The name of this podcast is Time for Teachership. But what is teachership? Today, we're diving into the scholarship and the practice behind this term. Hi, I'm Lindsay Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities, take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive anti-racist culture, where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader, turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether you're a principal, superintendent, instructional coach, or a classroom teacher, excited about school-wide change like I was, you are a leader. And if you enjoy nerding out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth, being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the Time for Teachership podcast. Let's dive in. I'm so excited to talk to you today on this solo show about my dream for teachership. I use the word teachership in the podcast title, and I'd love to just comment a little bit on what that looks like and why it's a dream for me. So here is the dream. I think it would be great if all educational institutions had teachers along with other stakeholders (students, family members) have leadership roles in the school. And then also the leader roles like administrators in the school are deeply connected to what's going on in the classes in terms of class instruction and pedagogy and curriculum. So I get this from Steinbacher-Reed and Rotella who came up with this term “teachership.” This is not a term of my own making. They say, and this is a quote from them. I'll read their description. “Teachership weaves exceptional, leading with exceptional teaching. It emerges when administrators engage in classroom based professional learning and exemplary teachers lead from within the classroom by working together to tackle the unique challenges of teaching and leading administrators and teachers can develop a deep level of understanding for other roles. The end result is administrators and teachers who work with one another to improve school culture, teaching practices, and student learning.” That's the end of the quote, but I just wanted to share a little bit about what teachership actually means. And I love that it's this idea on the one hand that everyone can be leaders. Teachers are leaders, certainly in this space, all stakeholders can be leaders, but there's also this idea that people in formal positions of leadership, administrators, principals, assistant principals, instructional coaches, superintendents are also intimately connected to what is going on in the classroom. They're part of those coaching conversations. Part of defining what our curriculum and pedagogy should look like and really working closely with educators to help them achieve the dreams that they have for themselves. And they're able to articulate it for themselves. Now, in terms of how we actually make this happen. I think it's great to have big dreams, but I always want to go through kind of a step-by-step what does this actually look like in practice so that it can be actionable for us. I pulled again from Steinbacher-Reed and Rotella's research in scholarship, and they talk about “professional sandboxes.” So they refer to professional sandboxes as these learning opportunities for teachers and administrators to develop this practice of teachership, here's a quote from them on these ideas of professional sandboxes and what they look like in practice. They say, “Sandboxes are designed along a continuum of intensity, focusing on improving culture practice and learning. Professional sandboxes are a shift from traditional professional development activities towards intentional and systemic professional learning. No two professional sandboxes are the same yet. They all share the following key characteristics: [they’re] Intentional, Contextual, Sustainable, and Evidence-Based.” So this idea of sandboxes that Steinbacher-Reed talks about here—this is a quote from her work actually in, in 2016—she talks about this idea of professional sandboxes to really say, we're not talking about a regular PD workshop here. A one-time I attended it, check the box kind of thing, where the binder of paper kind of lives in your desk or closet for years. And it doesn't really get translated into practice. That's not the kind of professional learning we're talking about. It's more intentional, she says, and also systemic. So when we think about those key characteristics, that it's intentional, that it's sustainable, which I think connects to that systemic piece, that it is contextual. So every person, every educator is going to need something different and unique. That is context dependent. It might be the grade that they teach or the content area that they teach, or just, you know, what is interesting to them or where they need to grow. Everyone has different areas for growth. So that context is also really important there. The idea is that it should be evidence-based. It should be based on what we know from the research works for our kids. It shouldn't be this full-on innovation with no research backing, but it's kind of a blend of creativity, innovation, thinking outside the box and what works for each individual learner. We talk about personalized PD on the podcast, you know, what does that look like? But also how does that balance with what we know from the research base? What we know is rooted in educational evidence as we move into this episode, and we think about this context of teachership and professional sandboxes as a way to develop teachership and our school communities. Let's first dive into this idea of teachers as leaders in the field. Teachers, I think, have great potential to lead as they say “from their classroom.” So this idea of teachers leading professional development in their own schools, I have had a lot of success as a teacher leader in that position where I was invited to lead numerous PDs at my own high school that I was teaching at. And I've also seen teachers present to me and, and received PD from other teachers, both in my school and outside of my school. That was some of the most powerful PD that I had ever experienced because it was specific to what I needed because I was often asked to sign up for it or let people know what I was interested in. And then I was connected with a person who could help me with that particular goal of mine. Often, this person was in a similar context, teaching a similar grade level, or just had similar ideas about pedagogy and what that could look like in the classroom. These were incredibly helpful things for me in my experience. And I'd love to see them really flourish in other school communities. So inviting teachers to lead PD and encouraging teachers to attend PD led by other teachers. Another piece here where teacher-led PD really flourished both in, in my experience of delivering PD and facilitating it as well as my ability to, as I said, connect with teachers that were doing things that I wanted to do were conferences. So these conferences could be kind of those large paid-for conferences that we might think about when conferences first come to mind. But for me, I was luckily teaching at a high school that was part of a network, two different networks, actually that had really unique characteristics. One was focused on project-based learning and less standardized testing. And then another was specific to the population of students that we were teaching in our schools, but both of them led very specific context-based, very relevant, conferences that were inevitably, always led by teachers in the field from these other schools. So conferences are a great way to highlight teacher successes to build up that kind of formalized sense of teacher leadership in the sense that you're sharing and facilitating and being really a thought partner with other teachers in the field, connecting with teachers and leaders in other spaces across school districts, states, countries, and a great way to, to hear other people's strategies and share your own. Also, engaging in PLCs (Professional Learning Communities). These could be formal in the sense that, you know, grade teams and department teams are often spaces where teachers can connect with one another and really be part of a weekly or monthly kind of regular ongoing conversation that's set up by the school. But it could also be that you find three colleagues at your school, or even, you know, three colleagues that are not part of your school community, but just people that, you know, maybe you went to school with them. They're now teaching in different schools and you engage in ongoing meetings with them to talk about whatever it is you're interested in talking about. And it could be that you meet up with these folks from different schools to focus on a topic of interest. Maybe you're all interested in a particular tech tool or a particular book that you want to read and have kind of a book club about whatever it is engaging in that work together can be very powerful work. Another option is inviting teachers into your class to visit. Now this can work in a physical setting, but it could also work to pop into someone's Zoom classroom if you're remote or in kind of a hybrid situation, but inviting someone into your class and letting folks know you are interested in being a teacher leader in modeling something that they might be interested in trying, and also demonstrating that component of leadership that is so important of learning as leading and leading is learning. So being able to go into someone else's space to learn from them and really modeling what that looks like for other teachers is a great form of teacher leadership. I would also add here that teachers are part of the school governance structure, which I talk a lot about, but this idea of shared leadership in a formal sense—Are teachers part of the decision-making process for the school? So we know from the research that organizations that embrace shared leadership structures in this formalized kind of decision-making, they see the better results for the school for organizations more broadly when we have diverse representation in the decision-making table. And also we know that people who feel supported in this sense, so teachers who are supported to be teacher leaders, they're more likely to work towards collective goals. So that idea of teacher buy-in around particular initiatives comes a lot easier when we invite and include teachers as part of how leadership functions at the school. Now let's look at the flip side of this. So the other piece of this is administrators being aware of and being connected to what is happening in classes. I mentioned this, some of these ideas briefly at the start of the episode, but when we think about the ways that administrators can coach teachers, they can take a formalized coaching role, or it can be something a little bit less regular or less formalized, but this idea of consistently providing feedback. So when you receive feedback from a formal administrator, be it your principal, assistant principal, instructional coach, I'm probably talking more about the first two in this regard, but this idea that you don't get feedback until you get your year-end review or your formal observation, is just not helpful in terms of creating a culture of coaching and thriving and growth in the school. If an administrator is only in your classroom to do that formal observation. And that's the only time that you're having conversations about what's happening in class, how you teach, what you teach, what your kiddos are learning that really disrupts this sense of constant growth and thought partnership around instruction and pedagogy from an administrator lens. And so this is a—I know administrators are super busy, but I think this is a really powerful shift around where the priorities lie particularly in a year that’s really been disrupted. I'm recording this in 2020, and things are still incredibly uncertain and teachers have been having a tough time adapting. So I want to be very clear that I'm not saying administrators should go in and start giving critical feedback all the time and go in uninvited to classrooms. What I'm suggesting is that we have this ongoing conversation around: How's it going? What are we trying in your class this week? Well, what didn't go well, last week, let's actually talk about that. Not from a punitive punishment kind of perspective, like you're a bad teacher, but what are we identifying as trends? How can I support you? What can I connect you with? What resource or strategy might we be able to try and then be able to touch base again to say, did it work? And if it didn't, I'm going to help you find something else. I'm gonna help you track that progress over time. And when I see that it has worked, when I see that you've successfully solved this really challenging problem, I want you to share your wisdom and your experience with the other teachers in the school. And I want you to take on that leadership role. So again, being connected to the classroom enables administrators to select key teachers who have really found powerful strategies and solutions to ongoing problems that most likely many teachers are facing. Not just that one teacher who had it. So that idea of creating that culture of coaching, providing feedback, I think also helping to analyze data that informs teacher practice can be really powerful. A lot of times when we think about—as teachers being asked to make sure we're analyzing the data, make sure we're making data-based decisions, that is sometimes difficult when we're not taught explicitly how to analyze data or what sources of data or what types of, of data are actually supposed to be used on a regular basis. It also can feel sometimes a little disconnecting when teachers are analyzing particular data. But again, if the administrators are disconnected from knowing what's going in everyday classes and recognizing the data that teachers are exploring in their grade team meetings or their PLCs, that sense of support, that's absolutely helpful for teachers, from administrators is maybe missing there if there's that disconnect. So I think analyzing and looking at data together can be really, really powerful in addition to developing a culture of coaching and learning. I think leaders can also organize the school behind a clear, shared vision while also personalizing support for individual teachers. And so what I mean by this is leaders in research on leadership really need a clear vision if they don't have clear vision of usually one to two kind of key ideas or key goals or overarching goals per year, there's a big chance that that school year or that organization as a whole is not going to be as successful as a leader with a clear vision. So clear vision is critical, but also within that clear overarching vision, we want to personalize the support because teachers are going to need different things. They're going to be interested in different things. They're going to have different students in their classes and teach different grades and content areas. Again, that balance of personalization with that clear shared vision. For example, the last school that I was a teacher at, our principal would share with us two big ideas or two big kind of school-wide goals for each. For example, one year we got an iPad grant. So, we got devices for each student and that was a really critical shift that we needed to make in order to best serve our students. We needed to be able to use that technology. And so one overarching goal for that year was thoughtful technology integration. And so that was kind of this broad overarching goal for us as an organization, as a school, but each individual teacher is going to support that goal in unique ways. So I was doing documentaries in my classroom, through iMovie, and that was thrilling and exciting for me and for my students. Another teacher might've said that is absolutely nuts. I'm not touching documentaries, but I am using an iPad app like Explain Everything, for example, as a whiteboard for my math class. And we're going to have students really practice these, solving these equations and demonstrating their learning, with a voiceover. And then we're going to have them submit this to a bank of resources where when we're studying for tests, I can highlight as the teacher, some really amazing key ideas that students shared and be able to share those as resources for students to kind of study with their peers, as opposed to just listen to me or review their notes that I gave them. So there's some really unique ways that we as individual teachers can support a shared goal, but that shared really organizes us and focuses us. So that as an administrator, my principal could say, we're going to make sure that X number of PD days for the rest of the year, we would have weekly PD, are going to be around this topic of tech integration. But as teachers, I will invite you, or you can invite yourselves to lead these PD workshops based on whatever it is you're actually doing in your class. You can show us the end product. You can help us work backwards, teach us the steps to get there. But we are personalizing while also moving towards this clear shared vision. Another thing I'll add about kind of administrators being connected to the instruction is that connection piece of being able to connect the teachers with the resources that they need when they need them. So that there's this consistent learning and growing process. And of course, as they said, I think administrators model this with their own learning and their own growth and, and be really transparent about what they're working on, but in order to do that, well, principals and instructional coaches, folx who are in positions of formal authority in schools are going to need to have that linkage to a variety of resources in a variety of types, right? We don't just want blog posts if some teachers are not going to benefit from reading blog posts. We don't just want podcasts if that's only what some of the teachers are interested in in learning like, you know, I think having this broad sense of: Do we have self-paced courses? Do we have something interactive? Do we continue to have those two hour workshops once a week for teachers to kind of show up as like a staff meeting, whether it's in-person or virtual, and just make sure that we have not only a variety of types, but also a variety of resources that span different topical areas, different content, in grade resources and part of being an administrator and an instructional coach. And I use those words kind of interchangeably because I think that's another piece of teachership right, is this idea that principals are still instructional coaches, even though their title doesn't say instructional coach anymore, right. That connection to the classroom and the instruction that's happening there, makes them inevitably an instructional coach. I will also say that the idea of teachers as leaders also makes teachers instructional coaches to their peers as well, right? Thought partners, people who are modeling as a coach might just this idea of everyone kind of taking on this instructional coaching role in this realm of teachership and making sure that if you don't have a resource, or you're not sure where to go, that you at least have identified a couple of key sources of folks that you can ask now, as they think about our next step. So after we finished this episode, you know, how do we go implement this idea of teachership? How do we live out the value of teachership in our school systems? I invite you to identify one way to systematize professional growth in your school. And so if you're a teacher, this might look like inviting other teachers to visit your class, to see something you've had success with, or to set up a success share meeting with your grade team or your department or whatever your PLC is. But to say, we're using this particular time, this one hour of time to be able to discuss a problem of practice or whatever phrase you use, or just share, it doesn't even need to be based on a problem of practice, but just share. This is something I've had great success with, my students have responded to incredibly well, especially during a pandemic, perhaps, and we're just going to go around and share. Each teacher has five minutes, you know, share a tech tool or a strategy or an approach or a mindset, whatever it is that has worked really well for you. And I find those meetings to be really exciting and energizing because we're not always focused on the problems. This conversation might have stemmed from a problem with practice we identified and we wanted to fix. And so we tried some things and some things worked, but it's really celebratory. And it's saying, you know what? A lot of things are tough this year, but here's the good stuff that's happening. I often come out of meetings like this really energized and ready to plan my next lesson or unit because that energy level is really contagious. It's what prevents burnout, right? It's what keeps me going. At least for me as an individual. Now, teachers, again, you might want to invite folks to visit your class, perhaps without that follow-up success share meeting as well. So even extending that opportunity, if someone in passing says, “Oh, I haven't used that tech tool,” or “I haven't used that strategy. I'm curious how you do that.” You know, it could be something as simple as an exchange like that, where you just welcome them in and say, “Oh, well, here's when I'm teaching.” I don't think you have a class at that time. If that's your prep time, come on over. You know, here's my Zoom link. If you're online, whatever that looks like, and it could be that informal, it doesn't need to be an email to the whole staff to say, you know, I invite you formally into my class to invite teachers in set up a success share meeting with your PLC or some, some fellow teachers, administrators, what you could do to help systematize professional learning might be getting each teacher, a coach that could be you, maybe you offer to meet with each teacher depending on the size of your school, or you identify leaders in the school, assistant principals, you know, other people with leadership roles that are similar to instructional coaching to act as instructional coaches, perhaps that's just once a month, once a quarter, but just making sure that everyone has someone that they can go to, to ask questions with that they can use as a thought partner, or it could even be other teachers, right, who are interested in taking that slightly more formal position of leadership that want to be a peer coach that wants to have those energizing conversations with peers. But kind of set up, you know, everyone that is a teacher currently in your school with some sort of thought partner or “coach,” even if that's not their formal role. And now another option for administrators could be to use PD time. What might typically happen as a whole staff meeting that lasts an hour or two, and let teachers use that to share their successes. So I talked about this in the teacher example, but if you just have each teacher—and you could do this in a whole staff setting where teachers sit at tables, if you're in person or in a breakout room setting on zoom, that they are in small groups, maybe around themes, maybe around grades, maybe around departments or content that they teach and they just share, you know what it is that they are excited to share. You could also do this on a rotating basis. So let's say you have a school where there's 30 teachers in the school. If you wanted five teachers to share each week, over the course of the year, you could say every other month, each teacher is going to present just something. And then you have one week, every, you know, eight weeks that is a success your week and teachers sign up and they can just identify ahead of time what their success share is going to be. And people can sign up for that particular topic, or if it's in a Zoom room, or if it's in a physical room in the school, they can attend again, whatever is interesting to them because we want to have that shared vision we're working towards, but we also want to make sure the teachers have options. So they attend the PD that is most helpful for them. I am going to link to a couple different things at the bottom of this episode in the show notes. One is a newsletter from the 2016 International Literacy Association conference. This is where Steinbacher-Reed and Rotella, share a lot of their information about teachership and professional sandboxes. And I also want to share with you a free resource that I've created to help you get started with this idea of systematizing professional development. And this is my Peer Visitation Starter Kit. So if you're interested in creating a culture of visiting other teachers and signing up for those visits and having a more systematized way of letting other teachers know you're interested in hosting and what topic you're interested in hosting on, this is a great, kind of a two pager, one being a note taker of like what people can kind of jot notes on if you want it to systematize that when they're actually in the visit. And then another page that really just helps structure the signup portion, where it can connect folks who are hosting with folks who are visiting and what topics and what times and all that. So I will link to those in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening to another solo show from the Time for Teachership podcast. I'm super excited to hear all of the great things that you are doing in your classroom to highlight teachership to foster professional learning. And I'm so excited and grateful to you for continuing to be amazing educators in this trying year. I know you are awesome, and I can't wait to hear all the innovative things that come out of this year. Thanks for listening, amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me at Lindsay Beth Lyons, or leave a review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it. To continue the conversation you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best. Episode Freebie: Peer Visitation Starter Kit
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In today's episode, I'm talking to Annalisa Holcombe, the founder of Connection Collaborative. Annalisa is dedicated to providing safe and brave spaces for human beings to connect and discover who they are and what they want out of life. She founded the coaching and mentoring center at Westminster College, establishing and scaling a suite of programs aimed at providing every student with access to a mentor. These programs significantly increased student retention among participating students thanks to effective student-alumni, mentoring relationships, and monthly group coaching sessions. She has completed her coach training through the Coach Training Institute, and she is currently training for an International Coaching Federation certificate. She holds a law degree. She holds a degree in business management, and she's currently pursuing her PhD in leadership and change. I can't wait for you to hear this conversation with Annalisa Holcombe.
Hi, I'm Lindsay Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities, take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive anti-racist culture where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader, turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether you're a principal, superintendent, instructional coach, or a classroom teacher, excited about school-wide change like I was, you are a leader. And if you enjoy nerding out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth, being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the Time for Teachership podcast. Let's dive in. Lindsay Lyons Welcome Annalisa Holcombe to the podcast. I am so excited that you are here to talk with us today. I am a huge fan of your podcast, 92,000 hours, which I highly recommend that everyone listening goes and listens to. It is like the best part of my day when I listen to it. And normally at this point, at the beginning of this podcast, I would ask you to introduce yourself, however you would like, but I am so incredibly fascinated by how you ask people on your podcast to introduce themselves. If you could talk to our listeners a little bit about that question that you typically ask them, and then answer yourself to introduce yourself here. I would love that. Annalisa Holcombe Oh, that's so exciting and scary because I get to ask that question rather than answer it for myself. And so the big question that I ask people that really does go to how I think of us as you know, I want to know, I want, I don't want to know what you do. I want to know who you are. And so I asked the question that sets it up in a, in a it's kind of a negative space, but I don't mean it to be that way. So I set it up with, if you remove all of the things in our lives that we usually list when we're saying this is who I am. So you take away school, all of your education, your work, not your job title or what you do, sports or volunteerism, or any of those types of things that we usually list. You can't count what I say. So not counting any of those things. What is your greatest accomplishment or what are you most proud of as yourself as a human being? And so thinking about that question, I am particularly proud of the both safe and brave space that I was able to create for a period of 15 years in a college setting, in which we brought students from all different majors and different areas. They were all of course at the same institution, but we brought students who wouldn't normally know each other, put them all in a room and said, we're going to talk about hard things like, fear, real fear, your existential stuff that you're not comfortable talking about to other people. Or priorities, what do you actually prioritize? And are you living it, and how do you self-reflect on that? Or, empathy or vulnerability and courage. And how do we make sure we know that the fact that courage that we highlight all the time, the antecedent to courage is vulnerability? And we have to actually understand that we are vulnerable humans. And let's think about what those vulnerabilities are so that we can act with courage when, when we feel that vulnerability. And so having had the experience of 15 years of those types of conversations is—I'm really proud of it—but I'm also very selfishly sad that those particular times are over because it created these really fulfilling, purposeful, meaningful moments for me, that created my deep belief in humanity and in people who are different, being able to talk to each other. And if I could just say, like, there were some moments that watching peers educate each other about their own humanity was some of the best, like the, the most joyful, best moments of my life. And they came in difficult times. So for example, there was a time in which we met monthly and we are halfway through a year and I was in a group. Usually the groups had about 12 students in them. And one student, they were really like talking honestly and openly with each other one student who was, you know, a business finance major who played sports at the university, spoke to a mathematics/performance art major who was, very outwardly gay. And this, this one guy asked his peer. He said, you know, I am so sad that I've never been friends with a person who is gay and I don't know how to do it. And I feel really awkward. Can you educate me on how to do it? Like, what do I do? How do I do this? I want to know you better. And I want to be a friend, but I don't even know how so I avoid it. And then they had this conversation. The one guy was like, first of all, don't think we all want to be with you. That's answer number one second. We're still human. So don't think of me as different from you. And so like having them have that honest conversation with each other that was scary and vulnerable and brave, changed how they're now going out in the world and talking to each other, but it takes a long time to create those spaces. And so I'm really proud. That's a long answer, but I'm really proud of having been a part—with a bunch of other people who facilitated with me—to create those spaces for people to have those conversations. That I think are, I think they come back to you years later, maybe even decades later where the learning is still real. Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh. I love that answer because I think it speaks to all of the people in education who are listening to this podcast and thinking about creating those spaces. One of the first questions that I usually follow this up with is what is kind of your big dream for educators or for education generally. And I don't know if at all your answer is connected to that, but I, I almost see connections to that just in my own thinking of being able to create those spaces for people and have that space for education, that's going to hold everything kind of that holding environment to be able to have those tough conversations and real conversations. Annalisa Holcombe I think that's right. But I also, I mean, those types of tough and real conversations, I don't think our systems are built for, right. They weren't at my, at the, at the higher ed institution that I was at. It wasn't built for it. We created this out of whole cloth and then, did it ourselves with volunteers like and I then went out to people and said, by the way, I want you to know that these students are showing up at 8:30 on a Saturday morning for four hours, and I'm not giving them college credit, and I'm not paying them they're coming because they are getting something intrinsically that we need as human beings that they are finding valuable. And, and they show up at the beginning, not knowing what they're in for just knowing that there's some kind of mystery about it, because over time that that program ended up having like this, this, you know, this kind of, you know, the Vegas thing, right? Like, I can't tell you what happens there, but it's really kind of cool and you should probably go. And so students had this, it was this mystery about, Oh, I want to be part of that program. What they got out of, it was just, it was only what they put into it. But I do think that what I really want for educators that they don't have is the ability to do—which I didn't have either. I had to create that at a separate time on a Saturday morning, not during course time, not with giving them college credit, because it didn't fit the structure that the system wanted me to fit. And it was a scary piece of learning that was about learning about ourselves and how we connect to each other as humans. Rather than, you know, a specific thing that we say that we can do, I wasn't even in the student life office, which, however, later I brought in people from student life, our Dean of students ended up doing it as well. But what I wish people were able to do is because I think teachers clearly have a calling, right? I mean, if you are, if you are doing this work, you care deeply about the learning and about the people that you are engaging with every day. And to be able to provide those teachers with the freedom, to truly educate, to truly teach to the student in front of them and to make sure that person is learning, rather than having to respond to the system that is requiring them to do certain things that may not even be the, the learning that, that the students right in front of them are asking for. That's the, my dream would be that we could do that, that we could actually provide that, that learning that I know inherently, the teachers were called to do and have specific understanding of the needs of the people right in front of them, that we may not be allowing them as a society to connect appropriately and to give our students and our children, and like all of us as humans, what we need to fulfill our own purpose. That's a long answer. Lindsay Lyons I love that answer though, because I think it speaks to my experience personally, as a teacher, I was never actually a teaching major. And then I did a program kind of like Teach for America. It was called New York City Teaching Fellows. And immediately after I graduated with degrees in Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies that I was like, okay, this is going to be great because I'm going to teach for that purpose. I'm going to teach for those conversations and that real learning that kids are going to be running to my class. And then two years later, looking back on those first two years of my teaching, it was, I'm going to teach this test. I'm going to remove all emotion and joy from the classroom, because I have to teach this test. And it took a couple of years to actually hit that moment where I was just like, this is not what I signed up for and find my way back to it. So that's super interesting that you say that. Annalisa Holcombe I think that that also can happen to us in all of our lives. It's one of the reasons that I talk so much about mentorship, which, and the reason I talk about that so much is because I find that when, so I've, you know, I've run a mentoring program for so long that I automatically can tell the good mentors. And they are the people who asked me if they're good mentors, right? Like, it's that simple? It's the, it's the person who says that they care so deeply about making sure that their mentee is getting the, what they need, that they come to me as the, as the organizer of the, environment and say, I hope I'm doing a good enough job. I'm really, I really want them to get something. And I think then I don't have to worry about you because it's those people who are striving, who are the people who continue to strive in all of the different areas of their lives. Like those are the people who do, who, you know, you can count on, and it's not necessarily the people who are at the top of their game and have the, have the best title or making the most money or drive the best car. It's the people who you meet, who are curious and striving, who are the best mentors. And I think that those, that, that opportunity for mentorship is another way that we can also, however, find joy, be brought back to the joy that you said that, you know, for two years it was gone, but when you have to be a mentor and talk to somebody who's coming into whatever it was that you were, you know, in some ways called to do it can remind you of what your why. And it can remind you of the joy that you found originally in doing the work. Because sometimes we just all get into the, you know, the spinning wheel of our lives and forget that actually, I really love this. Let me stop for a minute. And remember that I actually really love what I'm doing. And so I think mentorship can help us remember why we are doing what we do. Lindsay Lyons Let's maybe dive in a little bit more to that because you have so much experience with mentorship. And I know you're passionate about people having mentors and being mentors. Could you talk a little bit more about if a teacher or a school principal is listening to this right now, thinking that sounds great. How do I set that up? We don't currently have anything, either a mentoring program for their student or for themselves as adults. How did you get that started? Or what would you suggest for them to have those conversations? Annalisa Holcombe I think we have to, so I have to tell you that the very first time I tried to set up a mentoring program, it fell flat. It was a failure. In fact, I even had this like, you know, get together at the end. It was a pilot program for a summer. And at the end we were going to have a little party and we'll, I mean, I even had wine at my party. I was like, we're going to have wine, we'll have a little party and talk about how we did. And only one other person showed up. I was like, wow, that did not go well. And what was great about that, however, is that we did have to create some, some structure to it. And what I have learned, I have to tell you the most important thing that I've learned over time with regard to mentoring programs is that we have to be, we as human beings get so busy that we set up our lives. And, and we're so nice to each other, like in many ways, kind of fake, nice to each other that we, that we say, Oh, it's okay. I know, I know you're busy. And so when we, later, when I set up the mentoring program, I particularly told all of the students and all of the mentors don't do this. If you can't commit, I'm going to give you the exact requirements of what we want from you, how long it will be, what here's, what we want you to do. And it's not like, you know, do this many things, but it is this much time commitment, et cetera, here are the days. And particularly for the students, here are the days. And I have to tell you a kind of a story that might be interesting is that we set it up with the students at the beginning, where they come up with what their own, you know, rules, ground rules are, or however you want to phrase that, which I'm sure teachers do in their classrooms. You know, that's like, and you have the, the individuals who are participating, create what those are and provide the opportunity for feedback. And everybody has to agree that those are the, those are the rules. But then somebody has to actually enforce them. And I know that probably teachers are better at this than most people. Because once you get into the workplace, we're terrible at it. We tell each other that's okay, no big deal. I understand. But we, in our mentoring program, we would literally tell the students, so here's the deal. You signed up for this. And without judgment, if you cannot do it, then you cannot do it. And you're going to be asked to leave because you can't, you can't opt in and out. You have to either be in or out. And, and it's, it's okay, because we all have to, you know, make our choices and have our priorities. And so we won't judge you if you leave. And I think that's part of why we say we'll do stuff when we really can't do it, because we feel like we're being judged. But the truth is if we take away the judgment, allow people to really truly say their truth about whether they can do something or whether they want to even do it and let them be there without judgment. Then you can have those conversations. And, and honestly, every single year we ended up, you know, voting someone out who couldn't be there and it could be for all sorts of reasons, but the truth is we'd have, we'd have the people in the program talk honestly and openly truly about when we say it's okay, that somebody isn't here, is it actually, okay, you were here. This person, you know, rescheduled their jobs so that they could be here. This person, you know, didn't go to their great grandma's funeral or something like people would make sacrifices to be there. Let's honor those and make sure that we are doing that hard work. I think in society, we say it's okay when we don't mean it, because we're afraid of conflict and having those difficult conversations. But that's what we learned with our mentoring program. And every time when I didn't run one of those programs and I had other facilitators, and they'd say, we have a bunch of students who seem to be dropping out. And I would say, how often are you reinforcing that this is important and that you committed to this, and it's not okay if you make a commitment and then you don't show up for it. So, but it is okay to say, I don't, I no longer have time for this commitment, but let's just be honest about who we are and where we are in our lives. So I would say if I was a teacher, that's a long way of speaking. If I was a teacher or a principal, and I wanted to create a mentoring program, several things, one create the structure and the system of what the expectations are, and then stick to them. If you don't stick to them, it'll fall apart. And to look to the people who are automatically mentoring anyway, because there are people who are—every single school knows the teachers who are always the teachers that everybody goes to. Every single university knows the professors who every student goes to for advising. Those are the people that we are putting so much extra work on, in an unfair way, because it's real work. And it is incredibly emotional labor that we're putting on people who are automatically good at it, but we're not compensating them for it. We're acting as if, because you're good at this, you must love it. Not understanding that the reason they're good at it is probably because they are, they have one, the ability to do it well, which comes from the ability to truly listen, which means they can actually empathize with the people in front of them. And that is hard work that takes time for recovery. And we don't give people that. So that's what I tell a principal, give people that. Lindsay Lyons The structure piece I'm using is very similarly structured and linear. And so I think that makes a lot of sense. I love that there's a voice in that too, of the participants. So it's not something that you're just mandating, top-down, it sounds like that's something that's generated bottom up, which I think just leads to a lot more buy-in and commitment. Right. And like, I'm going to come back because this is where I want to be. And I think ultimately, as you were talking about earlier, right? I think this is where we want education to be in a place like I'm coming, because this is really helpful for me. I am deriving joy from it. I'm feeling good, mentoring others, I'm feeling good, being mentored. And I think for students and adults, that's like, that's what we want to connect with. Where is that joy coming from? And how do we create spaces where people, it sounds like you're saying, like they can really opt into it. Like it's a voluntary thing. It's not like everyone has to do it. Annalisa Holcombe I think that, required mentoring programs can be very, they can be actually detrimental for people because, and for both the, the person who is being mentored and for the mentor, because people are, if you, if you're required to be there, that doesn't mean that you bought in. It doesn't mean that you're ready to be part of it. And I think that over time, just like the program that I started, it became something that ended up, you know, we had to set up more, more courses, even though they weren't real courses with lots of people in it, because it became popular and more people wanted to opt in because the, you know, the results were appropriate, but at the beginning it was who wants to do this? And then we kept it that way because you want to serve the people who are ready for it and not tell people they have to have it and have them become jaded about what mentoring actually means. And I think also, I have to say during that process, one of the groups that I had the most difficult time recruiting to have to be in the mentoring program, where student teachers, Lindsay Lyons Wow. That's surprising to me actually, Annalisa Holcombe Well, in some ways it isn't right, because all of the business students were on it. Give me a mentor. I want that. And how can I put that on my LinkedIn page? The teachers were not interested in their LinkedIn pages in any sense of the word, but what, what they would tell me is I'm a, I'm a student teacher. So it means I already have a mentor. And so I would say to people—here's something that I think is a takeaway for all of us, which is to get yourself a mentor. Or, as one of my friends described to me, in fact, get your own personal board of directors, right? If you are a leader of a corporation, you're going to have several people, whom\ you have asked to be on your board because they have different areas of expertise. One mentor cannot be the, be all and end all for you. They don't know everything, but if you get somebody that you can go to for interpersonal relationship advice, or somebody else that you can go to for, how am I going to get to the next phase of my career? Because you've been there before, or somebody else who you can just go to for educational opportunities, what school should I go to? Why did you choose that one? Like if you could, if you could get a handful of people who you can ask honest questions, and they're not either your boss or could be your boss so that you can really be vulnerable with them. I think that's a, I think that's a really good way for us to build our own independent mentoring programs that we do for ourselves is by finding our own personal board of directors. And I think that there are people out there in the world who would feel honored if you ask them to be, would you be willing to be on my own personal board of directors? Lindsay Lyons I love that idea of the board of directors thinking from even just a student lens, you know, I could pinpoint some different teachers that I gravitated to as a student myself, but certainly like the ones that I look back and say that that was my favorite teacher or one of my favorite teachers. They have not taught me the things that I now really value and totally learned from someone who was not a teacher or was a teacher much later. And so I think it speaks to that, like people are contributing in these various ways and, and that you don't have to put so much pressure on each individual teacher to be everything for every student. Maybe part of our work is helping students to find those people for themselves, perhaps by modeling how we do it in our own lives. Right? Annalisa Holcombe I think that's absolutely right. The best way that we can, that we can teach is to model, right? To say, this is what I've learned. This is how I'm using this. This is what's good. And this is what's bad. And this is how I am iterating as I go, because everything needs iteration. And it's going to be okay if you fail with your first mentor, right? Like it's, it's going to be okay, because there are other people out there that have something to offer you. Lindsay Lyons Yeah. And in the spirit of that, I hate to put you on the spot here, but would you mind modeling for us a little bit about your own? Do you have your own board of directors? And could you talk a little bit about what that looks like, like the process of finding them, but also kind of what they provide for you? Annalisa Holcombe I have a different board of directors for different purposes. Here's an example: one person who's on my board of directors, I don't talk to all the time. It is, but you know what, he, he actually, I actually ended up having him speak at my wedding about what friendship really looks like. Because friendship is important in relationships, right? But this person, he models for me how to prioritize. And the reason I picked him on my board of directors is because I struggle with my ability to say no. And I know that about myself. I go, wow, that looks cool. I want to do it. Oh, that looks cool. I want to do it. And then I have way too many things on my plate. I worked with volunteers in my old work and, and he was a person that I wanted to volunteer because he's a leader. Annalisa Holcombe And I spoke with him and asked him if he would be willing to volunteer. And he said, not this year, but you can talk to me next year because I only have time for three things in my life. And here's the order of their importance. First, my family, they come first always, and I need to dedicate time to them second, my career. And that's really important to me. And third, one way that I volunteer and I've already committed to one act of volunteerism this year. So come to me next year. And it was just so clear the way he said that to me, that I had no reason to tell him, “Oh, come on,” which I would do with people otherwise. When he was so clear with here are my priorities and I'm sticking to them and I expect you to honor them as well. I go to him now as my, he helps me with my prioritization because it's a struggle for me and he has real clarity about it. So, I picked him because I found someone that I think I'm going to be like in this area. I don't want to be like him in other areas. In fact, he would know I would tease him that he prioritizes money far more than I do. And I think it's hilarious. But I do want to learn from him with regard to priorities, other people for different reasons. And I think the first aspect of me finding my own personal board of directors first comes with self-reflection on who I am and what is it that I need, because I should not pick someone just because they have a cool title. I shouldn't pick someone just because they look, you know, something about their lives is attractive to me, I would need to understand really what it is that I need and who it is, who I am and where I'm trying to go to see how they might be able to fit into what I need. So, the act of self-reflection first is really important. Lindsay Lyons I love that. And thank you for sharing that personal story. I think what's interesting about that particular example is I think it speaks to a lot of people generally, but teachers that I work with specifically about that idea, right? Like saying, no, it is so difficult. Cause you're just like, yep, sure. I'm serving, I'm serving, right? I'm doing all this stuff for the kids. I can't say no to that. And then it just leads to teacher burnout, which looking at the statistics, it's unlikely for someone who jumps into teaching five years later to still be teaching, which is nuts, you know, with no support system, no PD for how to say no and how to prioritize. Of course, that's going to be really difficult. So I know you talk on your podcast a lot about work-life integration and I'm not sure that I have a full handle on what exactly work-life integration is, but I would love for you to talk a little bit if you'd like, just about what that is and what it means to you and, and how that connects really, to not feeling burnt out and feeling excited about it. Annalisa Holcombe I think it has to do with a lot of the things I talk about. So it's of, for me, work-life integration in some ways, it's my reaction to people telling me that I needed to have a work-life balance. Right? People would tell me, you need to have a work-life balance. And then I think I work so much. Why is that something different than my life, right? Like how, why are you separating my work from my life? Because, we all know, and that's why I call my podcast. 92,000 hours is that out of everything we do in our life, the only thing we do more than work is sleep. And it is, we have less screen time, by far spending less time with our family and our loved ones than we do at work. So let's tell the truth about the fact that our work is in fact, our life. So how, like how do we make sure that we integrate it in a way that honors its place in our life and honors that it is part of who we are. It isn't everything we are. We shouldn't, that's why I don't, you know, I don't start my podcast with, what do you do? I start it with who are you? And what really matters to you? Because in fact, I want to bring that piece of me. And I think that's why we talk about it differently. I want to bring that piece of me, that part of what matters to me and who I am as a human being. I want to bring that to my work. I don't want my work and particularly my role as a leader to be, some performative idea of what a leader is supposed to be. I want to be me and know that I'm also a leader and I don't have to look or act or say or speak the way that somebody tells me a leader is supposed to be. I want to be myself and integrate what makes me special to my children and my husband and my friends into my work, because that's a part of my being. And it's a part of my humanity. And it's really like the only way that I'm going to actually find joy and purpose in my 92,000 hours is if I get to know people in that way as well, I don't want to be somebody different at my house and somebody different at my office. I want to be this. I just want to be me. And I want to be honored. And given, like, I want other people to see me as me and know that I get to be that person and be a professional. That's what it means to me. Lindsay Lyons That is so powerful because I've resisted this idea of work-life integration, because I thought that it meant that you had to be just “on” all the time. I thought it was, you never have a time where you could turn off work and just like be gone from work and you just have to be “on.” So that makes a ton of sense because I love what you said honoring that it's part of who we are. Like, I always joke about this with my partner, about our priorities. He is very clear. He's like family is his number one priority, work is way down that list. And I'm like, work is a very high priority for me because it's who I am. It's part of my identity. I don't want to give that up. And I always felt like that may be wrong. Like that was—so something was wrong with me that I loved work that much, but I also feel like I do have a tendency to go kind of too much in that direction of like I'm in the work zone, no time for family, no time for anything else. And so I feel like part of what you're saying too, is that there is that ability to say no to prioritize, to be clear on that. Annalisa Holcombe Your boundaries. Absolutely. This is my time for this. And, and my work is not coming into it and you get to do that, but you also get to be Lindsay who is fun, and who's funny at your job, right? Like you, you don't have to be two different things. And I, the reason it's important to me is because I struggled so much with it. I had, before I went into higher ed, I was a lawyer. And the pressure that I had, which I don't know if society put on me or if I on myself or, you know, how that worked. But I had this pressure that I was going to be, you know, tough as nails. I had to be like, I had to work all the time and I had to be tough and I had to negotiate. And, and I was really unhappy. And as part of why I started my mentoring program, because, you know, I'm 10 years into my law career and I hated it. And I think that, and I was so confused about why do I hate this when I thought it was supposed to be me, and underneath it, I learned that one of my, one of my biggest strengths is that I am inherently nurturing. And I struggled with finding a way to be a strong leader with being a nurturing human. And I didn't know what to do with that. And it felt really uncomfortable until I allowed myself to integrate those together and I can be a nurturing leader and that's okay because that's how I bring my whole self and how I integrate who I am as a whole person into all the things that I do. And at home, when I'm nurturing, I'm also a leader. And, you know, like I'm, it's like both of those are important parts of my identity, and I don't want to give up one or the other in who I am as a, and how I bring myself and show up for people in my life. Lindsay Lyons That actually brings me to what we were talking about before we started recording about this idea of teacher neutrality, of this idea of when we're teaching for justice. And we're talking about justice, I think for me, that's why I got into the classroom. And then having two years in realized, I'm not bringing that part of myself to the classroom. And also I think that pressure of not being tenured and teachers wondering, you know, can I bring that part of myself? What does it look like to bring a justice-focused sense of leadership and teaching into the classroom without getting fired? And, and sometimes I definitely butted up against that, “I'm going to get fired today.” But I think like that's so powerful to frame it in that way as this is who I am. It's who I am at home. Of course, it's going to be who I am in the workplace. It has to be, if it's going to be sustainable, at least that's what I'm hearing you say. Annalisa Holcombe Absolutely. And if you're going to continue to find joy, if you take away those pieces of you that bring you joy, because they're part of your identity, then of course the joy is going to go out of your work. It's going to go out of your teaching because you didn't allow yourself to bring those pieces. But I think it's also important that you talked about the worry that you would have about, am I going to lose my job if I do these things? And I think it's important to acknowledge when we have the privilege of being able to bring our full selves. And also if we do have the privilege, how important it is that we do it. So that we do—we start to change the conversation about how people can bring their whole selves to their work, to their classroom, et cetera. It does take the people who already are in a position of privilege to start to do that work so that people who are not can, because it's, if we expect people to do that. And I think we might often do that in our society—we look at people and in some ways like other them and say like, well, you're the other. So we'd like you to bring that to this classroom rather than being courageous ourselves, as leaders and bringing our whole selves to our classroom first. Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. I think about that in all of the racial justice work that I'm learning about trying to be part of this idea of this is a person who is Brown or Black or Indigenous, and they are a teacher. That means this is something they should tackle, right? Or this is something that they should be taking the risks on when in reality teachers who are Black, Brown and Indigenous are most likely to be fired for speaking out and things like that. Right? And that's something where if we take, I've been thinking a lot about language and like, if we take that idea of “issues of race,” right? Or racism, and we flip it to be, we're talking about white supremacy here, right? This is like a white person's like we are embedded in this problem. This is our responsibility to step up and take that risk and speak out and say these things. And to no other—that, just when you said that, I'm like, I see that every day and this example, right? Annalisa Holcombe I find myself worrying about this a lot in my work now. Because in addition to the work I do with 92,000 hours, which I have to tell you is part of my own, like you talk about my own professional development. In my other work, I am a fundraiser and I'm asking people for money all the time, but I know that what I'm doing and I feel really good about it. People will ask me questions like, don't you feel uncomfortable asking people for money? And I say, no, because I, in fact, believe in what I'm working on. If I didn't, I shouldn't be doing this work. And I'm asking people to invest in changing society through this investment. And I will provide them with information about the impact that they're making in society through it. And if it fits their values, which is, you know, what we do with our money is we express our values. However, we're spending it, whether it's, you know, restaurants or education or social justice, we're expressing our value, what we value in the world. And I'm happy to help direct some people to express their values. Lindsay Lyons Wow. That is powerful. Especially transitioning from a teacher role to a business owner now where I'm like selling, you know, courses and things. And I'm like, I feel very uncomfortable asking people for money, but I'm like, if you are where I was, this type of stuff is going to change your life. And I know that, and I believe in that. And I think that's such a great reframe of, let me introduce you to something that could be life-changing versus I'm going to ask you for money. Annalisa Holcombe That's right. And no judgment. If you choose not to do it, I need to choose it. I think you should. I like, it's great, like, it's a great way to be able to express your values. And that's when I reframed, I read this great book is called The Soul of Money. It's a great book about how our money—money has a soul and that it just flows through us. None of us get to keep it forever. It's just going to flow through us. What's the direction that you want that flow to go. Like, how are you going to make that money flow through you? And so what are you going to do with it? and when you look at your budget, how are you spending it? That'll tell you what you value. That goes only if we have additional funding, right? If we have only enough to cover our basic needs, then it is completely unfair for us to say, what do you value? So it's only when you have additional funding that you can do something with it. Lindsay Lyons That makes a lot of sense. And I was even thinking from the school perspective, right? Of a principal or a superintendent, like we have X amount of money. If you can cover like basic student needs, everybody's fed, everyone has a teacher, right. Where's that extra money going? Is it investing in mentorship programs or coaching programs or things like this, or is it going to, you know, I don't know, like a hundred textbooks that we may or may not use, right? I think about that. Annalisa Holcombe I say that all the time. Look, if you, if you wonder what people value, whether it's an individual, a school, a business, a society, a government, look where they spend their money. That's how, like where you spend your money, shows what you value. Lindsay Lyons I love it. I hate to cut this conversation short, because I think this has been amazing in our kind of wrap up. I'd love to know of all the things that we've talked about. We've talked about so many things, I'm just going to tie it up. Recap some of the amazing things that we have talked about. We talked about how, when we set up these mentorship programs, we want to make sure that students or participants are creating those norms. We're making sure it's voluntary and people have that commitment. We’re talking about how we create our own personal board of directors and model how to do that with students? Priorities and how to make sure that when we are saying yes to something we're actually fully saying yes to it, and we're making sure that the nos have their own category for now, based on those three priorities, perhaps honoring that work is a part of who we are. And so that work-life integration is really critical. And I love this last point, too, right of expressing what we value through money. I think through, through so many things, right through our actions, through how we spend our time. Annalisa Holcombe Time is our most precious resource. Far more than money. And so how you spend your time. I think that priority list is the most important thing, because it's the thing you can't get back. You can always make more money, but you can never get your time back. So really like really being very serious about your time and thinking critically about it and not allowing other people to take it from you because, because it really it's just fleeting and it will go away. And so how are you spending it and how do you make sure that, as we say, at Connection Collaborative, how do you make sure that the, that the time you have is spent well, rather than just spent? Because it's going away regardless. So how are you going to spend it that you look back and say, I expressed my values through that. I was true to myself through that. I had some purpose or some meaning in the time that I had. Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. I love that idea. And, and I think about too, you know, some of those shifts that are required to free up some of that time is big. Like that's a big shift that we have to make from how we have been doing things maybe for a decade, right? And like, this is what it takes to get that time back. Sometimes that can feel really scary to kind of jump into that abyss of what does this new life look like for me? But it's totally worth it, right? Because that time is something that we don't get back. And I, I love that, that you just said that it is more valuable than money. Annalisa Holcombe It's absolutely more valuable than money. Absolutely. I do want to also say that maybe like the last thing to talk about would be that I talk a lot about vulnerability. It's a, it's a real thing for me, it's really important to be able to acknowledge what our vulnerabilities are before we can be courageous or brave. And I also think that what I learned during the course of all of these years of mentoring is that some of the best gifts that we can give each other is to see each other, like really, truly see each other in our whole humanity. And to know that my act of courage might be different than your act of courage. And that we, as a society often see courage in those great grand, expectations of, that person was courageous. They jumped into the water, or they ran into the building, but acts of courage can be the small thing that nobody else would know is courageous. Annalisa Holcombe Like, and I use examples, like I called my mom today. And so for some, one person that might be an incredible act of courage for them. And if you can have a person in your life that notices or knows you well enough to acknowledge those small acts of courage, those are so important. And I think that if we want to make big systemic change in, in terms of how students learn and how teachers are allowed for that to happen, I think a big act of forward momentum would be to acknowledge the small acts of courage that teachers are doing in their classroom every single day. My youngest daughter is currently, you know, learning online, via Zoom every day. She is six years old. If I could acknowledge the incredible small act of courage that her teacher does every single day by showing up for those six year olds, I see that bravery and I am in awe of what she is doing every single day. Annalisa Holcombe I think that if more people reached out to their teachers and say, I see what you’re doing showing up for these students, particularly right now, I think it’s incredibly important. I think that because our systems have failed us, so that the decision-making about what we're doing in the time of COVID for our learners has gone from, you know, not our federal government, not our state government, it's down to every single school district so that those people have to make these decisions in vacuums, where they can, they're never going to make enough people happy, for us to just acknowledge for those people, regardless of the decision that they're making right now, that they are, they're engaging in courageous aspect, continuing to just show up is, is important to us particularly right now. And sometimes the biggest act of courage we have is to just keep showing up when it's hard. Lindsay Lyons That was so good. Thank you for sharing that. I think that is a perfect kind of wrap-up for our call to action. Like how do we really think about living out our values that we have, and that, that is a perfect one that encompasses so many different values. We might hold in terms of, you know, connection and collaboration and all of that good stuff. Oh, amazing. So as we close, we know that leaders are constantly learning and growing. Folx who listened to this podcast, love learning. I am curious, Annalisa, what is something that you are currently learning about or kind of diving into lately? It could be, you know, a book you're reading something that you're working on in your free time. What would you want to share for us that you've been learning about or that you would direct people to learn about if you're, if you're jazzed about it? Annalisa Holcombe Oh goodness. I have—I'm jazzed about so many things. Here's one, if you, if people are wondering about like, how do I even know what my values are? If you go to my website, in my blog, we have core value cards, which can help you identify those. And I think the most important thing to do with that is here's your core values. It helps you, there's some directions on how to get to them and how to like limit them. But then also how to define them for yourselves, because every single person's idea of what, you know, justice is, is different. And so how do you, how do you, how do you get clarity on what those are? The second would be to define your priorities, take some time to do that, do the act of self reflection and then notice and give yourself credit for your own small acts of courage, right? Because if you don't have time or you haven't figured out what those are if you could, first of all, define them. And second, after having gotten your own personal board of directors and you had the courage to share with them, what some of those vulnerabilities are, then share with other people who have your back, what you're doing so that they can give you that credit that you need to keep showing up. Lindsay Lyons Amazing. I love that you just linked all the different things that you've been talking about throughout the episode. Perfect close. And as people are curious about you and Connection Collaborative and your podcast, could you just tell us how they could find you, in either a social media, your website, where could they learn more about you? Annalisa Holcombe Yeah, sure. So connectioncollaborative.com is our website. If you go there, you can also find the links to the 92,000 hours podcast. New episodes come out every Tuesday and they are related to big picture issues that we talk about. So we have priorities, and coming up, we just did fear. And how, like how to handle fear in your professional life. We're doing one on vulnerability right now. So, that's, all of those I think are, are helpful and they're, they're fun to talk about, even though they're hard. So there's even an episode on failure and we have one coming out right before the holiday season, which is about love and how we can actually acknowledge that love is okay to talk about at work. Lindsay Lyons Wow. Those sound amazing. And thank you so much for doing that work. Like this is important stuff. And every time I listen, I take away so much and I feel it in my gut, like, I'm like, this is the stuff that I wish people were talking about. So it is really nice. Annalisa Holcombe Nice. That's really nice of you to say. And I'm so thrilled with what you're working on. I'm already taking away all of your work on PD and how I talk about it with the people that I work with so that we can make that a bigger lesson for people who are not necessarily teachers, but people who work and, and what that might mean. Awesome. Lindsay Lyons Thanks Annalisa. And thanks for being on the podcast. Annalisa Holcombe Thanks for inviting me. Lindsay Lyons Thanks for listening amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me at Lindsay Beth Lyons, or leave a review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it, to continue the conversation you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self. Episode Freebie: Core Values Activity
In today's episode, I'm talking to you about a practice that is common to schools and turnaround or schools who have been told by the state that they need to rethink how their school works and design an intense strategic plan. The root cause analysis is a key practice that is often part of these strategic planning conversations. What I do today in this solo episode is dig into what really makes a good root cause analysis to truly uncover what is at the heart of this system. Not serving all students. How do we get there? We'll talk about that today.
Hi, I'm Lindsay Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities, take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive anti-racist culture, where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader, turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether you're a principal, superintendent, instructional coach, or a classroom teacher, excited about school-wide change like I was, you are a leader. And if you enjoy nerding out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth, being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the Time for Teachership podcast. Let's dive in. Today. We are talking about root cause analysis. Root cause analysis is a process for identifying the underlying cause of an identified problem. When schools are in need of change or the school is struggling to implement a change initiative, a root cause analysis can help determine where the problem lies, which informs our proposed action. So in my professional life, I've seen a number of root cause analysis performed. And even as a teacher, I encouraged my students to conduct a root cause analysis of problems, trees of issues that they found, in the world. So teachers, this can be done not just at a school level, but also at a classroom level, to really promote some critical thinking and analysis and your students. But for today, we're going to be talking about it from the perspective of school change and what is also called a school reform. So these types of analyses are commonplace for schools in turnaround schools that have been given a failing grade by the department of education. And so they need to make big changes to turn around their schools. I have both witnessed and participated in root cause analysis in which the group reached what they thought might be a root cause, but no one was really sure. I would love to see school stakeholders, a variety of school stakeholders coming together, teachers, administrators, students, families, community members. I'd love to see them come together to perform this kind of root cause analysis and actually reach a root cause that they can feel to be true in their bodies. There's a visceral knowing that this is it. And if we address this, we can turn it all around. And so my vision for today, what I'd love to kind of help us think through and think about a little bit more concretely is this idea of root cause analysis and how we transform schools that have been struggling that have not served all students. And in order to do that, we need to dig deep. We need to identify what's really going on far below the surface level of what may appear to be going on, but we know there's so much more below that. And so I'd love to talk you through some examples of, and the process of how to use a root cause analysis in a way that I find to be more effective than I've seen it used in my professional consulting experience with schools and turnaround. The thing is that you'll know it when you see it approach to root cause analysis is so vague and it's unlikely to be helpful because it is so vague. And this was actually the guidance, this phrase we'll know it. When we see it is often the guidance that I heard from folks in charge of leading these analyses at the department of education level. And so what I'd like us to do today is to go beyond that, to get a bit more concrete on what we're actually looking for when we conduct these root cause analysis. And we engage in this in-depth conversation about what is actually happening in our school system. So we've spoken before about adaptive challenges on the podcast, adaptive challenges are longstanding challenges that cannot be addressed with a technical fix. So a technical fix is something where the solution is really laid out. It's step-by-step, it's like using a new textbook, purchasing a new textbook or having a one-off staff PD workshop, right? These are things that's like, Oh, you just do this. And the problem is solved. Adaptive challenges cannot be fixed with technical fixes. Adaptive challenges are difficult precisely for that reason, we don't know what the solution will be. It's going to take a lot of people coming together to dig into the problem, identify what's going on, and then collectively form a path forward. So the adaptive challenge is difficult to address because the path forward is unclear from the start adaptive leadership scholars Heifetz Grashow and Linsky are clear about one thing, though, when it comes to adaptive challenges, they right, quote, adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people's priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties. That quote is something that I will repeat again and again, because I just feel like it captures the essence of what we're talking about and the importance of a deep root cause. So to me, something that is a deep root cause, something that lies beneath a lot of that surface level stuff, it's likely going to be an adaptive challenge. The problem as a whole, right? And in the root of that, what Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky say needs to change in order to address that larger adaptive challenge is that underlying priority belief, habit, or loyalty that people in the system hold onto. This is very informative, I think, for the work of root cause analysis. So a common tool for conducting root cause analysis is what they call a Five Whys protocol. Basically, you name a cause of the problem. The first one that maybe comes to mind, and then you go down five levels. So you ask, okay, well, why is that cause—that I just named that's causing the problem—why is that happening? And then you keep going for, again, five layers, five whys. And I like this approach, but only if we know what we're actually looking for in that final why. Because I have seen five whys analysis just kind of go off the rails and end up in a totally different, completely irrelevant to my mind. A lot of times we played then where we could have gone. If we had had a bit more focus in really knowing what we were looking for as we continue down that five whys path, here's an actual example. And I'm paraphrasing a bit because I didn't write this down word for word, but here's an example of the five ways that I watched a school leadership team of a school that was in turnaround actually come up with in the root cause analysis meeting. The problem was that their school was in turnaround more broadly, right? And they got into some more specifics, but here's the first reason that they came up with when they did the five whys, the first reason why their school is failing was because according to them, they had a discipline problem. So their school's failing because they have a discipline problem. Then they said our cause is that we have a discipline problem. Well, why do we have a discipline problem? We have a discipline problem because, (and this is their second why of their five whys) students are not following the rules about no hoods, hats, or earbuds. So they're getting a little bit more specific here. And they said, well, why are students not following these rules in particular, the no hoods, hats, or earbuds? And they had a conversation and they said, okay, well, to us, it seems like that's happening because students don't understand it's disrespectful. Why number three to them was that students don't understand it's disrespectful. Hence they're violating the dress code rules. Hence we have a discipline problem. That's why our school is failing. Now there are two more levels to go still. So they said, why do students not understand that it's disrespectful? So why is this happening? So layer number four is the students don't understand because the teachers don't tell students that is disrespectful. They said okay, let's go a level deeper. The teachers don't explain to students that it's disrespectful because, and this is layer number five here, teachers don't see hallway, dress code policing as part of their job. And that's where they ended, that was their fifth why in the five whys activity, and they said, this must be our root cause. Which means if you do the check again, the check for a root cause analysis is if that lowest level, that thing you determined to be your root cause is fixed, will it fix the larger problem? So if we did a check here, we would see that this says, if teachers don't see hallway, dress codes, policing as part of their job, if that's a root cause, that means that if we convince teachers to see hallway dress code policing as an integral part of their job, our school will no longer be in turnaround. We will be effectively serving all students. Our discipline problems will go away and we will be a school that thrives and all students will be served. As you can tell, as we think through this, you know, they did end up with a belief of sorts. If we kind of use that language of Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky to think about adaptive challenges in this way and connect it with a root cause analysis process, they did end up with a belief, right? Teachers don't believe it's their job to do policing of the dress codes in the hallways, outside of their classroom. In that sense, you know, that's great that we're, we're digging into a belief. And I think this discussion, if pivoted in a slightly different direction, could have been really fruitful here. What I want to pose now is going back to number one, that first layer that first, why is this happening? The reason our school is failing is because we have a discipline problem. That's what was said. That may or may not be the case, but let's say for the sake of this exercise, that it is. The next why says the biggest discipline issue is students not taking off hats and earbuds and hoods in the hallway. So right here, I think is the pivotal moment that I wish I could go back and step in and ask, let's check our own beliefs, habits, and loyalties around this statement. And the next one, that next level was that it's disrespectful to wear hoods, hats or earbuds in the hallway. That was kind of assumed within that statement of students don't realize it's disrespectful. It was just kind of assumed that it was disrespectful behavior. So I would love for that self-reflection moment to really be highlighted in this discussion so that it wasn't just let's see where we can pinpoint other people who are not us in this room. And might I add, this was just a room of administrators and teachers, to my knowledge, no one in that room was a family member and there certainly were no students in the room. So just to kind of note that this was a limited stakeholder group of people who were deemed to be leaders on some level in the school building. But if we could introspectively take a moment to look at that point in the conversation and say, let's check our beliefs that are showing up in this statement right here. The question that we might encourage teachers or leaders to discuss at this moment might actually be: Why do teachers think that it's disrespectful? Why is that the belief there what's going on there? Or another question might be to discuss why is this dress code so important? Why is it seemingly more important than achieving the school's goal of reducing disciplinary incidents? Or why is this a rule in the first place? Why is that rule for no hats, no hoods in existence? Where did that come from? Who created that rule? Because I am willing to bet that students were not a part of that conversation in creating that rule. So here's what maybe another version of this five whys activity for this group of educators might have looked like if we started digging into these other questions and we obviously don't know for sure, because only the school stakeholders themselves would know what actually feels true for their school itself. So, because number one, might've been the same—again for argument's sake, let's just say that was the same. So our school is failing because we have a discipline problem. Why is that happening? Well, discipline is a problem because students are not following the rules about no hoods, hats, or earbuds. Okay, let's keep that the same. Now. Here's where it shifts. Why is that happening? Why are students not following the rules about no hoods, hats or earbuds? Well, maybe students don't follow these rules because they don't agree with them. And again, here, it would be really helpful to have students stakeholders in this conversation. So we're not just assuming what students are thinking, but let's just for sake of argument, go there for the exercise. So students, maybe aren't following these rules because they don't agree with them. Why is that happening? Why are there even rules that students have to follow that they never agreed to in the first place? So that next level is there are rules that students don't agree with because students were never asked to help make the rules. Now we're in a different place. Okay, let's go one level deeper. So why is it that students are never asked to help make the rules, layer number five could say maybe adults in the school believe again, we're getting another belief here, adults in the school believe students are incapable of making decisions like that decisions that affect their learning or their learning environment. Now that's probably a bit unsettling. It's a very different root cause than the first one. And this one really hits me in the gut. This one is hard to process as an educator who can connect with that, who doesn't like connecting with that, but who at times in my career have definitely noticed that belief coming up in myself. It's I think a product of how we are taught in teacher school to be as teachers, right? We know what's best; students obey. That's the, that's the game, right? So this one is really different and it's really uncomfortable. But I think to me, when we're thinking about adaptive challenges and addressing those head on, it requires that belief change. It requires an acknowledgement that there's a problematic belief and that needs to shift. And it requires that critical introspection. So no longer pointing fingers and saying, this is where the problem lies outside of me, but how am I contributing to the system to the problem that is being perpetuated by my underlying beliefs, habits, loyalties? What's going on there with me? When we look at the root cause of the first example, the initial actual example that happens and then this hypothetical example that we went through second, the first root cause, shifting teacher beliefs... So they see it as their job to police hallway dress. That root cause may result in higher disciplinary referrals because now teachers are hyper policing the hallways and they are perhaps writing students up or sending students to the office or getting in altercations in the hallway with students they may or may not know. And now teachers are feeling stressed about that. I'm sure students are feeling stressed about those interactions and we're increasing disciplinary referrals. We're increasing student and teacher stress. I'm not sure that that solves the larger issue of why the school is not serving all students. If that's the ultimate goal. Not sure that that root cause actually solves many of those things. Now in the second one, again, this is not perfect and it is a hypothetical scenario. So we'd have to really talk to the stakeholders in the school itself to figure out what's true... That second root cause? Shifting adults' beliefs that students can be a part of policy decisions, like the creation of dress codes may result in students following a dress code they helped create. So there's buy-in when diverse stakeholders are part of the process. If we're looking to change student behavior, are students involved in the creation of the rules that they're expected to follow in the first place? Do we have actual stakeholder engagement? If we expect stakeholder buy-in, I would argue that that is necessary. And I talk a lot about that, with shared leadership and student voice. But I think that's something that was kind of missing here that first, that internal reflection of the stakeholders in the space doing the root cause analysis. And then also just to think about once we hit on that belief, does it also speak to the larger way in which we're trying to lead the school? Is it one of inclusion and shared decision making or is it one in which we're going to tell you what to do and we expect you to follow it. And then if you don't, there's, there's a problem. I also want to talk about an Ishikawa diagram, which is frequently known as a fishbone diagram. It's often used during root cause analysis, and it helps the folx engaging in the root cause analysis to organize their brainstorming by different categories for each cause. So participants can make their own categories or they can use generic headings. These are usually something like methods, machines, or equipment, people, materials, measurement, and environment. In most analyses, I've been a part of, people have used the predefined categories. And again, the idea here is if we're having trouble getting started with just generating some possibilities for those causes, those categories can sometimes prompt some more nuanced or specific discussions of causes. And also when we use an Ishikawa diagram, because there are so many categories, we're able to see multiple examples of the five whys. So we might have a whole set of five whys around a particular category. For example, people, or even getting more specific students or teachers is another category of people or families, you know, whatever it is. And those might be very different from one another. They also would be very different, likely from materials and thinking about the root causes of materials or, you know, sometimes they might be the same, which is what's so fun about this. I think comparing, do we see multiple root causes showing up in those separate five whys conducted for each category? And if we do, that's probably something. So this is another example and really just a structure to help us with this conversation about root cause and to engage in the five whys so you can use them overlapping. So now I'll share another example from another school, a different school leadership team that conducted a root cause analysis. Again, this school was in turnaround, and this time they were really focused on the materials part of the Ishikawa diagram. So the problem that they had determined was that the school is failing because our ELA standardized test scores are really low. And so then the cause of that—right, why are our ELA standardized test scores really low—their response in the materials category of the Ishikawa diagram was our ELA curriculum doesn't address two key areas that are always on the state tests. And so then digging into that, they said the next layer of the why, why does our curriculum not address those two key areas on the test? Well, teachers don't want to change curriculum again every year. So far teachers have had to change curriculum. There's this constant change and they don't want to change again. And when asked, you know, why don't the teachers want to change curriculum again, the response was the new curriculum will take time to learn. And we just don't have a lot of time. We're very limited in the time that teachers have. They don't want to devote even more time to learn a curriculum when they already know one that they're familiar with and feel comfortable with. And so if we look at this root cause if we think about our solution to a root cause like that one, it might be a decision that the administration makes like we're going to reserve two days at the start of the year. And we're just going to have some, some PD on this new curriculum and that's going to address the problem. We're going to give you those two PD days. You're going to learn the new curriculum in those two days and you'll implement it throughout the year. Problem solved. Now let's look at that same problem again, from the people category of the Ishikawa diagram. So again, the problem is the school is failing because our ELA standardized test scores are really low in the people category. We say that the cause for this low standardized test score in ELA is students have repeatedly said they find the curriculum boring. Again. I just want to highlight here that we have different stakeholder perspectives, right? The last one was about teachers. This one is about students. It's going to be really helpful to have students be a part of this conversation, but okay. Our cause is that students find the curriculum boring. That's what they tell us. So why is that happening? Why do they find the curriculum boring? Well, the next level is they don't see themselves or the topics they care about represented in the curriculum. Okay. So now let's go a layer deeper. Well, why don't they see themselves or the topics they care about in the curriculum? Because teachers have used a curriculum designed by someone who doesn't know their students. So they don't know their students' identities, what their students are interested in. We could probably go a lot deeper. And in particular directions— they're talking about Euro-centric materials and white supremacy in historical, traditionally taught textbooks and things—but let's for now just say, teachers are using curriculum designed by someone who doesn't know their students and we'll leave it at that for this example. Now, why are teachers using a curriculum that's designed by someone else that doesn't know their students? Well, the reason for that is, they say, or maybe they would say—this is a hypothetical rewrite. Teachers have always been given curriculum or told to find curriculum, but they've never been supported to create original curriculum. They've never walked through the process of what that looks like? Where do you go? How do you find resources? How do you make it manageable? How do you invest in student voice and co-construct curriculum with your students? So in this example, the original materials based example, and then my hypothetical rewrite of the people category example, the habit of finding versus creating curriculum is really long standing. This second piece around the people category, I think hits a little bit deeper. I can connect to that. I can connect to the fact that I had been handed curriculum maps early on in my teaching career and was told, “Do this, make it work, but never really walked through the process of, until I got a coach in my third year. And I was able to just use that coach’s wisdom moving forward year after year, despite only having that coach for about six months of one year of, of my seven years of teaching. That support in creating my own curriculum was a pivotal moment in me being able to engage students and see academic success that I had never seen before with a standardized curriculum. So it really connects me on some level, that this may be true. Now it may not have been true for this group. I'm just trying to kind of highlight how different categories lead us to, to different places. But administrators and teachers may believe, right? Again, that belief idea is crucial here. If we're using that language of adaptive challenges, there may be an underlying belief here that curriculum developed by professional curriculum, authors or companies is actually better for students. But here's the thing I think about. If students are not engaged in the curriculum, then it's not going to do much. Even if it is amazingly designed, research-based, all of the things...if students aren't engaged in it, it's not doing much for those students. And so the path forward in this case, maybe doing some action research to see if the data confirms or rejects the claim that store-bought lessons or units are more engaging than teacher designed lessons or units. And by teacher design, I mean, co-constructed with students to some degree, and I've talked about that in other podcasts, but just this continuum of designing with students and advancing student voice in these designs now, of course, technical fixes. So for example, training, removing other tasks from teachers’ plates so they have time to create the new lessons would definitely be part of the plan moving forward. But technical fixes in and of themselves can not fix adaptive challenges. So there's much more work that needs to be done on an inner level, a mindset shift, belief shift level that are going to be required if we want results. Right? If people still believe, if teachers still believe that standardized curriculum is better, there's not going to be buy-in for any of those training that you may offer or the support that you may provide, or the time that you might give for teachers to create original curriculum. If there's not a belief that that's going to be better for their students, as we think about all this stuff, as we think about root cause analysis and what that means for us as we lead schools, either leading schools through transformation, if you're in a school that has been identified as a turnaround school or a school that is not meeting standards, according to the state or a school that is doing really well, according to the state, but you know, there's more work that you want to do. We're always growing and learning as communities. There's a lot here to kind of unpack and to think through and a root cause analysis is an incredibly powerful tool that you can use when used, well, I think it can really be used powerfully to identify and then work through some of those underlying beliefs, habits and loyalties that you can kind of dig into as a multi-stakeholder group. Now, in terms of putting this into practice, as you go forth and tackle those adaptive challenges in your school and conduct your root cause analysis, I encourage you to remember that key question that helps you really realize and recognize when you've reached a true root cause, which comes from again, the adaptive leadership scholars, Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky, what are the habits, beliefs, and loyalties we're holding on to? Do those need to shift? And when I say we're holding onto you, I mean, the people doing this analysis, the stakeholders in the room, right? We don't want to always assume for other folks that we want to make sure everyone who needs to be in the room is in the room for this conversation. And what's so amazing is if we can identify and address those underlying habits, beliefs, and loyalties that need to shift, then the technical fixes, which are also useful, have a chance to finally work their magic. In the show notes, I'm going to link to a freebie for you, which is an adjusted copy of what I actually created for my students when I was encouraging them to create activist based projects in my class as a teacher. But what I think can also be really helpful for school stakeholders and leadership teams in thinking through these different activities, the five whys, that Ishikawa diagram, the root cause analysis as a whole. And so I'll link to that template with the different activities to help you work through the stuff with your team. Thank you so much for listening to another episode. I am so excited to hear what comes out of this. Please share any root cause analysis stories or root causes that you identify as you do this work together as a leadership team, connecting with multiple stakeholders in your community. I can not wait to hear exactly what you come up with, and if you have any questions along the way, please feel free to reach out. Thanks for listening, amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me at Lindsay Beth Lyons, or leave a review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it. To continue the conversation you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best. Episode Freebie: Root Cause Analysis Worksheet |
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Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...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
November 2024
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