Ep #278: What Parenthood Teaches You About School Leadership with Blanca Carranza

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 278. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal™ Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach 

Angela: Well, hello, my empowered leaders, and happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast, and I have a very special treat for you today. I have one of my clients. Her name is Blanca. I’m going to let her introduce herself formally, but Blanca has been working with me close to a year now. We had an interesting experience because we paused her coaching package because she had a baby. So we’re going to be talking about Olivia. You’re going to be hearing about Olivia. She is the rock star of the podcast. 

Just a fascinating story about how Blanca is a school leader and a new mom, and she’s being able to get both done and balance her life. She’s had an incredible journey. You are going to love her story. So, Blanca, welcome to the podcast.

Blanca: Thank you very much, Angela, for having me. I’m really excited about sharing my story. I know that it helped me a lot when I heard other leaders talk about their journey and how they overcame several obstacles, different ways of handling things. So I’m really excited about sharing, and hopefully this helps another person that might be going through the same thing. 

Angela: Exactly. You have so many layers to share, like being a new school leader, being in a huge district, being a new mom, being a woman of color and representing and being a role model to students and fellow staff members. There’s a lot going on here, and I want you just to tell the listeners everything. So let’s go back to where we first connected. People always ask me, how should they make the decision to sign up for coaching? I’m always telling them it comes best from my clients. 

So when you think back to when you were a brand new leader and you found me somehow, maybe through the podcast, tell me about that experience and what helped you decide to move forward with coaching for school leadership? 

Blanca: I am someone that when I’m interested in something, I try to research it as much as I can. So I started downloading podcasts, reading, social media, following people, groups, Facebook, Instagram. I actually was listening to one of your podcasts. It was surprising because you were interviewing Wendy. I had worked with Wendy, and I was like wow. I text her on the spot, and I was like oh, my God. You were interviewed by Angela. 

I was listening to several of your episodes, and I found the way that she shared her story and how you were helping her. That definitely helped my decision. But also I thought about an investment on myself. When I think about that, I think about I’m investing in myself so I could also help others. The idea of having a coach is for me to bounce ideas off somebody that has gone through what I’m going through and for that person to guide me, and most importantly, for that person to help me see other perspectives. Because being new to this role could be very challenging and emotional. 

Angela: Yes. It is. 

Blanca: When our emotions come into place, we have a really hard time seeing the greater picture or things as they are. So having someone else say, have you thought about it from this perspective? Have you considered this other option? For me, it was definitely helpful. Yes. There are like, when we talk about it, you share with me the three month plan and different strategies that I could use, and those are helpful. But for me, the conversations and helping me see things through different lenses really helps. 

Angela: Yes. This is one thing I love about coaching with you is I will coach you and then you will ponder it. You stop and you think about it. You don’t just blindly accept it. You actually, on that call, do the work in your brain. I see your brain poking holes around the other perspectives. You’re like, “But what about this and maybe that? I disagree here. Oh, I can see that.” 

I love watching your brain work in real time on a phone call because it wants to know and understand and take that learning with you and put it out into your world, into your parenting world, your relationship world, your school leadership world, and apply that. Because I’ve watched you week after week, month after month, literally evolve yourself as a human over and over again. It has been such an honor and a pleasure to be on this journey with you.

Blanca: I appreciate that you see that because I think that education is a labor of love. You’re a teacher, you’re a paraprofessional, you’re an admin because you love what you do. When you love what you do, you’re very passionate about it, and you want to do your best. When I go into my building, when I go in every day, I try to think about it as me investing in myself so I could help other people. 

That goes into the whole conversation about being a person of color and being in the school that I’m in. I am not just passionate, but extra passionate because I see my students, and I see my daughter. I see myself and I see my cousins and I see my family members. When I see the students, to me, it’s personal. 

When I go in and they are exposed to amazing lessons, experiments, events, things that I see the students really enjoying, that brings me joy. It makes me feel like okay, I’ve made the right decision to switch into administration because I want to make sure that I support my teachers as much as I can for them to be able to provide those experiences for the students. 

Angela: Yes. So beautifully said. I know that people will always say what’s it cost to coach with you? They’re so scared of the price. But what you’re saying is it’s not about the dollars, it’s about what you’re actually buying. You’re not just writing a check. You’re investing in you. Not just in you, but you’re bringing this coaching work to your students, to your staff members, and you’re evolving the way that you think so that you can help them do the same. 

Because I was just talking to a client earlier this morning, and she was saying, “Oh, I can feel myself not wanting to go to work. I’m really burned out.” I said we are women on the planet who at one time did not have the opportunity to work or make as much money as we want. This is a gift. It’s a miracle that we’re sitting here now with this technology as women, as female in a leadership position, being the example of what is possible. Because there are kids looking up at you right now. She sounds like me. She looks like me. Her passion is like my passion, and they didn’t have that before. 

Blanca: I agree with you. I had that role model when I got to college. I saw my professor. Even then, she was the Spanish literature professor. There are different views, but it wasn’t until I was doing my Masters that I saw a professor that had a similar path that I had. She was from Chile. She also came when she was 15 years old. She had put herself through college. She was a teacher. But what impacted me the most was that she was my professor, and she was working on her doctorate, on her PhD. 

Angela: Wow. Yes.

Blanca: For me, that was like okay, you have kind of the same story. So is that a door that I want to open too? Is that something? It does make an impact. It makes you work harder. It makes you have a role model. I think when I do what I do, I think about my students that saw me transition, that saw me in the classroom as their teacher. Now I’m coming in as an AP to evaluate a lesson from one of their teachers. I see their pride. I see how they see me, and I want them to see that it’s a possibility for them, too. 

Angela: Yes. Just makes me want to cry because there are people who are out there being the example of what’s possible who never had that example. Right? Somebody had to start and be that pioneer and be the actual leader, like the person who’s going through the motions for the very first time, and that’s you.

Blanca: I’m privileged to be able to actually experience that with my students. It’s not like I was their teacher and then I got a job at a different school in a different district, and they didn’t see me. I was able to be their teacher and then go into their classroom, and they get to see and experience that. So they were my second graders, and now they’re in fourth grade about to be fifth and then they’re going to be out of the school. 

But now they understand it a little bit better what it is to be an admin. They’re like okay, so she now is the boss. For me to be able to be that for them, for them to see that it is possible, it’s major. So going back to what you said about the price, yes, I’m not going to lie. It is an investment in you, and that’s how I see it. It’s how you’re working on improving yourself so you could be a better person for your teachers and your students. 

Angela: Yeah. I also think that coaching feels better. To know you have a coach to work through any problem in real time, to know that that’s there, it’s a support network. Just to think, no matter what I face at school, no matter anything, I can talk to my coach about it. I can work through the emotional and the mental stress and the emotional response that just naturally comes as being a human on the planet. Knowing you have that person, I think that just makes the school leadership experience better. 

Blanca: Oh, absolutely. Because I remember there were sessions where there were no mentions of standards, evaluations, or anything. It was personal stuff that I needed to address before I could be ready. That’s one of the things that I want to make sure that my teachers understand in terms of meeting the needs of our students.

Sometimes I am not ready to talk to you, Angela, about my leadership style and what is going on at school. What I need to address is what I’m going through as a new mother or what I need to address is those basic needs. So it goes back to Maslow and the need. So that’s what I need to address first. Once I get that out of the way and resolved, or at least I was able to express how I feel about that, then there’s space for me to be able to focus on other stuff. 

Angela: Exactly. Because I say this all the time. You’re one human. You are the same human from being at home to going to work. You’re not not a mother at work or a partner. Right? You’re still that same human. This is why this is a life and leadership coaching program because there’s no topic off the table because emotions are emotions. It doesn’t matter if we’re thinking about our marriage or our relationship or our child or our parents or anybody. Right? Sibling or at work. It’s all the same emotions. 

It’s really about opening up and understanding. Oh, I’m having thoughts that are generating this emotional response. That’s okay. We want to acknowledge those feelings. There’s no feeling that’s wrong or bad or that it’s inappropriate. Let’s have the feeling and acknowledge it first. That, like you said so beautifully, it opens space to be like okay, now what? It has been so much fun. So let’s get into your story. Let’s tell the leadership journey that you’ve been on. 

Blanca: So I was born and raised in Colombia. I came to the US when I was 15. Very different from what I had experienced in Colombia. In Colombia, I went to private school, all-girls school. I came here to public school, boys and girls. The way that students treated teachers was very different from what I had experienced. 

Regardless of my environment, I went to Queens College. I went part time because I had to have a job. I couldn’t just like my other friends just go to college. I went for Spanish literature. When I came to this country, one of the things that helped me a lot was the library and just being able to read in my language because I felt like that was something that I could do compared to English. 

Throughout that and that passion for reading, I decided, I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher, but that actually made me think, you know what? I want to teach this to students, and I want to teach this to high school students. So my idea was I’m going to go be a high school teacher. I’m going to introduce them to literature. They’re going to love Don Quixote, and they’re going to love all these amazing writers and pieces of art. I literally discovered I was like, you know what? High school students are, you have to have the personality for it. 

So if you’re a high school teacher or admin, I take my hat off, I’m like you’re amazing. I was like, you know what? I want to address some of those issues that kids encounter in high school earlier on. High school students that are reading at fourth grade level. I want to address it before it happens. So that’s what motivated me to go into elementary. 

I went to an open house at Hunter College, and I was like okay I’m going to go for childhood education. There was this little table for bilingual childhood education. I was like that’s amazing. So the program was in English and Spanish, and I was like this is the best of both worlds. It’s what I am, who I am, and I get to share it with students. 

So I signed up for the program. I graduated. I started teaching in a community that I love. 75% Latino. The parents, the families, they’re amazing. Whenever I would speak to a parent in my school, I always felt like I was talking to my mom, I was talking to my grandma. It might be from different countries, but the culture is there. I could always feel like I could relate to them.

Fast forward the pandemic hit. We went into remote teaching. I tell you, Angela, all the time, I’m a recovering perfectionist. I want to make sure that everything is perfect. The pandemic hit and I was like okay, now this is the time that what do I do with my time? What do I do with remote instruction? We’re figuring it out, but there is definitely that flexibility. I was like this is the time to do my 30 and above. I had been thinking about it. 

I had been considering it, but it wasn’t until a colleague said, “You know what? You should do administration.” Well, actually, a former AP had told me, “You know, Blanca, you should do administration.” I was like no, I love the classroom. I want to stay in the classroom. I love my kids. 

Angela: Yeah, I said the same thing. Never going to go into admin, right? 

Blanca: I feel like everyone does the same thing. 

Angela: I know, right? 

Blanca: It wasn’t until someone else said the same thing, but they added one thing. They said, “We need representation. The kids need to see themselves in an administrator, in an AP, a principal.” So that got me thinking, and I’m like you know what? I think I just want to do it. Even if I just do it for the credits, it’s not a big deal. 

When I went through the program and when we started talking about different leadership styles and your ability to reach further than just your classroom, that’s what got me. I was like you know what? Right now, I’m impacting 32 students. Well, 64 if you talk about dual language in two classes in New York City. But I was like you know what? If I am overseeing a whole grade, it’s more than 200 students that I’m impacting by implementing a strategy, by coaching or guiding teachers. 

So I saw the impact, and that’s what really got me. I said I could do more for my community and my students because they’re still my students. They’re still my kids. But among all of that, I also decided to start a family. That in itself was challenging as well. I went through a lot. So Olivia is like a fruit of love. She’s so wanted. I wanted a baby so much. She just meets every expectation. She’s amazing.

Angela: She is, and she’s so beautiful. I love when I get photos of her. 

Blanca: I know. You know what? Everyone’s like the dimples. The dimples. I’m like oh, thank you. She’s also helping me as a leader. She helps me see things from a different perspective. We were talking about this recently in terms of prioritizing. As a recovering perfectionist, I’m like it’s hard for me. Everything has to be done. Everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be.

Angela: And right now.

Blanca: She definitely helped me understand that. Understanding that there’s got to be priorities. So navigating time with her and my passion for my job. I am privileged. My mom helps me with caring for her so I’m able to go to work and not really have to worry about who is my daughter with. But Olivia has helped me make sure that I have strict boundaries when it comes to work that I didn’t have before. 

As soon as I get home, work is on the side, and I need to spend 2 hours that I have with Olivia. Even during the break, I want to make sure that there’s time for work, yes. But there’s also time for me with my family, with my parents, with making sure that I am not just an assistant principal. I am not just the administrator. I am more than that, like you said in the beginning. I’m a mom, I’m a sister, I’m a cousin, I’m a daughter. So making sure that I fill in those buckets as well.

Angela: Yes. Yes. Parenthood can really make you clarify your perspective and your priorities really quickly. Right. It’s such a joy. As I was sharing with you before we started recording, like I babysat last night. One of my girlfriends is a teacher. She teaches third grade. She loves her baby, and she is a brilliant teacher. She’s also Mexican. So she’s also a powerful woman of color showing those kids how it’s done. She’s just so great. I love her so much. 

But, yeah, babies are pure joy. They really do let you know that simple is best, right? Things just don’t have to be complicated. Right? Our needs are actually very simple as humans, right? 

Blanca: Yeah. They also let you know that everyone is different. Because as a new mom, even when I was pregnant, people would say, “Oh, make sure that you do this, or read this article. Even your pediatrician tells you stuff. Olivia made sure that I knew, “You know what, mom? I’m sure that that worked for other people, not for me.” She makes sure that I know what works for her. Not my expectations or anybody else’s. It’s what works for her. 

Angela: Yes. Such a good leadership lesson, right? 

Blanca: Absolutely. Because sometimes, as leaders, we sometimes, with our best intentions, are trying to do the best that we think we can do. But then, no. That was not what it was supposed to work. So she’s teaching me a lot. 

Angela: Yeah. Can you share an example? I mean, I can think of several we’ve talked about. But can you think about what you’ve learned by being a new mother, how that’s helped you impact your leadership approach perhaps? 

Because I was thinking about you were working with the second grade team, you were working with the art team, and you were trying different approaches to get an end result created. I think your second grade team is a pretty glowing example of the work that you did internally to then be able to coach and mentor them to get a result that you wanted, but it wasn’t exactly the path you thought.

Blanca: I think that what I’m learning with Olivia is that what you just said. I think okay, the answer to this problem is to do ABC. I think that everything has to come from me. I’m the one that has to set the tone. Yes, there is truth to that, but I’m learning more and more that sometimes it’s kind of like a dance or a conversation. It’s something fluid. You make the decision on this, I’ll make the decision on that. 

With Olivia, it’s kind of like that. I can say honey, which onesie do you want to wear today? I’m going to put them to the sides, and I’m going to see which one she leans towards. But she can’t just choose not to wear anything. So that is helping me a lot with work as well in terms of, okay, we have to have certain parameters, and we have to have certain things, but things are negotiable. It’s a conversation. It’s something that goes back and forth.

That’s one of the things that I think that adds to the layers that you were talking about because it’s very different when you become an administrator within your building compared to being an administrator in another building. They both have their challenges. But I feel like within the building, it’s hard to or it’s challenging, at least for me, making sure that you have that same relationship with people, but it has changed because of position. So I think that it’s something that is definitely a negotiation, and it’s a dance that is going back and forth. 

Angela: Yes, I do talk to a lot of people because I also was an administrator in the building where I taught. That is a unique situation because you go from being a peer and being seen as a peer and interacted with as a peer, and it’s pretty immediate. They call it going to the dark side, right? They’re like, “Oh, you went to the dark side?” I’m like oh no, I did? But they engage with you extremely differently when the mindset is you’re now in a position of authority. You’re their boss. You do have positional power.

You have to navigate that gently. Because coming in with that power or trying to just stay the same peer and be the friend, none of those two ends of the spectrum work. You have to find that dance that’s in the middle. So I love the way you describe that. 

Blanca: Well, one of the things that sometimes helps me navigate that, I want to think about it as my compass would be the kids. We had this conversation recently about what’s best for the kids and what’s best for the kids. Sometimes I think about it, and I’m like okay, should I let this go? Should I engage in this? When I have that kind of dilemma where I’m not really sure where to go, I think about the students. I think about my daughter. 

I think about okay, so what would be best for my daughter if I was a parent whose child is going to that school? What would be best for my students if I was a teacher in that school? That helps me sometimes clarify if I should step in or if I should kind of like say, you know what? It’s okay. Let’s see where it takes us. Because I think that that’s the issue too.

I feel like I want to make sure that I am the kind of leader that allows my teachers to take risks because that’s how you grow. There is no manual to be a mom. Books, tons of articles, now podcasts and everything else, but even that could be overwhelming. I feel like there is no right way of doing things. For the most part, it’s kind of like an organic process that you just have to navigate and making sure that you have a north. You have something that is your nonnegotiable.

Angela: Yes. Agreed. That’s what keeps you grounded. That is why I start this program with your leadership values. What do you value as a school leader and why? Because in times of conversation or in times of decision making, you have to stay tethered. Because there will be disagreements. People do have different approaches, and it’s not that one works and one doesn’t. They might both work, but we’ve got to come to an agreement. 

You need to stay tethered in those conversations. What tethers you is your values, what you value, and knowing very clearly why you value it. When you can do that, you can have hard conversations, and they don’t feel so overwhelming because I call it holding space, right? Where you can be in conversation with somebody, have the dance, be open and listen, seek to understand their perspective, actually understand it and still agree to disagree and hold space for all of that. So good. That is so good. 

Because that’s what we are in the business. Education is the business of people. We are here evolving humans. Right? We’re all life coaches when you think of it because we’re all helping kids learn how to navigate life. There’s some academics that happen to be around as well that’s also going to help them learn and grow. 

But really, especially at the elementary level, we’re helping them regulate emotion, understand themselves, communication skills. There’s all these people, human being people skills that we’re really doing in addition to curriculum, standards, testing, all of that. Like all the stuff that the adults made up.

Blanca: Oh, absolutely. I agree with you. Like we said in the beginning, you have to address those first in order to be able to. I feel like this position is kind of like being a teacher. Just have a broader audience. 

Angela: Yeah. Your teachers are your classroom as an admin, right? Because you have to differentiate. You have to fail lots of times to figure out what is going to work for each individual. 

Blanca: People ask me, at least my first year, how’s it going? How’s it going? I’m like It’s just like being a teacher all over again. You learn the theory and the practices in college, and you get a taste during student teaching, but nothing prepares you for your first year of being a classroom teacher. You encounter the conversations with the parents, the relationships with the students, their struggles, and that’s not even counting curriculum and the skills.

Angela: Right? The stuff that they teach you about, right? 

Blanca: Yeah. So that’s why I feel like September is crucial when it comes to classroom teaching and to set up the routines and setting the tone. That was one of the challenges this year. Like you mentioned, we had to stop coaching because my daughter was born in July. I went back to work in November. So I missed the beginning. I missed where people set the expectations for the team. 

I feel like I felt it somehow. I’m trying to regain it, but it was challenging the second year because if I were to start with my team and we’re all on the same page. Even now, we have conversations, and they’re like, “Yeah, remember in the beginning of the year?” I’m like I wasn’t here. “I remember, I remember. Sorry. Yes. We had this conversation about.” Then they filled me in on what had happened. 

But even then, you have to navigate. You’re like okay, I missed that. I did say this to my principal. I was like I’m trying to catch up. I remember in the first few weeks, I’m trying to catch up. She was like, “You know what? Just try to start from where you’re at. Because you can’t really catch up.”

Angela: Yeah, you can’t catch up. Right? There’s just too much that’s gone on. So you were able to take a really nice maternity leave, so we paused coaching, which was great because it let you fully immerse yourself into the new parenthood experience. It’s just been so beautiful. Now we’re back together, and we’re just closing out this year strong. 

But, Blanca, can you describe how you feel? I was just telling her before we pushed record how many times she’s evolved herself over the course of our work together. We’ve really only coached maybe half of our sessions because we took that pause. But the evolution for you personally and professionally, it’s profound. Can you just describe on your end? Because I see it from my perspective, but I’d love to hear yours from your perspective, how it feels. 

Blanca: I think that you said it perfectly when you mentioned that we have our sessions, and then I ponder, and I think about it, and then I act on it. I think that that’s what I do for the most part. In the beginning sometimes when we’re having the conversations, I might not see it completely, but I feel like it’s kind of like when you’re cooking. You need to let it marinate. Suck in the juices for it to be a tasteful meal. 

So I feel like our conversations usually lead me to that, but it’s the combination of letting it rest and letting it sink and being okay with failure. So I think that in the beginning, I didn’t know who I was as a leader. I see leaders. I see my colleagues. I see how they lead, how they handle their teams. Then I see myself as a teacher and as a person. I’m like okay, I might do this, I might do that. 

But it is a journey. I think that that’s what sometimes people don’t see. It makes me think of the iceberg image where you see someone as an assistant principal. You don’t know everything that is deep down, what they’ve gone through, all the failures, the challenges, but also the celebrations. That’s one of the conversations that we had.

One of the biggest takeaways that I had with our sessions is celebrating. I’m a doer. I’m an action person. I’m like okay, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Let’s get it done. Something that I definitely was missing was celebrating my achievements, celebrating everything, little wins. So now sometimes I hear your voice in my head, and I say okay, you know what? That went well. That meeting went well. Let’s celebrate that the meeting went well. 

Angela: Yes. Awesome. 

Blanca: This event, it went well. We were talking about recently like we’re trying to get a hydroponics lab for my school. I asked a couple of teachers to help me out with it and then it morphed into this amazing team where everyone’s just chipping in and just helping. You know what? Old me would have been like okay, that project is done. What’s next? 

But I really took the time to think about what we did, analyze the decisions that I made to get that team going, and also kind of celebrate and say okay, that was amazing. We don’t know if we actually got the hydroponics lab, but what we did was amazing. Let’s celebrate it. More and more, I try to implement that throughout my day, my week, my months. 

Angela: How does that feel different? How differently does that feel for you when you’re intentionally embedding that celebration into your life on a regular basis? 

Blanca: It goes back into our conversation of investing in yourself. Because by investing in yourself, you’re investing in other people. I feel like by me changing that little thing of celebrating my achievements, I’m more prone to celebrate other people.

Teachers actually see that, and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, you noticed that.” We all need kind of like that little good job. It makes me feel like more prone to tell that to teachers. Say amazing job. Thank you very much for doing that. That was great. That was amazing. Kind of like say it more and more. That was kind of like one of my misunderstandings maybe as a new leader. I didn’t want to sound too condescending or like I’m treating.

Angela: Like you’re placating people. Yeah. 

Blanca: Yes. So what I try to do was not say great job so much, but actually people needed that. They needed those celebrations. So now what I do is try to remember celebrate the little things, make sure that you pay it forward, and you also celebrate other people. 

Angela: If there could be any takeaway, it would be that for coaching because our brains are wired. They’re wired to protect us and keep us safe and to solve problems. So it’s always looking for what’s not working. Let me fix it. It’s always looking for the dangers out there. So it feels like it focuses on the negative. It’s looking to problem solve, and it’s looking to keep us safe. 

So we have to intentionally direct it. Okay, we’re not going to stop doing that. We’re going to solve problems, and we’re going to make sure we’re safe, but we’re also going to look at what is working and what we have accomplished. We’re really going to make sure that we’re focusing on the full spectrum of our lives and our achievements. Just we call it the 50/50, right, where it’s like there’s things that are hard and the things that are wins. 

But our brain, we have to go like this. I’m showing her on the Zoom. Like you have to turn your head directly and look at it and say look, it’s right here. The win’s right here in front of you. 

Blanca: It’s a shift in mindset, for sure.

Angela: It is. 

Blanca: It takes work. It takes kind of like you prompting yourself to remember to celebrate. You’re not going to get it all the time, but as a habit. Every single time that you do it, the more that you do it, the more that you’re prone to repeat it. 

Angela: Then you’re spreading that joy and celebration out into your campus, those teachers. I just think like the ripple effect knows no bounds because students learn to do that from a young age. Imagine that impact. Teachers do it at school. Imagine their relationship with their own children and their own families. It just sets in motion such a beautiful way, I just think, to live and to lead. 

Blanca: I agree with you. I think that what you said was right. If anything, that would be one of the biggest takeaways. Just because it focuses on positive. Right now with social media, there are goods, there are good things about it, but a lot of it also has very negative impact on our students and people. Right now, the profession, I feel like a lot of negative things are going around that we don’t celebrate enough. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that we should just put on pink glasses and think that everything is fine.

Angela:  We’re not trying to bypass the negative. 

Blanca: Yeah. It’s a balance. 

Angela: Yeah. I love what you said because I think that people have been saying to me. I mean, I talk to school leaders all across the country, and I work with people from other countries. Specifically in the United States, they’re saying the field of education, like the climate in education, it’s changing. It’s different. It’s more negative. 

My theory is that people don’t know what to do with emotion when they’re feeling a negative emotion. They don’t know. It’s energy in the body, and they can’t get it out. They don’t know how to deal with it without being harmful. So they kind of blast it on social media. Whether they’re children or adults out there doing this, and then we do have adults role modeling this behavior. 

But it’s simply because no one’s taught us. Like what is an emotion? Even though it feels terrible, it’s actually harmless. Here’s what you do with that energy. You process it and get it out of you so then you don’t need to create harm. Right?

Blanca: Yeah, I think that you’re right. That I think, two things. One, SEL is important for our students to learn. But along with SEL, I think that I’m not really sure if it’s being done everywhere, but the growth mindset idea. We recently had a conversation with my grade about oh, should we put the comments in the front or in the back in the bulletin board? I’m like put them in the front so they could see their glows and their grows. 

Some people are mentioning yeah, but I don’t want the kids to be self-conscious and blah, blah, blah. I was like you know what? That actually is a mindset. We want to make sure that the students celebrate their glows. They also celebrate their grows, and they understand that as humans, as people, we’re always changing. I am not the same person that I was five years ago. You are not the same person. In ten years, we’re going to be two completely different people. 

Angela: Exactly. 

Blanca: I think that is huge. SEL in the school, trying to also bring parents into it and understanding that it’s okay, especially depending on the generation or the culture. We need to make sure that we address that. But besides having you as my coach, I also have therapy. I have a therapist. 

Angela: Yeah, they’re two separate services, by the way. People who don’t know, they’re very separate services. 

Blanca: Yes. You specified in the forms when you send them. It is very different. I think that we’re getting out a little bit of that stigma of mental health. That if you’re seeing a therapist it’s because there’s something wrong with you. I like to believe the opposite, actually. If you’re seeing a therapist, you’re being proactive. You are actually growing and bettering yourself. 

It’s something that what you just said. Those emotions need to be processed. I remember when I was growing up, my parents did their best, and my teachers too. But I was not literally taught okay, so this is what it feels to be angry. These are some of the strategies that you could use when you’re angry or when you’re sad or when you’re seeing change. 

Some people think that oh, you’re in a grieving state because you lost somebody. Yes, but changing your job could be grieving as well. It has the same stages. So the idea that you’re going to therapy is just embedding who you are as a person and helping shape who you are. So I think that that is the best combination. I couldn’t have gone through what I’ve been through, being a new mom, being a new admin, all the changes, without a coach and a therapist. I’m just one person. 

Angela: No, I want to appreciate you right now because I really appreciate your honesty and your candidness with this because therapy and coaching, they are separate service, but they can be very collaborative in supporting one person. Right. So you can be getting therapy and working on what I consider like past and kind of going backwards and looking at past things and processing some past traumas, past pain points. 

Coaching is like this, it’s forward thinking. It’s forward based. It’s like from baseline. It’s like from good to great. Therapy is getting you kind of up to baseline and healing some wounds that maybe hadn’t been acknowledged and processed in the past. Would you agree? Is that how that feels for you? 

Blanca: Oh, yeah. Sometimes at work, something happens and you react a certain way, but you consciously are not aware that that was a trigger based previous experience that you had, probably childhood. That’s the work that you do in therapy. 

You make the connection, heal your inner child, you heal your person, and then you’re able to then move on with what you said, coaching. I’m able to okay, next time that I’m presented with that same event, this is what I would do differently. Because otherwise the same event is going to keep triggering you and it’s just going to be a loophole. 

Angela: Yes. I think if there’s one thing we can highlight, it’s when you said, Blanca, that if we could just normalize talking about emotion, teaching emotion, actually teaching tangible processes and steps for emotion and then normalizing it so that we’re humans on the planet with a full spectrum of emotion, and there’s no wrong emotion. It’s really a matter of our opinion of the emotion and what we do, what we decide, and how we act based in response to that emotion, and learning skill sets for that. 

If we can do that in our schools. If this podcast helps a listener out there understand like I want to learn more about emotion so that I can help my school learn more about emotion. That’s exactly what we do all week long. Right, Blanca? 

Blanca: Absolutely. You’re absolutely right with that. I think that trying to focus on emotions and giving kids, what you said, like tangible names but also adults. Sometimes we think oh, okay. So we’re going to talk about emotions. We’re going to talk about the movie Inside Out. We’re going to talk about who’s all angry and sad. But sometimes, even as adults, we don’t know how to regulate our feelings. We don’t know how to. 

Something that I learned with my therapist and with you is how my brain, I think that this is an amazing thing, and it is. It is amazing, but he plays or she, they tricks on me. I think the more that I talk to you and my therapist, you know this all or nothing mentality. That’s one of the ideas that if you really do your work with your brain, sometimes the brain works that way or focusing on the negative.

You notice the trends and you’re like okay, I’m not going to be fooled by that. Let me do something to counter that kind of mentality. But I feel like before I started working with you and my therapist, I would say no, well, my brain is pretty smart. It’s telling me this, so I’m going to go with that because then I’m right. Then I learned okay, no. My brain is thinking out of fear. It’s thinking out of problem solving and it’s not considering all the variables. 

Angela: That is so good because when you see that the sentences in your mind called thoughts, that they’re separate from you and that you actually can manage them, you can control them. I don’t mean control them like make them stop happening. I mean decide what you’re going to make that sentence mean. Like is this sentence actually true? Do I want it to be true? How do I feel when I’m thinking this sentence in my head? When you separate you from thought, that’s when you feel like you have more ownership and control over the experience of your life. 

Blanca: Oh, absolutely. 

Angela: So good. Oh, my gosh, this has been so good for listeners. Is there anything in wrapping up that you want to share, Blanca, with the listeners? There’s a lot of brand new people that just got hired out there.

Blanca: Congratulations. 

Angela: Yay, congratulations if you’re a new leader, but really it does require a skill to allow yourself to be new, would you say? 

Blanca: I agree. If anything that I would like to add would be something along the lines of what you said about being a woman of color and being a woman. I think that, to me, is really big to support other women.

Angela: Yes. Agreed. 

Blanca: I think I mentioned to you that being that my role changed, I kind of had to change my friendships as well. But then I found other women that were in the same position, and we’re creating that community where you get to also bounce ideas off other people. So I think that you have to be okay with change. It is a skill. You have to be okay with making mistakes and forgiving yourself and learning from them. 

Angela: What we do is we ask teachers to fail, to get it wrong, to get feedback, to be new, to try new things, and to change. When we say we’re the role model, we have to live it, right? So we are living being new, doing hard things, failing in front of, publicly failing. Because when you sit in the role of an admin, it’s much more public when you fail. Right? 

Blanca: Absolutely. 

Angela: Yes. So we have to be willing to feel those emotions that come with those experiences. But the benefit, the outcome of being willing to feel those feelings is the life you’re living right now. 

Blanca: Yeah. Being okay with being vulnerable because you’re right. You make a mistake, everyone sees it. In your classroom, it’s kind of like the kids, they’re very forgiving. 

Angela: Yes, they are. You can laugh it off and move on.

Blanca: Yes. Brand new day, brand new experience. They forgot about what happened yesterday. Unless it was really exciting and it involves a slime or something. 

Angela: That it is so fun. Blanca, I just love your story, and I really appreciate you taking this hour to share with us your journey and how you’ve applied all of these, you’re new in so many ways, right? Like the new admin and new mom. Being able to take being new and applying that to your life and building it, it’s actually a skill that you’ve built up, is really being the example of what is possible for any woman of any color on this planet. Truly. Thank you so much for your service to kids and teachers. 

Blanca: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the help because I definitely wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you, my therapist, and so many people that are so supportive, even just listening sometimes. Just hearing someone share a similar story helps. 

Angela: Yes. That’s why I make sure I get my clients on the podcast because this story can only be told by you. There’s no amount of me telling your story that would land as beautifully as it does when it’s coming from you. So thank you again for the time. I really appreciate it. 

Blanca: Thank you for inviting me. This is really exciting. 

Angela: All right, my friend. Thank you so much. We’ll see you guys next week. Take good care. Bye. 

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