Episode 59 - Unapologetic Leadership with Guest Marcus Belin

Shownotes:

Join us as we dive into the world of Unapologetic Leadership with Dr. Marcus Belin. Discover how Marcus and his team have embraced positivity by finding what's good in the last 24. You will feel the excitement as if you're the one running around the school, interviewing students about their wins, from acing a math test to winning a championship game. But it's not just about the kids—Marcus reveals how cultivating gratitude benefits adults too. You won't want to miss this!

About Our Guest:

Dr. Marcus Belin serves as the Principal of Huntley High School, President of Illinois Principals Association, and was recently awarded the 2021 National Association of Secondary School Principals Digital Principal of the Year and was named to the Class of 2021 ASCD International Emerging Leader. Dr. Belin is a motivational speaker and host of the podcast Unapologetic Leadership. He is passionate about creating learning environments that foster social-emotional support for kids, leveraging the integration of technology to expose kids to the world around them, motivating educators, and challenging the status quo of education. He is an alum of Bradley University, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and National Louis University for his doctorate. Dr. Belin is the husband of an amazing wife, Monique, and a father to 3 beautiful children, who keep life exciting and active.

Website: ⁠drmarcusbelin.com⁠

Twitter: ⁠@marcusjbelin⁠

Instagram: ⁠@drmarcusbelin⁠

About Lainie:

Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving Learner⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and a contributing author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Because of a Teacher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Her latest book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving with Gratitude⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/lainierowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book, is now available! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Purchase here!⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can also get bulk orders for your staff (10 copies or more) at a discounted price! Just fill out the form linked below and someone will get back to you ASAP! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/ewgbulkdiscount⁠

Transcript:

Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] All right, my friends, Dr. Marcus Belin said it's time to rock and roll, so we're gonna do this. I am so excited to welcome you, Marcus. Thank you so much for being here.

Marcus Belin: Yeah, thanks Lainie for having me on the show. I've been excited. I've been waiting on this moment, so thank you.

Lainie Rowell: Oh, you're so kind. Well, me too.

And we actually had a chance to see each other in Chicago. Back in February, it was a very, like ships passing in the night moment and I saw you and I'm like, oh, I know him so I had to quickly grab you and say hello. Hopefully you didn't feel physically accosted, but I did wanna grab you and say hello.

Marcus Belin: No, it's awesome. I mean, we spent so much time being behind the screen virtually. That when you finally see people, you kinda like, How do I approach this person?

Okay, cool. I'm gonna just go after 'em. And you did that, so I embrace it. I'm good with that.

Lainie Rowell: Well, thank you. And we have a shared project. We have both written chapters for Because of a Teacher. So yeah, I feel like we're part of that franchise, if you will. I don't know, but for our friend George Couros who curated those amazing books.

So honored to be a part of that.

Marcus Belin: Yeah, shout out.

Lainie Rowell: Always gotta give the shout out. So, okay. I'm going to do my best to be professional and give you a formal introduction, Dr. Belin, and you will please jump in and add all the extra things. This is an impressive bio. So here we go. Dr. Marcus Belin is a current principal. Friends, he's actually a principal who is on the second to last day of school. Wow. I mean, thank you. Thank you. Truly honored that you're taking this time. I know you got a million things. Also, NASSP National Board Member, Past President of the Illinois Principals Association, ASCD Emerging Leader.

I mean, principal of the year, there's so many things. Podcast host, speaker, keynote, or, okay. I, I could go on and on. Marcus, I'm gonna let you take it from here. What else do we need to know about you?

Marcus Belin: Oh my goodness. I know people ask me all the time, like, do you sleep?

I, I actually do sleep. And I don't do what I do for young people for accolades. Yes, some of that stuff comes and the opportunities are there, and I'm so appreciative of the people that have kind of put me in a position to to be able to hear all of this about me. But it's just been a humbling experience.

As, as you stated, like, starting a podcast happened during the pandemic. It was like a pandemic project. It was one of those things where you just, you got bored in the house and huge shout out to Adam Welcome, who just, he called me one day and he was like, you just gotta start it. Here's how you do it.

Go do it. I'll call you tomorrow and see how it went.

Lainie Rowell: That's a good friend. That's a good friend.

Marcus Belin: I did. He's, he's, and, and when the accountability is there, like I did it and it, his people tell me all the time, there's people who are in education who were not in educated like, Hey, I heard your podcast, like you're not even in education.

They're like, yeah, but I just love listening to the story so Unapologetic Leadership is, it's out there wherever you get your podcast. Always looking for people to be on the show, but just using it as a laid back platform to be able to share the work of educators in the work that we do and to hopefully push the envelope and move some things forward in the field of education.

So in the field of education, leadership, all of that good stuff. The only thing that I don't have on my bio, that...

Lainie Rowell: I know what you're gonna say.

Marcus Belin: ...I'm working on. What do you think it is?

Lainie Rowell: Because it was something I think I bothered you about when we were in person. You got a book coming, right?

Marcus Belin: Yeah. I got a book coming. I got, this summer is I have a bunch of ideas that when I'm sitting in the cafeteria with kids, like every day in my building is content, right? Like every thing that I've done just being a principal, that's always content. Cause there's learning that comes from it, especially reflection that comes from the work that happens every day.

I reflect every night. When I get home I'm like, okay, what, what happened today? What can I do better? What did I learn? And a lot of those stories that are, are really shaping and shaping me into the leader I've become. And so really focusing on my journey. Kind of being a fifth generation educator and being from a family full of people who have been in education from various levels.

And then really kind of moving through this journey myself, I've been in education now for 13 years. This is year 13. 11 of those years have been in administration. I taught fifth and sixth grade social studies for two years. I was a part of a I was a founding teacher of a startup charter school.

I was a founding administrator of a dean of students of a charter high school. Moved into public education, became a principal. And at 29, right? Who would've thought right at 29? So yeah, the, the list just kind of goes on and the opportunities have presented itself, but it's all for the joy of the job.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and I think for me, a lot of the things feed each other. So you're a very reflective person. Why not turn that into a book? Why not do the podcast and get that stuff out there? And then hopefully it helps others. I know what you do does help others. Hopefully what I do helps others. And it all kind of, to me, it feeds each other. It makes me excited for the work. Like, oh, I get to have this conversation with Marcus today. This is gonna be so fun. I can't wait to hear what he has to share and have this conversation. So I think it is time, but it's time well worth it.

Marcus Belin: Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited.

Lainie Rowell: All right. Let's dig in. I have the very intense first question, but the good news is there's no right or wrong answer to it. So, I just wanted to get from your perspective, and people ask me, I even had a guest turn it around on me the other day. Well, what does gratitude mean to you?

And I'm like, okay. Today it means, because it does change pretty much from day to day. There's a general understanding of it. But just kind of maybe what's hitting you right now as far as what are you thinking about, what does gratitude mean to you at this moment in time?

Marcus Belin: Well, it's interesting that you say that because at graduation, which was last weekend, I graduated 700 young people.

I know I just saw your face. I have a student population of just about 3000 and I graduated 700 of them. And to open it up, I really talked about gratitude being really a, a positive emotion and a mindset that carries a sense of appreciation. Appreciation for really the good things in life.

One of the biggest things that we have focused on this year in my building is being intentional about finding the positive. And so some of the ways we've done that with connecting with kids and connecting with my staff and even my community we've done what's good in the last 24. And what's good in the last 24 is literally we create a video.

I have a student that films with one of my math teachers whose energy is just as crazy and and hype as mine. We literally run around the school on Friday mornings for about 30 minutes, just asking kids like, what was good this week? What was good in your last 24 hours? And it really, forces them to focus on like, man, what was good?

Like, oh, I passed a math test yesterday. Or, oh, I'm ready for this test that's getting ready to come up. Or last night we won our regional championship game. It's all of the things that can happen. I got a lot of sleep last night, right? Like there's a lot of positives, the small, the large things.

But what comes from that is an understanding of gratitude. It's really the act of focusing on being thankful. I think there's oftentimes, especially working with teenagers, and like I said, I got 3000 students. Working with teenagers, there's a lot of privilege that comes along with being a teenager cuz they don't, they don't know, right?

Like they, they have the technology, they have the resources and even if they don't, they tend to find them. But really helping kids understand. Why it's important to be thankful. And I think in turn what that does is it helps adults because our goal is to teach them. And so we have to actively cultivate gratitude in our lives.

And that's ultimately what happens here, and that's what helps me on a day-to-day. So gratitude becomes a natural daily focus.

Lainie Rowell: I love that. I'm picturing you all running around asking the students the questions and that's a great visual, also a great way to start the day. Right? Like, that's gotta make you feel good too.

Marcus Belin: Yeah. Well, I actually don't run. I know this is a podcast so people won't see, but like there's a hoverboard that sits over in the corner of my office. I I do roll around my building on the hoverboard.

Lainie Rowell: You are joking me. Friends, I am seeing the hoverboard right now. That is, amazing.

I don't think I've ever, ever heard of a principal hover boarding around school. That's pretty amazing.

Marcus Belin: It's called administrative efficiency.

Lainie Rowell: That's awesome. I know that hoverboard, my son has that exact hoverboard, I think. Oh, that is so cool. Yeah. Okay, well hover boarding around to start your day. What a great way.

Well, I know you're big on culture and climate. And I'd really love for you to just share kind of what are some of the things that you're thinking about. It can be specific to this time of year. You could maybe tease some of the things you're going to share in this book.

And did we have a release date for this book?

Marcus Belin: No, not yet. I'm not that far. Lainie, I, I, I, I sense the pressure and I know that you're gonna continue to drop this. So I'm gonna feel the pressure all throughout this podcast and because it's out there for the listeners and knowing your platform and your, your base, I know I'm gonna get a little bit more pressure, so it's on.

Lainie Rowell: It's a commitment device. It's a commitment device. I find if I say things out loud to people, especially when I know it's being recorded and can be played back to me in perpetuity, like, okay, I better, better do it. So yes, in a friendly, caring way, which other people have done for me, that's where that comes from.

Marcus Belin: Yeah. Yeah. So I guess now in the moment, right and even focusing on

now that we're at the end of the year, like this is probably my most reflective time. It is, it's one where like I'm exhausted, right? Most school leaders are, all educators, right? No. No matter what capacity they serve, it's all relative, but like I'm exhausted. And I always tell people it's, it's good to be exhausted at the end of the year because that means you put in work throughout the year.

You put in work day in and day out. We all get, many of us get sleep at night, maybe not as much as we should, but we at least get some level of sleep to be able to make it each day. And now we are entering a very reflective moment in time. And so when people are like, Hey, you get two months or three months off in the summer, first I laugh at them and second off I think about it as like, no, I just enter the next phase of the job. And the next phase of the job is that reflection piece that allows me to determine what things I wanna change, determine how did I grow as a leader. And, and one of the things that I hope to put in my book is just that reflective act, just how I just talked about gratitude.

Mm-hmm. Making it a daily act in our lives. Reflection should be probably up there with thinking about the positive and thinking about the gratitude that we have, because reflection is going to allow us to think of the things and ask ourselves the intentional questions that are gonna help us grow.

And if we fail to have the reflective moments, we ultimately risk repeating a lot of the mistakes that we've made. And some of those mistakes could intentionally or unintentionally do damage to kind of the ethos around us in education, right. When I walk in this building, my mindset has to be different than it was yesterday.

And when I leave this building, my mindset has to be different than it was because I also have a family to go home to. And I have to be able to compartmentalize and say, I need to think about this a little bit later. But as long as I give myself the grace and also find the moments to be grateful I think that is, that's key.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And. By the way, I love that you have pictures of your family on your website cuz it was so nice. I prob... oh look, there, they're friends. I wish, this is one of those times where, I wish this was a video podcast, but they're all along the wall in his office too, so That's very lovely. And, it's something that's aspirational for me because my family is so important to me.

Mm-hmm. But it's. But I am not as good at some at leading with, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, all of that. But I love that they were on your, your website, beautiful family, and, and hopefully, even though Principaling is a 24/ 7/ 365 job essentially, I'm hoping you're gonna get some break to, to relax and enjoy that time with them.

Marcus Belin: Oh, I definitely plan on it. My kids are in cheerleading. I have two competitive cheerleaders. And then I have a son who is in Park District Soccer and soon to be in Park District Basketball on Sunday mornings at eight in the morning. But my five, they're five, seven, and nine, so they definitely keep life interesting.

And they're my wife who is the manager of all of our lives. Huge hats off to her. I just, I make, I make life interesting. They make life even more interesting and she somehow manages to keep it all together.

Lainie Rowell: Oh my goodness. Not to bird walk too much, but five, seven, and nine. I didn't do competitive cheerleading till I was in high school.

Marcus Belin: Oh yeah. They've been in it for a little bit.

Lainie Rowell: A little bit. They've been alive for a little bit.

Marcus Belin: There's a lot of tumbling that goes on in my house, back flips off, off the couch, on the bed tumble tracks. I got it all.

Lainie Rowell: Wow. That sounds like a very fun and active house.

Marcus Belin: Tell me about it.

Lainie Rowell: I, I would need a lot of sleep to recover.

Well. I wanna give you an opportunity. I know you talked a little bit about your podcast earlier, but is the book also going to be named Unapologetic Leadership? I'm really pushing and I, okay, I'm gonna take that back. I retract the question. I retract...

Marcus Belin: no, no, no, no. Don't retract it. No, don't retract it. I have like three or four different titles that is on that is on there.

It depends on the direction of how much of the journey I talk about versus how much of the, the role of a leader I talk about. It may potentially turn into, let me get book one out there, and then naturally gravitate towards book two. Because one of the things that happens to me, I, I see writing books... I know this is about to be an analogy that some people are gonna be like, wait, what?

I see books like getting tattoos, right? Like, you get one and you just have that urge like, I really like this. I want to go get another one. For me, it's like I read this great book, like, okay, cool, I wanna go read another one. Or I wanna be able to say very soon, hopefully I wrote this book. It was great. I wanna write another one because I'll know the process.

I, right now I just, I literally just need to jump to have that faithful jump of like, this is gonna be a great process.

Lainie Rowell: Yes. And that's such a wise way to enter it because I feel like with my first book, which thankfully I had Kristy Andre and Lauren Steinman with me for Evolving Learner I had no idea what I was doing and had some really bad writing habits.

And in hindsight, if I had done some things a little bit different that could have been a faster and more enjoyable process. So, yeah. It can be enjoyable. Now I enjoy it. We'll see how many more there are.

Marcus Belin: We'll see if there's some people like ChatGPT will maybe give a basis of like a thought, like, Hey, take this thought and help me.

Right? Like be a crutch for me. My entire book will not be written by ChatGPT I don't think any of it will, cuz I think I have a a lot to be able to share with those who decide they want to read it.

Lainie Rowell: I think that it'll be really interesting to see how... you opened the door. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about it a little bit because I think it's kind of fascinating and I hear some real pushback.

Mm-hmm. But ultimately, I wouldn't be happy with a book that didn't have my tone and voice.

Marcus Belin: Yes.

Lainie Rowell: So, to me, I would have to be so intentional in how I use, and I, I think it can be done. I think it can be done so well, and I think it can actually in the end, create a better product. As long as we're super intentional, which I know if you were to do it would be, but super intentional about like, don't lose me cause mm-hmm. I like to write in a way that people feel like they're just having a conversation with me.

Marcus Belin: I, I will say that I think some of the best books that I've read have come from the people who are truly just this is how it is. I'm a, this is how it is kind of person, right? Like my podcast is that like it's just a laid back.

We just rolling with it. I don't do a ton of editing. I just want people to know like this is how it is. If we focus our lives on striving for the most perfect product, we will ultimately always fail because one, there is no such thing as perfect and two you spend so much time focusing on the perfect that you actually forget what the message just needs to be conveyed to the people who read it, right?

Yeah. It'll be perfect to the people that need to hear it. So yeah, that's, that's my philosophy on it. So I hope that that'll be my driving force.

Lainie Rowell: Absolutely. Alright, my friend, I don't think we've had a chance to talk about this yet, and I know I'm gonna be really sensitive to your time.

Second to last day of school. Thank you so much for taking this time. Yeah, but I don't think we've explicitly defined what does Unapologetic leadership mean? I have an idea of what it means, but I'd love if you shared for you how you came to that being the name of your podcast and an important part of your journey.

Marcus Belin: Yeah, so I, I've had a unique I would say unique to me, but I guess unique to the process about how people come into education. For me, I always knew I wanted to be an educator. Like I said, to begin, I was fifth generation educator, but I got into education and it was funny cuz this was actually asked of me today.

It was like, do you miss the classroom? I'm gonna be honest, I don't miss the classroom because my classroom is my school, right? It's just 3000 students. There's learning going on everywhere all the time. And I know that sounds cliche to some but I taught for two years and fifth and sixth grade social studies before I was offered the opportunity to move into an administrator and be a dean and educate kids with a different perspective.

I could be real good at teaching fifth and sixth grade social studies, or I can be real. Good at teaching kids life lessons through mistakes that they have made and mistakes that I've made or just general life. And so I found joy in that. And I was a dean at 23. I became a principal at 29, and where I became principal here at Huntley they took a chance on me and there were teachers who had been teaching here 32 years like I was born when you started teaching. You know what I mean? Like that, that's, it's hard to say, but like, I value them in my building. And so I had to, I was faced when I moved in here with the test of the normal, right? There are people who are just gonna test me like, are you really ready for this?

Can you do this? Whether it was coming from parents or whether it was coming from students or, or or my staff. They wanted to make sure that I was going to be able to stand my ground, right. I made some decisions that were in the best interest of kids and there were some decisions that I made whether it be to programs or processes or things that we do or the way that we do things that were a little more unique. I always told kids I'm a kids principal, right? Like I work for 3000 people and those are my kids. And then I work for my staff, right? And then I work for the people who pay taxes and the district. Mm-hmm. But kids first. And the unapologetic part about it is, is that my leadership will never be predicated upon making the adults happy before I make the kids happy.

Because we have to create safe learning environments for our kids, we have to create spaces in which our staff and the adults that work in our building who help run the building can be able to pour into kids. And we have to create all of that, but ultimately, if kids are at the center of our decision making, why should we apologize for the decisions that we make for them with the best interest?

Why should we apologize for that? And so that was where Unapologetic Leadership came from. Because I don't apologize for disrupting the status quo of education for the sake of creating that safe learning environment or just that great learning experience that kids will have. And that ultimately has changed the culture here.

And it's, it's, it's my guiding is one of my guiding principles.

Lainie Rowell: I think often we can let the adult issues get in the way. Mm-hmm. But sometimes they're not even as big a issues as we think they are. We're just in habits, we're in routines, and when we start to rethink things. The outcome is often not just the best for kids.

Mm-hmm. But best for adults too. So I love that. Unapologetic Leadership. I love it. All right, my friend. I am gonna be conscious of the time, and I wanna start with the wind down so I can give you an opportunity to give a shout out to someone. For those who know this podcast, you know, I am notoriously bad at holding people to just one.

So feel free to give more than one. Also don't feel like obligated to give more than one. But was that like a sigh of relief? Did I see like

Marcus Belin: Yeah, I, I just feel, I know you said conscious of time. I just don't know how much because I, I will tell you I figuratively I walk around with a cup like this, this, this cup of if you got water to pour in here, if you got something coming from the, well, I'm coming to grab some, whether I'm learning, I'm getting ready to drink, I'm getting ready to drink, right?

There are so many people who have poured into me from the time that I started on my journey who have believed in me, who have Who have challenged me, some people who have legitimately forced and pushed me and said, you have to do this. I'm gonna keep knocking at the door. I will send you a text every day until I hear something different.

Right? Like, first, it's, first, it's my mom my grandmother, she she passed away in April of 2020. On the day I actually defended my dissertation cuz she was like, I wanna see you through this process. And she did. And then my mom, who is an educator, she, you can only imagine with her being in education still to this day, just what our conversations are like on the phone.

We just, we think we have all of the answers to solving the world's problems when it comes to education. The key word is we think. My wife is an assistant principal. She'll be an assistant principal this coming school year. She's been in education as an instructional coach helping teachers.

And, and my kids who I get to learn from to understand, like, I will never make a decision for the kids in my building that I wouldn't be okay with for my own kids. Right? Yeah. And so shout out to them and just holding me accountable every day to the work that I do and being able to come home and be a dad but also be a great principal for great kids and great.

Great school leaders. And when I say school leaders, that's everybody. That's my custodians, my yellow limo drivers, my kitchen chefs I, my paras, I mean all, all of it. Teachers, everybody, right? My secretaries, everybody who makes my building run every day. And then outside my network I got a very big PLN.

Adam Welcome checks in on me regularly. George Couros. Jimmy Cassis my NASSP family, right? I, man, I, I could name a bunch of people and I'll probably forget some people, so I'm gonna just stop right there. My IPA family they believed in me and I am not where I am right now because I missed the calling.

I am where I am right now because I hit the calling. I believe I am in the season that I need to be in. I'm walking in that season just as proud as I can be. But I also know that there's a lot of people that have supported me and that, that are going to utilize me as that beacon of light in, in the field of education that has become so politicized.

And some places it's become so dark and some places it's become it's become a place where people expect everything and all things for kids all the time. And it's just not humanly possible. And so I think the, the, the burden has been shifted to the, to education in really a negative way. And there needs to be some more light to shine amongst amongst the great work that is happening in schools across this nation.

And I'm just one. Right. I'm just one person that's like, I got my flashlight ready to say I'm, I'm, I'm stepping up to the call and I'll do it at Huntley. And I want other people to do it in their buildings, and I want people who aspire to get into the field of education, to do it in their classrooms and hopefully in their buildings and school leaders and so on.

So I'm gonna get off my soapbox. You asked me to give some shout outs, but like, I can go on and on because I think there is, there's a lot of good in this work that we do and we, we have to dig that out of, of the places that it's been so.

Lainie Rowell: I appreciate that. That was a lovely soapbox to be on. And, and thank you for being that light.

I really appreciate the work that you're doing, the great things you're doing on your campus and beyond your campus. And so I thank you to you, thank you to your family for sharing you with us. And so I also heard a thread of that you appreciate people holding you accountable. So I feel really validated that me just like harpin on when is, your book coming is like, yeah, a good thing and you're not mad at me, so yay.

Marcus Belin: No I'm not, I'm not like it, it is. Every, everything's a sign. Like there's always something. Again, in the reflective moment, I will ask myself the question, like, why haven't you done this yet? Like, look at all these people who are pushing you. I, I, I'm excited about the journey, so keep, keep doing it. It was the same thing that like people did when I was working on my dissertation.

Yeah. And I had told myself, like, when I was done with my dissertation, like, I'm gonna continue, like when I see people post on social media, like, Hey, working on my dissertation, getting ready to defend or having trouble with this, it's like I may not even know them, I will stop my scrolling, shoot them a, a quick inbox message like, yo, keep going. Don't give up. And for those people who finally do it, right, like it's a I don't know you, but I'm just saying congratulations cause I know what the process is like. And so people are pushing me to do stuff. I, I, ultimately, one of the biggest pillars and foundation of, of your podcast, right, and, and of gratitude, is just being grateful.

And I am grateful for the opportunity to not only be pushed by people, but to have the ability to push others.

Lainie Rowell: Yes, I am grateful that you have that belief in the potential and the capabilities of others. And yes, when I, when I push you, it's just out of knowing all that you're able to do too. So...

Marcus Belin: I love it. I love it. I love it.

Lainie Rowell: All right, my friend. I wanna make sure people know how to get ahold of you. So please, what's the best, I know you're on Twitter. What are all the socials Yeah. That you like to be on your website? Spill it.

Marcus Belin: Oh my goodness. Well, the website is DrMarcusBelin.com. Instagram, @DrMarcusBelin. That's the other side. I, I do have another one that is, is more, more of the personal lifestyle stuff in that house, more of the stuff where it's just a lot of content. A lot of what I've been doing personally, I've been out speaking and really getting into the keynote world cuz there's not a lot of people with stories to be able to share.

And I actually love talking to people. So I've just really gotten into that in the past couple of years. So that's been an exciting journey. People can find me, like I say, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Really if you go to the website, DrMarcusBelin.com, you can, you can find all of ways to connect with me directly.

And yeah, just wanna be able to connect with people so when people hear like, how can we connect with you? Like, please do, please connect, because I think there's so much that I can learn from you. And so much that I hope that you can learn from me. And that's how we, that's how we make this web a little bit thicker, right?

That's how we make the pipeline a little bit stronger is by constantly pouring into it with our connections and our networks.

Lainie Rowell: Love that. I am gonna make sure to put all of the ways to contact you in the show notes. So friends, if you wanna actually be able to touch on the button and go straight to Marcus on Twitter, just look in the show notes.

If you wanna go straight to Instagram, show notes, website, all of it, and the podcast. We'll all be in the show notes. And then just one more little loving push, once the book comes out, I will come back and update the show notes for that.

Marcus Belin: Yep, yep, yep.

Lainie Rowell: I had to, I'm sorry.

Marcus Belin: I can't wait for that. I can't wait for that update.

Yes.

Lainie Rowell: I appreciate you so much. Thank you for this time, especially during such a hectic time of the year. I hope you have a great end of the school year and then onto all the other things that you get to do as a principal and just again, thank you for your time. Thank you all for listening.

Marcus Belin: Yes, thanks for having me on the show, Lainie. I appreciate it.

Lainie Rowell: My pleasure. Thanks, friends.

Episode 58 - Unlocking Unlimited Potential with Guest Brandon Beck

Shownotes:

Get ready for a paw-some episode with the charismatic Dr. Brandon Beck. He spills the beans on his furry friend Peaches and how she became the coolest classroom companion ever. Plus, Dr. Beck shares the secret sauce to unlocking your unlimited potential. Get ready, because this episode is filled with stories, purpose, and a whole lot of wagging tails! Don't miss out on the fun, fur-real!

About Our Guest:

Dr. Brandon Beck is a National Board Certified Teacher, Speaker, Results coach, and Author of "Unlocking Unlimited Potential." Brandon speaks to Teachers, School Leaders, Students, Athletes, and Coaches about the ultimate goal for ALL educators…to unlock unlimited potential in all whom you serve. He is also the host of the "Unlocking Unlimited Potential Stories Show. He also serves as an adjunct professor, a consultant, Results Coach, an editor and reviewer for AASA Journal of Scholarship & Practice.

Website: ⁠BrandonBeckEDU.com⁠

Twitter: ⁠@BrandonBeckEDU⁠

Instagram: ⁠@BrandonBeckEDU⁠

About Lainie:

Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving Learner⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and a contributing author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Because of a Teacher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Her latest book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving with Gratitude⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/lainierowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book, is now available! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Purchase here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can also get bulk orders for your staff (10 copies or more) at a discounted price! Just fill out the form linked below and someone will get back to you ASAP! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/ewgbulkdiscount⁠

Transcript:

Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello, my friends. I have Dr. Brandon Beck with me today. Hi Brandon. How are you?

Brandon Beck: I'm good. How are you?

Lainie Rowell: Good. You're a podcaster? Maybe you notice this? My voice gets really high at certain points, and I, I really would like to change that. I need to get like a voice modulator or something in here.

But anyways.

Brandon Beck: You either have to start high or start low or somewhere in the middle. It's very challenging.

Lainie Rowell: It is. All I know is that I don't have the radio voice that you do, but I'm very happy that you're here. So thanks for being here, Brandon. And I wanna make sure we get started with people knowing a little bit about you.

And so I'm gonna do a quick little intro, and then you're gonna tell us even more wonderful things about you. Is that a deal?

Brandon Beck: Deal. Let's do it.

Lainie Rowell: Okay, so Dr. Brandon Beck is a classroom teacher, speaker, author, and coach. That is the most concise way I can say what I wanna tell you about Brandon, but there's so much more.

I mean, he's a nationally board certified teacher. There's like so much, and I, I won't do it justice. So Brandon, please tell us all the wonderful.

Brandon Beck: Oh God, it's it's, it is wonderful to be on this, this show. I know I've had you on my podcast not too long ago.

And you know, for me, I'm a, I'm in Westchester County, New York, so I'm outside New York City, probably about 25 miles and probably one of the most expensive areas to live in the world. And so it's a wildly dynamic population of people as you go within like a couple miles of each other, just a really diverse area.

And I work in a school district that I've been, I've been a fifth grade teacher for 16 years of my 18 year teaching career because I love it. And I also got into a dual language program as a monolingual, which is a story within itself and just fell in love with the language side of things, even like completely connected dissertation work.

That I was doing to that area to reinforce and learn more because I knew it was an area that I needed to grow and it was an area that I wasn't as confident in. And that lack of confidence in my education of having a national board certification, working towards a doctorate, doing all this work, and you know, to me that didn't seem like it was enough.

And it made me think. Well, why do people feel unprepared? Why do people feel ready? What is it about self-efficacy? And so in a nutshell, that's kind of led me through to writing a book called Unlocking Unlimited Potential. And that happened during covid, and that turned into a really crazy side of my career because I am still a professional soccer coach. And have a professional soccer coaching business, and it all came from not having time to go on to soccer fields and dusting off that work from the dissertation, looking at it in a different way. Connecting experiences, stories, movies, other books, other great people, great authors, and putting it together into a system and format and workshops and speaking and keynotes and leadership and speaking to teachers and athletes and coaches and everybody that is out there, you know in the, the leadership field and, and talking about what it makes to, to build that collective efficacy and that self-efficacy. So, It's a really long-winded response.

Lainie Rowell: Well here's what I took away from it. I do know some of your story already cuz we're friends and we've known each other, but here's what I took away from that story.

It's like, okay, COVID happened. It freed up a little bit of your time. You decided to take on a bunch of stuff. And then as we have gone back to being able to get back on soccer fields and do all these things, you just kept going with everything. Does that sound about right? Like nothing has?

Brandon Beck: Yeah, pretty much.

You know, I gotta say I didn't really get into the speaking and, and workshop side of things until about 15 years into my career because of the, the amount of my soccer business that would take over my, my life, my wife, almost going on to 13 years ago she decided and we decided that the best thing for us to do was to have her take care of our children.

And my wife stayed home and she hasn't been back to work. And like I said, I live in one of the most expensive places in the world and I'm a public school teacher and I hustle like crazy because I have a family to feed. I have, you know, kids with dreams and goals and things that I want them to be able to accomplish and not be able to accomplish because I was a teacher or I wasn't able to, you know, to, to do more.

It's unfortunate that it's like that. I know being that it's, we happen to be recording this during teacher appreciation week and you know, it makes you reflect a bit on, you know, that piece. And I listen to a podcast about gratitude, right? I'm really grateful for the opportunity that I get to go to school every single day and bring my dog.

That is the single greatest thing that I happen to, to have. I have a dog named Peaches. I rescued her four years ago. I rescued her four years ago with the idea of bringing her into school because I read a Time for Kids' Magazine to my fifth grade students about these dogs in a program called Mutt-i-grees that go into schools and they're part of a social emotional learning curriculum.

And that curriculum is connected to Yale University's School for the 21st Century. And Marc Brackett is in the school for social-emotional learning across the street. You know, it's, it's literally one of the greatest things that's happened in my career was listening to my students say that question, why not? Dr. Beck, why can't we have a dog in class? And I was like, yeah. Right. Come on man. Gimme a break.

Lainie Rowell: Well, you made it happen and that does not surprise me. And your, I don't know if you're comfortable with the term brand, but your, the way you present the Unlocking Unlimited Potential and how you're always talking about individual efficacy, collective efficacy, you get so much done.

It's amazing. It's also quite helpful to hear that it's hard even for you, that there's a lot, right? It's a lot.

Brandon Beck: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, it's been tough. I mean, I have a small business and I had to, I had to keep it alive with, you know, the people that I run it with during the pandemic, and I don't know about you, but you can't play soccer unless you're on soccer fields and there were no soccer fields to go to, so playing in your backyard on a virtual screen wasn't cutting it for everybody, and it was challenging. And really, one of the hardest things that I ever went through as someone who runs the business was Covid. Yeah. And seeing people go down and, and having, you know, people who, you know, just uprooted and moved out and went to different places. And, you know, you talk about this podcast being about gratitude, man, I'm just, I'm just glad to be alive with every single breath that I take because we lost good people during that time. And, you know, finding whatever joy it takes, if it's a crazy idea to bring a dog to school. And it works and it does because I'm living proof of it and it is absolutely miraculous what I see. You know, the connections, the kids that come up and pet her together, the kids that come up and pet her next to me when I'm walking in the hallway, the teachers that say hello to my dog before they say hello to me.

When I find myself in the hallway, actually, like talking for my dog, like, they're like, Hey, how's it going, Peaches? And I'm actually answering like she's good, you know? I know we have a problem, but a good problem. And Yeah, I just also happen to be a part of a really great school and I've had an incredible career in this school cause I've been there this entire time with incredible staff and I'm part of a unique school.

It's a fifth grade school only. It's one of the only schools like us in New York state. And there's 17 fifth grade classes in it. So it's about 450 kids and it's all in one building. So they go from a three, four to a fifth grade and then to a sixth, seven, eight. So it's like it's an island. I always say it's an island because I sometimes won't even see them for years to come.

And when we take this dog around the school, because the students created this, this whole thing cuz they created this Kid's Helping Pause program. They DIY donated dog toys. They did all this crazy stuff. Now, we started a show where we go from class to class to and schools. We went to the high school, fifth graders got on stage, they were speaking, they were like TED talking these 10th graders with a dog sitting on the stage.

And it was really incredible because I don't really get a chance to talk about this dog part as much because I've always been in that place of, ah, There's so much here that a book needs to come out, and I know it will.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah.

Brandon Beck: But I, when I just don't know if I'm ready to become the dog guy yet.

Lainie Rowell: I think you have plenty of other things going on that no one's gonna just simmer it down to the dog guy, but...

Brandon Beck: I just think it's a good thing and it works. I have to say it's in my experience, you know, maybe it's just my dog, but it's been incredible and we're adding more dogs. We've written a bunch of grants to fund.

I wanna personally get funding for the training for the teacher to have the dog. So that the teacher, as soon as they get the dog, they can take her to a training right away and get, get the dog going cuz it's expensive. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I went all in, you know, I got a right away, got a trainer, I brought my kids to the trainer.

I wanted her from day one to know what it was like to be around dogs. Cause I had no idea what I was doing. I never had a dog before either. That was the other little thing. I was like, now I'm gonna get a dog.

Lainie Rowell: Wait, this is your first dog. Is your classroom dog?

Brandon Beck: Yeah, it's my first dog.

Lainie Rowell: Is the one that is like with you 24 /7.

Brandon Beck: Yeah.

Lainie Rowell: Your first dog ever is...

Brandon Beck: you know, before what we did is we started watching dogs for Guiding Eyes, for the blind. And what they do is they take little eight week old pups and you take them first out of the kennel, like the first experience that they ever get, like outside of being away from their mother.

And you take two or three of them at a time. They come to your house. They, you know, they use your whole house as a restroom and then they basically go back after four days and you and your family are like, we're good. That was a lot of work. They were crazy. And we put 'em back and we're good and we, we had our puppy fix and then read that Time for Kids Magazine and that's it.

That's what happened.

Lainie Rowell: That's amazing. I love that. Random story. I remember when I was teaching second grade and I told one of the parents, I'm like, oh, I'm getting a puppy. And they're like, you're getting a puppy. Oh, I'd take a newborn again over a puppy. I guess it's, you know, helpful that newborns aren't like running around the house.

Brandon Beck: It's funny, It's funny you say this. Once again, I am also very grateful to be able to have children and after we had the dog, we had been going back and forth about trying for, for number three and after that I was like, I'm good. I could totally do another kid.

And now I have a, you know, two, almost three year old. And my wife and I were sitting at the beach. She was about eight months pregnant and our two kids were running in the ocean. They didn't need any supervision. And we were in beach chairs, just chilling. And we're like, this is great. And we look at each other and I see her and I say, it's not gonna be like this for a while, is it?

And we just laughed. So it hasn't, I'm in shadow phase right now with a two year old.

Lainie Rowell: That's funny. Well, I mean, you're doing so much. I do know, cause you and I have talked about this before, that gratitude means a lot to you and I hear it as you're talking about it. I also am just gonna throw this out there, this quote, I saw it on Instagram, Mark and Angel, I don't know if you follow them.

But this really resonated with me and I, I wanna get your thoughts. The quote is, "being positive doesn't mean ignoring the negative, being positive means overcoming the negative, and there's a big difference between the two."

And so as I hear you, I hear you sharing the things that are challenging, but to me what I see in you and the work that you put out there is this overcoming the negative. It's not that it's not there, we're acknowledging it, but that overcoming, it's a big deal to me, let's celebrate that.

Brandon Beck: Oh my God. That's literally the foundation of all the work that I get to do and it's so true, you know? There's so many times, and I think the, I guess the best way to say it is anybody like yourself, anybody who's a writer, anybody who takes the time to write, if you're a blogger, posting, you know, even on Instagram, whatever it is, influencer you're writing.

And you're reflecting and you're, you're putting it out there because it is valuable to others. It really is. It's education. People should keep, you know, they should post a lot more about education, I'll put it that way. It's, you know, for me it's, it's using, it's seeing those challenges, but being able to write allows you the opportunity to really, you know, to practice that gratitude A and also B, it also gives you the opportunity to, to really reflect and I think for me, I, I've always been about a lot of different stories and a lot of the stories that I have have always led me to places where I thought I wasn't enough and worked as hard as I possibly could to, you know, to earn what I deserved in terms of what made me feel better. And that always made me think and think deeply about what makes people tick, what makes people, you know, and then digging more into that and then into that whole self-efficacy side, because the root of my work was always in how do you feel? How do you feel about your preparation? How do you feel about, you know, your work? How do you feel about what you're doing?

Because that's literally the core of it all. Because if you don't have joy in the journey, if you don't have the fire is lit and it's, and it's flowing because I'm not gonna ignore the fact that every single day, I don't go through moments in my life where I limit myself. We all do. We all do. When we step on the gas pedal and we go past the steep speed limit and we see the speed limit sign, we slow down.

That's a limit. We have limits everywhere we go in life, and I think sometimes we believe that we're gonna go through life without them. And that we see other people out there. We're always comparing ourselves to pictures and images and videos and things that people write, and things that people do and, and forget that that is also part of a vision.

I think that that is also is critical and the work that I do and I get to do with athletes, with coaches, with teachers, with school leaders. Has been incredible because it comes from that place. You know, I talk about three things. I talk about your story, your why, and your purpose. And those three things right there are the core of how you get yourself to unlock that unlimited potential in yourself and in others.

Because we have to empower others by utilizing stories that's culturally responsive. That's growth mindset, that's social emotional learning. That's everything. And our why has to be clear in everything because the kids are always gonna ask why. In fact, they should ask why seven times? Because if you ask why seven times, you really get to the root of something good, and we also need to know why.

And if we know why we're doing what we're doing. We have to remind ourselves of it. We have to be grateful for it. We have to, you know, that's where that, that gratitude list, that journaling, that gratitude journaling, it all comes in because you're reminding yourself of it. And then we have to be clear in our purpose.

And, and by really empowering those three parts, that's the work that I get to do. I work with athletes in, in college athletes. I've had schools that I work with now that are contacting me and I'm working with captains. I'm working with the captains cuz they don't really understand that leadership, how that perspective is.

The coaches, the technical, the tactical, they work the leadership, but they never really have the time to have a, some other third point perspective to check in with them. And so, That's been incredible to see and, and have the opportunity to work in that capacity too, because it was just kinds of, puts together all the, the pieces of everything and I think it's all about putting together all the pieces of all the things that you love and being clear and all that.

Lainie Rowell: Listening to you share your story and your why and your purpose is that you have just such a wide range of experiences and the things that you're doing every day are in such different spaces. I know there's through lines for sure, but being the teacher, being the coach, being the speaker, being the writer, being the podcaster, I mean so many different spaces and with different people.

I love that when you share things, you share them authentically and the things you share are very actionable. And I wanna give you an opportunity, if you're up for it, to share some of these things that you have in your book that you, and I know you have guests on your podcast, but you share wisdom there too, so it doesn't have to be specific to gratitude, but just something that you wanna give to people as some, some actionable things that they can use to unlock their unlimited potential. What would you wanna share? And I did not give you a heads up on this question, but I think you're locked and loaded with this one.

Brandon Beck: Locked and loaded. You know, one thing I actually include in my, in my book, in one of the action steps is I talk about the story of Michael Phelps and how Michael Phelps had ADHD and he had a fifth grade teacher who told him he would never amount to anything and nearly, you know, left the school.

Michael Phelps' mom she was a principal at the time. She realized that when he would go to swim practice, he would be so focused for six to eight hours straight. Realized how staying in his lane was really something that was effective. And I, we all know the story of Michael Phelps and, you know, the most decorated Olympian and it's amazing because one of the things, he's very big into mindset coaching and he had a coach for mindset and his, he had his list and he talked about keeping his, you know, himself mentally strong, his mental health. And I just thought it was important to know that everybody, that he does a gratitude list as he's, you know, one of the best athletes in the world.

And I think that that's important to remind ourselves that we can't forget how hard those athletes work out there or those teachers or those people in business or anybody who's anywhere who works really hard, right? We can't forget cuz you don't see what goes on behind the scenes. And so I think that that's, I I, that to me is, I'm gonna keep that simple.

I've already talked about, you know, I personally, I definitely start every day as much as I can. With, you know, two sentences, speech to text in my phone. You know, it's May 5th, blah, blah, blah, boom. Grateful for this, grateful for this, and then all of a sudden I'll start writing and sometimes that'll turn into content for me that I'll use later on.

Or sometimes it'll turn into something that I'll put in my newsletter that I'll send out to, to you know, my subscribers, because I love to provide free, helpful tips and resources as much as I possibly can, as I reflect, because I just put it out there because if it helps one person. It's helpful to me, and I'm not trying to own anything.

I'm just trying to share so that we can continue to keep going forward in the journey.

Lainie Rowell: I appreciate that. I think that's the best mindset you can be in when it comes to putting content out there is that I'm, I'm putting the best stuff out in the world because I want it to help people that I think that that really does...

it's almost like a pay it forward kind of mindset, but it definitely is empowering and it helps us to kind of hone in on what our message is and what our, you know, like you said, your story, your why, your purpose. Like that's us constantly revisiting that and, and, and growing with it. Evolving with it.

You mentioned Michael Phelps and I just posted on Instagram. It, it's gone viral in a bunch of places, but Michael J. Fox talking about gratitude and it kind of reminded me of this very famous quote. It's been kind of attributed to a bunch of different people, but I go to Brother David Steindl-Rast and its, "happiness is not what makes us grateful. It's gratefulness that makes us happy."

And again, going back to that, this is about overcoming. And I am sure people could say that Michael J. Fox has had a wonderful life. I mean, he's a wealthy man, well-known actor. But he's been battling Parkinson's for 30 years and it's not easy.

And if you hear him talk about his journey, it's remarkable that he is so optimistic. He just did an interview and he said, "with gratitude optimism is sustainable". And when I hear you talking about unlocking unlimited potential and you're doing all of these things, it's not because it's easy, it's not because everything is sunshine and roses and bunnies being chased through fields or anything like that.

The work is hard. It's hard.

Brandon Beck: Yeah. And you know what, it's, it's rewarding. Mm-hmm. You know, the more, I mean, I act, one thing is I still do is I still actively coach a high school team. I have a very, very strong high school soccer program. And I love it, and it gets harder and harder every year, but it's one of those things that I'm not trying to push it out of the way yet because it's not in a position that I need to do that yet. But what happens is it becomes for, you know, for the, the, the kind of future that I know that I'm, I'm going in and then, and what I want to be able to continue and what I see of, of this work is it's evolving in a way that it's happening because of these certain things that have happened and the challenges and how we've kind of faced them as a family and how we've faced them you know, in our organizations it's, it's shaped a, a way forward and it's a unique way forward. But I think that's what really is, you know, it's funny because I didn't go to get school administration.

I went from being a teacher and I went and got my doctorate. And everybody was in there and was like, oh, you're gonna become a principal. You're gonna become a superintendent. And I was like, I'm, I'm actually not. And they were like, what do you mean? What do you mean? I'm like, well, you know, this is, well I do this, like I'm a, you know, I have a soccer business.

And I started explaining what I, what I was doing, and it made me realize that. I'm more passionate about running that administration side through sport. Mm. And I'm, and I, because I am leading, I'm out there, I have 25 coaches, we've expanded rapidly. We're, you know, across a, a wide range, probably about 4,200 total members in our organization.

So it's a, it's a pretty big deal. And I'm out there putting out lesson plans. Putting out coaches, going to fields, seeing them. I'm an instructor for the United States Soccer Federation, so coaching education has always been my background. So, as well as all of the other education. But what my point is, is I think we just kind of, I, I think that a lot of these things sometimes that come naturally to us, they come through our passions, and I think I've always led passion first.

And I, and I've always felt that that's a good way to end up on your feet.

Lainie Rowell: Absolutely. Oh, I know you have so much more wisdom to share, but believe it or not, we're actually running out of time, and I believe you have a sleeping toddler somewhere.

Brandon Beck: Yeah, she, she might run, she might jump out of a crib and run down at some point, but she, we'll be all right.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah. I wanna make sure and give you time for your shout outs. And then tell us how we can reach out to you.

I mean, I know how to reach out to you, but tell our listeners.

Brandon Beck: Absolutely. All right. I'll give a shout out. I'll give a shout out to my man, Darrin Peppard. Cause that's just my guy. He's my brother from another mother.

Just an absolute amazing, incredible dude. I, I know this isn't gonna be on video, but I, I actually have his book right here.

Lainie Rowell: I got it too.

Brandon Beck: Yeah, I did. Let's do,, after this we're doing a picture.

Lainie Rowell: There we go. There we go. I'm like, look in my bookshelf right now where I know it's, I know it's close.

Oh, I can see it from here. Okay. We'll get it and we'll do the picture

Brandon Beck: Absolutely. To my, we did a Jeep wave this morning. So Darrin and I, we've we discovered each other through the, the book journey and we we both connected and started a coaching results coaching program and. Basically what it is, is, you know, we have, we have a large group and we have a mastermind and we have a we have individual coaching clients.

But what's been a crazy and so rewarding about it has been the fact that the, the, there's always three of us on the call, so it's always myself, Darrin, and the person we're coaching, and it's always great for the three of us to kind of triangulate. Yeah. And it's always, it's been really, you know, I, a lot of the other coaching I do is usually one-on-one or in a small group by myself, so it's always awesome to be in the same room with an amazing coach.

So just shout out to, to Darrin.

Lainie Rowell: To Dr. Pep.

Brandon Beck: It's Pep Rally.

Lainie Rowell: I know, right? There's so many things we can do with that name. We love him. Love his name. Okay, I'm gonna grab my book in a minute, but in the meantime, please tell people it will be in the show notes. Of course, this is not my first rodeo.

I know to put this in the show notes, but please, Dr. Beck, how should people reach out to you?

Brandon Beck: Yeah, absolutely. I keep it real simple. Everything is @BrandonBeckEDU, and also my website is BrandonBeckEDU.com.

Lainie Rowell: Very good. Well my friend, thank you so much for being here. It is always a joy chatting with you and I'm looking forward to sharing this episode with our listeners.

So thanks again. I'm I wanna make sure I'll put everything in the show notes so people can reach out to you. And again, just thank you for your time.

Brandon Beck: Thank you.

Lainie Rowell: Thanks everyone for listening.

Episode 57 - Positively Thankful Living with Guest Nikki Jones

Shownotes:

Get ready as Nikki Jones drops some gratitude knowledge that will have you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. Tune in to hear how shifting your perspective can make a tough year a little brighter, and get some practical tips for incorporating gratitude into your daily life. It's time to savor the good and spread some appreciation like confetti. Don't miss it!

About Our Guest:

Nikki Jones is a creative and tech-savvy educator with a passion for all things pink and gratitude! With 16 years of experience in education, Nikki has taught 1st and 3rd grade and currently serves as an instructional technology coach. As a mom to two young boys, aged 3 and 7, she brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to both her personal and professional life. Nikki's love for STEAM and EdTech is evident in everything she does, whether she's working with students or collaborating with fellow educators.

Twitter: ⁠@mrsjones72812⁠

About Lainie:

Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving Learner⁠⁠⁠⁠ and a contributing author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠Because of a Teacher⁠⁠⁠⁠. Her latest book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving with Gratitude⁠⁠⁠⁠, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/lainierowell⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell⁠⁠⁠⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book, is now available! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Purchase here!⁠⁠⁠

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Transcript:

Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Welcome friends. I have a very special friend here. I have Nikki Jones. Hi Nikki. How are you?

Nikki Jones: Hi, Lainie. I'm so excited to be here. It is a nice sunny day in Virginia and I'm just happy to chat with you.

Lainie Rowell: Well, I'm so happy you're having a nice sunny day. I'm not gonna complain, but I'm here in Southern California and it is a bit overcast, but you know what that's nice too so...

Nikki Jones: As a photographer, like let's find, let's find the perspective here as a photographer, overcast is the best for taking photos.

Lainie Rowell: Hundred percent, hundred percent.

Nikki Jones: I'm also acknowledging the, the sun right now because we are about to be hit with rain and like a complete washout the next five days. Yes. So I'm acknowledging that positive right now. We have some sun.

Lainie Rowell: I know and I do love that you said that about photography. You know, they say it's good luck when it rains on your wedding day, well it rained on our wedding day and we have the most beautiful pictures. Cause luckily it only sprinkled for a little bit, but then it was overcast and the pictures look amazing and so...

Nikki Jones: Exactly.

Lainie Rowell: See look at you already pointing out the the good. All the good. It's so funny, Nikki, cuz I feel like as I was getting all excited and , yay, I get to talk to Nikki today. I was like, I don't actually think we've talked live before, but it feels like we have because you post these amazing videos and we've connected on the socials and so I'm just kind of laughing that I'm like, help my brain.

Nikki Jones: I have to like just comment about this because it's so funny and my husband doesn't understand it. Because I'll be like, oh, I'm gonna meet with my friend Lainie today, And he's like who's Lainie? And I'm like, oh yeah, we met on Twitter.

And he's like, "I don't get that". So I think if you're not in the education space, it's such a hard concept to understand. But I feel like I've connected with you and we're long lost friends, right? Yeah. We've been friends forever. But again, we've connected just on social back and forth. And then, you know, I got involved with your book and obsessed with it. So I'm posting my recommendations, just to share the love, but I feel like we're, you know, kindred souls.

Lainie Rowell: Yes. And Nikki, I feel so comfortable with you. I came straight from workout. I had such a lovely experience. I got to present at Learning and the Brain in New York over the weekend, and so I'm a little off my normal routine and I was just like, you know what?

I think Nikki is just such a sweet person she is gonna forgive me for showing up, sweaty and a mess.

Nikki Jones: You look amazing. I wouldn't have noticed, but I am, I'm here for it all.

Lainie Rowell: You're so sweet. Okay, so I need to give you a somewhat proper introduction. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this and then Nikki, please jump in with all your magic.

You're so amazing. Don't be shy. So first off, I just want people to know that Nikki is the mom of two boys. #BoyMom She's been in education for 16 years. She's taught first, third, currently serving as an instructional technology coach, and that's just scratching the surface.

Nikki, what else do you wanna tell us?

Nikki Jones: I think those are the big things that sum me up. I was originally born in western New York. I went to a SUNY school and I got a degree in education, just like 25 of my other friends and everybody else. So I originally moved to Virginia to pursue a job in education and I always thought I wanted to teach kindergarten.

So I have, my New York certification is birth through two (2nd grade), and I've never taught kindergarten. So I started out teaching first grade and I fell in love with it. Got this amazing school. And I was at a school that really supported technology in the classroom and I was constantly using it.

So my admin was like, will you take this position and I, I kept telling her, no thank you. Like I'm so happy in a first grade classroom. I'm doing my thing. And then, I don't know, she just kept pestering me about it. So I became the instructional technology coach at that former school and I fell in love with it.

I feel like I had a job that I didn't even know I wanted, and I started presenting. So I presented at FETC and at VSTE and some other local conferences and really just fell into this space of coaching and supporting others and inspiring others. And it just kind of became my niche. And then I got pregnant with our first baby Grayson and I was commuting and I was just like, I can't do this, right?

I can't commute 45 minutes with a newborn at home. It's not realistic. So I searched for a new job and instructional technology coaches are kind of hard to come by, right? There's only one of 'em in our building. So I got hired at a brand new school that was opening. It was a STEAM school. And blessed her heart.

So Kathy noticed she took a chance on me. I was six months pregnant due on the third day of school. I had never taught third grade and she was like, sure, I'll hire you. I dunno what she was thinking, but I fell in love with third grade and I just learned their independence and I had so much fun. And again, I was just using so much technology in my classroom.

I was presented with the offer, would you take instructional technology coach here? And it took a lot for me to say yes, because I loved my team and I loved my classroom. And this little bubble that I had created and was in. But I feel like I had this calling, this bigger purpose to make an impact on, on a larger scale and that I could do that as an instructional technology coach.

So for the past three years, that's what I've been doing and doing lots of presenting and a lot of these things I feel like kind of took the back burner as I was a new mom and that was my big focus. I wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember, and family is so important to me.

So now I'm just kind of figuring out how to weave these things kind of all together and still be a very present mom, but also continue to make an impact in this space.

Lainie Rowell: One of the things that you said, "a job I didn't even know I wanted."

I can say that for so many of the roles that I have held in my __ years of education, I don't wanna say the exact number too many times, it just makes me feel old, but it's, it's really interesting that there are so many ways we can have an impact in education and to not even know that these roles existed and then land in one.

You're like, wow, this is really amazing. I get to support kids and my peers, and I think that's a real blessing. So I'm so happy that you found that.

Nikki Jones: Right? All of those different paths that we take and something you didn't necessarily dream of growing up and writing a book and having a podcast and doing all these things, but your path led you there and you're like, this is where I belong.

And just to add onto that one little piece, so I've been out on medical leave since November until just recently, a couple of weeks ago. And I loved being at home, right? If I could win the lottery and go be any place, I would do it. But as soon as I came back, I was like, if I have to be somewhere earning a paycheck, this is where I need to be.

This brings me so much joy supporting students and supporting educators, and really just coaching and being in this role. I'm so happy being here.

Lainie Rowell: One other thing I wanted to highlight as you were sharing a bit about yourself is you are such a proud mom, and I'm conscious of this that I compartmentalize my life a little bit now, partly because my kids are a little older and they have basically asked this of me... "Mom, don't put me on Instagram." Okay, fine. They're of the age where it's now a conversation. It's not an automatic that they're gonna go on the socials and I appreciate them advocating for themselves.

But I love how your family is at the forefront, and you bring that into all that you do, and I think that's a really lovely thing to do.

Nikki Jones: I think that's just such a big part of who I am is being a wife and being a mom and family is so important to me that I want everybody to know that that's a big piece of me. And I think sometimes in education we think of teachers as these people that like live in the closet, right? If you see them out at a grocery store, they're like, what are you doing here?

You don't belong here. You're just a teacher, right? Teachers belong in school. So I think it's so important that we show those other pieces of us and those other parts, and as we talk about with students and with our peers, building relationships. I don't know how many times I've connected with people on socials or on Twitter, because I'm also a mom.

Right? That piece, the technology is great. That's there, the coaching is there, but I've made some really great friends just because we are moms or just because we do share a similar background or similar role in education. So I think that's really cool

Lainie Rowell: And in different stages of being a mom, there's times where you're like, I really need someone else who's going through this at this exact moment to talk me through and to help me through. Because not every moment of parenting is magical. There's definite challenges. It's joy and it's fulfilling, but it's not always, it's not always...

Nikki Jones: I love that you say that.

Cause right now I have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old, and they love each other dearly and they are like ride or die for each other. But the instigation that goes on in my house right now before we leave and when we get home, I don't, I don't, I just don't even know what to do with them right now.

And yesterday I was like, I'm throwing at my hands and I'm walking into another room like y'all brawl it out. I don't know what to do. So if anybody out there listening has tips for a four and seven year old in how to get the instigation to stop, hit me up because I am at patience end.

Lainie Rowell: I wish I had words of wisdom, but I just have given myself the grace to, to do the best that I can and to sometimes step away and, and trust that you've given them the foundation to work it out on their own.

And I, I have found that a good amount of times, not every time is a win, but a good amount of times, no one's injured and everyone comes out on the other end okay.

Nikki Jones: Woo. I'm gonna use that like mantra in my head today when we are like hustling to get dinner and get everything unpacked and ready for baseball practice and out the door by 5:15 PM I'm going to say you are doing the best that you can. It is okay. It's okay.

Lainie Rowell: You're doing amazing. To that end, I wanna keep conscious of our time because you do have a lot on your plate. You are a very busy woman, and I would love for you to share what gratitude means to you. I invite all guests to open this up as wide as they want to take it personal or professional?

I just wanna reiterate that here. Nikki, what does it mean to you?

Nikki Jones: So I think gratitude is really the act of recognizing and acknowledging those good things and it's about that attitude, right? That "I get to" attitude. I'm talking about this evening when I'm going home and I know my boys are going to be at each other.

They're going to be instigating each other. And that perspective shift refocusing and say, I get to be their mom. I get to come home to these two wild boys and I get to be responsible for them and take them to practice and create these experiences for them and how lucky I am for that.

So I think gratitude is about just refocusing, re-looking at things to find the good. And to be honest, we've had a year Lainie. It's been over a year where if I fast forwarded you through all of the things that have happened in the year, we have had a rough, tough year.

But I think the only thing that has kept me sane is having that mentality of gratitude, finding the positive. And really, I love the word from your book savoring, and I don't know whose podcast it was, but one of your podcasts I was listening to and the word notice came up. So I have the word notice just on sticky notes around.

And I think that's so important to really slow down and notice slow down and savor those things. And having just the perspective change instead of getting frustrated in that moment, take a deep breath and figure out what the good is. I also think gratitude, this is one last piece is about sharing that appreciation.

Sometimes I'm, I'm really good at feeling internally grateful and I do a lot of be internally grateful and I'm thinking it in my head and I'm feeling it in my heart. It, it's all within my being, but I'm really trying to work on that speaking it out loud piece.

Lainie Rowell: I think that word notice, first of all, I just wanna touch on that.

I'm such a linear person sometimes it's embarrassing, but you know that word notice obviously it's an important word and I'm so glad you, you highlighted it. It's been mentioned by a number of guests and it does happen to be the first step in gratitude if you look at Dr. Hussong out of University of North Carolina, when she talks about the notice, think, feel, and do for the four steps of gratitude.

And so I think it's important and I find it to be one of those things that I still need to relearn over and over again. I didn't write a book about gratitude because I figured it all out. I wrote the book I needed to read and I need to keep reminding myself to notice the things. Cause I don't know about you, Nikki, but I tend to be a what's next person?

Okay, check this off my list. What's next? What's next? What's next? And when I'm doing that, I'm stepping away from what's happening. And I'm not noticing, I'm not as present. And so I don't know if you can relate to that, but that's one thing.

Nikki Jones: Yes, I can definitely relate to that. And then, Brian Martin, we have that connection one of the things that he says is, "Be where your feet are". And I love that quote because I think you're so right. There's oftentimes, I'm making a to-do list or, you know, I've just recently gone back to work and this, this really was resonating with me on that Sunday before we were going back to school.

We had just got back from the beach. I had 1,001 things to do. I'm like making mental notes. This is what I have to do for our Airbnb. This is what I have to do, like to get ready for the week. This is what I have to do for school. This is what I have to do to get my boys ready. This is our schedule. This is where we need to be at what time, this is what we're going to cook.

And I'm at Easter breakfast worrying about all of these things and thinking linearly, putting them on my to-do list, getting ready to check them out. And my boys are so enamored. There is an Easter bunny in a costume at IHOP and I am just constantly needing to, you know, my brain is thinking about all of these things.

So I'm just hearing that quote in my head, "be where your feet are", all of that is not important right now, just be present in this. And that's something that I really have worked a lot on doing as a mom. After school, I usually try to, four o'clock, I am done. I am out until my boys go to bed.

They are my focus, my family is my focus. So I'm usually pretty good at that. But I feel in those moments of being overwhelmed and kind of making those lists, it's really easy to lose sight of that gratitude or stop noticing the things that are right in front of us that we need to be acknowledging and appreciating.

Lainie Rowell: I have to give a shout out to my son. There is no one I have seen on this planet that is better at noticing than my son. He will have something to eat and he will light up and he will go, "Wow. That is amazing. That is so delicious." And his vocabulary is better than mine. Not even joking.

He'll just go off talking about how delicious... he savoring and he savors everything. It's truly remarkable. I am looking through his eyes to try and see things. I've heard people say, look through the eyes of a three-year-old, in my case, even my nine-year-old. But I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there, that that's one way I connect as a mom to how it's helped me experience and express gratitude.

Nikki Jones: I think that's an important way that we can look at gratitude if we have young kids or if we are around young kids, they are so good at being joyful and seeing the gratitude. And so Reagan is our four year old and he's actually apraxic. So he does not have a lot of language development, but he is a bundle of sunshine.

He is constantly smiling and happy and he seeks out to make other people happy. So we were out on a walk and I was busy noticing all of the things I wanted to notice. You know, I was using my senses and noticing, he was noticing all the people going by us and he was saying, hi, how are you? And then his classic response, if you ask him how he is, he says, Happy.

And it's so funny how many people it catches off guard because he truly is just happy. He is such a joyful little and he gets happy about seeing everything, but people really make him happy and he really likes to make other people happy. So I think that's so sweet. Thinking from a child's perspective and our seven year old, he's really good at vocalizing that appreciation.

And something from your book, over the summer I was reading. And I was doing a lot of the, say it out loud and making a big deal about those pieces that I'm grateful for. And just that modeling for him was so huge and the language that he developed from that or his ability to, to find gratitude or to find a happiness or joyfulness in a hard place is really something special that he has too.

Lainie Rowell: So taking it back to what you said earlier when you were talking about your definition of gratitude, and I don't wanna put words into your mouth, so please correct me if I got this wrong, but you were talking about how an important part of gratitude is sharing it, right? Not only experiencing and having the feelings and having this kind of internal process happening, but actually putting it out to others.

And so, when you're modeling it, and when you're saying it out loud, you are potentially sharing it directly with the person that you're wanting to express the gratitude to, but you're also modeling it to your littles and they're catching onto that, and that's making an impact on how they experience and express gratitude as well.

Nikki Jones: Yes. So one thing that we also like to do with the boys is, so Reagan is like really loves a firetruck, recycling truck. And we know the firemen, we know their names, we know their shifts, we know everything about them. We know the recycling, same thing. So we've really tried to instill in them. I feel like my love language is like giving gifts.

I love giving gifts. I love giving words of affirmation. So at the fire station we go, we just show up with watermelon and brownies and cake and we make sure we tell them how much we appreciate them. Thank you for your service. We know you're away from your family for a long time. And we've talked to the boys a lot about that.

Same thing with the recycling men, and those are guys that maybe are not as appreciated. So we kind of go out of our way to make them feel appreciated. And we talk about what hard work they're doing and what can we do? So we've had all different ideas and I usually let the boys kind of pick, you know, like if we're gonna buy them something or make them something.

So it was cold winter January and Grayson was like, let's make them hot chocolate and bring them brownies. I was like, dude, like whatever you wanna do, we will make them hot chocolate and brownies. And do you know how happy they were to have brownies and hot chocolate from two Beautiful, you know, little kids.

So I think that's one way is just giving gifts. And for me, I love to do that too. So in my coaching role, if somebody I noticed something that they've done or they've gone out of their way, gone above and beyond, worked with me, just made me smile in some way. I actually just have a basket of little notes, note cards and stickers, and I like to just, write a little quick note or I actually like to record myself doing a flip note.

So flip, which is formally Flipgrid, I usually just record. Hey, thanks so much. I really appreciate that you did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Print out the QR code on like a cute little Canva thing, or put it in a note, give 'em a sticker. And it's just these little things that I want people to know how much I appreciate them, and I want my boys to see that and have that modeled for them.

And then just, you know, you, you know more about this than me, but that, that wellbeing piece, when we take the time to do that, you feel so much better. And I remember last year, so we got these bucket filler things at school and to be honest, we kind of rolled our eyes. Don't tell my former principal, but we were like the bucket filler....

This is so old, we sort of grumbled about it. And then one day I was having a really crummy day. I feel like I spilled my coffee. My first lesson got canceled. Who knows? Something blew up. It was just one of those days. And I walked by the lounge and I saw these little heart sticky notes.

I was like, fine, I will fill your buckets. And I went in there, in the grumpiest mood and I scribbled my first note. And then I stood there and probably scribbled, I don't know how many more. And I walked out and I was like, Oh, I'm not so grumpy anymore. So that, that piece I think is really important to highlight too, that when we are feeling grateful and expressing that gratitude it, it does something for us.

Lainie Rowell: I appreciate some people don't like this phrase, fake it till you make it, but it actually is true that even if you're not feeling it in that moment, just going through that motions of it. Is, and I know you did it with intention and it was authentic and sincere, but kind of forcing yourself to do it, even though it wasn't like your instinct at the moment.

You're like, I'm just, no, you know what? Something's telling me to do this, so I'm gonna just do this and see if it works. And it totally worked. I love that. So I really appreciate, Nikki, that you have shared personal and professional examples. I mean, so thoughtful to think about the firefighters in your local area and those who work on recycling. And there's so many people in our community that do just. So many things and they have to make sacrifices.

Like you said, the firefighters are away from their family. I happen to live in a neighborhood that it's like every other door is a fire person. They're all firefighters in my neighborhood, so I am very aware there's actual carpool situations that are dependent on whose significant other is on shift and things like that.

So I'm very aware of that and it's so thoughtful to bring them the brownies and the hot chocolate when it's cold outside. I love all this empathy for what the recipient is living. And then, okay, how can I bring them something that will bring them joy showing my gratitude?

So I think that's lovely. And then I also wanna. Touch on what you said about professionally in your role. Could you just really quickly explain what Flip formally known as Flipgrid is all about? Because I really love this example you're giving of how, and, and this is again why I feel like I know you so well, is cuz you're so good at having this presence through video that not everyone gets the chance to experience. So could you just really briefly share a little bit about Flip and what that is for the people who don't know?

Nikki Jones: And then I have one more really cool idea with Flip too. So Flip formally, Flipgrid is a video platform. They have been around for over 10 years now, and it's kind of grown and changed basically in the most simplest form.

You can literally download the app. And press the record button. There are lots of other cool camera features, so there's like lenses and filters and stickers and gifs or gifs, however you say it, that you can add on. And then you can just save your video and share it in any way that you want. So I could share a link, I can download it, I can share a QR code.

And this is something that I really like to do, especially when I'm connecting with people online, right? Because I've become really familiar by being connected on video and you feel like you kind of know somebody. So that's actually how I shared about your book a couple of different times.

So Flip is one of the big things that we use to show gratitude. You can just record a simple, quick message. But one of the things that we actually started doing in our home to practice gratitude is every night I asked the boys, "What was the best part of your day?" What was the favorite part of your day?

And we would just talk about it before bed. So this is just like a very simple thing. But then I started thinking like, I wanna remember all of the things that they're grateful for and all of the things that they're saying, but in the hustle and bustle of nighttime, like I don't have a journal. We're trying to get to bed.

I want it to be just authentic conversation. I don't want it to feel like it's scripted. So I was thinking, and one night I was like, I'm just gonna make a Flip. Like I just made a topic. And every night before bed they record a video so it can be a video with their face, it can be just a sound video.

So it's just their voice. They can also add pictures. I'm a photographer and a mom, the amount of pictures that I have on my phone is embarrassing. I don't even know how my phone still functions, but here we are. So they love to just make these videos and I have, I think right now over 400 videos of the past, whatever, 200 some days that we've been doing it, that every night they share the best part of their day. And how cool is that going to be to go back and look at kind of like a gratitude jar, a gratitude journal. It's just digitally and it's a different media, I guess, that works right now for the season of life that our family is in.

Lainie Rowell: I appreciate that because I think that you do have to think about how do we make this accessible? And so you've made this digital, and I love how you called it a digital gratitude jar /gratitude journal, and the same concept applies is that you're being really intentional and thinking through the notice, think, feel, do. And you're also capturing it in a way that you can go back when things are difficult and watch that video and just be like, oh, you know, last year at this time this was happening.

And that was such a great moment, and I think that's a really lovely way to capture it. And to me, you're removing the barrier of it might take more time to write, or again, you said the season of our lives, and so it just feels very natural and authentic to just say, okay, and you're giving them so much choice, which I truly appreciate.

You're basically universally designing their gratitude experience every night.

Nikki Jones: 100% Yes, exactly. It's just such a cool thing. And like you said, they love to scroll through the videos and watch the videos and just seeing their face light up or them talk about, then, you know, they'll go off on a whole story of, of what happened if they just have a little snippet of it.

And it's also cool, like you can add video clips too. So this weekend we were in the outer banks and Grayson's favorite part of his day was we went to an arboretum, and there's a huge pond, and he caught a bunch of turtles, like with his bare hands. He is our nature guy. There is nothing he is afraid of.

He is all about getting dirty, getting his hands on reptiles, he's gonna be like a herpetologist or biologist. He's gonna do something cool. Snakes, he loves it all. So the favorite part of his day was touching these turtles. So he knows so much about, and he's so familiar with the platform. He was like, mommy, just, just gimme it.

I was like, okay, so I just give him my phone, right? It's right on my phone. And he's adding the pictures. He's adding a turtle emoji or a turtle gif, and then he uploads a video just right from my phone of him actually catching the turtle and you know, the narration of our family behind it.

So that's a really cool way for him to go back. And see what a fun experience that was and have that saved. I feel like we have all these pictures and videos on our phone, but to have them really curated in a place and created where we can go back to them and look at 'em and you know, during hard times or good times, just appreciate that special moment.

Lainie Rowell: And that word curation means a lot to me because I do feel like with the ease of capturing things on our phone, we sometimes capture so much that we actually never go back and look at anything cuz it's too overwhelming. Like 20 pictures that I took in 30 seconds and it's, I can't even handle it. So that curating as you go, I think is really important.

Now, I hope this doesn't come across as self-serving, but I'm working on my next project with Allyson Liu, and we're creating an interactive gratitude journal, and I feel like this conversation we're having is very affirming for me because one of the things I wanted out of the journal is I wanted to universally design it, and so the practices can actually take place in the journal if you want, but we specifically say at the beginning, if you don't feel like writing it, pull out your phone and record it. Pull out a device, you can do it in so many different ways. We're trying to focus on what's the purpose of the practice, and then giving the multiple means for actually doing the practice.

So you can do it in the journal, and I think a lot of people will choose to do it in the journal.

Nikki Jones: Right.

Lainie Rowell: But some people are going to want to, and it's gonna be contextual. So it could be like, today I actually feel like writing it out. Other days I might feel like recording it and so you're making my heart happy again.

I hope that doesn't self-serving, but...

Nikki Jones: no, that's not self-serving at all. I think that's really important. And you know, as educators we think about that. It doesn't matter how our students learn the content or show that they've mastered the content, we wanna know that they're, they're learning it, they're mastering it.

Right? So you don't necessarily care how we're showing that we're grateful or expressing gratitude. It's just that it's happening. And I think those seasons of life in the, the best intentions would, I love to sit down with a gratitude journal every day and, and make that work. Sure. Realistically, though I know that that's, that's not me right now.

So I know that I can put it on my phone and I just have a notepad on my phone. It's nothing fancy, but I have a notepad on my phone for myself where I go through and I really try to be intentional and I would love to do it in the morning and like really think about it. But for me right now where I am is that when I'm in that moment of really feeling something throughout the day where I have that gratitude and I feel like it's something I want to remember, I just pull out my phone, I pull out this notepad, and I try to type a couple of sentences about it.

I've tried the thing like where you do 10 things every morning and I feel like I'm writing the same things. So for me, I wanna remember more. Like I'm not just grateful today for my family and my husband and my mom, like, I wanna know about this experience. I am really grateful today that I work with a staff that is so welcoming and inclusive and embracing technology.

I wanna know what specifically happened when I go back to that piece.

Lainie Rowell: Oh, Nikki, you're so inspiring and again, you're, you're making me feel really good cuz this interactive journal that we're designing, it's meant to get people past that monotony of okay, list your three things.

And so there's tons of different activities. The journal is coming.

Nikki Jones: Wait, is there a date I need to know?

Lainie Rowell: I mean, not yet. Not yet. In fact, Nikki, you're the first time I think I've ever mentioned this on the podcast. I don't think I've said it before, but yeah, it's in the process.

Nikki Jones: I need to know the pre-order date when that comes out.

Lainie Rowell: You're so sweet. And I wanna give you credit, it's been watching you and others and how they do things in their own way. And again, it's like we say with Universal Design for Learning firm goals, flexible means like we know what we're trying to do.

We're trying to experience express gratitude, that's going to nurture relationships, improve wellbeing, and activate learning. That's our firm goals and how people do that should really be up to them and let them have some voice and choice and it's gonna be contextual. And so I'm super excited about this project.

I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on it. And again, thank you, it's watching you and other people who've taken to Evolving with Gratitude and made me see, oh, well that's a way you could do it. And so offering those choices and giving people the option to choose their own path, right?

So we don't have to be so rigid.

Nikki Jones: I love that. I love all that.

Lainie Rowell: Oh my goodness. This conversation... so fast. But I wanna make sure and give you time for your shout out.

Nikki Jones: So I feel like this is such a hard question, and I've listened to all your podcasts, and just narrowing it down to one person is really hard.

So I feel like I have a tribe of people and they know who they are that I'm so, so grateful for, and I really try to express daily to the people that I love most. But I have to give a shout out to my mom. She is the most amazing human. She actually takes care of our boys when I am at work and this lady does everything with unconditional love and I don't have to ask her to do these extra things, but during the week, my week is crazy.

She will just change my laundry, do my laundry. We've left dishes in the sink. She does the dishes. She takes care of our dogs without asking for anything. She doesn't want an accolade. She doesn't want a pat on the back. She just wants to do whatever she can to make our life better and easier for her grandkids and my husband and I, and.

I'm just so appreciative and like I kind of mentioned, we've had a year, my husband was sick and he was in the hospital for a while. Both of our boys got sick. I had emergency surgery. I was completely out of commission. She was our taxi driver. I mean, she was there. She lives about 45 minutes from us.

She was there driving my kids to school every single day back from school, driving me to physical therapy, driving me to target, to pick up whatever we needed. Without a single complaint, and she actually last year was diagnosed with breast cancer, like all of this through her own things. She was just there for us, and I know, I don't tell her enough how much I appreciate her and all of the support that she provides for us and the lifestyle that she's allowed us to live and, and have, you know, our boys being taken care of.

We're really blessed to have. She's there for them when, when we're not home, you know, she is the one that is there and she'll stay late. She'll get there early. She'll spend overnight, she'll make dinner. All of the things. I am so, so, so grateful for her and, and the things that she gives up to be there for us.

And I just love her so much. So I could not do it without the village that I have, but especially my mom. So her name is Kim. She is the most remarkable person that I know, and she's like my best friend too. I mean, I am on the phone with her daily actually. Anymore. She just wants to talk to the boys. Like if I call, she's like, oh, where's Grayson?

Like, wait, I'm your kid. So she's getting my big huge gratitude shout out.

Lainie Rowell: Oh, Kim, thank you for all you do for Nikki and her family and what a lovely shout out.

Nikki, make sure and tell people how they can catch you on the socials or whatever way you want people to connect with you.

Nikki Jones: So Twitter, I am super active on Twitter. I love being connected with other educators, other moms, other gratitude followers, other Lainie followers. That is the best place to find me. So I'm @mrsjones72812 on Twitter. Like I said, I'm super active there and I love sharing, but I also love borrowing ideas from others.

So if you're doing cool things, follow me, tweet me. I'm super happy to be connected to you.

Lainie Rowell: And you share a lot of amazing stuff on Twitter so I encourage people to go check it out and make sure and soak in and savor as we say. All the amazing that is Nikki Jones. So Nikki thank you so much for being here and I'm just so grateful for this time because like I said, you're so good at having this online presence and with the videos and with everything you share.

Honestly, if someone said Lainie, have you talked with her live before? I would not have a hundred percent been confident one way or the other because I just feel like we've gotten to know each other through the magic of technology.

Nikki Jones: Yeah. I think that's such a cool thing to be connected with other people and to just really learn and grow.

Right. I've learned so much from you. I'm so grateful for you. I've loved reading your book, following you. I go back to your book and thumb through it and look at all my highlights and ideas and the podcast. This is such a special place where I continue to get connected with other really awesome people.

So I love, I love that I'm just here for it all.

Lainie Rowell: Well, I appreciate that and I never, ever forget that. I'm very proud of what I wrote and Evolving with Gratitude. But what took that book from good to great was the contributors and all the guests on this podcast is what makes it great, and that includes you, Nikki.

So thank you for being here, and thank you all for listening.

Episode 56 - Being an Experience Expert with Guest Amy Mathews-Perez

Shownotes:

In this episode of the pod, Dr. Amy Mathews-Perez shares her unique perspective on gratitude and let's just say it's not all rainbows and unicorns (although those are pretty cool too!). For her, gratitude is about being grateful for every opportunity to learn and grow, even in the face of challenges and mistakes. From learning what to do to what not to do, every opportunity is a chance to evolve and improve. Discover the power of gratitude in personal and professional growth in this short and sweet podcast episode.

"Life is short, but our influence is never-ending so let's be our best & make the best of every interaction, situation and opportunity."
-Dr. Amy Mathews-Perez

About Our Guest:

Dr. Amy Mathews-Perez is a Texas native with over 30 years of experience serving public education. She has held various roles in the field including GENED Teacher, SLP, Diagnostician, SPED Supervisor, Principal, Assistant Principal, and Director of Special Education. Currently, Dr. Mathews-Perez is serving as a Director of Special Programs. Her passions include communication, authenticity, and laughter, and she finds her greatest fulfillment in using these qualities to inspire and empower others. As a lifelong learner, she considers herself an "Experience Expert" and is constantly seeking to learn and grow. Dr. Mathews-Perez is also an aspiring author and speaker, using her talents to connect with others, share stories, and highlight the best in those around her.

Twitter: ⁠@drgrowtoknow⁠

About Lainie:

Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving Learner⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and a contributing author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Because of a Teacher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Her latest book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving with Gratitude⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/lainierowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book, is now available! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Purchase here!⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can also get bulk orders for your staff (10 copies or more) at a discounted price! Just fill out the form linked below and someone will get back to you ASAP! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/ewgbulkdiscount⁠⁠

Transcript:

Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello friends, we have Dr. Amy Mathews-Perez with us. Hello, Amy, may I call you Amy on air?

Amy Mathews-Perez: Of course. Yes, please do. How are you doing Lainie?

Lainie Rowell: I'm doing so great, especially now that I get to talk to you.

We've been connected on the socials, but this is our first live conversation and I'm super excited about it. So Amy, I'm gonna tell people a little bit about you and then I'm gonna toss the ball to you and ask you to fill in the blanks. So your current role, and by the way, you're in Waco, Texas...

Amy Mathews-Perez: Yes.

Lainie Rowell: I have a lot of my love to Texas. I have so many friends in Texas. In fact, I don't think you're the first person living in Texas that I've talked to today, and I live in California. So Dr. Amy Matthews Perez is Director of Special Programs in Robinson ISD.

She wears a lot of hats my friends, I mean, she's in her 30th year of public education and she has done it all. I dare to say, Amy, I'm gonna let you take it in just a minute, but you have definitely done everything from gen ed teacher, SLP, diagnostician, special ed supervisor, principal, assistant principal, director of special, I mean, it's a long list.

And so that's kind of a lot of a listing of job titles. And you're much more than that. So I wanna give you an opportunity, what did I miss there, Amy?

Amy Mathews-Perez: Well, you didn't miss a lot, but you're right. It's been three decades as someone described it the other day, which makes me feel exceptionally old.

But I do have a funny story in listening to you list those job titles. When I got my doctorate degree, I was honored to do the speech for the National Junior Honor Society in the district in which I was working. One of my very best friends had a daughter in the audience that was getting inducted, so they introduced me and you know, went through my Vita and et cetera, et cetera.

I did my speech. It ended, yada, yada, yada. And then in speaking with one of my best friend's daughters, she said that the young lady next to her, now keep in mind, Lainie, this is junior high, where they're honest. The young lady next to her said, sounds to me like this lady can't keep a job. What is she gonna have to teach us?

And I just thought that was so funny because it's all about perspective, right? To that girl, I've just been job hopping when in reality it's just been advancement and just, just meeting my needs. Really just starting as a general ed teacher and I knew I was gonna work with students with special needs when I was in fifth grade, lainie a long time. I didn't know how, and I didn't know where, but I knew that's what I was gonna do. And then my senior year in college for my undergrad was at North Texas State. And I decide I was getting my teaching degree and I decided, oh, no, no, no, no. I took a phonetics course and I fell in love.

And I was like, no, I need to be a speech pathologist. I talked for a living anyway, so let's, let's make it official. So I called my parents. I'm the youngest of six, and I said, guess what? I know what I wanna do. And they're like, tell us all about it. Which I did. It was a master's degree, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And they said, we are so excited, you can do whatever you wanna do. And I was like, really? That's awesome. They said, yeah, as soon as you graduate and get a job. Yeah, you do whatever you want to, sweet girl. So, so, yes, I've, I've held lots and lots of positions, but I've always followed my heart. Yeah. So that's okay with me.

I've always followed my heart.

Lainie Rowell: Well, I can relate with that because I would've never guessed, especially in early college, that I would've become a teacher. But it was actually an interest in going into special ed. By the way, I love how you said middle schoolers are really honest, cuz that's a very honest way of saying that. And I live with one and our lives are full of honesty.

But, I love that. And I think it's not that you can't hold a job. It's that you go, like you said, where your heart takes you. I think that's really important and I think that's something to be valued and honored and supported.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Yeah, and I appreciate that. And it doesn't always jive with what society, and you can't, our listeners can't see my fingers, expect you to do.

Right. When I went from a director to a principal position and then from principal back to director, a lot of people thought, Ooh, you know, people are gonna have their own opinions and perspectives and you know what the the saying is, that's none of my business I'm gonna do what my heart tells me to do, and I'm gonna do the job and the work that fulfills me the most.

Yeah. I loved being a principal. It, we were a successful campus, but special education is where I get fulfilled. That's what makes my heart full and happy and all the, all the good things. So yes, I've always just followed my heart when it's come to my profession.

Lainie Rowell: Mm. You said one of my favorite words, fulfilling. I love that word. I feel like it's very inclusive of a lot of different things and not that it's always easy, right? But fulfilling is, is really special. So I have to tell you, Amy, I was on the phone with a dear friend of mine, someone whose opinion I value tremendously, and I'm not gonna say his name because I don't know if he'll be comfortable with me sharing this comment, but he said, Lainie I to your podcast, and when you go to ask your first question, I'm anxious for the guest because it's such a big question.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Mm-hmm.

Lainie Rowell: What does gratitude mean to you? Mm-hmm And I said, dear friend, I give them this question in advance and I hope that they know that it is no right or wrong answer and so I'm just saying that because if there are other listeners that feel like this is an ambush, not that my friend thought that, but if there's other listeners concerned about the wellbeing of the guests, I do want you to know, I do give a heads up and want you to feel comfortable that there's no right or wrong answers.

So I just wanna hear from your heart, what does gratitude mean to.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Awesome. No, I, I definitely appreciated the heads up cuz it means a lot. And I know we only have so long on our podcast, so I did try to pair it down, but for me, gratitude means being present in the moment, in as many moments as you can, right?

We're all human, but also gratitude means seeing the benefit of every experience and embracing it as an opportunity to grow. So sometimes you grow from hard experiences. Sometimes you grow from positive experiences. I personally consider myself an experience expert because I learn from all of my experiences.

But I know a lot of people in a lot of places hear the word gratitude and they think, oh, hearts, rainbows, flowers, love, kumbaya. That's not what it is for me. It is a gratefulness of the opportunity to learn and the more challenging, the better. Now, the learning might not be quick. The learning might be delayed for a long time, but I'm always grateful for the, for the opportunity to learn because that's how I continue to grow. And I continue to evolve not only as a person, but in my practices and in my thoughts and in my beliefs. I seek out opportunities to grow. That's what Gratitude is for me. It's being present and having the perspective of, okay, what can I learn from this?

And sometimes, let's be honest, Lainie, I'm learning what not to do. Or I'm learning about a mistake I made, and that's okay too because it's an opportunity to learn. So that, so that's what gratitude is to me.

Lainie Rowell: I heard you say learning might be delayed, ongoing. I would maybe add recurring.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Mm-hmm.

Lainie Rowell: Because I find there are lessons that I need to relearn over and over in my life. And like you, I have had a variety of experiences, not only in my life, but even within my career. And sometimes I need to relearn lessons in a new context. And so maybe I...

Amy Mathews-Perez: absolutely.

Lainie Rowell: ...I understood how to handle this situation in that context, but now I'm in a different context with different people and there's just so many variables that are potentially different.

I have to really be thoughtful about that and, and embrace the learning.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Absolutely.

Lainie Rowell: Which to me, someone who has had as many opportunities to hold as many positions as you have, you clearly are an experiences expert in learning.

Amy Mathews-Perez: I do. I do love to learn. I mean, I know it's what us educators say, we're lifelong learners, but I really, I really do love to learn and I really do seek out, okay, what can I gain from this experience?

And not only just for me, but if I can put my finger on what I learned and then share it with someone, that's awesome. Cause I definitely don't want learning to stop with me. I want learning to flow through me. And if I can prevent someone from going through a bad experience or prevent them from having something negative happen because of what happened to me, that's awesome.

But I'm all about learning and that's what gratitude is to me. To me, gratitude is an attitude. I do like some rhyming. I do. I might say I'm a rapper, but we won't go there. But gratitude is an attitude that makes learning an option. That's kind of where my brain goes when I think about gratitude.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And I heard you, as you were describing what it means to you, talking about that being present in as many moments as possible and appreciating even when it's not always maybe what you were hoping it would be.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Right.

Lainie Rowell: It's another opportunity to learn.

Amy Mathews-Perez: And being a leader, there are lots of opportunities to learn and I am always the one that's willing to fail first, because I think in leadership, you have to be willing to be honest and say you don't know everything.

And I always say that I, I'll never claim that I know everything, but I know where to find the answers, right? But as part of leadership, you have to have gratitude, and I think gratitude is completely different than praise. I think praise is something like ,"Good job, Ted". Whereas gratitude is very specific and intentional and it makes the connection between what that person offered and you. So what did I gain from what you did? So a better example might be, "Ted, thanks for being so organized and on top of things that really helps keep me organized." So instead of just "Good job, Ted". I think praise versus gratitude makes a huge difference. And you can't give gratitude unless you're paying attention.

Right. You get to know people and have relationships with people. You figure out and get to know what they value because that's how you communicate it to them. Some people like a note. Some people like a social media acknowledgement. Some people just want a smile or a pat on the back or a kind comment in front of someone else.

You have to have relationships in order to make gratitude effective in my opinion.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah. You opened a door and I'm gonna walk through it and you can tell me...

Amy Mathews-Perez: okay.

Lainie Rowell: ...how you feel about it. So if you look at the literature on praise, I'm talking about research on praise. Mm-hmm. It is actually the way you're describing gratitude, but what I think has happened, cause I've gotten pushback when I use the word praise, even though I'm referring to it in how they speak about it in research on how does it impact business relationships, romantic relationships, learning relationships, all of that. But I think what's happened over time is the word praise has been given a new meaning in the way that people use it. Does that make sense?

Amy Mathews-Perez: Uhhuh.

Lainie Rowell: So I have a, a more of a classical opinion of that word praise, but I think that because it's been used in like the example, you gave of pretty empty praise.

It's just like, "good job". It's nice, don't get me wrong, but there's not a lot of specificity, authenticity. There's not enough to it, for it to be meaningful. And so for me, I would consider praise a form of gratitude, but I really am honing in on how you're saying it's the, the use of the word praise has kind of evolved over time and some people have a negative connotation to it. I totally get that.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Right. And you can even give specific praise. You and, and again, all this is obviously kept to my opinion, you know, I can say, "Mary, thanks for being so organized". Well, that's great, but in, I'm, I'm giving her praise for that.

But in my, what I call my Amy brain, okay, it's not better than anybody else's brain. It's not worse. It's just very, very unique. I call it my Amy brain. But in my Amy brain, to really express the gratitude that I wanna express, I'm gonna connect it back to what that person offered, how it benefited me, because I wanna circle back and follow up and help them understand, I'm not just saying, you did a good job, but you positively impacted me. And this is how.

Lainie Rowell: I love that. That reminds me of the Jeremy Adam Smith definition of the best thank yous. Acknowledging the intention, the cost, and the value. And I think that's what I'm hearing you describe is, I wanna take it to that next level and really make the connection of how I see this interpersonal thing happening.

Is that fair to say? I don't wanna put words in your mouth.

Amy Mathews-Perez: No, that's absolutely right. And, and along those lines, I also work really hard to empower other people with my gratitude because there are so many people that don't realize what their strengths are. They don't realize that what they're offering is benefiting me and possibly the situation or you know, lots of things.

And they might not realize that. I want to highlight that so they can start to have maybe a little bit more confidence and possibly say, oh, I do have something to offer. I do have something that's benefiting the big picture instead of just, I don't wanna take that for granted because when people do that for me, it means a lot.

It means a whole lot. So I definitely wanna do that for, for others. Also, I wanna be sure that I can empower them through gratitude to let them know some of the awesome things they have to offer.

Lainie Rowell: I think it has a very profound effect on the relationship.

When you're talking about, I see you and this is, I value you, I honor you, I see all these things and it's come up a a couple times on this show that sometimes you show gratitude to someone for something and they're completely taken aback. "What do you mean? You see that in me?" And I think that's a really lovely thing too, is when we acknowledge something that we feel is maybe even very obvious about someone else that never even occurred to them is one of their strengths.

And so I think that's a really thoughtful way to approach gratitude. I know you are huge into gratitude, so I wanna give you an opportunity to share even more ways that you experience and express gratitude. I'm gonna open it up pretty widely, let you take it where you wanna...

Amy Mathews-Perez: Sure.

Lainie Rowell: ...cause I know you have some specific thoughts on this.

Amy Mathews-Perez: I do. So working in as the director of special programs, there are six programs that I work with, but the biggest one, if I could say that, is special education. And so when a lot of people hear that term, they have an emotional response to that.

And special education in public schools is hard. There's no getting around that. It is hard. I'll show gratitude for the challenges that come with the job, and there are a lot of them, but I only wanna talk about a few, you know, the challenge of meeting the needs of diverse learners.

That's, that's hard work, but it's very gratifying. And when I talk about diverse learners, I'm not just talking about students, I'm also talking about staff because. Teachers, paraprofessionals, campus district administration, everybody's a learner. So I find I'm very grateful for that challenge when I'm successful with that challenge.

And I'm grateful when I'm not successful. But again, that's a little bit of a delayed gratitude. But another challenge with special education is compliance. With all of the laws. And that's something else that people think of when they hear special education. They think legal paperwork. But I'm grateful for that because, well, I'm not grateful that the laws change, but they do.

And if they're evolving to better serve the students and families, that's great. But there are, you know, there are local, there are state, there are federal laws. And that's a challenge not only to stay aware of what they are, but to be able to communicate those to all of the stakeholders in the process.

And in that way, I'm grateful to serve as somewhat of an advocate for students and teachers and parents. So I'm grateful for that opportunity because it's, like I said, special ed is hard, and if I can make it easier for other people, easier to understand, easier to take action, then I'm grateful for that opportunity.

For sure.

Lainie Rowell: That is a huge gift. I appreciate it when you are including adults as learners cuz we are all learning, we're all evolving and it's a very core belief of mine that we have to remove as many barriers as we can. And I have a visceral reaction to the word advocate because I think we should all be advocates for our learners.

Right, right. Again, kids and adults so I will say that I have a habit of designing learning experiences that would be ideal for me. That is a, a default that I have to often overcome is like, Ooh, I could do this. But then I have to think about, okay, well what are the, what are the multiple means I'm offering to meet the needs of everyone.

And I have a strong belief that even though not every child or adult is identified with learning differences, I do believe we all have learning differences and that it's very much contextual and it could have to do with what happened five minutes ago.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Right.

Lainie Rowell: What happened five weeks ago, five years ago.

I mean, there's so many things that are coming into play of, okay, well this is where I am in this situation at the moment. Mm-hmm. And so I appreciate it when I am given opportunities to make choices based on what's gonna fit my needs in this context best.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Right, and, and one thing that's kind of a broken record of mine is there are no special education students in our district.

They're only students because in my, again, my very humble opinion, everyone is special. All the kids and all the staff, we're all special. We all have things that we either require because of physical issues, you know, like food allergies or illness. Then we also have things that we prefer. Like I don't want tomatoes on my burger.

I don't like tomatoes. They're not finished in the middle. Does that make me special? Yes, it does, because I want my burger, my special way, right? So we're all special, and I'm not trivializing special education, but we're all special and we all want what we want and need what we need. So let's make that happen for everybody. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to perpetuate that and model that.

That, that's kind of one of the things I talk about a lot. And when I do training and speaking, I work really, really hard to do it in different ways. And most importantly, most importantly is engage your listener. And get them to participate in the learning.

And I always, always, always say, you have to ask me questions. I would rather you ask me the same question 15 times than guess once, because when you guess we don't know what we're gonna get. So please, please, please. I love play. You know, interact through, play, through music, through silliness, through jokes, and I can tell you my favorite joke, but if you ever come to one of my presentations, you're gonna hear it again.

But here you go. Just for you, Lainie, and your listeners, my favorite joke in the whole wide world is, what does a thesaurus eat for breakfast?

Lainie Rowell: I don't know. What does a thesaurus eat for breakfast?

Amy Mathews-Perez: Synonym rolls.

Did I mention that I'm a speech path and I'm a word nerd. I love me some language stuff, but yeah, that's my favorite. That's my favorite.

Lainie Rowell: Word play is a good deal. I wanna touch on something you said... you're talking about, I want you to be asking questions.

I don't remember where I heard this tip years ago, but it was when you pause for questions, you don't say, "Do you have any questions?", or "Does anyone have any questions?" Instead, "What questions do you have?

Amy Mathews-Perez: Right.

Lainie Rowell: I know there are questions out there, so I wanna frame that in a way that invites the questions rather than framing it in a way, "Are you asking a question cuz you didn't get it?"

Amy Mathews-Perez: Right, no, absolutely.

Lainie Rowell: It's a small, but when you were saying that, I was like, oh, I, I know she does this.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Absolutely.

And you know what else I do, Lainie, is I refer to other people that have asked other questions. Because I can anticipate what the questions are gonna be.

And I'll say, you know, I was speaking with someone the other day and their question was, and I see the, the heads and the audience nodding Yes. So I anticipate their questions so that they don't have to feel like they literally have to ask. But again, I want it to be a fun atmosphere where we can be silly.

And sometimes I'll make mistakes on purpose just to let them say, what, what, what? That doesn't make sense. And I'm like, okay. Well, let's talk about why that doesn't make sense, because sometimes that's the best learning mode also, again, grateful for the opportunity to help people learn and facilitate, you know, maybe their passion, maybe helping them align their energy and their efforts into what action they wanna take.

That that's kind of what I'm always grateful for those opportunities.

Lainie Rowell: So helpful and I think that's where we can leverage the unique and dynamic interests and gifts of our learners, again, of all ages.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Mm-hmm.

Lainie Rowell: And find ways to leverage that to what are some ways that we could actually do some good in the world, that pro-social learning, like I'm grateful for athletics, like I'm grateful for sports. I love to play sports well. Mm-hmm. Can you do a sports clinic? It's like a service learning project for some younger kids or, you know, I am a big foodie. I love to eat and I'd love to help our food services people with maybe a garden on campus or with composting or even if there's ways to, test out menu items that would fall within the very strict guidelines of food services.

But you know what I mean?

Amy Mathews-Perez: Absolutely.

Lainie Rowell: I think there's all these opportunities to bring in these unique and dynamic interests and strengths to leverage it. And I think that's what makes the learning really authentic and also has that undercurrent, has that framing of gratitude, if you will.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Absolutely. Absolutely. I love to learn. I love to teach, and I love to have fun, and I love to laugh and I love to empower people. So anytime somebody needs somebody to stand up and do the talk and then walk the walk, I'm, I'm the girl. Bring it on. Let's make it happen.

Lainie Rowell: I hear you ready. Now, believe it or not, we are approaching the end of our time. It always goes way too fast and I know that.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Oh my goodness.

Lainie Rowell: I know, it's just bananas how fast it goes, but I wanna give you an opportunity for any last quick tips you have for teachers, coaches, and /or administrators.

Amy Mathews-Perez: I want to remind people to see the able, not the label. Whether that label is special education, GT, English language learner, whatever that label is. And even on adults, if it's, you know, temper tantrum, Tammy, don't see her label.

See what she's able to do. But when it comes to gratitude, I kind of think of it in a way of and I had to look this term up, let's be honest cuz I couldn't think of it. Frequency bias. Have you heard of that? So what, when you notice something or you're looking for something, you tend to see more and more of it and there's a much more official name, but I'm going with frequency bias and I feel like that can evolve with gratitude. If you start to look for it and hone in on it, you are gonna notice it everywhere. And the other thing that popped into my head, Lainie. What comes first, the blessings or the gratitude, and I think that's up to each individual, but I, I think that's important to know that you can have gratitude for lots of things without them being major life changing blessings.

You know, I'm, I'm grateful that we had a little bit of rain today. I'm also grateful that we had some sunshine today. So it's, it's super important to me that we find the gratitude and we seek the gratitude. And the more often we seek it, the more often we're gonna see it because of that frequency bias thing.

And then the other thing I really like to practice is remembering that our point of view drives what we do. So our point of view drives what we do. And if we have a point of view of gratefulness and awareness then those are the things we're gonna see and that we're gonna naturally gonna practice more and more.

Lainie Rowell: I a hundred percent agree. I think it might've been my therapist who said, we see what we look for.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Mm-hmm.

Lainie Rowell: When you go looking for it, you will find it.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Right. Just like when you buy a new car, you think you're the only one with a black wagoneer, and you're like, what? Why does everybody have the same car as me?

What's this about? And I, I believe the same thing can happen with gratitude.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And so when you were talking about the blessings, You know what comes first, blessings or gratitude? I think when you look for the blessings, you'll find the gratitude and also. When you're grateful, you realize how many blessings you already had.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Absolutely. I could not have said it better. That's excellent.

Lainie Rowell: Oh, I'm pretty sure you already said it better, but you're very kind. You have given us so much wisdom and so many strategies. I really appreciate your time, Amy. I wanna make sure and give you time to do your shout out.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Well, the obvious shout out, which I've heard on quite a few of your podcasts is my spouse. I have a wonderful, loving, supportive husband who is phenomenal.

But I was also thinking in the context of what you and I are doing. So when I think about podcasting and Twitter, I have to give a shout out to Sarah Pedrotti cuz she introduced me to Twitter. I don't know how long ago, wait till my Twitter anniversary thing pops up. I'm gonna say 10 years, but I could be totally wrong.

So shout out to Sarah and then podcast world, I have to give a shout out to Brian Martin because he was the first podcast to have me as a guest. You know, just little ol me. I don't, I don't have any books published yet. I don't have a website yet. I'm not doing a lot of speaking engagements yet, but I am driven to make a difference in the world.

So shout out to Brian Martin for being brave enough to have me as a guest on his podcast.

Lainie Rowell: Well, I'm gonna echo that shout out to Brian Martin. He is one of my favorite people and we've been on each other's podcast, so listeners, I don't have his episode number off the top of my head, but he's been on Evolving with Gratitude. You should check it out. And you should also go listen to Amy on his podcast.

I wanna say, you know, bringing it back to, we were talking about that like specific authentic gratitude to people. I think we often risk showing it the least to the people we're closest to. And you mentioned gratitude to your spouse, and I think that's so important.

And again, I know not everyone loves the phrase praise, but when I think of that praise to correction ratio, I think of my spouse and how I really need to be so careful to be overwhelming showing gratitude for all the wonderful things that he does. Be much more strategic about, do I need to give him this feedback?

Is this something that is actually going to make our marriage better, or is this something that I'm just feeling in the moment? Maybe I should wait on it. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's so easy to point out the negative, with that negativity bias.

Amy Mathews-Perez: It's also so easy to take things for granted. I work really, really hard at not doing that. But again, it's that awareness and the perspective. And you said strategic, and that is something that I was just chatting with him about, about a week or so ago, how he's taught me, again, showing him gratitude for teaching me how to be more strategic in certain areas of what I do.

So it's an awareness and I never, ever, ever wanna take him or anyone that I'm close to, family, friends for granted. So it's the awareness and the perspective and what am I learning? And once I learn something and have that lesson, I want to show gratitude for gaining that from that person.

Lainie Rowell: Lovely way to end. But we're not actually a hundred percent done though, because we need to hear about how people can connect to you. And I wanna just give you a shout out for that mindset and that frequent use as you were describing, where you are in your journey of "yet" that constant use of the word "yet". And you're already doing amazing things. You're already having a huge impact. I can't wait to see how you're gonna put that out to an even bigger audience. That impact is already happening and I'm excited to see what is yet to come.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Well, you're very kind.

Thank you so much, Lainie. I appreciate that. They can reach me at Twitter. It's probably the best way to reach me @DrAmyMP @drgrowto know. And now that we've had this conversation, you understand where that name came from. My initials are AMP and I've gone round and round and round.

I was called AMP for a long time. And, but let me tell you, there are a lot of Twitter people out there with those initials, so I had to figure out something. But it's @DrAmyMP @drgrowtoknow. So if you wanna reach out, that's the fastest way to reach me.

Lainie Rowell: Perfect. I'm gonna put that in the show notes so people can, can have quick access to that. Amy, thank you for this opportunity to chat. So happy that we get to share your thinking with the world and people should definitely connect with you to continue to learn from you.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Well, Lainie, I have to tell you. So, so grateful for the opportunity. I know you have a wait list of people to chat with, so the fact that you took time to chat with me, and I'm just so grateful. I'm so grateful because I follow what you do and the impact you're making is huge and it's one grateful moment at a time.

So I'm just. Just really honored to be a part of that journey, so thank you so much.

Lainie Rowell: We're gonna get in a gratitude loop here. I just wanna say, a little behind the scenes, I send guests a form and I ask them to tell me about themselves.

And just so the listener knows I'm asking for their headshot and all these things just to make it really easy. I have a little comment section that's optional. You almost brought me to tears with this beautiful message that you put in there and it was, it was just so heartwarming and special to me. You made me feel seen, known, heard, and valued.

But it was just like, oh my gosh, right there she's taking this little opportunity. I give you a little box, it says comment optional. And you took that opportunity to, to show me some, some gratitude and I just wanna thank you for that. So I. I we're gonna have to stop the Gratitude loop because I feel like you and I are one of those people that we'll just go round and round on this, but just again, Amy, thank you for being here.

And to our listeners, thank you for being here too.

Amy Mathews-Perez: Thanks everybody.

Episode 55 - Yes! Your Child Can with Guest Victoria Waller

Shownotes:

Hey there, podcast fam! Are you ready for an episode packed with positivity and empowering, practical advice? We've got the one and only Dr. Victoria Waller joining us, and she's all about being strengths based! If you're a parent or caregiver of a child with learning differences, you won't want to miss this engaging and fun-filled conversation. Trust me, as both an educator and a parent, I recommend tuning in and joining us on this journey!

About Our Guest:

Victoria E. Waller, Ed.D. holds a B.S in Education from Wayne State University, an M.Ed., as a certified reading specialist, and an Ed.D. focusing on reading and learning differences, from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Waller has been awarded the University of Cincinnati’s Distinguished Alumna College of Education Award, was one of three finalists for the L.A. Music Center’s Bravo Award for Outstanding Teaching, and was named the Local Hero in the L.A. Times for her Printer Pal Program, connecting students with nursing home occupants. She was the creator of the Disney Busy Bags for Travel on Planes and Cars for Disney/Hyperion Books and has created backpacks and toys for M&M Mars, Inc.

Book: Yes! Your Child Can: Creating Success for Children with Learning Differences

Website: ⁠drvictoriawaller.com⁠

Instagram: ⁠@drvictoriawaller⁠

About Lainie:

Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving Learner⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and a contributing author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Because of a Teacher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Her latest book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving with Gratitude⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/lainierowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book, is now available! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Purchase here!⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can also get bulk orders for your staff (10 copies or more) at a discounted price! Just fill out the form linked below and someone will get back to you ASAP! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/ewgbulkdiscount⁠

Transcript:

Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello, friends. Welcome to the pod. I am very excited to have Dr. Victoria Waller with us. Am I allowed to call you Dr. Vicky?

Dr. Victoria Waller: No. Call me Vicky. It's okay, just Vicky.

Lainie Rowell: Well, I feel like for people who have gone to get that advanced degree, they always earned the doctor, but I will take you up on that informality.

Hello Vicky. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Victoria Waller: I am so excited to be here. I can't even tell you because usually podcasters have read my book, which is lovely, but I've read your book and I've literally been crying for days. It's so important. gratitude and what you say. It's just, it's, it's the most important thing that I think I can say about every aspect of my life. I started with my parents and I went all the way to where I was now. And I have a whole list of, I have gratitude for all of this and you're right, you say, when you experience it, we create more happiness in our lives and lives of others.

And I think every word you said was just amazing and all the articles by other people, so. I'm gonna compliment you.

Lainie Rowell: Oh, you're too kind. Well, I rushed to read your book. I read it in, I think. 30 hours-ish because I couldn't put it down. And I had so many notes, so many highlights, and I'm really excited to share where our work comes together because I feel like there's a ton of connections between gratitude and your work.

I'm gonna do a very quick introduction and then, Vicky, I would love it if you jumped in and said more about what you do. So Dr. Victoria Waller is an educational therapist with a doctorate in education and learning differences. She is the author of the best selling book. I'm gonna slow down for that... bestselling book, Yes, Your Child Can, Creating Success for Children With Learning Differences.

It is also a finalist in the best book for 2022, the Forward Indies Reviews. We'll talk about that, I hope. I mean your, I'm just gonna talk straight to you right now, Vicky. Your bio is long, impressive and you have such an array of work that you've done and so I don't even know how to capture that all and still trying to keep this a relatively 30 minute podcast, but would you please tell people some more wonderful things about you that you really wanna make sure they know?

Dr. Victoria Waller: Well, I think I have to say, over 40 years I've been teaching and working with children with learning differences. And if you notice that word, I never say, even 40 years ago, I never said disabled children. They were so smart. I always found them smart and interesting . And I thought, they're not disabled.

Okay, they have differences. Maybe they have a little attention issues. Maybe they can't spell, maybe they can't write. But I never said that word, dyslexia. I just don't use those words because I know, because I've taught thousands of children. They're the geniuses of our time. Like Anderson Cooper, Richard Branson, Simone Biles, the astronaut, Scott Kelly, and so many more.

And I believe every child can learn and become successful and happy. If we diagnose them early, we get them help when they need it, and we use their strengths and passions to teach them. You know, parents come into me now I do ED therapy. I was in a school for 40 years and now I do ED therapy.

I always did a little, but now I do it, and parents immediately come in and tell me everything that's wrong with their child and I say, oh, what are they good at? And there's quiet. Because the parents are so focused on what their child can't do. This one child came and I said to him after, what do you like?

And he said, oh, I love sharks and whales. Now, the mother never said that to me. Well, I so happened to know the biggest shark expert in the world, Chris Fallows. I met him on a trip, and of course he communicates with my students and this child interviewed Chris and he interviewed the man in Maine who was a lobster fisherman and he got caught in a whale's mouth.

Lainie Rowell: Oh, wow.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Yes. Oh, it's fantastic. It's on the internet, and I called this man and I said, can my student interview you? It was so fascinating listening to this man. Tell us how he's a lobster fisherman.

He goes down with his baskets and he gets, he still does that. Many people just put baskets down. He goes down and all of a sudden it was dark. He knew it wasn't a shark because there were no teeth, right? Feel that they leaned, so he knew it was a whale. He lost his mouth piece. So he knew I have to get that, or for sure I'm gonna die anyway.

I can't even believe in like 10 seconds all this went through his mind. He felt around, put it back in his mouth. Then the whale opened his mouth and spit him out. This child dictated questions he wanted to ask him. We did a Zoom with. He read them and I had the mother sitting there. The mother was in shock.

He can't read. Well, he read because he knew exactly what he wanted to ask the man, and he knew what he told me to write down. I typed it in big letters. I try to connect kids and get their passions and their strengths, and I've done this since I've started teaching.

And we did a group of seven boys, and they were so brilliant and they loved writing scripts, and they wrote a script about the Hamburglar who was in McDonald's years ago. He came and he stole McDonald's. So I called McDonald's. I said, we've written the script. Can we film at McDonald's? And they said, yes at 5:00 AM.

Because they opened at 7:00 AM nowadays, they'd never let you do that. And I went with the boys and some moms and we filmed them with a movie camera. It was one of the first things that I did was amazing.

And I said, what was the most important part of this day? And I'm like, glowing, what? Are you kidding? We got McDonald's fries at 7:00 AM.

Lainie Rowell: I mean, they're not wrong. That is pretty amazing. There's just so many connections and you know, you and I have communicated back and forth before, but this is our first live conversation and I just have to tell you, there's so many things that you do and your perspective and your approach that resonate with me.

So first of all, I was a psychology major. I ended up going into education because I did my hours at a non-public school helping a student with learning differences. And this child was just so special. He just totally had my heart.

And I really loved working with kids and just like you said, he was so interesting to me and I was like, oh my gosh, this kid has so much to share and he needs the opportunities to do that. And so that was actually why I became an educator. I was gonna go into special ed.

Years, years down the road I worked for Apple and would do professional learning for them on how we could universally design our lessons and bring technology into this. And so I constantly, as I'm reading your book, which is so inspiring, so informative, as I'm reading your book, I'm hearing about all these ways that you're engaging, you're inviting them into the learning.

You are giving them all these different opportunities to access the content and all these different ways to show what they know and are able to do. And I just think that's something that every child deserves.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Well, the thing about the book is.. I have, every A D H D book, every learning disability book, and you open them up and there's a picture of a brain. Every parent I've ever met buys every single book.

They open it up, they see that, and they close the book. My book is a step by step for parents, for teachers, for educators. It's just a journey.

First of all, He's gonna snap out of it. She's gonna snap. They're not snapping out of it. You have to do something. Yeah. You know, what do you do? What's the testing about?

Parents come to me and they're like, freaked. My child has to go to a brain doctor. Well, that's a neuropsychologist to test them. Nowadays you can go a pediatrician who does the testing and that's on insurance. The testing you do with a neuropsychologist is very expensive. Okay.

IEPs at schools, I have been around those meetings. Those teachers and educators are phenomenal. Mm-hmm. You need to find out what are the passions of strength in my child and how can we get to teach them getting past the fear medication. I am not a medical doctor. I mean, 40 years ago, 45 years ago, there was Ritalin.

Now there's all kinds. One of my students she takes a little medicine. It's liquid. I didn't even ask what it was. Okay. She's totally changed. She was inattentive. You know, we never seem to find the inattentive children because they're quiet, but the ones I seem to get all the time are the inattentive who they say, oh, they'll snap out of it.

So my book takes you on a step. What do you do? How do you hire the right person? It doesn't have to be somebody with a doctorate. I'm met a girl the other day she's 32, and she said, my second grade teacher, Took me all through college. I went, what? She said, yeah. She was just a brilliant woman, but she liked teaching little kids.

But she started with me and she could do all the math and all of that in high school. She took her all the way through. It's getting the help, hiring the right person. I just talked to one of the moms. I hadn't talked to her in years. I wanted to check up on her son, who's brilliant and fabulous, and she had come to me and said, I've interviewed 26 therapists and I don't like any of them.

And I thought, oh, this is gonna be a good one. Right? I mean, 26, that's the most anybody's ever said to me. And of course I totally hit it off with the child. He's brilliant. You know, when people kept saying, oh, he can't do this, he can't sit still, he's not smart. These children are smart. Yep. And you need a team to help you, whether it's a therapist, whether it's a teacher that can help after school. I find better than parents helping the kids. Kids don't do as well when the parent tries to teach them.

Lainie Rowell: Oh no. I think we all learned that during Covid. Even those of us who are educators learned that and no disrespect to those who homeschool.

I have so much respect for you if you homeschool. That is just not for me. If you can do that, I think you're possibly up for sainthood. That's a gift if you can teach your own kids.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Well, it's funny during Covid, one of my students made himself an alien.

So on the camera he was an alien. And another person who was working with him called me and said, I can't stand it. It's so stupid. Doesn't it bother you? I said, well, not really because it's his voice and he's reading with me and he's responding. You know, so he's an an alien.

I wrote it up in the New York Times, even printed it, I said, during Covid, I taught an alien to read because I did. But my book is that step by step journey and the parents who follow it and find the strengths of their children, the passions...

And my book tells about all of it very simple terms. Do this, do this. And it's funny because the Quill Driver Press, the people who published the book and there was a woman who was the editor, and at the end of every chapter, she made these blue boxes. And it's what to remember and I loved it because you know, you read a book and then you go, oh, where did it say that?

At the end of the chapter, it's the blue box that tells you exactly what the chapter is about. Everybody along the way talking about gratitude. I just, I read your book and I went from my whole life with my parents saying I was never the smartest kid in class, but I was the one doing plays.

Vicky would do the plays and write the plays and I was the youngest of three sisters, and the sisters were, they were 18 and out of the house and I was 10 so mother says, I grew like topsy. I just grew. Who knew? She didn't pay very much attention, but they always said, oh, you can do it.

They always said that to me. And then my whole life it's been people that I've met, and I'll just do this quickly, the professors at the universities all the people that I contact for my student. There's not a person that I contacted, very famous people, the head of Disney, Michael Eisner he got me into every single...

In the eighties and nineties, Disney was really hot and I'm in LA and they would have all these fantastic openings and all my kids. We were the first ones on Splash Mountain and somebody said, but what happened if it broke? I said, well, no. You know, the people at Disney, the actual people who worked there were on, you know, it was gonna open in two weeks, but we were the first kids You know, Secret Service, the head of the Secret Service for Clinton.

I met his wife on a plane and when she told me what he did, it was like, okay. But he arranged my students here when I was doing ed therapy to get a challenge coin. A challenge Coin is given by a president to people in the Secret Service and they slip it to them. And the head of the Secret Service said to me of, of Clinton, of course, he would tell me nothing about anything that went on with Bill Clinton. I said, you won't even tell me a little story. No, Vicky...

Lainie Rowell: You're fishing. It's so funny.

Dr. Victoria Waller: No, of course. But he was wonderful and they gave, I have two kids that got a challenge coin, but it's a Secret Service challenge going so it's like even better than the president's one cuz so few are given.

And my children who work really hard and he set up so that a Secret Service agent gave the child the Secret Service going. It was amazing. The head of Google, I met him on a trip and he had kids and I went over and said, oh, what do you kids like to read? I always chit chat with people and we were in Australia.

I said, where are you from? And he said, mountain View, California. And I'm going Mountain View. One of my students, Google, he's obsessed with Google. This was 20 years ago. He is president of Google paris now. We've been in contact for 10 years. We flew to Google and the student and his father and I did. The three of us, we spent the day at Google. He was then the vice president of Google. We spent the day with. And it was funny cuz at the end my student was eight and he just loved everything about Google. This was when it was really starting. And he, I said, what was the best thing about the day?

And I'm like, flying cuz he interviewed the Vice President Sebastian. And he said, in every room there is a big, huge bowl of candy. You can eat all the candy you wanted all day. And he kept stuffing them in my pockets and stop giving him sugar. And he said, well, Vicky, what was your best thing?

I said, are you kidding? Number one, you could bring your pet to work. I love my Labradors. Okay, you can bring your dog to work and if you work there, you take your laundry in the morning and, and when you leave, they have the laundry finished. I said, I'm working there. That's like the best thing I've ever heard.

Lainie Rowell: It's very, very smart. Yes. And I'm a Google Certified Innovator. I was brought in in Santa Monica. And I've done things for Google at the DC office, but I've never been to Mountain View, which of course is the flagship. So I have serious envy that you got to do that because that is the best Google campus to be at.

Dr. Victoria Waller: This seven year old boy could cook. He could cook, we could go into the, and he couldn't read the recipe. I read the recipe, but we, he'd tell me what he wanted to make and we go into the kitchen. But he could taste something and say it needs a quarter more of salt.

And that'll do. And he's still a cook to this day. He's 17. Loves cooking.

Lainie Rowell: What a pallet. That's amazing.

Dr. Victoria Waller: And Google, their lunchroom has 25 different countries that you can pick and, and this, he was so funny. He said, can I keep going back? I said, go, go and taste all the foods from all over the countries.

Chris Fallows, the shark expert, the principal from Crossroads School who said, every report I wrote, she kept saying, this is a book. This is a book. And that's how it went. My publisher, Quill Driver, forward reviews. I'm now a finalist. That's so far unbelievable for book of the year, 2022. And somebody said, oh, well, oh, maybe you'll win.

I said, I, I mean, yes, that'd be nice to win, but that is so far fetched. I'm a finalist. Yeah, that's amazing. How many people can I get to, to, to tell them that their children are smart? You have to do my step by step and your child will succeed. But if you don't and you keep putting it off or saying, oh, he'll step out.

They're not going to snap out of it.

Lainie Rowell: I love that your, your book is a tribute. It honors. All of these people that you've been able to help and the people who you've worked with who've helped these people and the families and the everyone that coming together to support these learners, it's just a lovely tribute to what's possible.

I mean, your title, Yes! Your Child Can that really sums it up. It's yes, every child can, right. We're so blessed as educators to have so many of our fellow educators who have that mentality. It's, it's pretty rare, but but there are some who don't always get that.

So your message is important. It's, it's important for everyone to understand. Everyone can, all of our learners are capable. We can hold them all to high standards. It's how we help them get there that's different.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Yes, and I think it does start with, of course you have to have a teacher who understands, but it starts with parents saying, oh, Maybe there is not a problem, but maybe there's something. The parents will come, oh, he is lazy.

They're not lazy. They just have a different way of thinking. And if you get them help, whether it's getting, a tutor to help them after school, a teacher that they love, like that girl, a teacher that they love that wants to help them, and if they need medication and I have to tell you, so. It used to be, oh, if you give them medication, they're gonna become a drug addict.

Guess what I have to tell you, after over 40 years, let's say they need medication and you don't give it to them. You don't get them help. You don't listen to what people are saying and you think, oh, they'll snap out of it. When they're 14, 15, and 16, they're gonna start self-medicating with bad things because they keep saying, but everybody says I'm smart and I can't do anything.

They have no confidence. What you want and your whole thing with the gratitude... we create more happiness in our lives and lives of others. And it's not happy people who are grateful, it's grateful people who are happy. That's in my room right now. What you said in your book, I mean, just was over the, the mountains and hills.

Lainie Rowell: Oh, you're so sweet. Well, like I said, I think we're sisters in that we really see how wonderful everyone is in their own special way.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Yes.

Lainie Rowell: And we see that as an asset and not as a deficit. And so I think that your work is so important.

And I love that you keep coming back to learning differences. And you keep saying it's not a disability, it's about uncovering what the abilities are. And I just think that even if you. You know, health, exercise, eating, like there is no one way that's gonna work for everyone. And as soon as we start to appreciate that variability, that's when we can see it as opportunities instead of, okay, well now we have to do this.

It's like we're all different and I just wanna say something really quickly. The inattentive, this was a big learning thing for me early on in my career because I had a master teacher who said to me, Okay. There might be kids who are driving you crazy and there might be kids who are making your days.

Be careful you don't miss the ones who are just flying under the radar.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Absolutely.

Lainie Rowell: Watch out for them because they might be in the most need. And I think about that in respect to gratitude. If you think about how often a child hears their name said out loud in a classroom, we've got the kids who are doing the things that we're hoping they do, so they get the praise. And then we have the kids who are maybe challenging us and they're getting the corrections. Obviously we wanna work on that. Upping the praise for everyone so that everyone is hearing their name in a positive way. And that really sometimes I think is the hardest for the inattentive kids.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Yes, yes, yes, for sure.

Because what happens is they go under the radio. It's funny, I even said to one of my students, the teacher I went to visit the class and they were on the floor and she was talking about whales. This child knew everything about whales and he sat in the back of the room, he was inattentive, and later I said to him, I can't believe it.

You didn't raise your hand. You're the one who knows more than the teacher on whales. And he said, You know what, the three kids in the front row always have their hand up and she always chooses the same ones. He said, what do I have to talk for? So the ones that are inattentive are the ones that teachers think, oh, they're not smart.

They don't talk. And the funny thing is the child who loved the whales and sharks, you know, I said, what do you like when I started talking to him after, and I have clay, I have all kinds of things here. And he made me the whale that the man, the man was caught in and he had feet coming out of the mouth.

So not only could he to make it, but he's clever. It was just amazing. And the mother said, oh yeah, he's always building and always ma, that was to her negative. Well, everybody does that. No, everybody isn't created like he is. And it's just interesting that I tend to see more of the kids that are inattentive because the parents just think they're lazy and they'll snap out of it and they're not paying attention.

And as soon as I give that list in my book about does your child not reply when you call them 14 times, but all kids do that now because they're on their computers or something, whatever. But my book is giving you a list. This is what to look for. What are these doctors?

What is a neuropsychologist? What is an IEP at a school? I have to tell you, the testing they do at public schools is as good as the $7,000 neuropsychologist, they're all trained, they're brilliant, and it's free. And then they have the writeup for the teachers to work with him, or they'll say, get somebody out of school to help your child.

It's very important, the team that you choose to work with your child. I can't stand when a parent says, well, he's lazy because I haven't found any student who's lazy, especially the inattentive ones. They're just quiet, but they're always into something, they love something that they do. I found it so interesting the different, they like sharks, they like whales. Like the one who like Google. He was obsessed with Google.

Lainie Rowell: I see it from the teacher perspective and I try and correct myself because I know what's happening deep down, my brain knows, but there's part of me that takes it real personal and I just go, I'm not engaging them. They don't find me interesting and I make it, which I think humans have a tendency to do, I make it about myself, and what I really need to think about is, okay, well what could I be doing differently to bring the gifts that this child has into our learning community and making sure that everyone has a voice.

I think there's a lot more ways to even do this now. You know, you mentioned technology and I love how you give examples in your book of ways that we can use technology to remove the barriers and help learners with what we're trying to accomplish.

Dr. Victoria Waller: It's funny, I had a student, third grade boy and everybody had to do a report and his report was supposed to be on strawberries, and he came to me and I went, what? The teacher gave him strawberries. And I thought, okay, I don't even like strawberries. I'm a raspberry person, but I went, wait a minute, you know everything there is to know about rollercoasters. His grandmother lives in Cedar Point in Ohio, which is the biggest rollercoaster park.

So he's been going there all the time and he knows all about them. So I said, let's write a letter to the teacher and ask if you to could do it. And he went up and he said, could I do it on roller coasters instead of strawberries. And I'm now calling her my wonderful teacher. She said, of course. You have no idea. He built a rollercoaster. I don't know how he did it cuz he was really good at math. When he went to Cedar Point, he interviewed the president because I called ahead of time and asked if the president would do me a favor.

I'm always asking people for favors. And he said, sure. And he interviewed him and he took notes the whole time. It was unbelievable. Just a little thing. It's a little hard for a mom or dad to ask the teacher to change something. But if your child could do it, or if you have an ed therapist or a tutor, maybe the tutor could say, you know, he knows everything about sharks. Could he write it on sharks? Most teachers will say, sure.

Lainie Rowell: To the wonderful teacher, I don't know what the standard was, but obviously she had the wisdom to go, okay, well the standard isn't, he needs to know about strawberries.

It was probably a writing standard so she goes, oh, well the writing standard is still covered if he talks about roller coasters, and that is, such a brilliant understanding of teaching and learning is if you can get to the point where you really focus on, okay, what's the standard?

And then give that flexibility. Universal Design for Learning we say firm goals, flexible means the flexible means is what is so important. And your book is so good at making this accessible for parents. I wanna make sure and get this out here because I think if your child needs additional support and you've gotta advocate for your child, and you've gotta get a team together to advocate for your child, that is incredibly complicated, incredibly overwhelming for a family that might already be overwhelmed in a number of other ways.

And I really appreciate it in your book, that you made it very accessible for non-educators to understand how this system works and to really leverage the resources that are actually available and sometimes even free, and take advantage of those things. And here's how to make it make sense to yourself.

And here's how to ask for help and who to ask for help. And then there's one more thing that I wanna say, cuz there's so many spots where I'm just like, oh, this resonates with me. I know we can talk for hours.

Dr. Victoria Waller: I took notes on your book and it's some of the things you said, I'm just sticking them up on my wall.

Lainie Rowell: Oh, you're so sweet. One of the things that I really connected with is you are bold in asking for people to come in and make the connection with learners, and I think that is a testament that actually a lot of people are happy to do that. Schools are not an easy place to be invited into. But there are services out there. I mean, you got fortunate that you were on the plane with the wife and...

Dr. Victoria Waller: Well, I talk to everybody, that's what I do.

Lainie Rowell: You talk to everybody and that is very, very helpful. But, you know, there are services out there. When I was in the classroom I would use Skype in the Classroom and it was a network where I could find experts and have them video conference in to be interviewed.

There are all these people, a Minecraft engineer could be video conferencing in and talking about their process, how they design, troubleshoot. So many experts out there that would be happy to donate a little time and we just have to make that connection. And so I love that you're encouraging kids to have the agency to be like, I care about roller coasters.

I wanna do this. Can I research this? And when teachers know about those interests, they can actually start to bring the experts in. And it's not as hard as you would think.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Zoom makes the world right here. It's amazing. You know, I didn't even know who Joey Chestnut was. During Covid I had these two kids and they love... Joey Chestnut is the one that goes to Nathan's and eats 5,000 hotdogs at July 4th.

That's the guy who has the record. Oh my goodness. Well, we interviewed him. It was a hoot and nowadays you look on Google. In fact, it's funny How to Be a Perfect Person is one of my favorite books. Very old book. Stephen Manis is the author and I had to call him cuz I read that with every child cuz can anybody really be perfect?

It's such a funny book, short. The kids like it, but it's. So I look him up on Google, right? And it doesn't say anything. Then it says wife. So then I look up his wife and it has her phone number. So I call and he calls me back and he says, how did you get my phone number? It's not listed. I said, no, but it said your wife's name.

So I just called her, left a message saying, give this to your husband. But people, because of Zoom, they're just so easy about, okay, I have 10 minutes on this. Now Chris Fallow is the biggest shark expert in the world. Chris is now on tour and he's coming back in May, and I have a student who's really into sharks, so he's gonna do a Zoom with him.

Now. We just did, this is the new one. Do you know who Mr. Doodles is?

Lainie Rowell: Oh, I feel like I do. Yes. I, and always seen him on Instagram. Yeah,

Dr. Victoria Waller: he doodles his house. Okay. So I wrote a letter. And the funny thing is the person that's his media person used to be a teacher. Oh, okay. So my letter saying I'm a teacher with these kids with learning differences, he wrote me back immediately.

Now we videoed the children asking the questions and he replied, cuz it's London. He replied to their questions on a video. It wasn't, he didn't see them. And they didn't see him. They saw it at the. Because they saw...

Lainie Rowell: But that's a beautiful workaround for the time zone challenge because we've got kids in school for six hours and you gave a pro tip earlier that I wanna highlight because this is critical.

We can ask them to come in via Zoom or Skype or however you wanna do it, and it's so generous of them to give a little bit of time and to honor that time, you need the kids to come prepared with questions, and you did this, and so I wanna make sure that teachers know to do this too, because I have failed at this.

I did it one time where I didn't have the kids have their questions fully prepared. Well, they had written them, but I hadn't vetted them. And the kids were so nervous to ask the questions that one kid would ask the question and the other kid who's ready to go was so nervous they weren't listening to the first kid's questions, and they asked the exact same question and I was like, oh my gosh, I feel so bad.

So from then on, I vetted the questions just to make sure we didn't have redundancy, that we were making good use of the person's time. And now we have tools like Flip, formally called Flipgrid, where we can even do it asynchronously with the video responses. I love that we can just even email videos back and forth.

I mean, whatever it is, we can find easy ways to do that. You're doing it in such smart ways. I just wanted to point out that I thought that was really clever.

I could talk to you for hours, but I gotta let you go. Now. One thing I love about this episode is that you basically answered all of my questions without me even asking them. So I thank you for that. You just were so good at sharing and I never even had to explicitly say like, what does this mean to you?

So I love that you made my job as a host very, very easy. I thank you for that. I do wanna make sure, I'm gonna put this in the show notes as I always do, but I wanna make sure you have a chance to tell people how to reach out to you.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Well, either on Instagram or you can do my email it's drvictoriawaller@gmail.com. That's an easiest way, or on my website at Dr. Victoria Waller, and it says, contact her, but I think it's easy to just do it directly to me.

If you have questions or anything, I'm happy to answer.

Lainie Rowell: All right. And I will be sure to, in the show notes, put a link to the book.

Dr. Victoria Waller: I'm so happy. My publisher has been wonderful to me and I have this social media person. Let me tell you something. I didn't even know what a social media person was when this all started, but her name is Julie Hoffman. Honest to goodness she's young and she's brilliant. Yeah, and we just were like almost like sisters. It's funny, the people, even you, I could be friends with you. I said that to my husband.

I said, I've done like almost 40 podcasts. I said, I love every single person that I've been on a podcast. He said, oh my gosh. I said, I know, but he said, well, cuz you're like-minded. That's why. But I haven't found anybody that I'd say, oh, I didn't like that so much. It's just, they're educators and it's people who wanna help children how can it be bad.

Right?

Lainie Rowell: Yeah. We are same team, trying to make sure that everyone has every opportunity to live life to the fullest. Have that fulfilling successful life. So well, Vicky, this has been a real joy. I am super grateful for this time with you. You gave a ton of shoutouts and I am excited to release this episode out into the world.

Thank you for the work that you're doing, and I hope I get to chat with you again real soon.

Dr. Victoria Waller: Oh no, absolutely. Thank you so much and I love your book. You're, they should buy your book.

Lainie Rowell: They can buy both of our books. How about that? I'm a fan of both books and I really do hope people grab yours.

So thanks everyone for listening.