself, I can do what I want to do. So courage is something that people sometimes with due respect, confused with confidence, but courage is me just getting off my chair and saying I believe in myself and I'm going to face my fears now that I've decided to do something and take action on my why not? 00:12:22 Like what's holding me back? I need to think about what are going to guide these actions and that's where the second c of character comes in because courage without character, you and I both know is directionless, right? So we want, you know, our positive character values to guide it and being good is first being good to ourselves. Like having gratitude, being organized, things like that and being good to others kindness. Um so these character values now are guiding our actions great, we have courage and we have character, but Lindsay you and I both know as parents and as educators, if you don't do those actions of practice, all the courage and characters lost. Right? So we encourage Children to find things that they want to work on and then come up with plans to practice. So we we tell them that, look, this is not about the outcome, it's not about the result, it's about you just becoming a better view. And I think that's very important because we know all Children start at a different point, right? 00:13:27 And to really make this equitable for all Children, it's important that they just become the best that they can be that's possible, that's possible, right? We're not asking to be the best, we're just asking you to be your best. Right? So then we talk about, you know, coming up the actions of practice, but now repetition of practice is not good. You need to surround yourself, you're not alone. We encourage Children to then make a circle of confidence. It's people that can support them. These people can be rocks or champions. Rocks could be mom or a teacher that's always there for me and a champion could be my little friend in third grade who's telling me, hey, you can do this. So like in school sometimes we make walls called circle of confidence and kids will come and post like little posters and say, I can help with, you know, you know, cleaning your desk up or I can help you with like kicking the ball or something. So they feel really good about themselves and somebody can pick, pick this up and say, hey, you know, Michael, can you help me with this? So we're creating a very supportive environment where other kids and teachers are stepping up and helping each other by being Rocks and champions. 00:14:36 Right? And the moment you help someone, usually you're willing to accept help as well, right? It's kind of interesting people think that, you know, to help once you help you like this was not bad. That's kind of cool. Let me ask for help too. So that's something that we encourage and the last piece that you talk about a student identity experiences. You know, once a child, I'm going to focus on the child right now understands I uncovered what my why not is I found my strengths. I faced my fears. I created a group of people, my circle of confidence I did match as a practice and I got better at this. I can do that as well. So they make that connection in their mind that anything is possible. If I'm willing to do these six steps, we don't talk a lot of fluff like anything is possible, know anything is not possible, okay. Anything is possible if you do this, this and this. And I think it's being really realistic in the child's mind and helping them face what's going to happen in their lives. 00:15:42 Like I know we are sort of behind Covid, at least we want to believe that Covid is behind us and you know, and that was, you know, a pandemic, but you know, life is full of pandemics, right, some personal, some universal and having this mindset of a confident mindset is going to help prepare our Children and our educational system to be prepared for what what life brings. So that's why these six steps cannot come into play. I love these six steps. And I also thinking a lot about like, even beyond just youth, even beyond Children, like adults using these six steps and school systems and districts, right? Like I'm thinking about that again, that Bettina love idea of freedom, dreaming and like dreaming of what's possible. And there's so many things I think sometimes that adult Are held back by not having the mindset and this clear process that you laid out with the six steps that we don't, we don't try to get to that place where things are possible because we're like, oh well, you know, this is a barrier, this is a barrier or we haven't done this yet. 00:16:46 So it's probably not going to happen this year. We'll extend our timeline 10 years or something. There's so many things in here that I think are not just relevant for Children, but adults as well. And so I really am connecting with these steps that you're sharing. Thank you, No thank you lindsey. And that's why, you know, I got a one day and I realized that, you know, to bring change true change. I'm not talking about like true change that's sustainable. There has to be a movement for confidence education, a movement for confidence. Education where Lindsay at work is hearing the same thing, Lindsay is a teacher is teaching the same thing and little lindsey in the classroom is hearing the same thing. So all everybody's on the same page about what confidence is, you don't have to be confident. You can become confident and the six steps and understand the courage, character, commitment. Also those pillars that can make you become confident. So we talk a lot about common language. I do this with my 14 year old when I picked her up from school, I'm like, okay, what's your one word? Check in tired, tired is not allowed and then we talk about like, you know for eggs, you know, we as teachers, parents even as you know, managers or business owners, leaders, principals, we do a lot of feedback. 00:17:59 Give you a small thing that we use. This is part of our common language, which I encourage, you know, our listeners to use. It's called a glow and grow. So feedback the word itself is like as if you're telling me how I can become better and my mind's already maybe shutting down. If you tell a child I'm going to give you a glow and agro you'd be like, okay, well I wonder what the glow is. And so the one, the first thing I suggest is, you know, address the child by name if possible. You know, you know, Mark, here's a glow for you. You did a really great job with, you know, studying for this math test. You know, you got this this and this time, here's a girl for you. You're not taking the time you're rushing through. You're not picking the right things from this answer. So you know what this question, Can you really like spend more time on the question before you start solving it. He was like, okay. I mean at least he noticed that I did all this right. And by the way, let's look at the wall of, you know, a circle of confidence. I think that Susan said she's really good at what problems, How about you do connect and then at the end like, hey Michael, what's your one word check in, I'm excited. 00:19:10 So we had this whole conversation that was less than two minutes, told them what to do, made them feel empowered and connected them with someone. This is how I see the world becoming. I know it sounds lofty but that is that's why this is a movement, it has to be across all dynamics of a person's life. Yeah. And I like it because it doesn't, it's not, it is a beautiful kind of like dream and and kind of goal and I do think it's also realistic, like you said, because there are clear steps and you're connecting them with people, you're making clear the people in their lives who can be part of that circle of confidence and then you're like in that example you're modeling, look at the wall, we've already established these people who can help. And so you're not just saying like go do this thing, you're giving clear kind of processes and supports and I like that so much and at the end of it doing the one word check in. So I know when you leave, like sometimes teachers give instructions and the thing the child got it, but we don't know if they did or not because of the child that confused. 00:20:13 I'm gonna spend that extra, you know, minute or two helping them. I think the one word check in is just a game changer and so we do a confident mindset, We do a lot of like common language. So everybody in school knows it and then if your mom is taking the same sort of program at work, she knows what a one word check in is and that's how we bring everybody on the same page. I love that and I think we spoke a little bit already about mindset, but I just wanted to open it up because I know mindset is really critical to the work that you're doing and this program. So I was just curious to know if you had more to say on that idea of a confident mindset, you know, a confident mindset, thank you for asking me that something was so passionate, so close to my heart. It's just a way of life, right? It's how I get up in the morning, how I make my bed, you know, how do I go to school? You know, how do I eat in the lunch room? It's all a confident mindset. So when we do, we know when we work with educators and you know, principals in school, we tell them that this is not an extracurricular activity. 00:21:16 This is part of the who you are, the essence of the school, the fabric of the school, it's how a teacher communicates another teacher, it's how a student communicates to a teacher, it's how the student voice and their self reflection just becomes a part of who they are and what we do at school. So that's where the mindset comes before the skill set and unfortunately, you know, teachers are overwhelmed, there's so much on their plate, it's like test scores and you have to get this done and this is what the state requirements and this is what common ground, this is so much right, but if we take a step back and just do this set up as I call, like the setup, I believe that all the skills of the Children to learn will have a different outcome and that's why mindset has to come before skill set. That makes so much sense. Thank you for explaining that in a little bit more depth. I'm curious to know you already gave us this beautiful six step process and you gave us some great depth in each of those, anything else you want people to know in terms of those brave actions that either leaders can take to support their teachers in doing this work or teachers can take to support their students or even I know you mentioned several times like parents and caregivers, you know, um what what recommendations would you give for for any of that? 00:22:33 I love that question. So it's interesting, but when we go to a school, the first thing we do is we have, we work with the staff itself to uncover their, why not? Like if you believed in yourself, right? And if you face your fear, what would be your, why not? You know, what actual practice do you need to do? Who and who is in your circle of confidence, Who can you get a glow and a girl from and it's, it's interesting like I have to have teachers cry. I've had teachers like hug each other or me or whoever the conference creator is because once the voice, you know, I love your, you know, you talk the voice the voice of not only the student, the teacher matters to write, Once a voice comes out and our inner strength and, and, and areas where growth come out, it just opens up our mind. So in our world of mindset we focused on about, on why not? Like what's your, why not? What is your, why not Lindsay? Like right now, you know, what is your, why not? That's something that you think you want to do, but something that you're holding back on. 00:23:35 Mm my why not? I think for this year has been trying to peek into the keynote industry of conferences. I've done a lot of presentations, I do a lot of workshops but that keynote thing just feels kind of far away. It feels like, you know, for people who are much more professionally known where like educational celebrities and so it has not been something that I have tried out yet. Exactly. And and something that we would do together with a group of people would be like, okay, that's your so my why not is like really real and true to me, like my why not? Is like why not play golf? Like I've been, it's been like seven years that I've been trying to think about learning golf. Like I'm not gonna, you know what should, but I'm, if both of us told each other like look, we don't have to be good at this. Like I don't have to be the greatest of my keynote right now. But if I practice it, I'm going to get better and with each keynote I'm going to get better. You might be like, why not? Like I request you and I plead to you say why not? 00:24:36 And apply to the next conference? Not as you know, podcast, but as a keynote speaker right? And for me I'm like, I'm gonna sign up for golf lessons and I'm going to go up to practice and the next time I meet you, whether online, offline or whatever, I'll be like, I actually know what to do want, you know? So at a golf course. So I think it's important that you know, so when we do work with educators, we first work through their process because one the Aha moment comes to like each child also has a why not? Or maybe several. Why not? And the moment we are able to figure out this, why not? We unlock unmet potential. I believe you have so much unmet potential as a keynote speaker that you know, you probably don't realize it, but I see it. But once you face your fears, you'll know that it's there for you. Hey, it's Lindsay just popping into this conversation to say today's free resources and there are tons are provided by the media, we can find posters, confidence cards, all sorts of stuff for instilling a confident mindset in our Children in her website. 00:25:40 You also have an opportunity to sign up for monthly freebie. So there's an ongoing, amazing nous that can happen. So go to www dot lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 103 back to the conversation because I feel now, you know, so talking about circle of confidence, like in my mind as I'm talking to you, you know, I wanted to be part of my circle of confidence, but the way I look at circle of confidence, I on my own unilaterally can't say, oh lindsey is part of my circle of confidence after the podcast, I have to reach out to you and say, hey Lindsay was nice connecting with you, Do you think that you could be my rock or champion for this? And is it okay if I reach out to you and that's the other layer we teach Children is like, look just in your mind thinking that uncle john's going to help you is not enough. Have you talked to Uncle john, have you asked him, have you told him exactly? What are a few things you might reach out to him? Because when you need him, he knows what you're calling. So we make Children go through this whole exercise of actually reaching the rocking champion and asking them ahead of time because when you are in a tight spot, that's not the time you want to go over your story. 00:26:50 So I think having support systems, like just think about it if pre covid we had the support system, how different with the outcomes have been. So that's why I believe that, you know, having the circle of confidence and I said, yes, you know, I'm gonna lean on you. Perhaps you lean on me. Isn't that how we made this world a better place? Absolutely, yes. What a great idea. And such a valuable again, like to every age group, this is a valuable skill to be able to have awesome. So I imagine that there are many challenges that people name and I think you mentioned overwhelm a little bit. I don't know if you want to expand on that one. But I think any work that we do when we're trying to make the world a better place, we're trying to advance justice. We're trying to, you know, help you feel affirmed and confidence. What challenges have you seen and how have you seen people kind of face them address them? What does that look like? So I'm just gonna ask you a question for this. Are you asking me how they received the program or like can you dive a little deeper into this question? Oh yeah. 00:27:51 When when looking at kind of okay, so I want to teach for example, I want to teach confidence and I want my students to kind of follow these six steps. What is kind of the thing as teachers are kind of maybe listening for example to this podcast or an educator um leader is listening to the podcast and like yeah, I want to do this uh here the reason to hear the barriers to kind of doing this work in my school or something. Right? Like what is that typically for people And then how do you kind of help them through it or what recommendations would you give to someone who's feeling that particular barrier? Absolutely. The first and foremost is that adults love putting pressure on themselves right there. Like I have to be confident if I'm not confident in how can I need a child to be confident And that's what I alluded to earlier. You are all you need to be is a well meaning adult. Right? I love acronyms by the way, the whole program has acronyms right? Confident. My so called ACM actions a practice there called a O. P. You are a W. M. A. A well meaning adult if you are a well meaning adult, that's all I need because here's a step by step program. So please Dear teacher, Dear Principal, dear curriculum director, your personal confidence. 00:28:56 Side note side note my change after you start teaching the program, but that's not a prerequisite, right? Because first of all, you're gonna, you're gonna realize that the meaning of confidence is very different than what you thought. The second barrier that people feel is like I am so busy now. One more thing really, you really want me to do this too, and I think that, you know, once you understand it's a mindset shift, that's a forever change, like a forever change that has to be done once and every school year, the child is just learning deeper and deeper about a confident mindset, the onboarding is not so much and and you yourself, you know, Mr and mrs teacher are also going to feel the positive change, you'll have a more confident classroom, a more confident school and when you go home you might have a more confident family because your sort of, your interaction with your own Children will change. So that's, you know, that's why that's the second thing, like I'm so over so over what comic, how can I do? 00:29:58 The third thing is this is all well and good, thank you for sharing your six steps now, how do I teach it? Right, So being an educator, what we do is, you know, it's very simple if you follow the process, it's really a step by step process, like going to the gym, you know, you have a warm up and then you learn the exercise and then you repeat it and then you have a coach who tells you how to make it better and it can happen. So it's it's doable and it kind of goes back to the first thing, believe in yourself, have the courage, have the character and have the commitment and you can make a school wide change, a classroom changing and hopefully personal change. I love that, thank you so much. We have talked about a lot of things in this episode and so I'm sure that ideas are kind of swimming around in people's heads and I'm wondering what is that one thing as we start to kind of wrap up the episode that you would encourage people to start with? What's that kind of like one next thing that people can do, can I just say to absolutely one is mindset comes before skill set as an educator, as a parent, as a professional. 00:31:05 First have a confident mindset or a mindset that's positive and then try to learn a skill set. The second is No one is born confident, but anyone can become confident, I love that, I feel like that should be on the banner of every school entrance, right? Like it's just one of those phrases that are amazing, that's the dream that's going to come true, Excellent that and what's your, why not? Which I also let's unlock your unmet potential by discovering it. Why not? I love that. So, we kind of talked already about our kind of what we've been learning about lately and what are Why not is within the episode. So I'm thinking I'm gonna I'm gonna end with two questions. One, I'd love to have you unpack this idea of the movements if you want to say more about that, I know you've mentioned start a movement and then I was thinking we could end with a one word check in for both of us because we could use the practice that you shared. Um so the movement again. 00:32:06 So like everything in my life, you know, everything is very organic. I didn't set out to start a movement. You know, it came to me, I I really believe I set out to, you know, instill confidence and people instilled confidence in me about what I'm doing, right? It came full circle. So, the movement to me means is every human being, irrespective of age, irrespective of our social economic background, is irrespective of our of our race or whatever diversity we have understands that are only mindset should be is to becoming the most confident self that we can become and that we are in control of that, we are in control of our own confidence journey. If we have courage to get started the character to lead our actions and the commitment to stay on task. It can happen, anything can happen, and that's what I believe, and that's what this movement can instill across all stratas of society. 00:33:09 I love that so much in terms of locus of control, right? Like we can control that. Like there's so much in the world that needs to be changed and we should be working towards that changed collectively as schools and districts. Absolutely right. That I think of that as like the kind of the circle of confidence, like these are some things we can do to support people in their journeys and at the same time what can we control is is I think a very positive thing to be able to focus on when sometimes other things beyond our control, just feel so overwhelming. Here's what I can do. Like, I think that's really positive. Thank you. Thank you. It's really cool stories of a little child, you know, I'm your champion, Like helping a student that's three grades older, you know, ahead of them in school because once you become a champion age is not a bar, a little kid can help a big kid, right? That's that's the movement about like everybody is empowered, Everybody has a mindset, let's change the world and we can do it. Yeah, I love that. I think about all the things I've learned from my students, I'm sure I'm going to learn from my kiddo, right? Like there's so much we can learn from young people, but so would you like to engage in the one word check in to kind of close us out here. 00:34:18 And I mean what my one word check in would be grateful. Oh, that's good. I think mine is going to be inspired. I'm feeling very inspired by this conversation and I'm sure other people are going to want to continue to feel inspired. I'm sure they are feeling inspired as they listen. So where can people find you online and connect with you further? If you just google a confident mindset, it'll tell you all about our movement, what we do, how we do it and why mindset comes before skill set. Excellent. I will link to that in the show notes and on the blog post. Prasad. Thank you so much for being on this podcast today. You've invited me Lindsay. Thank you so much. If you're leaving this episode, wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. 00:35:21 It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money if you can't wait to bring this to your staff. I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think Big Act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network, Better Today, Better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach Better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also want to check out this video on student voice in decision making:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
March 2025
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