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In this episode, we talk with returning guest Ari Gerzon-Kessler (check out our other discussion on episode 155). Ari has been an educator since 2000 and is currently an educational consultant working with schools and districts committed to forging stronger school-family partnerships. Ari is the author of On The Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together.
We frame this conversation about relational family engagement in light of the current political and educational climate we’re in. Drawing on personal experiences, research, and professional perspectives, Ari showcases how small, intentional efforts can profoundly impact school communities. Building a Foundation of Trust Ari opens our conversation by telling an anecdote about his daughter’s first day of school. After dropping her off when she was teary and worried, Ari, naturally, wondered how she’d settle in. Then, just a short while after, he received a text message from the teacher saying she was having a good morning and was able to pivot and settle into the class. That moment of intentional communication fostered a sense of trust, connection, and gratitude—creating a strong foundation for the parent-teacher relationship. This is a simple story to illustrate how important relational family engagement is in creating better education environments. Shifting Our Understanding of Family Engagement Ari wants to see a conscious shift from seeing family engagement as an outcome to a strategy—something we intentionally do. There is a lot of scholarship on what types of outreach, such as relationship-centered home visits, achieve positive outcomes like lower absenteeism. Beyond the mindset shift to family engagement as a strategy, it’s important to engage with the question, What is the purpose of family engagement? Many still see it as events, and whether or not the families attended. But this can be expanded to include day-to-day communication, relationship-building, and trust. These are the things that have more impact on children’s educational outcomes. It’s a shift to human-to-human connection rather than traditional event-based family engagement. Action Steps To build positive family-educator relationships, Ari draws on his scholarship and experience to offer a few action steps educators can take: Step 1: Break barriers and build trust by using team-building or ice-breaker activities at the start of any gathering instead of “talking at” parents. This is a great way to get people talking and laughing together. In a parent gathering, share names and something about their lives to connect on a personal level and build psychological safety. Step 2: Keep communication simple. A short text or photo to a parent can mean the world of difference and build a relationship of trust. Step 3: Implement relationship-centered practices, such as home visits or virtual meetings, to build meaningful connections with families. These interactions should prioritize listening and understanding family perspectives instead of the educator talking the whole time. Step 4: Follow through by creating a sense of continuity and being concrete with what you are changing as a result of gathering and hearing from parents. Without the follow-through on ideas and changes, you won’t build long-term trust. Step 5: Set aside time for positive outreach. Educators and administration can set aside time each month to send calls or text updates to families with children who are struggling to establish that open line of communication. Challenges? One of the main challenges is overcoming time constraints and existing structures that prioritize traditional engagement methods. Educators may also feel overwhelmed by additional responsibilities. However, by integrating relational practices into existing workflows and emphasizing the long-term benefits of trust and collaboration, schools can gradually shift towards more inclusive and supportive environments. One Step to Get Started To begin cultivating stronger educator-parent relationships, start with a simple step and ask families how they would like to communicate. This simple step demonstrates respect and consideration for family preferences, while also setting the stage for more personalized and effective interactions. Stay Connected You can learn more about Ari and his work on his website, Same Team Consulting, or connect with him on LinkedIn or by email at [email protected]. You can also grab a copy of his book, On The Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together, to get more practical resources and strategies for strong relational family engagement. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing 6 Practical Ways to Develop Authentic Family Partnerships Playbook with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 235 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. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) We're not on video at all, right. 00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Sorry, hold on, ari. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast, or I should say, welcome back to the Time for Teachership podcast. It's good to have you. 00:12 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) It's great to be here. Thanks, lindsay, I always enjoy our conversations. 00:16 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. I am really excited for kind of the frame for today. We won't ask the same questions as before, so people should go back and listen to the other episode, but you know, so much has been happening in the world with us individually, and so I kind of want to frame the context for us today. What do you think is important for folks to know in the audience, both in terms of, like, the hats we're speaking to today, but also kind of this idea of where we are as a nation and kind of as an educational kind of society or sphere of life here at this moment of recording in August 2025. 00:52 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Yeah, yeah, well, and I think most folks who've been following the news and feeling the impact of the shifting climate since just the last six months since inauguration, we know that attacks on education funding massive threats to kind of the safety and well, each month a lot of families are afraid and educators don't know how to support them. And you know, the heart of my work are these teams that bring immigrant families and educators together and there's this sense of, oh well, we, we can't deepen relationships, they're afraid to just come to school. And it's been fascinating to see that actually, as we've built initial rapport over the last year or two, that we're often getting more families that are afraid to come to school actually coming out, and I think that's in most communities. Speaking to the need, of course, the attack on DEI and the sense that, regardless of people's political beliefs around DEI, I think we all are on the same page of wanting to build cohesive school communities where everyone feels a sense of belonging, and that's really the heart of the work that I care about. 02:22 So that piece I hope is common ground, that all best practices that foster better relationships and trust are beneficial across the board, regardless of anyone's political affiliation. So, yeah, so those are some just quick reflections on the national landscape and how it's impacting, I think, our day-to-day work. And then I know you and I have talked over the years about the intersection of like being closely in connection daily with educators and then being parents working with the educators in our kids' schools, and I've had some a couple of just really meaningful, powerful experiences. Now wearing that parent hat, that's giving me insight on how to actually help other educators better support our families. 03:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, you had mentioned kind of the day one experience that you had with your child's school. Do you mind sharing that story? Yeah, no absolutely yeah. 03:20 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) So something that I often one of my top practices, I support schools with is increasing two-way communication and this piece that families are feeling flooded with too much communication and or they're feeling like the communication is not through the right channels. And I'm working on a piece for Agitopia right now on those two themes to themes. And so what I got to experience powerfully as a parent was day one, april 10th, my daughter's two and a half birthday. She was allowed to start school and she was nervous, pretty introverted at the time. I brought her to her first day of school and she was in tears not uncommon and I walked away feeling, of course, sad and anxious, really curious, like how her first day was going to go, and I jumped in my car, was driving to a meeting with all of our family, community liaisons, and as I arrived at that meeting I get a text from her teacher saying hey, selah is having, you know, like a wonderful morning. Now she was able to kind of pivot after a few minutes. I'll loop back with you again later in the day with an update. 04:37 So to get this text on day one built this sense of trust, connection, deep gratitude, that, like the teacher, in the middle of that morning was so thoughtful and aware that she reached out with a text instead of sending me an email five days later or whatever. And I shared that with the liaisons moments later at the meeting and said, hey, we've been working for a couple of years on trying liaisons at moments later at the meeting and said, hey, we've been working for a couple of years on trying to increase texting and reduce emails, because that's what our parents have been telling us again and again. Here is kind of proof in the pudding of what it feels like as a parent, and I now trust my daughter's school, you know, probably for years to come simply from that really positive start. So I just think that speaks volumes to intentionality and being proactive and why things practices like in the summer, calling all new families to welcome them for 30 seconds makes such a huge difference. 05:39 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh my gosh, thank you for telling that story and, in the spirit of Shane's Affair, called it story and teaching. I'll share kind of a similar my kids first school. When he was three months, he brought into kind of like the you know infant center or whatever and didn't ask like my name, his name, it was just kind of a drop off and it felt horrifying like he was fine, it was a great school, all the things, but like just that lack of communication. That lack of that contrasted with just around the same time, april of this past year, he switches to a new school, has the tears that drop off, is really nervous and they it was an email but I actually preferred email, so it was, it was perfect. And they sent me just like a picture of him playing with a toy and it was like he's fine, like you know. 06:23 You know it was a phrase, it was short, sweet, but it was like five minutes after drop off or something and it was like thank you, because now I don't have to worry all day long. And it's just the power of like where my mind went. It's funny, your mind went to like you were just going to something around family engagement. I was sitting there thinking, as an educator in a classroom, how great would it have been had I had the thought to be able to share directly with parents and family members to just say, hey, I know your kid came in having a tough day and like here's the great thing that they did today. Like even as a high school child right to be able to share that. I'm sure parents and family members would have totally appreciated that. 07:04 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Yeah, yeah, well, and you're sparking just two quick connections. One is positive outreach, which is the other in my top three practices. Positive outreach at any level. And I remember in the pandemic we established, you know, like here are the 150 high school students at this particular school, we want to re-engage and we did, you know, 20, 30 minutes a week of positive calls and that is so incredibly impactful. Yeah, and then, just you know, to your story of like the initial outreach, just that proactive piece can make such an initial difference. 07:42 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. And I think this kind of spins into our next thing about kind of the why. Why is it so important that family engagement is a priority amidst budget cuts, amidst all of the competing priorities that school districts have? And I know you know a lot of the research on this. Do you mind speaking to kind of the benefits of doing stuff like this? 08:00 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Sure, yeah, yeah, I think, lindsay, it's a conscious shift from seeing family engagement as an outcome and something we can kind of check boxes around to. You know, dr Karen Mapp and many others in our field have said it needs to be a strategy, not an outcome, and it's a strategy that drives all the outcomes we care about out. The third practice of my three actually comes up naturally now. You know, relationship centered home visits. That's not only the research has proven, it's great for academic learning and obviously for relationship building and trust. But when a few districts in California a year ago embraced that as one of their practices to reduce chronic absenteeism, it was remarkable. I mean, I read about this in New York Times last year they knocked their chronic absenteeism rates from 30 percent of their students down to 14 or 15 percent. So that's hundreds of students and families where those home visits made a pivotal difference. 09:07 Hands out to me is our paradigm around. What family engagement is that? I think to this day in most schools we still see it about events and did they attend. And the reality is, as you were just speaking to, like the day-to-day communication, the relationship building, trust is much more impactful, as well as things like the research shows that if we get parents talking about education with their kid at home and the value of learning, that does more than anything else to predict academic success, more than socioeconomic status, parents' education level host of things. So that's one piece. 09:42 And yeah, and I was sharing this with colleagues this week that you know, I worked with some teachers and principals in Boston last summer and we brainstormed what does family engagement look like at your school? 09:54 And when I was on my flight home to Colorado I looked at the list and it didn't surprise me but it really was stark. More than 90 percent of what they put on their list of what is family engagement were events. Of what they put on their list of what is family engagement were events. So it's really seeing the value of how do we shift towards more relational communication practices, which I know we'll dive a little deeper in. And I would say, on the event front, many of us can go to school events and not forge a stronger connection with the staff or with other families. So a lot of our family and educator together teams at 31 schools now in Colorado are looking at how do we reinvent events like back to school night, parent teacher conferences, to make them much more relationship building oriented and mutual and human to human, versus the traditional approach that's just not working for families and is usually unsatisfying for educators when we create spaces to hear their experiences of these events. 10:58 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, wow, that is. My mind is exploding right now with all sorts of ideas, but that that is so profound because I think about, you know, again, as a parent, showing up to preschool activities. Like there are some activities that I don't integrate, interact or engage with like another parent, a teacher or another child that my child is friends with, and it's like what, what was that versus? You know, having like a text thread or like a Slack coaching space or something, or, you know, whatever it is, some other means that's asynchronous. It might not be live, but it is. 11:27 You know, I often think about, like you know, I want to be seen as a person, as a family member as well, like I kind of want my child teacher to be, like hey, what do you do? Or like what's important to you, or you know these kinds of relational things because I feel like, without knowing them, you know, how do you, how do you best like have a values alignment when you're teaching my child? Right, how do you know that? Actually, I kind of reject the gender binary and I don't want to raise my child in a way that's very gendered, and like I have to actively write that in the forms when there's not a space for them, because that's not a question that someone asks, right, or there's no opening to have those kind of conversations, and so that relational versus like attendance at an event. I mean, we know with students at school you can attend school and not get very much out of it, right? Like where's the relationship, where's the engagement? That's deep and thoughtful. I love that shift. That's brilliant. 12:20 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Well, and I appreciate you sharing about wanting to be known and seen, because my older brother visited last week. I hadn't seen him in three years and he was in Canada the last seven years and we briefly talked about family engagement and what he said, you know, affirms what you were sharing and was really helpful for me because I'm always learning in this field. He said to me yeah, I went to an event at my kid's school and I wanted to get to know other families. I wanted them to ask about my hobbies, my strengths. I wanted to be able to share. I coach tennis. 12:58 I'd love to help the school, but instead the educators really, just as is commonplace at so many schools, followed the traditional mode of we're going to show we're experts and share a ton of information with you and not create the space. Um, and when I, you know, when I commented on that, he said I don't even think it was in their mindset that that they could create a more collaborative, humanistic space for sharing. And I also get as a former principal, there is this element of ooh, I'm going to have to release some control and that's tricky. Yet I also know that if we're intentional in creating nice structured spaces to hear more voices, that can also be fruitful and not, you know. Get off the rails. 13:49 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, that's a perfect segue. I would love to know from all the work you've done, like what are those ways that we do create those structured spaces for more relational dynamics and engagement with families and educators? What action steps do you have for us? 14:14 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Yeah, yeah. Well, in terms of the in-person gatherings, I mean, I think, one huge learning. What action steps do you have for us? The essence of these family and educator together teams that you know, I wrote about in depth in my book on the same team and they have really illuminated over hundreds of gatherings, what makes a difference for families. So instead of them coming into the meeting and listening to someone talk to them or at them, you know, for 10, 20 minutes this is so commonplace we start with a quick team building activity that you know some might call an icebreaker but gets everyone laughing often is a paired activity that goes across language, cultural, other boundaries and barriers. 14:57 And then we've learned again over the years to apply SEL best practices to parent gatherings, where we do an introduction circle where everyone shares their name, their child's name and something about their life and that builds the sense of okay, we're all humans here and have both rich differences and similarities, and it also creates much more psychological safety when everyone's brought their voice in. Briefly. When we're then inviting families in to share their input, they feel much more comfortable and since most of the families I work with have been marginalized in our school communities, it's just so important for us to be very thoughtful in the initial, say 20, 30 minutes of gatherings. And the last thing I would say that's really the essence of doing connection better is privileging relationship building, not going to content right away in initial meetings and then making sure that families' voices comprise as much or more of these gatherings than educators' voices, which really flips the traditional paradigm. So, yeah, I would say those have been some of the core pieces. 16:07 And a final one is you know, parents will lose trust in us if we don't show follow through. So, like creating some sense of continuity and getting concrete around, what are we changing as a result of what we learned from hearing everyone's perspective tonight? Because one of my failures as a leader of this work in the early, I'd say, three years was that we built great relationships and trust and that was a win in itself. But if we walked down the hallway to a random teacher's classroom and said, hey, it's April now, how are you doing family engagement different If they had not been a part of those gatherings? There weren't systemic changes. So I'm really keenly aware of like what can we easily and efficiently change at any given school that will have multiple benefits for ideally all members of the community. 17:01 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. 17:01 I think that is something I'm trying to work on as well as like how can we, both as a reflective opportunity but also as a measurement opportunity, just like reflect on and kind of codify like this is the change, and like report that right Of the family members and the educators? 17:29 Is there anything that you have found to be particularly successful in terms of like engaging family members who might have, like you talk a lot and write a lot about linguistic, like linguistically affirmative spaces and affirming spaces and having like translation and things like that. I'm wondering also about like time constraints and people who you know are like oh, I don't know if I have the time to like come in and be part of that. I know you've talked about like a childcare as like actually part of the whole setup and kind of infrastructure. I'm just thinking about some of the other constraints that educators might have in their minds or families might have in their minds. It's like, oh, I'd love to be part of this and I'm thinking about this challenge and wanting to know how do I overcome it or if there's like an alternative means of relationship building that might not be synchronous. I don't know. I'm thinking about a lot of questions at once. 18:19 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Yeah, no, absolutely I mean. Yeah, I mean one thought is that we're shifting our perspective as educators to appreciate more, you know, the linguistic capital and other capital that we often, you know, we often assume like, oh, that family speaks Spanish or Hmong, they're going to have a hard time connecting with us. Instead shifting to, like they have a bilingual, multilingual child, how can we connect with them and build a bridge to them, which means concrete things like that. They get a positive call too, because I, as an educator, tap the translation line to make sure that we're building that relationship. In terms of time constraints, I'm glad you brought that up, because if we're moving away from an event focus, um, and the reality is I'm busy in in my, my two jobs as an educator right now I can't go to, you know, this saturday's event at my daughter's school, which is like the welcome back community service thing, because I'm happening to take her to like an art class, which is not I'm not normally that kind of like ambitious parent on the weekends. It's usually about rest and hang out at home. But that transparency aside, my point is the small back and forth texts, powerful one line of like, like you were saying. 19:41 You also mentioned earlier the photograph. When I was with moms at one FET team gathering a couple of years ago and we said what would be most helpful, three out of three moms in that group shared stories of yeah, when the teacher just sent me a photo with a couple words, that meant the world. And I don't need all these long emails necessarily about curriculum. So that's one example. And and then I'm also thinking about other relationship building strategies that, again, referencing my recent experience as a parent, my child's teacher emailed me for the first time, you know, since last school year ended, and just asked two questions like what are you most excited about for this coming school year and what are you curious or concerned about this coming school year? And what are you curious or concerned about? 20:29 And I sat out, you know, at night for 20 minutes after my daughter was asleep, and it sparked deep, deep reflection I was able to share with her. You know, hey, I'm an educator too. You might be interested in connecting and and. So that was great that she didn't just inform me, she posed questions and and so, and between that, home visits, which again also can be virtual. I mean, they're not the same, but I've seen the power of identifying five families in your class that didn't come to back to school night and laying out, you know, a schedule of OK over the next two weeks. Here's some blocks where I'm going to try to connect for 15 to 20 minutes to do a virtual visit with families. I think those are some of the ways to ensure we're building trust with all of our families. 21:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. I think one of my takeaways from this conversation already that's such a simple shift is like, instead of talk, just invite a question. Like ask a question and invite a response. Like what a small shift, but what a powerful one. This seems like a good starter. I was going to ask you that's my one thing, what is your one thing? That like, if someone is like this feels really big, this feels like you know it's a big thing. 21:42 It's a long process to build like relational trust and all of the pieces. But you can start the momentum right. You can start with something. What would be that one thing for you that you would recommend to someone to just kind of start tomorrow? 21:55 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Yeah, no, I love that question and the timing is perfect because you know we're talking in mid-August, as school year kicks off in many states. I always say in August, the easiest and best thing you can do is just ask families how would you like me to communicate with you? And I've seen teachers leverage that information to realize okay, half of the parents want this info in an email, the other half want it in a text. It also just starts sharing power with the family where they can say you know like I'd love to be able to connect with you for five minutes once a month after school when you're saying goodbye to your students or shortly after. So I think that would be the one easy, easy question to ask families and, ideally, doing an inventory. 22:47 I talk about this when I do trainings on parent-teacher conferences. The word that comes to me is like and I did it myself the arrogance of us as educators to five, six weeks into school year to even say phrases like well, let me tell you about your child's strengths, and it's like OK, I've had my daughter or son at home for nine years and you're telling me about their strengths. So you know those inventories that make them easy on. You know families maybe ask five questions Like what are you most proud of your child about? What are your greatest hopes for their school year? Tell me a little about what they enjoy doing outside of school. Those can open up doors to just be a better teacher and support to that child and so that I guess that would be a parallel. What's one easy thing you can do. 23:41 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love those. I love that they're specific as well. Right here, if you're really like I've never asked families questions before like there you go, there's a bunch, you can just ask those now. I love that and I also am thinking that those are kind of some quick things that you can do for some longer things. I know you do coaching, you support school districts, you do kind of one-on-one stuff. What are some of the kind of range of things as an educator is listening or a family member who wants to advocate on behalf of, maybe, their child's school or school district, like, what are some of the ways that you or folks like you are kind of like supporting schools to do stuff like this? What are the options available for them? 24:19 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Yeah, yeah, and that's a great question. I mean, I would say we've touched on a number of these great practices right that can be woven in a principal can give teachers and teachers can advocate for this, or parents can 15 minutes once a month. The staff makes positive calls or they send text updates to kids who are struggling academically in a class, and I've seen it. Some of our middle schools, you know, that's a couple hundred families that get a call that afternoon. So there's all these practices that I, you know, coach and embed into trainings around. I know we're overwhelmed as a profession. How can we work smarter, not harder, and weave them in so it's not add-ons for educators to do, you know, in the evening and after school. 25:01 The other major piece that you know, I truly think is the game changer, is starting teams and creating these somewhat unique spaces. 25:11 Because what I found, lindsay, is that schools that do family engagement kind of a la carte or don't have a built-in space to discuss family engagement and to listen to families, just stay stuck in a traditional family involvement approach. 25:30 And these teams just literally creating 90 minutes once a month to come together, break bread, have dinner together, ask great questions, listen, you know, engage in team building activities is utterly transformative and I see these schools make five years worth of progress in six months compared to neighboring schools that don't have teams and don't create these spaces. So a lot of my coaching work is how do you launch a team? And you know my book is a step-by-step guide because after five, six years at 15 schools, I was like, wow, we have kind of a special sauce here. This is really needed in pretty much every school community to have this space. So I think that would be the heart of what I would encourage schools to really think deeply about and, if they have some sort of existing team, getting more clear on its purpose. And I'm doing some work this fall with some schools where they have a family engagement team, but they're doing so much around theories and frameworks and data and not doing the story-centered approach you were talking about at the beginning of our conversation. 26:42 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, that's a really good thing to highlight just that difference, right and like oh, we're just looking at data, we're just looking at right Versus. We're listening to stories, we're inviting conversation. It is very stark that you put it that way and that, I think, is going to resonate with a lot of people. So thank you for that frame. I think, too, this is a fun question that I asked you last time. I'm curious now also, like what is something that you have been learning about lately? Either, uh, something related to our conversation or something completely not related to our conversation. Take it wherever you want. 27:15 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Yeah, um, no, that's great. 27:17 Um, I'm reading a book that my Zen teacher and one of our you know, my peers um just published and just read last night about the shadow and how much we can learn, you know, and and this new concept of like the golden shadow, which I didn't know about, which is like when you look at other people and deeply admire something about them and then you don't necessarily see that capacity and that gift in yourself enough. 27:48 Um, and so both there's the projection side of like oh, that person seems really like overly ambitious, and then turning towards like well, where do I actually have that ambitious part in myself as I judge them for their overly ambitious approach or style? So, yeah, I would say, you know, that is resonating from last night's reading. And then I continue to learn from other walks of life about family engagement, and so that's been really fascinating the last year or two to really take this lens of wherever I travel, wherever I go, can I look for examples of big systems creating more of this authentic care approach versus the more transactional, institutional way of doing things? 28:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's such a good lens for just everyone, whatever your thing is, whatever. Yeah, oh, that's really good. Okay, thank you, I'm glad I asked that question again. Where can listeners learn more about you? Connect with you? I know you have a new website, which we will, of course, link to, and we'll, of course, link to the book as well in the show notes and blog posts for this episode, any other place that you would recommend people reaching out, or anything else you want to comment on before the close of the episode. 29:06 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Yeah, in terms of reaching out, yeah, I spent much of this summer creating a website that just was released last week sameteamconsultingorg. I'm really excited about that. Easy to find on LinkedIn. People can email me directly at ariagurzon at gmailcom, and I'd say those are the easiest pathways. And then, you know, my book on the same team is right now it's 47% off on Amazon, so it's a steal. Right now it can be found at the publisher Solution Tree site as well. 29:39 Yeah, and I think I would just close, lindsay, I was mentioning to you like there's been some powerful experiences lately. I'll just share briefly a story I had. That was one of those. Oh, we could bring this back into schools and make it an easy thing we do in terms of how we approach interactions with more intentionality. 29:58 I got on a flight a few months ago to Sacramento and usually we don't see the pilot, right, they don't come out. And pilot came out and said hi, welcome, I want to thank you for putting food on my family's table. For 27 years I was in the Air Force. I've now been a pilot for 27 years. I have 10 kids. I think they're all mine. So bringing humor, right, humor and connection. And then he took it further and he said here's my team and we count on each other. You all are part of our team as well and we count on each other. You all are part of our team as well. And then, you know, I just was moved and I thought about wow, imagine if the front office person at a school, the principal and they're welcome, the teacher and they're welcome made that sort of relational we're all one community took them all three minutes to do intentionality and purpose. 30:56 And the final part of the story, you know, is 10 minutes later we had some insane turbulence out of Denver and I have had a couple rough flights over the years and I started to get anxious and then I just paused and I was like, wait, 27 years plus the Air Force, he's got this. And that totally settled my nervous system and I had high trust and I think we can think of all the families in our nation schools that don't come in with trust or have had that trust broken and what those kinds of couple minutes can really do to shift the level of trust. So yeah, I think that's the one story I felt moved to share with you today. Oh, my gosh, that's that's the one story I felt moved to share with you today. 31:37 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh my gosh, Thank you. That's a beautiful story and I am just reminded there's been like a thread of airplane related stories that I've heard lately. I'm just reminded how, like airplane stories if you have them there are many parallels to education and life. 31:51 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) Absolutely. 31:52 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Ari, thank you so much. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming back on. 31:55 - Ari Gerzon-Kessler (Guest) A delight, Lindsay. Thanks so much for.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
November 2025
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