Human-First “Withness” with Jaz Ampaw-Farr

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Lindsay Lyons: I'm thrilled to be able to give you listen a to my conversation with Jaz Ampaw Farr, who is a resilience ninja, international speaker, coach and author hailed in the US as the British Oprah. Jaz has traveled the world advising governments, educators and helping tens of thousands of people with her bespoke leadership development programs, training courses and motivational speeches. As a successful entrepreneur, mom of three and former teacher, She knows a thing or two about galvanizing people into taking action. With a passion for resilience, positive disruption and a human first approach to everything, Jaz's energy is infectious and you can't help but become mesmerized and fall under her captivating spell for reference, this conversation was recorded on November 2nd, 2021. Now Let's get to the episode with Jaz.
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.

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I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you are 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 and being the best version of yourself. You're going to love the time for Teacher Ship podcast. Let's dive in.
Lindsay Lyons: Jaz, Welcome to the time for Teacher Ship podcast.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: Hello, I'm very excited to be here.
Lindsay Lyons: I'm so excited that you're here and so I have just read your professional bio and I want to know if there's anything beyond what is typical in terms of professional bios, you know, all the accolades and accomplishments, like how do you define yourself or how do you want to intro yourself to, to the audience?
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: Oh, I'm a world class reframer, that's how I describe myself because the kind of ability to um like reframe stories to make sure that I'm taking responsibility for what I'm responsible for and nothing else and to stand on the truth about myself so that I can fight for the highest good of the children in my care and the leaders that I serve,

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that takes a lot of reframing. It also takes, you gotta be like 10% braver than you were yesterday, every day. So that's kind of, I think, you know, that's who I am, that's what I do.
Lindsay Lyons: Oh that is wonderful. Okay, I love that. It's a really great, great um pitch about yourself. So as we think about this idea of, of education and what Bettina Love talks about in terms of freedom dreaming. She says "Dreams grounded in the critique of injustice". I really like this idea of freedom dreaming about schools and education and I'm curious to know what is your kind of dream or freedom dream around education, what could it be
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: Human first, that's what it could be, you know, when people get more responsibility or influence, they start, it's almost like we automatically start thinking we've got to be either professional or human. On the human, professionals do things to other people like schools or school boards that do things to their staff or to their students. Like during the pandemic, I heard of one school, bless them, doing enforced yoga like at one o'clock on Thursday everyone will do yoga for mark, for well-being and you just sort of thinking kind of missing the point, I see what you're trying to do there, but it's a bit tricky to sort of force people to relax.

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So doing things to people coming from that space means that you make decisions that are probably the best and probably gonna work when we when we don't consider the humanity of the situation. When we take empathy out of it, then some people do things for others. Now, doing things for someone or being for someone is fantastic and that's where a lot of schools and kick it out of the park, but what's missing is that the child or the parent or the community needs to think and feel and know that you're for them. There's no good me being for you, if you don't feel that I'm for you, I could be fighting for your high school but you're like, I don't know if I can trust her, it's not working. Some schools, some leaders, some people go for with, withness where they actually stand shoulder to shoulder in the chaotic fire in empathy not sympathy. Like in Britain when somebody dies, we always go oh I'm so sorry and it's like literally oh I don't know what to say. Don't talk to me. I'm talking about empathy which is the opposite. That's like I don't know how you feel that's hideous. I can't imagine your pain but I'm going to stand here with you. That's different. It's the withness buys loyalty,

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it garners commitment, it rigs of its compliance. That is what human revolution looks like and if it's going to the revolution is going to happen anyway it's going to be an education being human first leaders, human first teachers, human first adults. Schools that are human first. That's what I want to see.
Lindsay Lyons: That is a beautiful dream and I love this concept of withness. I think that's so much of what I talk about in terms of shared leadership and how do we do things with one another and truly partner not just communicate one way but like actually partner with folks. So that's really exciting. And I think a lot of times when we think about the traditional education system it is definitely not that right? It is we are communicating one way and we are doing it this way
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: It's fear based, I think that's the problem and I know kind of in in the Canadian system, in the American system, the Australian system, in the New Zealand system. I've worked with lots of governments and just like in UK, there is this feeling of um from the kind of nurturing guardian everyday heroes in the system, I've got to take the boxes and do what needs to be done and sometimes you know we go into the role thinking right, I'm going to bring change, I'm going to do it, but we failed to future proof ourselves and so over time what happens is that we get like, broken down and heat on and we start saying things like it's the system. When where the system it's not

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they are us, them and us, we are the system, they are us. So we forget our agency within that moment and we become, we feel like we're data slaves and we feel like we're just here and we turn the volume down and we don't stick our head up or take risks because people didn't come in to change everything, they came in to do a great job. But it feels like you stop serving the child and you start serving the administration. And we are the magical like tracing paper between the administration and the child. We have to stand. But it becomes increasingly more difficult because of the judgment element, because it's not collaborative. It's judgment like in the UK we have offstage which is a body that comes in and you know, I can or cannot make you cry and like decides what level you're working as a staff and it's all very personal and it's all people are terrified and they say things that I hope we get a nice offset team, were hoping for, hope and hope is not a strategy, this is the education sector, we're not going to leave things to hope, you know. It's like you should be able to say, I know where I'm doing great and I know where I need to work harder and this is my plan for that, interested in your thoughts, but we're scared, we're scared of getting it wrong.

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We're scared of making a mistake. We're scared of what other people think. We're victims of comparisonitis, the whole time comparing our from our backstage and everyone else's front stage on social media or "Look at that school, they were on the telly". You know, and that causes us to play small. So it's hard to be, to do with this, when you're only united in oppression. That's, we deserve better than that. Our kids deserve better than that and we can do better than that. But it means we've got to come from an intentional place. We can't be Forrest Gumping our way through education, life, job, work, with our partner, hating our job because our job gets the best of us and they get what's left, not good enough. We deserve better.
Lindsay Lyons: So well said and I appreciate all of the mindset shifts that you're kind of speaking to their around like, you know, this idea of like withness being really front and center. And I love the idea of, you know, not necessarily just blaming the system, but recognizing we are the system, right? We have this agency and that's so important to be able to wrap our minds around to be able to do this work well. So in terms of what that looks like To, to get to that dream, to do withness and to um you know, practice all the things that you're talking about,

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what, I mean, I think bravery as you said at the start, right? 10% braver than you were yesterday. I think bravery is a requirement here. And so what are those brave actions that either teachers or educational leaders can, can really take to make that dream come true for their school.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: Yeah, I think it really starts from getting very clear and reconnecting with the purpose, the reason you came into this job in the first place because all the resources, all the YouTube videos, all the great examples. You can read all the books, but if your mind and heart is not in a place where you are ready to take risks, none of it is going to happen. You've actually got to be able to apply stuff, but it's got to be the driving force. The thing that takes you on that Shero's journey, which is the hero's journey, but "shero". That journey, it can't be something as mundane as well, you know, hopefully we'll get some good grades, because the impact that you have and the difference you make cannot be measured on a spreadsheet. It is not the sum of your greatness. The transformational power is not what appears on a bit of paper at the end of the year.

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It's a lifelong legacy, you know, culture, leadership, impact. That's what happens when you're not watching anymore. When you're not even in the room anymore. And when educators, when any adult in school grasps the heaviness and the complete massive power they have to change, transform lives in the tiniest actions that caused the biggest ripples, that will outlive them. That's when you stand on the moment of truth and not on this kind of "Oh my gosh, I don't think I mark the geography books. I must get on. And I've got to try and steal some minutes back at Christmas" and "I wonder if I could", no! So it first of all it's getting, it's putting the right pants on and I mean under trackers English pants, not American pants, getting your underwear on the right way around so that you're not walking around, you know like this all day, uncomfortable where some comfortable knickers is basically what I'm saying. But it's about saying, "Okay, when I go to bed tonight, I can show up as my full fat self or I can hide and feel I'm failing all day and tell myself a story that I'm not enough.

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I get paid the same. So which one do I choose for me? For my family, for my children, for the community I said, which one do I choose because it comes down to choice and I wish it didn't. I wish the world owes us a living. I wish we were all being victimized. I wish that was true". But the plain fact of the matter is, is that you are in full control of how you show up. And so when we tie schools values and counties values and school board values to our personal values. And when we see the transformational part, when I talk about transformation, I'm talking about like caterpillar to butterfly, like short fat hairy guy to Beyonce colored bird, right? I think sometimes education, when you hear the word transformation, people are talking about like a quicker faster harrier, shorter caterpillar and I don't mean that, that might be something that happens. I'm talking about the impact of human-to-human standing with, that is palpable. And until you stand on the truth about yourself, you can only, you can only achieve what you believe you deserve. You're only as powerful as the stories that you tell, and if the story you're telling yourself is I'm not good enough, I'm just one person,

00:11:12
what can I do? Nothing will change until your desire for things to be different is bigger than your fear of having a go. And I've learned that the hard way by living a smaller version of myself for like the 40 years of my life, for turning the volume down and trying to blend in and be accepted and it's not that it's about being the human, you were designed to be not the human that the system has crushed you into being, that's really how I try and live in all aspects of life, but specifically that is what's caused the change and the bravery or one thing about bravery, courage is firefighters, right? They see a burning building and they run towards it while the rest of us are screaming, running in the opposite direction, that's courage, that is a practice, embedded skill, art and commitment, bravery is when you are absolutely terrified and you have no idea if it will work, but you still choose to take the first step, very different,
Lindsay Lyons: That's really powerful, I had never heard the distinction before or anyone put it in that way. The courage versus bravery and I think that idea of, you know, facing down your terror in so many ways, especially when talking about equitable education, right?

00:12:17
A lot of, a lot of um a lot of that is related to my sense of self and how I show up and like you're saying there's so much of that and then there's also like the societal pieces, like I totally hear what you're saying around, you know, we choose to show up in the ways that we show up, we have the agency, we can't take that away. And also there's this context, particularly the US right now, there's this context around critical race theory and anyone doing any sort of equity work. Now there's all these states that have these laws on the books that are, if you mentioned this, you must lose your job, right? And so there's like this very real threat of I have no more job, I can't put food on my table and there's like multiple pieces and so I'm wondering like you know, how do we make sense of that and how do we kind of like honor those pieces that make it really challenging. And then also kind of show up as you're saying and kind of have that agency and take on the agency and show that bravery to be able to choose how we show up each day.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: That is such a good question. I was talking about resilience and mindset and bravery with a conference before Covid and I went to a workshop and I went to an LGBTQ

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workshop for teachers and I've been talking about being yourself and being honest and being and they were talking about how afraid they were to come out because the governors, and I suddenly got this massive oh my gosh, I mean and I'm like angry that people feel they can't be themselves, but at the same time I can see how they've kind of navigated. And so, and I know that I am a person designed to stand out and cause trouble. I know that that is when I lean into that, I'm at my fullest self. You know, I'm like, I'm not aiming for everyone to go. Yeah, Jaz is great. You know, if you don't like me, that's great. Don't work with me. We'll both be miserable. So I'm very clear on that. But that's come from a journey of saying what matters most, because everybody wants to be in control, right? But you don't grow when you're in control because it's too comfortable that being in control is great, it's not going to get you anywhere, it's just going to give you a nice journey. The opposite of being in control is being in chaos, and we've all experienced that to some way, shape or form. We've all been through the same storm.

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We've been in very different boats. Some people have had a, a nice luxury catamaran with a deckhand and a pair of speedos with a glass of Champagne on a silver tray during lockdown. Some people have been in a rowboat with a hole in it one row missing and a relative they don't like. So, it's not really measurable in terms of, "Well we've all survived". We've done different things, but chaos for people could be something as small as you know, the car doesn't work in the morning. It can be something as big as "I have no family and no way of feeding myself. I mean, it's relative to what you're experiencing. But in between control and chaos is this beautiful golden space of complexity, and in complexity if you can stand in there and it's easier if you opt into it, then if you're forced into it where you stay neutral and you get curious and you ask questions and you come from a position and a kind of stance of genuine curiosity, I mean, we're education right? We should create a space where we can get it wrong when we're saying to the kids, "Oh yeah, try best get it wrong".

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When do you make a mistake? When did you last make a mistake? Huh? And if you haven't made one today, you're not trying hard enough because we're supposed to be outside our comfort zone in order to lead the way, when we start putting ourselves in the position, we asked the kids to be in all the time, when we start putting out. So it's not just "Yeah, take a risk". You take a risk! When we're actually one that garners withness, two it garners commitment not compliance, three it buys loyalty, four it's fulfillment, it's not happiness, that's just like cake and beer, it's fulfillment, it's long lasting and five it reconnects you to the reason you came into the job in the first place. It is not going to be easy. It is not going to be easy, when I trained, they said to me, here's a tip, "Don't smile until Christmas". And what they were trying to do was saying, don't make relationships with the kids. Don't let them get too close because you'll get hurt. Well, here's what I'm saying to you. You're going to get hurt. You're going to cry, you're going to carry these kids in your heart and you're going to get hurt. You're gonna carry the staff, the parents, the community in your heart. It is going to hurt because teaching starts with art. It's about relationships and those relationships change lives.

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They change the world. So if you want, if you don't want it to be a plumber, I'm pretty sure you can do that job without, you know, getting too emotionally attached. But although I do know some very emotionally attached plumbers, but it's a job where it is going to be hard. I'll also say there are sometimes your values, you know, your values should be valuable, right? They should cost you something. I have left relationships because of my value on towards integrity. I've left jobs eventually because of that value of integrity. Sometimes it is time for you to say not "Not this profession", but maybe "Not this school". It's a buyer's market any that, you know, we're wanted. So, you know, learn to negotiate a bit better, but we wanted sometimes it's about speaking up, sometimes it's about finding an ally, sometimes it's about asking a question, but it's never going to be a comfortable journey. And if you want comfort, you know, there's another way of doing this that doesn't, that doesn't bring about the same commitment, the same change. It's still valid, but you've got it. It can it can only come from you because you can teach what you know, but you can only embed in others where you know where you've been yourself.

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And I'm not saying you have to have the same experience, my journey and yours is different, but we both know what fear is. We both know what worry is. We both know what guilt is. We both know the feeling that we're not enough is so it's it's being able to address that in yourself before calling others up to do the same in themselves.
Lindsay Lyons: Yes, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense, and one of the things that one of my colleagues doctor Shoebridge is always reminding me is like, you know, you have to make it about yourself first, right? And so like, so we're always doing like SEL for example, right? Social emotional learning were like, yeah, like "come on kids be all these things and do the castle competencies". And how many times have we actually practice the breathing exercise that we're telling the kids to do or how many times have we, you know gone through all of these things. And so this idea of like adults going first and not even modeling, but like I want a better word than that, but like sharing in the practice of, right and doing that withness that you're describing like we're in this together, right?
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: And you know, you know why that's important as well because as if you grew up in an abusive home or with someone who is an alcoholic or bipolar or something like that, you learn as a child to read body language, facial expression, micro expression.

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So I used to think that I was psychic because I could tell when what people said and did and what they thought and felt were out of out of sync with each other. So I used to think that I was like, oh maybe I have some sort of magical power. No, I can read people really well. So if you are not doing it, I remember doing a workshop on growth mindset and one of the leaders said, "Hold on, I thought you were going to give us tips on teaching growth mindset, but this is what you're saying, it sounds like a complete mindset shift on my part" and I'm like, yes, it is because if you want to, you don't try and buy a diamond with a moody £10 note that you make bill printed in this kitchen. I mean you just and these kids are diamonds, they are lives for crying out loud. There are the people who are going to be doing the hip replacement on you in a few years' time. So treat your most expensive resource with a bit more investment and a bit more, you know, go first, go first and I know that some people are in immense pain and it's not about, I'm not saying coming to school in the morning and say, "Oh well I've watched the whole of Netflix last night. I'm an alcoholic and I think I might get involved in some human trafficking on the way to school this morning.

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Grade two don't need all that information, but I am saying that you need to be professionally vulnerable and personally authentic, so that you can say to them, "Do you know what? Sometimes I get scared too. Do you know what? This is what I did watch me now. This is what I do when I don't know what to do when I get stuck when I fail. I take a minute and I decided to be a resilient chocolate hobnob rather than a rich tea soggy biscuit". I mean you use your own stories but you're not afraid to be what's the term? Oh, I know human first! It's back to that again. We so often wonder like, well it's in the textbook would just follow and we, yeah, computers can do that. We have apps that could do that better than humans can do it. That the missing element, the human element, the connection, the encouragement that there never giving up, that's not something anyone else can do. And if you ask your kids, I remember thinking I saw this poster once and I designed my own and my poster says "I loved my teacher, I can't believe how brilliant she was. I loved all the data she used to collect on me said no child ever".

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So just make an order of the priority of what you do and make sure you put the right amount of, of weight on each one. Because if you ask the kids what the story they tell about you. If you get involved in the story, that your team, tell about you, that's often different to the story you're telling yourself. Your story is well, I'm not very good at this and you know that pep talk, you give yourself in the morning before you leave the house, you look in the mirror and you go, oh I'm fat, I'm old, I'm going gray, let's go, you know, beat yourself before you. It's just, it's like the story we tell ourselves and the story, our class or our teams tell about us need to be in alignment. Those stories need to be in alignment. So, stop putting yourself down, turning the volume down and indulging an imposter syndrome. Don't get me wrong, I love a visit to victimhood. It's very nice seaside town, but you can't live there, you can't exist forever in victimhood if you want to bring about change. So, it feels like I cop out sometimes. I feel like I'm saying you've got to look at yourself but I know what it's like to be on the other side of people who have not done this work and gotten curious as a child and as an adult and it is debilitating, it means people who mean well end up actually causing another adverse childhood experience.

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So the cost is too great and the payoff is huge. Human first
Lindsay Lyons: Excellent, excellent points. And I like the cost being too great and also just like the being able to align your stories piece I think is so insightful when we think about, you know, the how often we ask students what the stories are that they tell us or even as adults right? Like thinking about what we personally remember about our childhood experiences in school. I usually open workshops with that question and I'll say, you know, what is the most powerful experience you remember? And now you know, what category does it kind of fall into? Was it like, "Oh I love this particular lesson that we did and I like I learned my ABC's in this particular way", or is it like "I had this deep sense of belonging with this other child or this teacher or this sense of connection", and if we take a moment, just a moment to like, ask that question of our own experiences or the students around us, we will often see that it doesn't reconcile or align with the things that we're prioritizing on a day to day basis. If every teacher were to ask themselves, you know, "What's the most important thing I do today?"

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Imagine, right? That like, they would say, oh, get through this content when it's really, like, make this student feel seen or heard or valued, like say that child's name, look them in the eye, right? And we don't prioritize those things. So I really appreciate you naming that we should, that we should be.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: I think it's hard because it's actually what you benefit from that as well, because it means it makes your job, makes delivering the content easier. It's like you shouldn't be teaching the bus stop method for long division to someone who hasn't had a biscuit. It would be easier if they weren't hungry while you were trying to teach this lesson. So, I'm talking about making it easy on yourself. You know, I'm inviting people to stop, don't make it so difficult, you know, that this is the first stage that will make the rest of the journey a lot more palatable and enjoyable
Lindsay Lyons: Right? And as you were saying before, you know, connect to why we got into teaching in the first place, right? It's probably not to dump a bunch of information on someone, right? It's about making those connections and we got to get back to that if we want to stay nourished and fulfilled as you said, I think there's such a trend, I mean there always has been right, but such a trend of leaving the profession after 3 to 5 years or something.

00:24:15
And like that burnout is real and so finding these ways that we can feel fulfilled um and our students can feel fulfilled at the same time. Like that. Again, that sense of witness I think is so powerful. Um and obviously placing humans first as well, that's just really powerful concepts that I love have kind of threaded through this entire conversation. So thank you for naming this.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: No, no, one of the questions I always have is, and I feel like you see it in lots of places have been marketing in other places. It's getting the b's in the right order because I feel like some of the schools, I went to had belonging at the top. So it doesn't matter who you are away from what you've done, you belong, you're part of this family end of. And when, when you know that you belong, then you get this belief the second b where they believe in you and you start to believe in yourself because you feel like you belong. So you start to actually believe you might be better than you think and then last comes behavior, you change what you do because what you think and feel has changed. But other schools have the b's in the wrong order behavior came first, you have to behave like this in the way,

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And I went to a very kind of white middle class school and I was a foster kid who was mixed race. I didn't have a clue. I just didn't even know how to behave. So, I was wrong from the get go. So, there was no, I just felt wrong all the time. Then you're supposed to believe in the delayed gratification of education, whatever one I know is on the wrong. So why do I need history GCSE and then if you behave in the right way I believe, then you can belong. Well, I can go mug someone and belong to a gang who will actually take care of me and have my back. So why would I try it's too big? So inadvertently we create this lack of belonging within a space where we need belonging in order to build the curriculum on. So it's like Jaz Lowe's, hierarchy of needs is you've got to be safe, you've got to be well and you've got to be seen, and when you're seen then we know we can start teaching. So it's what are the things that you can do to make someone feel that you've noticed that their there. Then what are the things that we do to our friends? You know, we send them a text when they're not around. "Are you all right?" We can send postcards home and the kids aren't there, we could like when schools have to isolate kids or expel them whatever they rather than saying "You don't belong here", say, "look, this isn't tenable, but we will never stop fighting for your high school of believing in you".

00:26:26
I mean, there's so many little things that we can do that actually negate what it feels like to be told you're not good enough. And it's those little things, it's putting yourself on the other side of where you are looking at things with a different lens that allow you to find the whole, you know, tiny random acts of kindness that you can start embedding that will make your job more fulfill, make you feel more fulfilled in your job and make it easier and more impactful.
Lindsay Lyons: I love this framework of the b's and Jaz Lowe's, hierarchy of needs. It's brilliant.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: I didn't make all this stuff up sometimes it makes sense. But these are all the things that I've kind of tried to make sense of my own experience as a child, as a teacher and as a leader, you know, it's kind of like, well what if we what if, I don't know if it's gonna work and I don't know if anyone, it will probably fail, but who's with me? You know, it's that kind of attitude and sometimes things and things, you either win or you learn, it's one or the other. It's never, it goes wrong to the point.

00:27:28
And I personally think the worst thing that can happen is that things go right the first time and you miss out on an opportunity to embed ambitious resilience, but that's how I feel. But it's that's a way of intentional living for me. I don't just turn it on when I'm in school, that's that's how I choose to be the whole time. So it's easier if you can get an alignment with who you are and what you do be a human being before a human doing, you know, that's the thing that has more impact.
Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. And oh my gosh, you've dropped so much wisdom, like throughout this whole, this whole conversation. So just imagining a listener, you know, in their car, on the command of community or in the subway or something, and just like listening to all this stuff and wondering like, "Okay, I want to take one step to like, be, you know, in alignment with all the things you've talked about today", what would you suggest that first step is like, what can they do as soon as they, you know, hang up, the ear buds and get to work on this
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: The first thing is, I've got three stickers on my mirror at eye level and I say them every morning, three kind of affirmations, I guess, and it says, I love you, I accept you, I forgive you. Because when I say that and during different parts of my life, different ones of those have been really hard.

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I could love and accept myself. I could never forgive myself because I'm holding myself such a high standard. And I think when I was able to say all three of those and keep eye contact and smile with relief and just openness at the end, that's when I suddenly realized what full fat Jaz looks like. And so I say what we do and we hear something great, will go to the conference, were writing scribbling notes and recording it and then we put all these notes in the box of shame that live in the back of the cover and then we feel bad because we never look at them again and all we can remember about the conference is the food was good and I know I've been here. So I would say unless you're planning on checking out, like, you know, tomorrow, I would say you've got a whole lifetime to make these tiny little changes that will make a massive difference. So today, the best time to have started doing this is last year and the second-best time is right now. So, one thing, one thing for the next semester, that's all. One thing that you are intentional about pouring yourself into and it might be not slagging yourself off in the mirror in the morning try that, see how that works.

00:29:41
It might be standing at the door and saying to everyone, "I'm glad you're here". It might be having a give what you can take what you need bowling class. So, when someone needs something, they just, you know, it could be any number of things. But one thing to just commit to doing and collect the data, I know you love a bit of data, so collect the data on the difference. That makes the, the impact that has. And then after that semester is done, you've done that, then do the next thing. You can also elicit a friend. You could do two different things and you double your bubble there, but it's, it's about taking the smallest steps. It's not about rescuing everyone, it's about valuing everyone. What would that look like? Including yourself? Nobody wins if you work yourself into an early grave and you know, you're trying to encourage the students to say, "Yeah, I want to do something great in my life". What if they go into education and you keep saying to them, yeah, you know, it's important, you're important and then they get to your age with your job and suddenly they're knackered and bitter and twisted and hateful. They're gonna feel like you lied to them. So, let's try and get ourselves in alignment, one tiny step at a time.

00:30:44
Lindsay Lyons: I love this. These are great suggestions and and one of the, one of the questions I really like to ask just at the end of podcast episodes specifically, is most of the people who come on here are talking about, you know, like you are growth and you know how, how we personally as adults are continuing to grow and learn and do all these things and so I'm just curious to know for fun, what is something that you have been learning about lately in your own life?
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: I'm learning about how to get my own Netflix season because that's what I want to do. I want to do a kind of Nanette sort of a stand-up comedy that isn't stand-up comedy, but actually talks about story but takes people on this journey because I'm all about, you know, storytelling. So, I've started charting that and you can follow along on social media anywhere. Jaz Ampaw-Farr because I do reality tv, you could put Jaz The Apprentice and you'll find me on google, that's the gift of being on reality tv. But on all the social media platforms, I just kind of send something out every day that celebrates and challenges people so that you can do both. And part of my journey around my kind of Jazzet, stand up piece is going to be within that
Lindsay Lyons: Wow, that sounds brilliant and I cannot wait for you to get your Netflix show.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: It will happen.

00:31:54
Lindsay Lyons: That is so great. Jaz, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show and having this wonderful conversation today
Jaz Ampaw-Farr: So much fun. Thank you for having me and thank you for the real brave questioning. I like the big questions that you ask.
Lindsay Lyons: Thank you so much.
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. Until next time leaders continue to think big, act brave and be your best self.

You can find Jaz on her website. 
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