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Dr. Darrin Peppard is a leadership coach, consultant, and speaker focused on organizational culture and climate. He’s the author of Road to Awesome and continues to be an educator at heart.
The Big Dream Every adult and kid in a school feels seen and valued and heard. Every single kid has an opportunity for a better tomorrow and to figure out what they’re interested in. No one gets put in a box. Mindset Shifts Required Develop portraits of a learner instead of portraits of a graduate! We can lead from the middle or the back. We don’t always need to lead from the front. Help teachers see what’s possible and give themselves permission to teach in innovative ways. Action Steps Hand over the curriculum decisions to teachers (e.g., to align curriculum and instruction to their three academies: Health, Energy, and Fire, Law, and Leadership). Dr. Peppard had three incredible leaders leading those academies, and just let them go. Of course, he was still in their classrooms all the time, but they led them. Protect and shield your staff from outside (and sometimes even inside) forces so they can do their work. Build a groundswell of interest. It can’t just come from just you; it’s gotta come from staff. Put a team together and invite someone who’s not an early adopter. Visit other schools doing great work with teachers. Ask: Who’s doing that well? Invite students from other schools doing the work you want to do to talk to your students and families. One Step to Get Started Have a vision. Be clear about that vision. What’s the shift in reality you want to see in your school for your kids? You can then make decisions about where to allocate your time and resources to make it happen. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on www.roadtoawesome.net or @DarrinMPeppard on social media. You can get the revised edition of Dr. Peppard’s book here. To help you be the best leader you can be, Dr. Peppard is sharing his free ebook on 5 mindsets to level up your leadership. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 115 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, I have the honor of interviewing Dr Darren Peppard who is a leadership coach, consultant and speaker focused on organizational culture and climate and coaching. Emerging leaders. Darren is the best selling author of the book Road to Awesome a title I Absolutely Love and is the host of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. As a quote recovering high school principal daren shares strategies and lessons learned from 26 years in public education to help leaders gain clarity by joy in their work and walk and their purpose. He shares so many examples today, not just advice and tips and strategies which I love, but also how he actually saw them play out in his experience as a leader. I'm so excited for you to hear this conversation with Darren. Let's get right to the episode, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher 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. 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. 00:01:05 If you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go there and welcome to the time for teacher podcast. Well, thank you, Lindsay. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you today. Me too. And I'd love for you to just share anything that you want listeners to know prior to having that conversation, what's important to keep in mind. Yeah. So I think maybe the thing to keep in mind about me is I did spend 26 years in public education, like everything from, from middle school classroom teacher all the way up through superintendent. But even though I'm now, you know, in that leadership coaching space and the, the speaker space and, and that kind of thing, I still consider myself a public educator. I, I, I go to school in a different way now. I don't go to, you know, the same school or the same office every single day. I get a chance to go to schools all over the country. So, but, but I do still consider myself a public educator and I always will. I love that. Absolutely. It resonates a lot for me as well. Right. We're, we're working in and recording right now from our home offices and it is something that is, is really nice to still be in touch. 00:02:13 With schools. I think one of the big questions that I have around freedom dreaming, which is a concept that a lot of people have written about. But Doctor Bettina Love, I think describes it really well. She says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. I always love to hear what people's freedom dreams are for the system of education or, or if you have a specific school district in mind that you know, you worked in, that you want to talk about. Well, what's that big dream you had specifically around the area of, you know, curriculum and instruction and, and that day to day piece, I think a big part of that dream for me starts really with the culture of the school and, and in that culture, every adult and every kid feels seen and heard and valued and trusted in their school. Uh If we start there, so many amazing things can open up. Um I, I'll talk in a minute, I'll, I will jump a little bit on the curriculum and instruction piece and, and go back to my time as both an assistant and, and high school principal. But specific to um injustice, whether that's racial injustice or it's uh gender injustice or gender identity injustice. 00:03:22 If, if we see people as human beings, if we just simply start there, then I think that allows for, for any of those dreams to open up and it's not necessarily let's let's tear education to the ground and start over again. I think, I think some people, if you ask them, you know about the dream, it would be, oh, we do this different and this different and, and certainly there are things we need to do differently. But to me, it just starts with remembering that, that our work is about human beings. And if we see everyone as a human being and we value them and trust them and see them and hear them, then man, what a magical place, school can actually be. It could be a place where a kid every single day, every single kid has the opportunity for a better tomorrow. And that's what it's all about, you know, no more, no more. Trying to put everybody in a box and say, you know, this is what this is what a graduate should look like. Uh We, we actually did some of that work when I was a superintendent and if I stray too far, please pull me back to the curriculum piece I want to talk about. 00:04:24 But um we did some of that work when I was a superintendent around the profile of a graduate and many schools do this. There's a lot of great research work grounded in developing your profile of a graduate, but I never felt that that was appropriate and we ended up shifting and this wasn't an original thought in my head. I'd seen this actually in another district uh that I was doing some coaching with, we actually focused on the profile of a learner because to me, profile of a graduate is only about the end, the end product and a graduate, it's not an end product. A graduate is just simply somebody beginning their journey away from, from public school. Right? So if we focus on, you know, what do our learners, what are our learners look like? And, and I don't mean physical attributes, I mean, what does learning look and smell and feel and, and sound like? Um, that made a tremendous difference, I think in the work that we were doing because now a third grade teacher could really understand, OK, a profile of a learner at third grade, this is, this is what learning looks and smells and feels and sounds like same thing for a middle school teacher or high school school teacher or whatever the case may be. 00:05:36 So, as I said, I knew I was going to squirrel a little ways away. But I, I think the dream is really, you know, one, yes, everybody is seen and heard and valued and trusted and two, we're not putting people in a box. You know, we're actually giving people an opportunity to find out what they care about, what they're passionate about what they're interested in because that's really what education should be. Yes, kids need to be, to be able to do math and they need to be able to, you know, be literate and find a passion for reading and all of those different types of things 100%. But what it really is is we should all find what we care about, what we're interested in and look at, look at the jobs right now, like the big, big jobs they didn't exist long ago. Right. And a lot of that is because somebody kind of had a dream or an idea or a thought of this is where we could go and if we allow people to step outside of the box, we can get there. So now I'll, I'll use that. Um, my, my own dovetail there. Um, I can't believe I set myself up so well. Um, I must be a podcast host, right? 00:06:39 Um, I'll use that to, to talk a little bit about, um, some work that in the curriculum instruction space specifically as a high school assistant principal and then as a principal, we found that our students across the board were pretty disengaged and we weren't, we really weren't preparing kids for what was gonna come next. And, um, we started doing a little bit of research around. Um, this was the time when the, when the career or college readiness phrase came out. I hated the, or, um, I don't really like career and college ready either. Uh I'm not a fan of either of those phrases. Um, but I digress, we, we started to focus on what were the career interests that our kids had and we had been doing this interest survey stuff all the way back to the time they were in seventh grade. So we had longitudinal data for years on our students and ultimately created three different uh career pathways within our high school. 00:07:40 And we weren't a real big high school. We were about 13, 1400 students, a smaller community, 25,000 people. But we were able to connect with the passions and the interests of our kids around the health care industry, which is a massive industry. Um because this is Southwest Wyoming um uh natural resources um and energy huge if, if it comes out of the ground and we use it to, to power anything it's found in Southwest Wyoming. So um having that particular um career pathway for our kids was huge. And then a third one for our kids was um uh fire law and leadership and really giving kids the opportunity to pursue um whether it was, you know, law enforcement, military um government, you know, politics, all types of different, different interest spaces and a lot of people have done that and that's not the unique thinking. The unique thinking was turning it over to our teachers and allowing a language, arts teacher to shape their curriculum around the health care industry or shape their curriculum around fire law leadership or, or um energy and natural resources so that, you know, you don't have to read, you know, To Kill a Mockingbird. 00:09:00 Is there another book that, that can give you some of the same things? And I'm, I'm probably crossing, crossing the two books in, in the wrong spaces. But in, uh, the Natural Resources Academy as an example, instead of To Kill a Mockingbird, they read a book called The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind. And there's, there's some similar themes there. If those are the two books that, that were the crossover, I can't remember. But uh but nonetheless, the, the big piece was turning over the curriculum to those teachers. Again, our, our teachers see heard, valued and trusted. We believe in you go make this fit, go spend the time with the business partners, spend the time with the kids so that we can make this, you know, to where we're not just putting kids in a box and oh, by the way, their test scores went up and grad rates went up and all that kind of stuff. But more importantly, we got a chance to really touch kids, you know, in terms of finding their interests and the successes have been incredible for those kids. So I, I don't know if that was the dream or that was the outcome. 00:10:03 I don't know. But uh you let me go and I just kept going. I love it. And there's so much in there. I just think about a profile of the learner first off, like amazing shift from profile of a graduate, right? We what we want to be as human beings is learners. And I like love that human centeredness as well. I think if you ask any teacher to think about individual students that they're connected to, regardless of identity, they want the best for those students. And it's like seeing those students at the center of every decision is what enables us to do things like just a centered education. And then also like thinking about from an adult standpoint and, and a, a leader standpoint as a leader of staff, that idea of a profile of a learner for staff as well, right? Like for everyone in this community, not students. Yeah, like, oh my gosh, just like so cool. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, and, and maybe you should, you should consider having him as a guest on your show. There's a superintendent in Texas named Wade Stanford who took this work and he was a guest on my podcast very early. Uh I, I can't tell you what episode it was probably in the 1st 10, but the profile of a learner concept and actually put it on his head and said, now let's talk about a profile of a learner or rather a profile of an employee in our, in our school district. 00:11:18 And it's amazing how for him and for that particular district, it has become, you know, everything has turned over to them. Um You know, I, I talk a lot about leadership. Of course, that's my big passion. And um in my new book, I, I, I talk about three leadership positions leading from the front, the middle and the back when, when we can do that, that's really allowing us to lead from the middle and from the back. Because leading from the front, there are times when you really have to do that, but leading from the middle and from the back is where true leaders really stand out. And, you know, in, in the case of what, what Wade has done in his district, um What, what we were able to do um at Rock Springs High School where I was, the principal was, we turned it over to the staff, we let them run with, with what they cared about. Their passion started to come through and something that, that you said to kind of start this portion, um they built relationships, you know, it's, it's all about relationships again. I mean, if we're, we're in the people business and if we focus on really building, you know, those relationships where true trust exists, that's, that's when we start to see really cool and innovative things happening in our schools and really cool outcomes for our students. 00:12:32 You know, I mean, students are gonna to take risk in a classroom where they don't feel trusted and teachers are gonna to take risk in a, in a school where they don't feel trusted. So it's, it's all about relationships and I could talk about relationship for hours. Hey, everybody. It's Lindsay. Just popping in here to say that Darren Freebie for you is an ebook on leadership. You definitely want to check it out. You can grab it at our blog post, Lindsey Beth lions dot com slash 115. Back to the episode. I, there's so much in here that I want to unpack. So I think there are several components to, I imagine what a shift because I imagine, and I'm guessing here that you went from a shift of like maybe things used to be traditionally in that school or in the district kind of ben top down and leading from the front and then there was a shift to let's hand it over to the teachers and let's let them go or, or had it always been that way? Oh man, I'll tell you what I, that's, I love that question. Um And I'm gonna chase this all over the place. So first of all, I would tell you that there was still a lot of traditional, you know, school happening in our high school, even while this was happening. 00:13:40 And there was, it, it was a really interesting leadership balance for me which pushed me into that leading from the front spot quite often because we had very traditional thinking teachers that, you know, mostly stand and deliver. Um You know, we, you know, kids need to know this curriculum specifically, you know, I must teach Julius Caesar, you know, those types of things. And at the same time, I had this, this parallel of, you know, roughly half of my school in these three academies. Um but I also had other departments who had kind of taken the, hey, so will you let us do some of this with us, you know, with, with our department or with this or with this? Absolutely. You know, go for it. Now, as far as the leadership at the district level, I went through three superintendents in six years as a principal. So the first principal or the first superintendent. Absolutely, he was all about it. Um His third son was part of the very first health academy cohort. 00:14:43 He's actually now a doctor. Um And so, so he was all about it. He, he bought in, he believed in what we were doing. The second superintendent, he supported it. Um His leadership was, was really bizarre, but from, from that perspective, you know, he supported it. They even had some input on as we were developing that third academy, the uh fire law and leadership academy, third superintendent, not at all, 100% top down leadership. And that I think, I think that kind of made some things struggle. Uh and it made it a little bit more difficult to, to completely turn over or keep that, that leadership turned over. Um because in, in some ways as the leader of the building. Um, you know, you always want to protect and shield and maybe that's not the right words to use but protect and shield your staff from those outside, outside forces so that they can't do their work and having to protect and shield them from within. 00:15:45 Seemed a little bit odd. Um, and I think that that kind of pulled me in directions that made it a little bit complicated. Um, but all that said in those three academies, I had three incredible leaders leading those academies and I just let them go and just let them do their work and, you know, we stayed in contact all the time. It was in their classrooms all the time, but because I could really let them leave their space from the front, um, it, it gave me the opportunity to maybe kind of focus on those other things that were not necessarily trying to stop that work, but just cling to that old traditional way. And I, I'm not one who really buys in too much to the old traditional way. Although I will say this in, in all fairness. I was probably that teacher in the classroom at least until maybe my last year or two. You know, because I didn't know any better. Right. You know, but once we know better, we do better and, you know, going through that whole process, I was an anatomy and physiology teacher. 00:16:50 I would have loved to have taught in our health academy. Oh my gosh, I would have loved to have taught in our health academy but I, I think I'm way off the answer. Uh here on, on this one, not at all. I I two things I'm thinking so one kind of like situating yourself as like a leader who has a leader above them, who may or may not be supportive of the work and then also staff who are working within the school, who may or may not be into this kind of shared leadership dynamic where the teachers have kind of this control to pursue. And like it's really interesting because one thing that I think I I've always called it like admin as buffer and that you were kind of talking about the shield like, right, so this buffer space and then also this idea of like, didn't know any better yourself as, as kind of the rationale for like, well, this is why traditional practices happen. I'm wondering if you saw the same thing in your staff that were still the traditional mindedness. And if seeing the possibilities of what could be better in those academies was kind of the shift that some of those teachers needed. Did it work for everyone? Were there are some people who are still very much, you know, I'm just curious what that dynamic was like. 00:17:55 No, absolutely. I think that's a great question. And um let me just tell a really quick story and then I'll come back to that because it'll, it'll dovetail into both. Um, as a superintendent. Um, I, I came into a district that was really small, uh, under 450 students, two campuses and weren't gonna be able to necessarily recreate that work, which, which wasn't really what I had in mind, but we did end up going down a pretty beautiful road towards allowing our students into, you know, into internships into some job shadowing spaces and those kinds of things. But it began with a district wide shift to project based learning and same type of thinking, same type of leadership in terms of giving the giving the teachers permission to not say, ok, it's Tuesday. I have to be on page 78 of my book. But rather, you know, let's let our kids show us how they or what they have learned instead of let's just, you know, have them do it this way. 00:18:57 So in both cases, both at Beth, as the principal and as the superintendent, there were certainly those, those who were inside of the academies, those who were my, my, my lead team on the project based learning stuff. Absolutely. They were all in, I mean, they were, they were the proverbial choir right. There were times where at the high school level that I had teachers who, who taught in the academy and then, you know, taught classes outside of the academy, they didn't just teach health academy courses or, or Energy Academy courses, whatever. And some of them, their non academy courses still were very traditional. Um, and I, I think in some cases it was just, they needed permission to use that stuff somewhere else. You know, it, it wasn't, well, but these aren't my, these aren't my health academy kids or these aren't my, my, my fire law kids. So, what good teaching is good teaching and if it works for them, why wouldn't it work over here? Um, the, the PB L stuff was the same way. 00:20:01 Um, I think there were some teachers who thought, oh, because we've done all this, this training and stuff at PB L. I have to use PB L all the time. And first of all, if, if, if you're like in a district or, or somewhere where that, that PB L is just now starting to get off the ground, the answer to that is no, you don't. In fact, you can't, you can't, you know, even, even go to, you know, some of the absolute top PB L schools in the country and I, I've been to all of them. Um, they don't even do PB L 100% of the time, you know, they, they just don't, you know, I mean, there, there's always something in, in transition and some other ways that, that learning takes place anyway for, for both sets, uh, in both, in both settings. A lot of it was permission to, to do that outside of, you know, that specific setting and it wasn't necessarily permission from me or, or when I was as sued, permission from their parent or from their, their principal, it was like permission from themselves to do that. 00:21:02 I, I think that's like to me it was one of the coolest teacher efficacy things that, that I'd ever seen and, and just having some conversation, that's why I love this question. I'm thinking about two specific teachers, uh, that were academy teachers, uh, when I was at the high school level that did some amazing things inside the academy and outside it was back to the traditional and just having conversations with them. It was like this light bulb moment for them. Like, oh, I can do that. Why not? Why wouldn't you? Oh, ok. Oh, so if I do that then, and then here it came, you know, all of a sudden it was, you know what? I have an opportunity to do some cool things for my kids and the other challenge that they, that they would face too. I heard this from a couple of people, um, that were academy and then non academy classes, the students expectation of how they were going to learn, felt different in non academy versus academy classes because the academy kids, they just expected it. Everything we're gonna do. We're gonna do some kind of a presentation or we're gonna have, you know, we're gonna have to speak. 00:22:05 Usually we're gonna speak in front of business partners because I'll tell you what our kids that came out of the academy because public speaking was incredible for them, every one of them. But our, our non academy kids and we do this across the board in education. We, every now and again, we'll tell the kids. Yeah, they have to give a presentation and we grade their content. We don't grade their ability to give presentations. We don't really, really push for kids to be successful public speakers and that's a huge skill that can easily get overlooked. That's why I was in love with the PB L stuff. As, as a superintendent was, you know, kids are gonna have to speak about the work they're doing. That's why I love the internships and, and, and being able to do job shadowing and stuff. Kids have to be able to speak and communicate and I'm sorry, there's not a standardized test for that. They just have to do it and experience it. So there you go. Absolutely. I'm hoping my dog is not super loud in the background here. Um We will uh I, I wanna like dive into this idea of like actions, person listening right now. 00:23:12 They're like, yep, I wanna try that. What does the action, what actions did you take to kind of help support that transition or help, support the teachers who might be like, I don't know. Right. Yeah. So um Oh, man, that's, that's such a great question. I think, I think some of it with, with the career academy stuff. I kind of came into that. Um, we were just starting to take the steps into that and because the seed had been planted, I was able to just take the ball and run. Um, when I, so when we really moved forward, I had transitioned from being the assistant principal in charge of discipline and tenants to the A P in charge of curriculum instruction, special programs and, and that the academy work was gonna fall under that. So for me, it was sit down with the guys who are gonna be, um you know, leading this work, start to identify those people and say, ok, let's get after it, you know, let's, let's get to those schools that are doing this work, let's do our homework, let's get our teams together. Let's say, hey, we have a year of planning, but we are gonna roll this out in the fall. 00:24:17 Let's be committed. And now let's start to put the actions in place. Let's start to talk about what are the things that need to happen if, if there's somebody out there who's like, man, I'd really love to do career academy stuff. Just reach out to me. I, I'll walk you through exactly how we did it. I'll even tell you what schools we went to. Um and some schools that are doing it that we didn't go to that. I didn't know about at the time that I do, you know, uh happy to share those too. Um As far as the PB L work again, it was very similar and let's build a ground swell of, of interest, you know, if it just comes from me and leaders, this is so huge. I, I had a, had a great conversation with one of my former high school athletes that's now an assistant principal and she was struggling with. I know what I need them to do. But how do I, how do I? Yeah, it's obvious what we need to do. Why won't they do it if it comes from you, it just you, yeah, you got your people who carry the flag, they'll do it for you and you have your people who will never do anything because it came from you. 00:25:22 It's gotta come from them. And so in both cases, but I'll, I'll talk specifically to the PB L stuff. I loaded a team of eight or nine and we headed off to California. We went to either three or four different project based learning schools. Um And, and I was doing this across the district. So I had elementary teachers, I had middle school teachers and I had high school teachers. I had administrators at counselor. Um you know, and it was OK, let's go ask all the questions. I don't know all the questions, you know what my high school counselor asked, I wouldn't have asked those questions, but he asked some great questions. You know what, my third grade teacher who was on the trip asked, I wouldn't have asked those questions, you know, and, and so forth. So put a team together and, you know, find at least one person to invite onto that team and keep inviting until you get a Yes. That's not necessarily the people who carry your flag. You know, because if it's just the people who, you know, who are in that, that 10% you know, your, your, you know, your, your leaders, you know those ones who, who are, hey, we're gonna do this. 00:26:31 Boom, I'm, I'm back in my classroom doing that right away. You know, if it just comes from them, you know how this rolls Lindsay, right? I mean, especially the bottom 10% and, and by bottom, I mean, you know, when we, when we think about the implementation uh group, so the True Laggards, they're looking at that group like that ain't happening, you know. Oh, here they go again. Look, you know, it's Lindsay and Darren, you know, boy those two, those two brown noser. So, you know, make sure that you're getting somebody or a couple of some from kind of that middle group that, that group that will be kind of your mid to late adopters and get their buy in because if you have those people buying in, you know, that that increases the likelihood of success because it's not just your, you know, your bluebird group that uh that's doing that. So that would be my advice on that and get lots of help, you know, talk to other people who have done that work. Don't do it alone. 00:27:33 The road map exists for whatever it is you're trying to do the road map exists. Go find those people and learn from their road map. Oh my gosh, brilliant. And I love that it's like people are already doing this stuff, go seek them out, go literally visit and sometimes it's not even like another state. Sometimes it's a district down the road or something, right? Like reach out and ask who's interested in even doing a swap. Like we're doing some cool stuff too. Wanna see our academies, you know, like I think that idea of you can go beyond your own district or, or within a district, you can go to multiple campuses and there's so much brilliance, we can just seek out and learn from with like amongst each other. It, it just is so often overlooked and it makes me sad, but I'm happy. You said it. Well, yeah, it's, you're right. I mean, there's, there's so many incredible things that are out there happening and you know, with uh with our career academy work as an example, you know, we went and saw a whole lot of people and when we first we did our very first recruiting. So, like we had to recruit kids to, to be in this. And we were, um, we were gonna do two sections of, of each academy at each grade level and year one was only sophomores at, you know, and we had two academies. 00:28:42 So we're, we're talking, you know, 54 kids and 54 kids. So 100 8 kids total out of 1400 kids are gonna get into this. These first two cohorts in, in health and energy. And we were like, well, how do we get the kids excited about this? You know, we went to these schools, we saw them but we can't load our kids up and take them. So we reached out to a couple of those schools and said, is there any chance you could come to us? And so they did, you know, we had four people from, you know, from one of the, the health academy schools. We'd seen him when four from uh from an engineering uh academy school come to us. But even better, they each brought seven kids. And so we had kids on the stage, you know, sophomores through seniors from California. Both both of the schools were in California sitting on our stage, you know, and they're telling our kids their stories. We don't have to tell the stories, let those kids tell the stories and even better. That night when we held our very first parent meeting about this, the parents got to hear the stories from these kids. 00:29:50 I mean, they, they're seeing somebody who looks just like their kid telling that story. I'm, I'm getting goose bumps right now. Lindsay telling you the story and this was in 2009, 2010, something like that. And I'm, I'm getting goosebumps right now because of, of just that particular evening and, and I remember listening to those kids and I, I will never ever forget that I could walk to the exact spot in the auditorium with Ted Schroer, our first Energy Academy director, Bruce Metz, our first health academy director and myself watching these kids talk and Ted crying and Bruce saying, do you think we'll ever have kids who can speak like that? Lindsay the very next year we had kids who spoke exactly like that. In every single year our kids were speaking all over the place you know about, about that heck, the US Department of Education came and saw us, you know, and then we had Arnie Duncan in our building calling us an Island of Excellence. Yeah. 00:30:51 And my point behind this isn't, you know, hey, yay us, my point is back to what you said this is happening in other schools everywhere. We had people coming to see us like crazy, you know, word got out. Hey, spring has got some cool stuff going on. You know what? We were still going to see other people on other projects. You know. Yeah, this is going really cool. I want to do more in our A P programs who's doing that. Well, I want to do more in, fill in the blank, you know, who's doing that? Well, let's go see it. Let's go, whether we have to get in a car or get on an airplane or whatever it is. Heck, now we have zoom, we didn't have zoom then, you know, but go see it, go hear it because way back to something I said earlier when we talk about the dream, you know what, what, what learning looks and feels and smells and sounds like you go into those schools. Oh man, all of a sudden those people and this is why you get those, those kind of mid and late adopter people in the room, they feel it, they feel the energy, they hear the stories from the kids and unless you have a heart made of stone, in which case, you're probably not an educator. 00:31:59 That's, that's what gets you to say. Ok, I have a dream for my school. Now. I have a dream for my classroom now and it's powerful. It's super powerful. Yeah, I I just think about like again back to your initial point about humanizing like everything, right? And like we are, this is a human centered business or, or whatever the exact phrase love you use. That's it, right? Like how do we bring to life like the students at the heart of what's possible in these other schools center their voices. Like we don't need to do convincing, we just need the students to be able to talk and we need to get opportunities for that. Right. Like, oh, yeah, as we kind of go to wrap up the episode, I think there's so many things that you have shared. I'm wondering for the listener who's like, ready to go, ready to do something. What's like step one? Like, what's the first thing to get started on this path that you would recommend? Yeah, I think, I think the number one thing is to just get some clarity, you know, what, what is, what is your dream, what is your vision for, for your school? You know, just, just because at my school, we had this vision for, for those academies as, as an example and, and that one wasn't my vision. 00:33:08 I, I got to join in, but that honestly, that was a brilliant man named Ted Schroeder. That was Ted's vision and by the way, a classroom teacher, his entire career, brilliant classroom teacher, Ted's vision came to life. So it doesn't have to be a principal. It doesn't have to be an A P, it doesn't have to be an instructional coach. Um, it happened because we listened to Ted so be clear about that vision, if you can get really clear about, you know, this is, this is the shift in reality that I want to see happen at our school for our kids. If you get that, then you can start to be really intentional about the actions that you'll take, the behaviors that you'll have. The, the words that you choose to use and where you decide to allocate your time to try and make that reality come true. But if you don't have the clarity first, if it's just, oh, hey, I've got this cool idea. And Lindsay, I'm as abstract random as they come. So like I'm really good at, oh my God, I have this cool idea but I have to always make sure I get that clarity around. 00:34:10 OK. Here's where I, here's where I really see it. Now, let's, let's talk about what do I have to do to be intentional? And a big part. I I already talked about it so it won't be labored is you gotta get people who buy into your vision too as a part of that. Oh My gosh, love it. Um Our two final questions here. One just for fun. What is something you're learning about lately? I think everyone who comes on here talks about learning in some way. You talk about portrait of a learner. What is it? You're learning, you know, the big thing that I am learning, you know, now that I'm in this, this entrepreneur space or educ space. Um like you, I'm learning so much about the business side of this work, you know, the the leadership stuff. Yeah. I, I've learned a ton of that. I'm still learning that, by the way. I mean, it's not like, ok, I've got that. I'm good. You're always learning that. But I'm really intentional now around learning how do you build a successful business from the ground up? You know, and how do you, not only from, you know, understanding, you know, and how to, you know, do your taxes and, and pay for your insurance and I mean, those kinds of things. 00:35:24 But also like, right now I know you and I are, are part of a group that the rene group to, to teach better. And I'm really focusing on content marketing and learning about content marketing. Podcasting is a huge part of that. You are, you and I are both podcasters, but I'm, I'm really learning a lot and I'm loving it too around. How do you, how do you build this up? And what I love the most is there's not like a specific model, you know, I mean, we've read a plan, we've read, you know, Gary V, you know, we're, we're reading, you know, uh Joe Polizzi and there's a lot of commonalities there. But what I love the most and, and what I hear the most is it's all about being willing and this may be my biggest learning. It's all about being willing to view things as an experiment or view things as, you know, let's just see how this works, you know, what's resonating with, with people? What do, what do people really want support with, you know, um learning the lyrics is, is something that, that I know you and I've uh both been learning too, you know, what's, what, what are, what are the pain points and the pressures and the struggles for people now versus when I was in, you know, any of my leadership roles. 00:36:41 So that is really the big, the big thing I'm learning and, and obviously with, with the podcasting, I learn from my guests every single time I sit down and have conversations with them and, oh, there's so much learning there that it's too much to list. And speaking of where can people follow your podcast or, or what's the title of your podcast? Where can people reach out to you? And if you want to mention the ebook, I know we'll link to that in the show notes, but Darren has a resource for all of you listeners. Yeah, absolutely. So, um I'll just go in reverse order. So the e-book is uh walking in your purpose and what this really is is just five steps for leaders to gain clarity, to be intentional, to just find the joy in their job again, you know, to really walk in your purpose. That's, that's, that's where the title is, is actually coming from. And that, um I know you'll, you'll have the link for them um on that. Uh that can be found on our website just like everything else, which is road to awesome dot net. 00:37:45 Um That's a great way to get in contact with me. Every single page has a contact us button on it. So you can definitely do that. And when you first go there, um right away, you'll have a pop up, sign up for our email newsletter. Uh We, you know, we share a lot of content every single week and uh you know, a lot of good stuff there. Um social media, easy to get in touch with me on social media. I'm on every platform and it's at Darren M peppered on all of them. Um I tried to make that as simple as possible. And then the podcast, uh the podcast is titled Leaning Into Leadership. It's available on every platform out there. Um We are, let's see, as of the time of this recording, I think we just dropped episode 65. So we're just a little over a year uh in, you know, into this process and it just continues to grow and grow and grow. And um the purpose behind the podcast is great. Leadership is great leadership and it doesn't matter what walk of life you're in, we can all learn from each other. 00:38:48 Um So I've had law enforcement leaders, I've had business leaders, obviously, education leaders, higher education leaders. Um and you name it. Um And you know, it, it's so cool one of my favorite episodes is with, um, a county sheriff in Colorado who led his county through the second largest wildfire in the history of their state. Now in Colorado by proxy, uh, or by law, the county sheriff becomes the fire warden. And so he was in charge of this massive wildfire that, uh, just ripped, ripped through Grand Grand County Colorado. Uh, a couple of years ago, the leadership lessons in there are amazing and they're amazing for educators too. So that's the purpose and the premise of the podcast. And yeah, you can find that anywhere that uh that you have podcast. Amazing Darren. Thank you so much for being on the show. This is absolute pleasure. I learned so much. No, I did too. I really enjoyed it. Um It's, it's just always great to catch up with you and thanks for having me on. 00:39:53 If you're leaving this episode, wanting more, you're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. 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 w w W dot Lindsay beth lions 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:
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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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