Leading Through Unprecedented Times Podcast

But the one thing I can pretty much bet on is that not one of you, not one of you were handed a pandemic manual, whether it was in your leadership, prep, preparedness, whether it was in from the district. And they’re like, oh my goodness. Yes, here’s the manual. No one did that. So as you look back, be forgiving of yourself and forgiving of others. Welcome back everybody to this edition of leading through unprecedented times, I’m Tom Murray, your host, and I am so excited to introduce you to my very good friend, the one and only LaVonna Roth, LaVonna. Thank you so much for joining this future ready podcast. How you doing my friend? How are things I am doing great, Tom. So good to see you. And I cannot wait to give you an actual hug. Absolutely, Absolutely. This darn pandemic, but we will be able to do that. I hope sooner rather than later. And listen, this podcast is, we’ve got so many principals, superintendents, district level leaders that are listening, and I’m so excited to bring your brilliance to them today.

You know, I’ve always said that I really believe in the work that you do in the, I feel like it’s the right work, the heart work, the SEL side, the brain science, bringing it all together. And let’s say that I believe your work as it’s always been important, but it’s never been more important than it is right now. So thank you for investing the time.

Your message is so, so important. So let’s dive into that, you know, LaVonna, you do so much around SEL. And a lot of times we think about SEL for our students and we go right there. Of course there are priority. There are why we do that. But talk to us if you would, because I know when you get to work with school and district leaders all across the country, you also focus on SEL for leaders. So talk to our superintendents, our principals kind of about their role. They’re constantly on the go. They go, they go, they go until they’ve got nothing left. What’s this help them wrap around their heads around SEL and leaders themselves. Oh, Tom, I think this is way beyond time to be discussing this.

You know, there’s so much that we’ve focused on with students yet. We forget about sometimes the adults in the building and sometimes especially even those in central office, those that are administrators and the school building. And you know, I live with an administrator, well, he did just retire, but I lived with a school principal for years and years now.

So I see the impact of what happens. And the one thing that I do know is that every experience that we go through, everything that we’ve experienced our past, whether it’s childhood, whether it’s even adulthood, that that impacts, we bring that with us, the good, the bad, the ugly. So when we talk about leaders who are also bringing that to the table for themselves, but now they’re shouldering that have parents that have children that have the in their school building, all of that begins to really take harness. So one of the things is we like to do is step back and find the importance of looking at the individual first. So every time we do Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E., for example, the lens that we are coming through is the individual that’s in the room with us first and doing some of that hard and heart work there and then taking it to through what does that thread for?

What does that look like when it actually impacts those that are around you? And it’s easy to do, you know, we use the S.H.I.N.E. Framework, so it’s easy to get through that. But the importance of that is, is that as humans, you can only do so much. You can only give so much. And if you aren’t taking that time to be able to work through yourself, then it ends up impacting every decision, everything that happens. So lot of times we are, sometimes I should say are a lot of times, are we are our greatest barrier. So let me ask you this. As you just referenced the S.H.I.N.E. Framework, something that I know that you’ve developed, something that you’re working with. So many folks around the country that walk us through that a little bit for people that might not be familiar Gladly.

So originally, Tom, I don’t know if you know this, but the word was not originally S.H.I.N.E.. It was smart. And I was, I felt super stupid as a, all the way into adulthood. You know, elementary, I did great middle school. Grades started declining by the time I got out of high school, I showed you my report card.

You’d see these enough’s. I was put on probation to get kicked out of college my first semester. And I felt super stupid. I thought I’m just dumb. This is how I am. And I had labeled myself that, and it was out of desperation that I thought, how do I like do something at least my last semester. And I, when I pulled the university catalog, you could take sign language. And it was something that I always wanted to do because I hated the barrier of not being able to communicate with somebody just because they couldn’t hear our language. And that is actually what turned things around for me. It was, I did art take sign language. You actually had to go into the field of education. And my GPA did a complete, like a complete flip and looking at all of it. I just thought, wow, like, this is where my passion is my excitement. And I called it smart. But then I had somebody who said to me, LaVonna, you will never change the definition of smart and education in part of my personality went, watch me. Right. But then the other past side, that lack of confidence that, yeah, well, what if they’re right? And I’m thankful to that person, because it did become the word S.H.I.N.E.. And this was after years of doing brain research, brain science and looking at how do we engage instruction and actually get learning in the classroom that it hit me. We have to back up and look at how we S.H.I.N.E..

And so S is all about self. What are your strengths, gifts, skills, and talents. So many times as humans and especially even leaders, we focus on everything. We did wrong, everything we can’t do. And we have this specific lens about ourselves that may not actually be true. It most likely is not true. So S when we look at, we talk about self strengths, gifts, skills, talents, mindset, self care, all the goodness. That’s a big one. We had to H his heart and heart is all about passion, but what do you want to do? You get one life? Like, what excites you? What do you love about education? What do you love outside of education?

And we begin to explore all of that. And then it’s the two together. That’s actually the power package, because if you have your strength be, it’s not a passion of yours. Well, that’s great, but you’re going to burn out. Unfortunately, right now in a pandemic, we have a lot of educators who are burning out, right? They’re not getting enough of that passion.

They’re burning too much of the strength when we flipped that model, though, when we take the passion, you have some passionate about, but you lack the strength. Well, that might be more like a hobby, right? And if I shift this slightly through the lens of the schools, we work with, we’re looking at what students can do. We’re looking at the passions and we teach through that lens to actually maximize the learning and to maximize who they are as a human.

Then we get to eye eyes inspire because we know that things are gonna happen. Life’s going to throw us curve balls that we’ve already experienced before, or even in a pandemic. How do we stay inspired and how do we inspire others? And that really affects the culture within the school building or the central office, or we work with corporations to then when you get into N and as navigate, and what are you gonna do with everything I just talked about? What are your action plans, your story, your goals, your journey, what do you want that to look like? What does that actually look like in the school? What does it look like in your life? And then when we get to E is exceptional, because by doing everything, I just said, you’re becoming the exceptional person. You were meant to be not anybody else who you were meant to be. So stop the comparison game of what we see on social media or the person in the next building beside us, or in the next classroom beside us, stop that be who you were meant to be. And that’s the gist of it all.

I love that. I’m thinking back actually, the very first time I believe, or one of the first times we met in person, we were presenting in rooms side by side. And the reason I’m sharing this story is because you eloquently model the things that you just talked about. I walked into your room, you were standing on some sort of chair.

I can still picture it. You had like balloons all over things on the desk treats over here. And I’m thinking to myself like, oh, I’m the, like, we’ll take out your laptops. And, and I’m like, man, she’s bringing the passion and the inspiration and the energy. And I really admired you from that point forward because you’ve truly model and practice.

What you preach is certainly that lesson that, that leaders need there as well. So one of the pieces that you referenced early on in that answer was around the brain science and at all, Fred, with the homes of home for future ready schools, we’ve done a lot of work in the learning sciences and those pieces. And it’s one of those things where there’s been this silo for so long between what we know about how the brain works and then what we turn around and actually do.

So give us kind of your elevator speech, if you’re would, or somebody you work at, you do a lot in this area of connecting educators to the brain science, civil learning sciences, related to how this all works. Talk to us a little about why it’s so important. You might point people to around brain science. Well, Tom, you may, I’m going to go back to the laptop statement. If I recall your room was standing room only, and they were highly engaged, so I’m not going to get you out. It takes all different kinds, right? It depends on what your goal is and what you’re achieving. So yes, but no, we definitely have fun. We call them fun notes and fun shops instead of keynotes and workshops.

So, yeah. So when it comes to the brain science again, like I said before, you know, I started in brain science as a matter of fact, all my books around how to engage the brain and we call it brain powered learning. However, we weren’t quite seeing the results that we should have seen. And I had to take a step back and really take another look at brain science.

And I went, oh my goodness. You know what the issue is is that we’re not putting the brain in a state of learning. And that is when I didn’t know what SEL was, but that’s when the intersection crossed for me. And later on heard the term SEL and I went, oh, that’s exactly what we do. And so w w the importance of it is if we want someone to learn, whether that’s an adult or a child, it doesn’t matter. The brain operates in the same way. So before, before SEL was, was known, I often heard, oh, you do the fluff stuff. Nope. I appreciate your, your lens of what you’re coming through, but let me, let me share a little bit more. It’s actually how our brain operates.

And so like, when we get deep inside the brain, the brain has the, in the limbic system deep in here way. So those you can’t see me, it’s, this is gonna be really gross. But if you put a pencil through the top of your head, towards the back, and one through your temple, where they would intersect would be the Olympic system.

And then there, we have two organs that I’ll just briefly touch on and it’s, but it’s under one name is the amygdala, right? So they may dull out when those are heightened and they’re always on alert. Like they care about one thing. And one thing only is that, how do we survive? So it could be a physical threat. It could be a facial threat, like me making a face, like I’m mad at you. That’s perceived as the same threat. So then Maitland goes on alert, and the moment those go on alert, you can not learn. So when I look at it, a lot of the circumstances of what happens within a school building sometimes intentional, sometimes totally not known when we look at that we actually hinder learning.

And so that’s when I stepped back and started Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E. and looking at how do you Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E. and work through some of those things, while at the same time, looking at brain science through the lens of engaging instruction. And so now we take people through schools through that, but in the middle of that is the cross section. So for example, we have a fun shop called a content and SEL unite because they’re not separate silos. You just mentioned Tom, the exact thing that so many perceive as brain sciences over here, SEL is over there. It’s actually the intersection of both. And then that’s where we see the highest levels of two. Yeah. Brilliantly said. And another thing that you’ve really you’ve coined the term around a human focus culture, and we’ve had so many podcasts that culture continues to come up because obviously it’s foundational to actually with the brain science that you’re talking about, creating environments where people want to be talk to us about how school and district leaders can really create that human focus culture. So the title is literally what, what we mean, you know, is remember that you have humans in your building.

And I know a lot of times it’s the demands. It can become about testing or it become about making somebody happen, like happy to stop issues or stop problems that they’re causing, or to stop a behavior or change a behavior. And so, because of that, no matter what it comes back to the human, and what I found is over time, I’ve just kept referencing. We’re all human. Like you mess up, stop hiding mistakes. That’s who we are. We’re humans, humans make mistakes. Learn to embrace that. When we talk about shame versus guilt, which is a lot of the research of Dr. Brene Brown. When you look at that shame versus guilt, it comes back to how we perceive things as a human.

So when we look at the culture within a building, right, and if we think about the leader, the moment somebody comes in to your office and you’re thinking, oh my goodness, here they come again. Can’t believe this around this conversation again. And you’ve already made up your mind about things you’ve already perceived. What’s going to happen. You’ve already set the stage for what is going to happen.

And so the thing to remember that we’ve loved to teach on this is that it’s the backstory of what somebody brings. So Tom, for example, if we were walking down the hallway and I saw someone and I, somebody super negative, right. And I see them and I’m thinking, oh great, here they come. Here. They come. Every time I talked to her, she makes such a negative face. It drives me crazy. And I don’t even want to talk to her. So the moment I see her, I make eye contact. And I pick up my phone and pretend to be on a call. The question I always ask is, did we make an impact? So administrators, you walking down the hall, you know, don’t say who they are, you know who they are. Right. And you see this dude, you make an impact and the question should be, or the answer should be yes. But then the question is, was it a positive one or a negative one? Because the moment you made eye contact, you actually created a situation of saying, I see you.

And that next moment of decision decides what we do. And it also impacts that person positive or negative is no different with an adult and a different with a kid. So what we do is we have to change our lens. We have to get ourselves to be aware of that. Self-awareness be aware of the emotions that we have, the actions that we take towards somebody.

And what if instead we switched that focus. So the next time I see that person coming down the hallway, instead of pretending to be on the phone, I make eye contact say, Hey, I just wanted to tell you the idea that you shared in the faculty meeting the other day, never even thought of that. Brilliant, thank you so much.

And then I walk away and I want that to be short and I want it to be authentic. Those are the two key factors short, because if I’m not sure the brain goes, yeah, see, you just made that negative face. I told you, you tried not going to work. You just reinforced a belief that you’re already trying to break, but it’s already there. And then the second part is authentic. Have you didn’t like the idea you don’t like the strategy. You don’t like their shoes. Don’t comment on that. Find something that you can actually speak truth about. Yeah. Brilliantly said, and I, you know, I’m thinking about it and just processing those, those pieces on, on those types of interactions, we have to be so intentional about. Right. And we all know what it’s like to be that principal walking down that hallway and it’s up there. They come. And I duck into a quick room because I don’t have the 40 minutes for complaining, but we start to reinforce the problem if that’s what we do. And that’s just being intentional about short and sweet and to the point, and it’s modeling to them exactly what we’d want them to do with a student that that’s how they felt. And so going back to the modeling piece there as well, one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about, you know, we think about future ready. We often talk about, you know, it’s not a place where we check off.

It’s not a place that we say we’ve arrived. It’s really around mindset and continuing to move forward. And I think about the pandemic and I think about how fear and anxiety are just so real. But I also can flip that to think pre pandemic, where maybe I’m a principal in a building and I’m new there and it’s a negative culture. And I see that they need to move.

And I have this mindset that I’m just going to mandate change. And if they don’t like it, that’s tough on it. And you do a lot of work around psychological safety. And so when I think about it, we can look at it from a pandemic end with just the fear and the heightened anxiety and just everything is amplified right now to the flip side being, you know, for school and district leaders, creating a culture where we can’t just say, go innovate and then rule by fear, go change your teaching practices. And then every time I’m in your classroom, I’m barking down your throat. That’s something’s wrong. Something’s not right. Talk to us about psychological safety and the importance as leaders to really establish that.

And also how can they establish that? Yes. So one of the things is to remember that none of us like to be told what to do. Like that’s, I don’t know about you, Tom, but I’m the kind of person you tell me what to do. I’m already searching for the loophole, right. To figure it out. But, and majority of us are that way.

We don’t love to be told what to do. So that kind of a leadership is something that typically doesn’t work. You know, at least not with most people. I mean, and if it did work, I’m going to say it actually didn’t work, but you think it works because now they’re complying or they’re secretly going behind your back and figuring out other ways to go against you.

You know? So when we think about establishing psychological safety, that’s such a base and there really are four stages that we take people through psychological safety. So there’s so many factors that play into what affects this. But for example, the lowest level is inclusion. And so are we including people, do they feel included? And that takes us back to Maslow’s hierarchy of knowing that near the bottom is all about love and belonging.

You know? So inclusion, like, do I even feel like I belong when I’m new teacher arriving into the building, arriving into the school, do I feel like I’m an outcast and everybody else already has their people? Or do I fit in, do I look different? Right? Do I practice something different? Like, so there’s a lot of pieces that go into this, but the initial piece that we can create culture wise, again, human focused culture is to create that inclusion. The next level up is going to be learner. Right? So does the person feel comfortable asking a question such as, okay, see, my schedule says this, but I don’t know where those rooms are. Do they feel comfortable doing that?

Either one-to-one with someone or even in front of the group, like in a faculty meeting, then we take it to another level and the third level is going to be contributor. Right. Do they feel comfortable contributing to the conversation? Are they okay in a faculty meeting on a committee or in front of a smaller group, their team, for example, and raising their hand and saying, Hey, I love where we’re going with this. And so I also think what would be cool to consider as XYZ. So now they’re contributing to the group, right? So there’s a psychological safety at that level to be able to do that. The highest level though is challenger. And this is what just lights me up. When I see this happen and challenges, safety is me being able to actually challenge what is being said, it’s done respectfully. It is not, it is all done. I’ll put this way. It’s done with the intention of seeing progress. You know, I think I have a team here with ed Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E.. And I always tell them that it’s not about my decision and my idea it’s about the best decision for the company, the best decision to serve our people. And so I think the same thing in a school and when somebody is that challenger level, they are willing to say, I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t agree because of, and that’s an example of what they could say. And so when we get through all four levels, obviously the highest level is where we’re seeing the greatest success and we will see momentum.

We will see a culture of people who feel safe to come together, they belong. And you want to talk about reducing attrition, who right there is one big key. Yeah. Well said. And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the same thing for students in a classroom for teachers in a building or for an admin team with a superintendent, right.

It’s, it’s really the same level there. And just so vital and especially at a time where the pandemic has heightened emotion, understandably so heightened everything in that regard really amplified what an important piece there. So, so one more piece. I want to ask you a little bit about, you know, the, the title of this podcast is on leading through unprecedented times and let’s face it.

It’s been said, you know, how many millions of times about our school and district leaders facing adversity each and every day, talk to us about how they can be resilient, how they can continue to face adversity to it because it’s a challenge. Like, you know, we talk, we started with talking about SEL for them because they’re getting battered left and right.

I mean, we look back 13 months ago and you know, everybody was worshiping educators that first couple of weeks home, like standing ovations coming in the fall. Right. But then the tides turned pretty quickly when places didn’t start to reopen and then people ever everybody’s got an opinion. And so they continue to face adversity, even 13 months into this pandemic here, give us some feedback, some thoughts around how they can continue to develop that resiliency that they need to lead. Yes. So it is a, it’s a big challenge, you know, and you’ve got the pool of what district requires you to do, such as access on your cell phone by, you know, air AirPods. Like I’m just gonna throw it all out there by any device you can never think of, or even imagined. There’s a way that they can contact you. And so I think about it, you have to draw a line in the sand. I think that just needs to be, and I’m starting to hear some districts do this. And I applaud them immensely, such as not sending the email after six o’clock at night, things like that. But you personally have to draw a line in the sand.

You know, we’ve heard so much about self care. And one of the biggest things that I love, the idea that we’re talking about self care, but that’s not actually the issue. And some people may have been saying, okay, self care, self care. I know the actual issue is, are you doing it right? So if you draw a line in the sand and you’re saying, this is, these are my boundaries, because we all know we’re in a profession that there’s never being done. Right. It’s never finished. There’s always one more thing to do. Parent called a have strategy to think about committee. Do you create meeting to attend? You know, there’s always more and more and more. So I’ll go back to, I think the age and S.H.I.N.E. know being about passion.

I think so many people, you know, probably got into education for the money. Okay. Totally kidding. Do they get the education for the money they got into it because it’s a passion? Well, the thing with a passion is then it’s hard to draw the line in the sand. And we also measure ourselves very personal in education. We see this as it’s a reflection of us, but you know, what a reflection of you is as setting those boundaries and drawing that line in the sand and saying, this is what I’m willing to do up to this point because you know what? I need this block of time for me, I need this block of time to just step away from everything and to turn my brain off as best I can and say, you know what, right now is me time right now, time is family time. It is not about what’s happening outside. I will get to that and catching yourself every time this happens because the bottom line is you’re draining yourself constantly. You, you, you’re amazing. Every single educator listening to this, I am in all of you because you continue to do this.

But if you continue to do this, there will be repercussions down the road, whether it’s your burnout, to all the way even being hospitalized, it’s a reality of you being a human and having to take a step back. So the best advice I can give when it comes to resiliency is that you have to be able to take that step back, draw that line in the sand, put those boundaries in place and actually stick to it and make it happen. And guess what as leaders, just like we do with teachers in the classroom, modeling, you are now modeling for them as well. Credibly brilliant advice, my friend, and I hope the leaders listening to this really take that to heart. It’s easy to talk about. It’s a lot harder to actually do it.

And I think having a servant heart, which they have can come at a fault as we continue to run over ourselves in this process. Right? And so let me ask one final thing, and then I know your time is precious. So we have to go. We have thousands of listeners, viewers for this episode, and what’s one thing you want to leave with them with one piece of advice as they continue to lead through the pandemic as they look and they start to see, okay, that, that end that light at the end of the tunnel for this school year, that’s been so long as they’re not a hundred percent sure what next year will hold, give school and district leaders a piece of advice moving forward. So I would say forgiveness, you know, it’s easy to look in the rear view mirror of this past year and say, I should have, how come I didn’t? Why did we make that decision? Or why did I make that decision? And we’re looking back. But the one thing I can pretty much bet on is that not one of you, not one of you were handed a pandemic manual, whether it was in your leadership, prep, preparedness, whether it was in from the district.

And they’re like, oh my goodness, yes, here’s the manual. No one did that. So as you look back, be forgiving of yourself and forgiving of others, but definitely be forgiving of yourself because the decisions that you made or the best decisions that you could make in the moment without any guidance. And remember you also, during this time have been in a state of stress yourself in a state of fear and cortisol going through your entire body.

So you’re all in this boat together. We say that, but that truly, I mean that, and I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, for everything that you’ve done for kids, for families, for teachers, for everybody, because you’re making that happen. Thank you. That’s LaVonna broth, everybody LaVonna. Thank you so much for investing the time.

My pleasure, Tom. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do, including this podcast.