Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 435. 

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 Kelly.

Well, hello, my empowered principals, my empowered district leaders, and my empowered aspiring leaders. This one is for you, aspiring leaders. And district leaders and site leaders, listen up too. This is the time of year where we are cultivating our aspiring leaders into leadership positions. We want to encourage them, inspire them, support them. And one of the ways that you can do this is to have them listen to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast.

This episode is a recording, a segment of a recording of a training that I did for aspiring school leaders. Aspiring school leaders, if you want to land a position in school leadership, I have a program specifically designed to help you build up the identity of a school leader, the skillset of interviewing, connecting authentically, and landing a job in school leadership. This is the time of year to become a school principal, or if you’re a school principal and you want to land a job in district leadership, the same concepts apply. So this episode is an excerpt from the Aspiring School Leaders Workshop 2026. Enjoy.

There’s no perfect teacher out there. There’s no perfect leader out there. But we’re moving through this journey together here in the Empowered Principal world. So ground yourself in this desire for growth because it’s going to tether you in moments of stress, confusion, uncertainty, really painful moments. It’ll tether you. This work is hard. It’s hard mentally, but it’s hard emotionally because you’re in the business of people. 

We’re about the humanity here. So you become a leader first for you, then for them, then for the greater good. So I always say, for us, for them, for the greater good. It’s a spinoff of what my coach used to say, for me, for you, for us. But for us as leaders, we have to become a leader, one who leads herself, himself, theirself. We lead ourselves in order to lead them, our staff and students, for the greater good of our families, communities, and all of humanity. 

So this work, the desire to get into this job has to feel good. You have to want it, right? It’s like Rocky. You have to want to get into a ring and get beat up, right? You have to have a desire, a hunger, bringing your talent, your strengths, your brilliance, but also knowing that with you comes those moments of weakness, those areas you don’t feel as strong in, those Achilles heels, right? All of you comes into the ring. But if it’s a calling, if it’s compelling, that tethers you, it grounds you.

And look, anybody can do anything, right? I could go train to be a boxer at the age of 55. I could go do that, but I don’t want to do that. So I’m not compelled to do it. So it would not be fun for me. It would not be a goal. I wouldn’t sustain that goal. I wouldn’t pursue it. And even if I pursued it for a hot minute, it wouldn’t last because I don’t have the desire. It has to be fulfilling. It has to be something you want to do.

So there’s something beyond the skill of being a leader. So many people come into my program and they’re like, “I want to know how to do this job. How do I do this job? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

With all of the love and respect and grace, I offer you this. When you become a leader, and you’ve been a leader before, so we’re going to tap into the parts of you that have already been a leader. You’ve led yourself through college, you’ve led yourself to learn your classroom. You have been a leader in your classroom for yourself and your students and for families. 

But when you say, “Just tell me how to be a leader,” that’s not what leadership is. The energetics of leadership matter. And what are the energetics of leadership? I’m going to talk about this a lot. It’s not something you hear very often, so I want to be direct in what this means, what I’m referring to when I say this.

The energetics of leadership, it’s the energy that is fueling your decisions and your actions. It’s emotional energy. It’s like when you drive up to a gas station for your car and you have choices of fuel. It’s the fuel that you put in the car. It’s how you feel about yourself, the thoughts you think about yourself, your identity, what you believe you are and are not, how you feel about your ability to lead, to be a leader.

Now, if you’re aspiring, you’re feeling like, “I have the capacity to lead.” That’s great. You’re feeling good about yourself. And then you’ll get into the position and part of your leadership energy is going to be the thoughts and feelings you have about those that you’re leading. You’re going to have opinions about certain staff members. You’re going to have thoughts and feelings about certain families, about certain policies that the district has, certain procedures, certain things they want you to do, initiatives. You’re going to have feelings about those, fuel going in. 

You’re going to have thoughts about your influence and impact, your capacity to create influence and impact. You’re going to have thoughts and feelings about the vision you have for your school. Do I have a vision? Am I leading the vision? Am I somewhere in the middle? Am I in the back cleaning up all the messes that people leave behind? Where am I in this vision? Am I leading it? Ooh, that feels kind of scary, doesn’t it, to think that? I’m leading the pack. I’m leading the circus.

And how do you feel about your capacity to handle anything that comes your way in school leadership? This is the energetics. This is what matters. This is the difference between two leaders who got trained at the same school with the same teachers in the same way, got the same credential, have two very different experiences. It’s just little differences, what they think, what they feel, how they perceive things, their perception, their, you know, ability to look through different lenses, like you know, look through all the facets, look through all the angles, consider different ways of thinking and being.

Energetics is just running the show. And I just, the easiest way I can explain it is that if you were a car and you pull up to the gas station, there’s different octane levels, there’s ethanol, there’s diesel. Which gasoline is the most ideal for you? 

Everybody thinks they want premium, but there are some cars that have to run on diesel. And you put premium in them, they shut down. Or if you use ethanol in a car that’s not equipped to handle ethanol, it doesn’t work. It shuts it down. It’s not that one’s better than the other, it’s which is the right energetics for you, which is the right fuel, the right thoughts, the right feelings, the right mindset for you.

So we all have a vision of what school leadership will look and feel like. And there’s the expectations that we have, what we think it’s going to be like in anticipation, and then the reality of what it actually is. And I know for me, there was a gap in what I thought it would look and feel like and what it actually was.

So people tend to go in one of two ways. They kind of go to all-or-none thinking. So on my end, it was like, it’s going to be great. I’m going to have so much more flexibility. I’m going to have so much more influence and say in what goes on. And I’m going to fix all these things that aren’t working for teachers. I’m going to fix it all. I had just this very sunshiny energy.

It’s like thinking about vacation. When you’re thinking about going on vacation, you’re just thinking about all the happy stuff and how you’re going to feel and how good it’s going to be. You’re not thinking about the potential of a flight delay or losing your luggage or the hotel room’s not ready or you’re taking your kids to Disneyland and they’re going to have a major meltdown right when they’re meeting Mickey Mouse and the pictures got ruined. You don’t think about that stuff. You think about the happy stuff. That’s one side. 

Other people tend to think about all that could go wrong because they want to be prepared. What if the plane gets delayed? What are we going to do? What’s going to happen if the hotel sucks when we get there? What’s going to happen if we can’t get an Uber if they don’t have Uber services? What’s going to happen if the kids melt down?

So you can see on one end, it’s like ignorance is bliss. It’s so happy and you’re expecting good things. And a lot of times good things happen when you expect them to happen because you’re in alignment with the good things happening. That’s where I tend to lean. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be prepared so that your trip does go as smoothly as possible.

However, this, when you’re all daisies and roses, you can get severely blindsided when you step into school leadership, which is what happened to me. I was smacked in the face at the reality, and it was harsh. And it made me go into a identity spiral. I call these identity quakes. We’re going to talk about this in a minute, but like I spun out of control. “What have I done? This is terrible. I’m not good at this. I’m not cut out for this. I can’t do this job.” Like this is just, “I got to go back to the kindergarten classroom.”

But then I felt all this shame and embarrassment and guilt because I felt I was failing. I felt like something had really gone wrong. My nervous system completely short-wired, dysregulated, and I had a hard, hard time my first two years. And because of that and because I didn’t know how to get into the energetics of leadership, I got a coach is what ended up happening, but I was really spinning. 

I did not serve my first school to the best of my capacity because I was so caught up in how I felt and the disillusionment. That’s why I’m bringing it up. I want to bring you into the land of and. So it’s not all sunshine and daisies, but it’s not all doom and gloom.

Over here, you have the person who doesn’t ever really go into school leadership because they want to, but they got to know this and that and what if this happens? And I don’t know how I’m going to handle that. So I got to prepare. And they overanalyze and they overthink and they just, they already got to talk themselves out of it and they’re never quite ready. Maybe next year, maybe one more year. Maybe I’ll just go and they ease in.

But in the land of and, where you understand that it’s a 50/50 experience no matter what, then you think, “Okay, these hard things are going to happen, but I’ve got the capacity to handle them when they come. I don’t need to know everything now.” These people be like, “I trust that this is going to be an amazing experience, and I know there will also be hard times and I can handle it when they come up, right?”

Sometimes we romanticize leadership. I’m going to have so much more time and flexibility and power and I can come and go. I thought all the things, right? I thought it was going to be, you know, when you view the principal, just like she gets to be out of the classroom. Like I felt like, “I want to go to the bathroom midday. Like I don’t want to have to wait till lunch.” Must be so nice to just sit in meetings. It must be so nice. 

And then I got into it, right? Other people are like, “I would never do that. It is the worst job in the world. Can’t handle it.” This person’s not going to make it and this person’s not going to make it unless they go into the land of and.

And here’s what I want to tell you. I don’t want to break your heart, but I do want to set you up for success. Being a principal, or if you’re aspiring to be a district leader, being in a leadership position of any capacity, it’s not better than not being in it. It’s just different. 

So as a teacher, you have great days, exceptional days. This is like, this is why I went into teaching. Best day ever. And you have the hardest, most heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, horrible, no good, very bad days where you’re like, “Why? I’m leaving education. This is horrible. Nothing works. The kids are terrible, whatever. And we’re never going to do it again. We’re going to go sell lattes at a local coffee shop or we’re going to run to the beach and make Mai Tais,” right? We want to get away. Exceptional, exceptionally hard, teaching.

School leadership, you have exceptional days. You’re like, “Oh, that is exactly how I thought it would feel. It’s amazing.” And you’re going to have heart-wrenching, heartbreaking, no good, very bad days. And you’re going to wonder why you ever stepped into school leadership. It’s 50/50, folks, whether you’re a teacher, a site leader, a district leader, whether you’re a homemaker, whether you’re in corporate. 

But if you can align to, that’s why I said, when you can align to the calling, the mission, it doesn’t, the hard days, you accept them as part of the mission, as part of the calling. This is the work I want to do even on the hard days. 

It’s like parenting. Even on the hardest of days when you’re like, motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood, I don’t know about this, but you would never, right? We love our babies still, even on the heartbreaking days, the days they graduate and leave us, the day they, you know, get their first tooth and you’re like, “Oh, I like that toothless grin,” right? We romanticize our lives or we catastrophize them. Empowerment brings you back to the land of and, okay?

So why should we even dip our toe in leadership? Why are we going here? It’s because as humans, we are wired for growth. We are wired for evolution. This is why we’re in the business of education. We loved it. We loved learning and growing. Most educators liked school. Even though school could be greatly improved, we loved school as kids. We loved playing teacher. You probably played school outside of school, right?

Okay. Why we do this? Humans are wired for growth, for evolution, not stagnancy. They don’t want to just sit around and do the same thing, Groundhog’s Day for 50 years. You want to get out. You want to learn how to surf or you want to go mountain biking or you want to learn how to crochet or you want to learn how to create beautiful meals or you want to learn how to communicate better or you want to learn how to play guitar or you, whatever. 

There’s a bazillion endless things you can learn and grow, personally, professionally, doesn’t matter. We’re not wired for stagnancy. We’re wired to be alive, to be engaged, to enjoy this opportunity of life that we have.

And if you think about being new, I love this part. All of us were new at some point. Everything we’ve ever experienced was new at some point. Learning how to drink from a glass without spilling used to be really hard. Have you seen a toddler or a very elderly person struggle with this? Everything was new at some point. 

And when we were little, I have, one of my closest friends has babies. She’s got a four-year-old and a nine-month-old. He’ll be turning four. But I love watching them because I’m not the mother, so I have a degree of separation. I can observe them in just pure joy and just observe them being little humans without all of the world’s worries on their shoulders.

Everything is new at some point. They love it. They explore it. They embrace new things. Everything for them, they’re excited, they giggle, they’re happy, they’re interesting. Oh, it’s just divine joy to see children learning, which is why we’re in the field, whether you are teaching littles or you’re teaching way up to the big kids, the big adults, right? You could be teaching at a university level. But those freshmen, it’s new. 

And when we’re little, we love being new. We love the excitement. And then as we grow older and we get more self-conscious, and then we have social pressures and opinions that, you know, come in and encroach on our learning and our being new. We didn’t, used to not care what it looked like and as we get older, we start to care. We start to not want to be new. I don’t want to go. I’m taking dance classes right now, and I feel myself, like we go and we practice at my friend’s house on Monday nights, but then we go to the class on Wednesday nights.

And I feel so much pressure because these people are good dancers. I got into an intermediate class and I had no business. But I’m doing it so I could go with my friends. So she teaches me all the things, the steps, and then I go and I fuddle around. I feel the discomfort of being new.

But what I decided to do was apply my own thought process and my own concepts to that class. So I go in and I’m like, “Yep, I’m brand new. Yep, I’m just learning. Yes, I am a brand new intermediate. So I am an intermediate, but I’m new at being intermediate. I’m not an advanced intermediate. I’m not an intermediate intermediate. I am a new intermediate.” 

But I’m going to just come in with puppy dog energy and have fun and smile and laugh and thank people. I only had one out of like, I don’t know, 12 or 14 partners because you change partnerships. Only one that was kind of grumpy. “Remember to count. Remember.” “Okay, thank you for the feedback.” One, two, three, four, five. Trying to remember to count while I’m also remembering to move my body in the right way and follow the leader’s cues.

So when we’re little and there’s no pressures, we’re just compelled. We’re just exploring. So what we want to do as leaders is we want to remember as adults to embrace being new, embrace new things with the enthusiasm of a child, but also with the patience of a mature adult. Sometimes we will avoid putting ourselves in situations, and the older we get, the less, you know, flexible we are with that, the less amenable we are to learning new things. We’re like, “I just do it my way.” We don’t want to look clumsy, we don’t want to look awkward.

This is something I am really embracing this year, just putting myself in situations that are new, that are different, going to different places, trying different things, going to actual classes where I am clumsy, I am awkward, I am new, nobody knows me, I don’t know them, and I feel those emotions inside my body. I worry about what others will think. This is going to happen to you. 

You’re going to get hired either into your own school district or another one and you’re not going to know what the heck you’re doing. And you’re going to think about what are others thinking about me. “I’m embarrassed. I feel silly. I don’t know.” You know, “I feel awkward. I don’t like this feeling in my body. It’s so crunchy. Ugh.” But if you come in knowing you’re new, embracing being new, letting that new energy be infectious, take it in stride. Just have fun with it.

As adults, when we get in, especially a leadership role, there’s something that’s like, “Oh, well, now that I’m a leader, I’m expected to just walk in and know.” And here’s what’s crazy. I basically got hired, here are your keys, a brand new principal at a brand new school, brand new construction, wasn’t even finished on day one. We had plumbing issues, the kitchen wasn’t done, we had to do sack lunches for the kids. I’m telling you, hot mess express. I was a brand new principal. I had no idea what I was doing. 

Thank goodness for a very skilled and seasoned secretary who basically ran the show and told me what to do and where to focus on, right, and what to prioritize. And then I stepped into like after that first year, I really started to embrace like, okay, my identity as the leader and I would work with her, but we became like co-leaders. And then I moved to another school. 

But as adults, it is very uncomfortable to be new because they’re like, “Here are the keys, you’re now the leader, know everything, do everything, be everything. Have a great day.” So you’re like, “Wait a minute, I’m supposed to know this?” And then the minute you don’t know something or the minute you misspeak or misstep or misunderstand or miscommunicate, “I’m flawed. I’ve done something wrong. I’m not cut out. I’m not the right fit. This isn’t the right school for me.” Your brain just goes off. It starts to tell you all these things. “Go back to teaching.”

I just want you to know you’re going to feel discomfort when you get into school leadership. Nothing’s gone wrong. You’re right on track. This part’s uncomfortable. Just tell yourself that. “Today, I’m feeling really new, feeling really clumsy, feeling a little awkward, pretty vulnerable. It’s a tough feeling, but I’m here for it. I’ve got this. It was hard to be a new teacher, and now it’s hard to be a new principal. And today I’m having a hard day.”

Being new at anything is hard. It’s clumsy. Just know that you’re not going to know. This discomfort that you feel, I call it just kind of crunchy inside where you’re like, “Ugh, cringy.” That’s the emotion that accompanies growth, evolution, and success, right?

So when you get into school leadership, you’re going to feel doubt. There will be the emotion, the fuel that goes into your body one day when you go to the gas station of life is doubt. You’re like, “Okay, I got this job. Now what? I don’t know.” You feel excited and you’re like, “Somebody tell me what to do,” but they’re going to expect you to lead. 

So you’re in this little quandary here, like, “What do I do?” Well, you’re going to have to take action in doubt. You’re going to have to allow yourself to feel like, “I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m not sure if this is the right decision. And I feel doubtful, and I’ve got to make this decision. I’ve got to take this action.” Let yourself feel doubtful. 

And some days, yes, you’re going to go home, there will be water leaking out of your eyes many days on your drive home or when you get home. Just know tears will come. It’s okay. Cry it out. The tears won’t hurt you. That actually releases emotion. It’s a very good thing. When you are really in doubt and you’re in an overwhelm cycle, just acknowledge it. Be kind to yourself. But don’t think something’s gone wrong. There’s a difference.

I’m feeling this way today and it’s a normal part of the process versus I’m feeling this way today and something’s gone wrong and I need to fix this now. That’s accepting and allowing the emotion, the fuel that went in the tank for the day versus trying to like spit it out and avoid the emotion or stopping the car altogether, halting. But here’s the thing. You can always let the fuel run through, feel the doubt, feel all the feels, and then refuel. Okay, now what? Go back and get the right gas.

Overwhelm is going to happen. It’s okay. Literally, in school leadership, there is too much to do and not enough time. It’s a mathematical certainty. Just like the Titanic sinking, as the guy said, it is a certainty. It’s a mathematical certainty that there is too much to do and not enough time. So we don’t have to argue with ourselves or try to convince other people that there is too much to do as a school leader or a district leader and there’s not enough time. We know that because people want us to solve the world’s problems as educators, right? So we know this without a doubt.

But the sooner you realize that the demands are always going to outweigh what you can physically accomplish, then you just start to accept, “I’m going to need to plan this out. I’m going to need to prioritize. Sometimes I’m going to have to triage. Sometimes there’s going to be wipeout days. But I’m also going to learn to constrain myself. I’m not going to try and solve all the problems. I’m not going to buy into whack-a-mole, putting out fires, and I’m going to allow myself to accurately delegate.” 

Which is an entire skill that I teach, how to delegate, how to onboard, how to teach someone before you… all of the onboarding stuff, all of the delegation stuff. Like those are critical parts of, those are the skill sets, but it’s also part of mindset when it comes to being a highly, highly effective school leader. 

So these are things that most principals don’t want to do. They don’t want to make decisions when they’re feeling doubt. They want to wait until they feel certainty. That delays, it stagnates. They don’t want to delegate because they want to make sure they do it themselves and get it done right the first time, right? 

They don’t want to have to prioritize because everything feels like a priority, especially in your first year. It’s just fire hose coming at you. What do I do? You have to learn the skill of slowing down. But in order to learn the skill of slowing down, you have to have the mindset that it’s okay to slow down.

So this is why I talk about mindset over skill set because you can’t create the skill set, the practice, the things that you do without the mindset of who you have to be. 

That it’s okay to slow down, that it’s safe to slow down, that it will be better for you and your school if you take the time to slow down to plan, to prepare, to think, to constrain, to prioritize, to learn, to come to, you know, one of my other programs, like to be in a program, to be at the table like this where you slow down for an hour a week and you have these conversations around mindset to get you in the place to then create the skill set. They go hand in hand.

So your mind will want to indulge in overwhelm. “I’m so overwhelmed.” Brand new leaders, it’s a thing. Overwhelm’s actually a thing. You’re going to want to indulge in that. You’re going to want to swim around and you’re going to feel sorry for yourself because there’s so much to do. Mathematical certainty, there’s too much to do and not enough time. 

Now what? What do we want to do? We want to respond with prioritization, constraint, and slowing down. But what we do is we react. We tend to like, go work, overwork, overschedule, overexert, over plan. We just crunch too much in and then we’re frustrated that we planned all these things and nothing got done.

So just be careful if overwhelm starts to become the excuse that you don’t have the time because that will become an identity. “I’m the school principal who never has enough time. There’s too much to do, not enough time. I don’t have the time. I don’t manage my time. I don’t prioritize my time because I don’t have time to do all of that. I don’t have time. There’s not enough time.” 

Your relationship with time will erode your capacity to lead. You have to build a healthy relationship with time. That is an entire mastery course that I teach. And in EPC, which is the Empowered Principal Collaborative, we talk about time all of the time because your relationship with time really really matters.

A leader who identifies themself as busy. “I’m so busy. It’s been a busy week. I’m really busy. There’s a lot on my plate.” This story, this identity of a leader who’s always busy, you will forever feel busy and overwhelmed. If that’s the story you choose, if that’s the title of your book, the title of your career, the identity that you embody, you’ll forever be busy. 

And here’s where people get a little bit gray on this. Busy does not mean productive. I can remember trying to look busy so that people thought I was being a productive principal. So silly. I wanted to be very busy. And I thought, gosh, if I had any downtime, I must be doing something wrong, right?

So, here’s my invitation. The solution to overwhelm is this. When you start to feel it, you’ll know. You’ll feel it in your body. Tune in and say to yourself like, “I’m not too busy to slow down.” Because if you start saying, “Oh my God, I’m so busy. I’m really slammed. I’m overwhelmed,” it’s the fuel you’re putting in the tank. You want to put a different octane in. 

Take a breath, slow down, break your tasks down. What’s the one thing you want to get done today? If you could walk out of the door with one thing being done today, what is it? That’s where planning mastery, time mastery, balance mastery programs, all of these programs in EPC, which is the Empowered Principal Collaborative, I’ve created them because it’s the mix of the mindset plus the skill set, who to be and how to apply. Okay?

So for people who feel overloaded, even for the most enthusiastic of extroverts, you’re going to experience people overload because you’re in the business of people all day long. So you’ve got kids coming at you, teachers, staff members, parents, community members, school board, district level, county, state, whatever, office staff, your, you know, psychology, counseling staff, nursing staff, custodial staff, cafeteria staff members, transportation, technology. 

You’re going to have days where you’re like, “No more people, please. No, thank you.” You’ll be tired of dealing with people. I’m pretty extroverted. I like people, but I have a limit. I’m just like, “Don’t want to deal with people today,” right?

It’s energy, right? They’re filling their tanks and they’re coming at you and some of them are like, “Ah.” Other people are calm, some people are very insistent, some people are aggressive. There’s a lot of energy that you’re holding space for. 

So there’s going to be their energy, their requests, their personalities, their quirks, their demands, right, what they want, their opinions. They all want your time and attention. It gets annoying. You get overloaded. Again, nothing’s gone wrong. You’re a human. And some days you have more capacity for it than others. You’re just going to be in tune with that capacity. So when you start to feel annoyed, irritated, impatient, again, slowing down, give yourself permission to take a break.

I cannot emphasize enough the power of stopping and taking a few deep breaths to reregulate yourself because your brain will go on autopilot, your body goes on autopilot, and then your identity becomes reacting versus responding. You want to give yourself some permission to close that office door if you have one and get some alone time. Just a few minutes can make a big difference to gather yourself. Or if somebody’s really set you off, you might need to be angry for a few minutes or to cry for a few minutes and then reply.

The slowing down, the permission, the identity of like, “I’m a human too. I’m a principal and I’m a human. I’m a district leader and I’m a human, and I have human emotions,” expands your capacity, expands your perspective. Just separate yourself from them. And this is where I talk about relationship and communication mastery in EPC.

Okay, this one is for the brand new leaders. And sometimes we have imposter syndrome even as veterans because there’s always something we don’t know. We’re like, wait a minute. I’ve been doing this job. I tell this story all the time, but Dr. Crates was one of my favorite principals. She had been doing site leadership. This was her 19th year. I think I was in like my third or fourth year. 

And I said to her, “Dr. Crates, when does this ever get easier?” And she looks at me, this tall, thin woman, she had presence, she had power. She was an empowered principal, like the poster child of empowerment. She just put her hands on her hips, she said, “Honey, it never gets easier. What are you talking about?”

When she said that, she kind of laughed and she said, “That’s what I love about it. I love it. I love it’s always different. I love this and I love that.” And I literally felt the burning of tears coming like “What is she saying to me right now? This never gets easier? Oh my gosh, I don’t think I can do this.” And I had a moment of complete imposter syndrome, complete inefficiency. I felt so inefficient. I was watching her just be a powerhouse. I felt completely incompetent, compare and despairing. Yes, I know. 

But in the moment, like I just wanted to be like her. She made it look so easy. She made it look like flow. She made it look fun. She looked like she was enjoying herself. And I was like, “I want that,” because I was spinning out in my head. “I’m not good enough. Nobody likes me. What are people thinking? I can’t do this. I don’t know that. I thought I was going to have power. I don’t have power. This is worse. This is worse…” I just, you know, so in my head about me.

But the more that you become aware of who you are and how you’re feeling, your identity, if you get stuck and spinning on that, you’re going to get stuck in an overwhelm cycle that’s like a merry-go-round and it’s going to make you sick to your stomach. 

The bouts of insufficiency and incompetency will paralyze you from leading because the power thought will be like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not sure how to handle this. I don’t know what to do. I’m not enough.” It’s an insufficient feeling. No matter what you’re doing, it’s like, “I’m not being enough. I’m not trying hard enough. I don’t know enough.”

What is the solution to insufficiency? For me, and for the clients that I serve, you can’t do it all. Too much to do and not enough time. It’s a mathematical certainty. You can’t do everything, but you can do anything, any one thing. Focus on one thing at a time. 

When you get one thing done, you feel accomplished. It gives you a notch in your belt in terms of sufficiency, of competency. “Maybe I didn’t get these other eight things done, but I got this done.” Every time you do the one thing, you expand your capacity. One, you’re expanding your capacity no matter what, but you will feel more accomplished, your identity will evolve. This is what leadership mastery is. This is the leadership energetics I’m talking about. It’s the balance of doing and being.

So right now, as we’re sitting here together in this webinar, you have a current self-identity. You have a self-concept about who you are. I want you to think for a minute about your character traits. You believe certain things that you are, you believe certain things you’re not. “I am this, I am not that. I can do this, I can’t do that. These are my strengths, these are my weaknesses. This is what I’m capable of. This is what I can and cannot do. This is what I can and cannot handle. This is what I can and cannot learn.” You have a certain identity right now.

And it’s funny, we’ll introduce ourselves based on who we believe we are. Like when we meet somebody for the first time, we’re going to say, “Oh, I’m a brand new principal. Oh, hi, nice to meet you. Tell me what to do.” Or we come in, “Hi, I’m the principal of Sunnyside Elementary School. Pleasure to meet you.” Confident, calm, assured, empowered. You can do that in your first year or you can do that in your 10th year. “Hi, I’m the new principal at Sunnyside Elementary School. What a pleasure to meet you.” 

You might identify as being too young for the job or maybe too veteran. “Nobody likes me,” or “Nobody knows me.” Experienced. “Hi,” you know, “I’ve been doing this job for 10 years.” Or, “Ugh, I have no idea what’s going on here. I’m brand new.” We talk about this. Our identity comes through in our interactions with other humans, right? We tell people, “I’m good at this, not good at that. I know how to do this, not that.” Your identity has a direct impact on your capacity to lead. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 433. 

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 Kelly.

Well, hello, my Empowered Principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. I have an interesting topic that I’m going to discuss with you today. It’s not a topic I have felt comfortable talking about for a while because it’s so personal to me. I’ve been doing this personal work and been on this personal journey. 

And in my work with my coach, my coaches, I should say, and through the work that I do as a coach, I’ve really uncovered some understanding about the fears that I had in school leadership when I was in school leadership, the fears that I have as a coach, the fears that I have as a human, as a female on the planet, and the way that I was conditioned to understand myself in the world, the way that I was taught and expected to behave or to respond or to act, behave, think, all of that at a deeper subconscious level.

And I want to talk about it today, number one, because it’s really prevalent in aspiring school leaders and brand-new school leaders. This is the time of year when people are transitioning into becoming a school leader and stepping out of a teacher leadership role into an administrative leadership role. And with that can come what I call child energy, little kid energy, an immaturity that is tapped within us when we are venturing into the unknowns, a new adventure, a new chapter, a new position, particularly when we step into a leadership position.

So what I mean by child energy is this naivety, this uncertainty. I’m not sure. I’m kind of shy. I’m stepping back. I’m asking other people, what should I do? What should I think? What should I believe? What should I value? What should my philosophy be? I’m looking outside of myself as a little kid, you know, as somebody who’s new, to guide me.

Now, there is nothing wrong with having a coach, having a mentor, having guidance, looking to those you admire for aspiration and inspiration and leadership, knowledge, wisdom. Of course, we can’t know all of it ourselves. That’s not the goal. We want to learn from others. The energy I’m speaking of, it’s more of an approach fueled by fear. 

So it’s when you feel kind of afraid to be a leader. You’re timid, you feel a little helpless, you lean on other people to kind of, you know, the buck stops with them. So you might feel more comfortable in an AP position because you’re like, well, the lead principal, the buck really stops with them. So you might feel insecure with your opinions, your decisions, your actions, your initiatives that you want to take, or perhaps you are very easily intimidated by other people’s confidence.

So when you are new, you walk into a room and there is a ton of highly successful leaders, very confident leaders, leaders who seemingly know what they’re talking about, what they’re saying, what they’re doing. They have a vision, they have a mission, they’re very fueled, they’re passionate, they are knowledgeable, they seem very wise, they’ve been around the block before, they have experience under their belt, and that can feel very intimidating. Now, you can be a leader who’s been doing this job for three, five, 10 years and still feel this. 

So it tends to happen when you’re new at something. That’s pretty normal. And I talk about how to embrace being new in other podcast episodes. So when you’re new, right, we sometimes we hold back. We test the waters. We check on other people. We’re picking up cues, right? How are they thinking? How are they feeling? What how are they responding? You’re looking at their behaviors, their facial expressions, their body expressions, that those nonverbal cues to kind of see what the response is going to be. And you’re getting to know people before you lead, right?

We often tell first-year leaders, build relationships. And that first year, you’ll get grace where you’re not maybe taking a ton of forward action or you know laying out a vision or pushing people forward. You might just be getting to know people. That’s very common in your first year where you are building relationships. 

However, building relationships, that term can be used sometimes as a shield or excuse to not have to be vulnerable, to not have to express yourself, to not be clear with yourself on who you are and what you believe in and what you want to do and how you want to approach your leadership position and really stepping into the identity as a leader.

So I’ve noticed this with new leaders, I myself included. You know, it’s easy to want to kind of tread water and watch what everybody else is doing and you’re kind of picking up context clues. But you can tread so long that you’re not stepping out and taking action, right? 

There’s a difference between watching what’s going on and then trying a little something and then watching a little bit more and then trying a little something. That’s different than just watching and observing and kind of waiting to react to other people around you versus taking leadership and responding internally with your own thoughts, opinions, and ideas.

And I understand when you’re new, you’re like, how do I know? I don’t know what I don’t know. That’s absolutely correct. The way that you learn, trial and error. Yes, you observe people. Yes, you get out there and you just meet with them. You build relationships with them. You get to understand them and know them. 

And also, you’re also taking action. You’re also expressing yourself. You’re learning about your school and then you’re processing that and you’re saying, what are my thoughts and feelings around this? What am I adding to this? What do I believe to be true? What do I think is the next best thing for my staff or my school?

So it can happen when you’re new, but I’ve also noticed that it can happen after you’ve been in an identity of empowerment. So perhaps you felt very confident and strong as a teacher or as an instructional coach. And then you get into a leadership position and you bring that empowerment with you, and then something happens. So sometimes you have felt, you have been in a stage of confidence or empowerment and you feel like you’re in grown-up energy, adult, mature, you feel knowledgeable, you feel secure in your own skin and assured with yourself.

And then a situation kind of shakes you. I call this an identity quake, where something happens and maybe you didn’t handle it as well as you would have liked or you didn’t know what to do, or it really set you back. It kind of put you in check or it hurt you, it really criticized you. Maybe you got admonished. And we can revert back to more of that like childlike energy when we feel like we have been attacked or we’ve been admonished or punished or scolded.

So I’ve observed this in myself and in others that if it’s not brand-new energy where you’re actually just, you are new and you’re learning and trying to figure things out, sometimes we get into this like big people energy where it’s kind of bossy. You know? I think of like I’m the oldest sister of two, my sister and I, and I’m the oldest. 

So like big sister energy, kind of bossy energy, like my way or the highway, one perspective. It’s this kind of boss vibes energy, bro energy. Some people call it masculine energy. I think of like the Devil Wears Prada energy where, you know, the boss is just like very assertive and aggressive and, you know, people are afraid of her and she’s clicking around and making everybody fear her through intimidation, right? Granted, it’s a movie, but that’s kind of the image that comes to mind for me.

Sometimes it lacks compassion or perspective or awareness on who they are and how they’re being, or they’re using it to kind of toss their energy, their vibe, and authority around so that people don’t question them. People don’t give them feedback. People don’t critique you or they don’t offer another way. 

So sometimes we use this like bossy vibe energy as a layer of protection. We’re actually so soft on the inside that we don’t want people to give us feedback or critique us or offer something, a different perspective or a different approach to something. We don’t want to hear what other people have to say or how they feel. We just protect ourselves. And in doing so, we’re unaware of, you know, our lack of empathy or compassion or how other people might feel, you know, if they’re feeling dismissed or they’re feeling that, you know, we are being rude to them in some way.

We can use empowerment as a form of protection. And we can also use this childlike, innocent kind of naivety as a form of protection. So just first of all, just notice if you’re doing one or the other. So sometimes when you are naive, you might get kind of a smackdown where people are like, step up and lead. 

And you’re so afraid to do that because you feel you don’t know, you feel like an imposter, you’re afraid, you’re new, and really the solution to that is kind of dipping your toe in, making the best decision you can, grounding yourself, getting in alignment and moving forward, being vulnerable, knowing that you won’t do it perfectly. There’s overcoming that fear.

And then there’s the other side of this where people who have been very bold and strong and protected and they’re in their, you know, Devil Wears Prada energy, something happens or someone comes along and awakens you in a very abrupt way where they give you the smackdown and it stings so much. It puts you into doubt. It makes you doubt yourself, question yourself. 

And you’re like, whoa, I used to feel so confident and now I’m, I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I’m walking around and I’m not sure if, who to be or if I can be strong again or I’m afraid of empowerment because this negative experience happened. And again, that’s another identity quake, right?

So an identity quake is just something that comes in and shatters your reality. It literally changes your identity. And oftentimes, at the time it happens, you’ll say, I did not see that coming. You might in hindsight see the signs that it was coming or the signals, but at the time it happens, it feels like you got blindsided. 

Like an example might be that you got laid off. You had no idea it was coming and you got laid off and you weren’t expecting it. Maybe you were reassigned or you were demoted. You went from being a teacher leader to not being in a leadership position or you were an AP and put back in the classroom or you were a lead principal and they asked you to go to an AP position. And that can be demoralizing. It can be kind of an emotional smackdown where you feel afraid to speak up, afraid of your own empowerment.

And we can find ourselves kind of swimming back in childlike energy. Like, well, I tried this and it didn’t work. So now I’m going to go over here. And now we’re in the land of all or none where we’re either in our empowerment and we’re being kind of protective in one sense, or we’re being in this childlike energy and we’re being in this, you know, protectiveness where it’s not me, not my fault, you know, I don’t know what I’m doing. I need other people to help me. Kind of a helplessness.

So my goal in supporting school leaders is to find the land of and, is to bring you back to the middle ground, which is authentic empowerment. And sometimes you have to explore the boundaries. You have to be in that little child energy, and then you need to be in big boss energy to kind of feel the boundaries of that, to land in the middle that feels appropriate for you. 

So fears of identifying as an empowered leader or fears of stepping back into your empowerment or being in a mindset and an identity of empowerment is something that many principals experience. 

So if you are experiencing this where you’re new or you’re going to be new and you’re anticipating this fear, or you’ve had a little smackdown at some point and you feel wounded and maybe you have, you know, your heart is gaping open and you’re heartbroken or you’re very embarrassed or ashamed or you’re unsure of yourself and you’re doubting yourself and you’re recalculating and rebuilding back up to your identity, this is normal. It’s a part of our experience. It’s how we test those boundaries.

But when it’s left unattended, if you’re either in this childlike energy or you’re in this big boss energy, you will find that you will go through the motions of leadership and you will be acting as a school leader, but you’re not generating the outcomes you want or not having the impact that you desire. And that’s where the feelings of imposter syndrome or I’m not good enough, I feel insufficient, come up because you’re doing the work, but it’s not creating the outcomes.

And I’ve been in this. I’ve been in this as a teacher where you’re kind of spinning trying to figure out who you are and how to get results. Then I was spinning around as a principal, and then I was spinning as a district leader when I was the coordinator for the RTI programs across the district. 

And I’ve had moments and chapters of that in my business, spinning as a coach, trying to figure out how to serve more people or how to communicate, how to coach better, how to communicate better, how to explain these concepts of what I believe will really create positive impact for school leaders and students and staff and communities, which is this internal work that we’re doing here, called empowerment.

So when you are in a cycle of imposter syndrome, and if that tends to surface on a regular basis, you might find that your strategy becomes waiting for others to tell you what to do, waiting for people to validate your opinions, waiting for people to make the decisions or to support your decisions before you move forward. Before you take any action, you make sure you’re like over-ensuring that you’re doing the right thing. That’s childlike energy. 

It’s like waiting for mom and dad’s approval, waiting for teacher’s approval, waiting for your, you know, athletic coach’s approval versus getting out there and just playing the game and then be willing to get the feedback and be willing to make mistakes, but you’re going for it, you know, 100 miles an hour, 100%, right? It can stagnate you and your school from evolving yourself, evolving others, your staff, those you’re leading, your students, your community.

So as uncomfortable as this is, addressing this childlike energy within you, acknowledging when you’re in it, validating the fears and the other emotions that are fueling it and owning, really owning that you do have access and the ability to step back into your own power is required of you as a leader, to feel better and feel more aligned.

Exercising empowerment, it is not simple because the little kid energy within us is triggered all the time. We want to retract. We want somebody else to be the leader. We want them to tell us what to do. We don’t want to take ownership. We don’t want to be out on the front lines, you know, taking the bullet, so to speak. We’re gonna want to be behind the shield. 

But part of leadership requires us to own the leadership part and to step into our maturity and to step into the truth that we have the power within us to lead with maturity and to own our emotions and to own our decisions and actions and to have the bandwidth to when we get it right, we celebrate. When we get it wrong, we apologize and repair, but we keep going. We don’t let it stop us.

It’s hard work. It’s scary work, but it is so freeing. It is highly rewarding. I do this work consistently myself. I work with multiple coaches and I also support school leaders as a coach through this process. We discuss this work in EPC. Clients of mine will schedule one-on-ones, you know, private sessions for deeper emotional processing. I believe it’s the most empowering way to be a highly effective leader.

And I’m talking not just school leadership, but the leader of your life. Being you, doing what you want to do, living your life the way you want to live, allowing other people to have their opinions about you and have their opinions about how you should run your school and have their thoughts and ideas. And not that they can’t have them, but that you can still be in your empowerment. 

You don’t have to be dismissed or to demote yourself or your own ideas or your own approach to life or leadership because other people have different opinions. If someone’s in a funk, it doesn’t have to mean now you’re in a funk. If they have a negative opinion of your decisions and actions, we don’t throw them out. We can listen to them, but we can self-discern.

That’s true empowerment. Is being able to see that somebody else’s tantrums, somebody else’s emotions are theirs to own. We don’t need to own them. We don’t need to fix them. We don’t even need to change them. We can acknowledge them and allow them to have their feelings while we get busy and regulate our own emotions. 

So when we feel triggered, when we feel like a little kid and somebody’s scolded us and we’re sad, we can be sad, and then we can be mature and say, okay, why am I sad? What can I learn from this? What do I believe is true here? And you’re right back into your empowerment. Easier said than done, I know, but it is the path to empowerment. 

And that’s the whole goal. That’s my mission, is to empower principals, to empower site and district leaders, state leaders, to empower teachers so that they can empower children. That is the purpose of education. In my book, I believe that we are here to authentically empower people to have their own identities, their own feelings, allow people to come up with their own thoughts, their own ideas. 

We call it critical thinking. We want to empower that. We don’t want people to think in conformity or to be isolated if they think differently than us. It’s to bring us together, to collaborate, and to allow differences of opinion, to be mature, to respect ourselves as much as we respect others, to not wait for others to tell us what to do for the rest of our lives.

So if you feel called to really working on your empowerment and learning the skills, the exercises, the practices to get yourself back into a state of empowerment when you have slipped into this childlike energy, I really invite you to join EPC. You can join now. You can join this summer. For those of you who book for next year, you get access to the rest of this year. You get to come in the back door and see what the end of the season looks like. 

Then we jump into summer of fun, and then we’re off to the races. I’m going to have, you know, programming in the summer, trainings to help you prepare and get ready for the fall. It’s a wonderful time to join EPC. I love you all. I care about you and I invite you into your mature empowerment. 

And that little kid energy, I promise you, it comes out all the time. It comes out in me. It comes out in others. You want to know how to recognize it and you want to know what to do with it, to create awareness around it, to feel it, to acknowledge it, to validate it, to get back into alignment, and then to have the courage to step back into your mature empowerment. Have a beautiful day. I love you all. Take care. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 431.

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 Kelly.

We have an exciting interview. This particular interview is near and dear to my heart. Warren Buck is a friend of one of my most dear friends, Becca Silver, who is a content expert in resistance. She is an instructional coach coach, so she coaches instructional coaches across the nation. And she is personally a friend of Warren’s. I met him through Becca.

This interview is fantastic. It revolves around college entrance and prep and all of the things that families need to do to prepare themselves to apply for and land the school of the students’ choice. Warren is an expert in this. I think you’re going to love this interview. Please share it with any family members that you know personally or if you are a school administrator in the high school levels, please share this with your colleagues. Warren’s work is phenomenal. He’s got a book that he has published on the topic, and he individually supports families through the college application process. Enjoy this episode.

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Angela Kelly: Let me give you a little background before I introduce our guest for the podcast today. My friend, Becca, is a coach for instructional coaches. So Becca and I met at a workshop, a presentation. We were both presenting in Maryland, I believe, at the National Center Convention. It was this huge school leadership summit and we were both presenting. And we, I think we just ran into each other over dinner. And we met, “Can I join you for dinner, glass of wine?” and we started talking and we hit it off. And so she and I are kindred souls. We have been entrepreneur buddies. We have been friends ever since that one meeting. And she and I talk on a regular basis about life and business.

And she introduced me to her friend, Warren Buck. And Warren is our guest on the podcast today. And he offers something so special and so unique that is very relevant to school leadership and to your students, particularly those who are in the high school leadership arena. And I’m going to pass it over to Warren, let him introduce himself, tell you a little bit more about who he is and what he does, and we’re going to have a conversation about the services that he provides to students and families. So Warren, welcome to the podcast.

Warren Buck: Thank you so much, Angela. I think this is going to be a lot of fun and it was really cool to hear your story about how you and Becca got connected. So I’m the owner of a company called Future Finders. I work with families to help them plan for life after high school, navigating all the choices that are out there because it’s a lot different than back in my day when you just kind of followed the path that you’d always been on. And now kids just have so many choices and they all sound amazing. So my company works really closely with families to navigate that landscape, explore the options that are out there and provide them with the tools and resources to end up with a really bright future.

So in my Becca story is, we met actually 16 years ago when we were both new teachers at KIPP, The Knowledge is Power Program in Atlanta. We just kind of hit it off in a social studies cohort meeting one day and became friends. And I transitioned into being a principal for KIPP eventually here in Jacksonville, Florida. But Becca and I have stayed in touch and when I moved into the nonprofit sector, that coaching that she does of coaches was really valuable. So she was the first person I called to help us out with a cohort at the Jacksonville Public Education Fund. And she just brought that energy and brought that expertise that she has and just wowed everybody that we were working with. So that’s my little Becca story.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, Becca is amazing. And I actually am kind of saving her, her services story because she’s coming on the podcast. We’re going to do a separate interview. She and I literally could not remember if we, I have been on her podcast, but we couldn’t remember if she’d been on mine because we have so many conversations. We’re like, it feels like we’ve had a podcast conversation, but it might have just been like friends talking on the phone. So yes, Becca is incredible. She is the founder of The Whole Educator. You can find her on Instagram. Yeah, she’s on Instagram, but you can really find her on LinkedIn. I think that’s where she does the primary. And I noticed connected with Warren on LinkedIn as well.

So if for all of you all who are following on LinkedIn, you can find us all over there doing fabulous work. So Warren, I’m curious to know like you’ve been a teacher and I didn’t know you were a principal. So that’s really cool. So that makes this even more relevant. And now you are supporting families and connecting them to, you know, higher level education. So how did you transition from your role in school leadership into this role?

Warren Buck: Well, really it was that role in school leadership that helped me develop a passion for this. Just if you want to get kids engaged, start talking about their future and start talking about it in realistic terms and really, you know, kind of push them to think about what they want to do in a meaningful way, not just naming the first two or three careers that every kid says when they when they start thinking about those things. So just seeing the process of kids getting really invested in their future and the pathway towards that future, when you lay it out and have a really mature discussion with them, just kind of set my educator brain on fire and it was something that, you know, coming to the college admissions world from the school building like I have, I’m just in this for the kids.

And, you know, as educators, we all know we want to see when the kids light up and get energized about something. So that’s really what I’ve tried to bring into this process. And you know, really helping the kids to learn some soft skills along the way because that teacher hat is always on and getting them ready to be successful on whatever next step they choose and frankly, just not being their parents because I think we all know that about the time those kids hit 9th, 10th grade, parents stop knowing anything as far as they’re concerned. So sometimes I can just be that third party in the room that really brings some energy and brings some excitement, brings some resources and connections and I’m not mom and dad.

Angela Kelly: Yes, yes, which is a win-win for the kids. What I love about the work you’re doing is that genuine connection to something that they find passion about that isn’t just another curriculum to learn, another test to take, like performative learning, especially at the level of high school kids where they like they get it at this point, right? They know the difference between like performative learning and just like learning for the pleasure and the joy of being alive on the planet and learning for life’s purposes learning and that passion. So you get to connect with them at that genuine level which they probably appreciate. It must be so refreshing for kids to have someone to talk to and of course like there’s not that barrier of like, I’m the parent and I say so.

And like the parents have an interesting interest in their children’s lives. It’s like, they want their kids to have all the opportunities and all the passions, but they kind of have their own way of in the way that they want that for their kids versus you just get to say, hey, I’m all here for you. What do you want to do and what connections can I help you develop to get you where you want to go?

Warren Buck: Well, and that’s one thing I do very intentionally in the first meeting with my students is I tell them like, you’re going to have to get used to this. You’re about to be bossing around a 50 year old guy that’s going to be working. You have to put yourself in the driver’s seat of this process because I don’t know you well enough to steer your future, but I’m really good at research. I’m really connected to lots of people and I just I have some gray hair that I’ve earned along the way of figuring these things out for families. So automatically putting the students in the driver’s seat, I think really kind of shifts their perspective and gives them a lot of power in the in the dynamic, which they take and run with.

And then, you know, on the back end, I’m doing really cool presentations for the families to make sure that the communication is there, everybody’s on the same page. So really the kid and the family don’t need to do anything but discuss all the cool options that are out there and all the different things that Warren has found in his research. So it really becomes a very collaborative experience for everybody where I like to think that I’m kind of the engine driving it with the process and the timelines and the deadlines and all that. But the students definitely in charge of that steering wheel and the parents know everything that’s going on and get to steer me as well because they know and love their kids so much.

Angela Kelly: Of course, of course. Yeah, it’s such like a, you’ve developed like a grand slam home run. It’s like a win, win, win for everybody involved. So I’m wondering how you connect. Do you go through the schools and connect with the schools, the kids, or do you work with parents directly? Like, how do you reach out and how do you connect with families and students?

Warren Buck: Well, really the main way is A, I spend an embarrassing amount of time on Facebook. Facebook groups are phenomenal for making those initial connections and getting people warmed up. I’ve also created a whole bunch of digital products that I’ve made available to families for free on my website. So that families can go on there and kind of get a sampling of what I do and start to get more familiar with the process. Then when they get to that point where they feel like they need some additional help, they contact me and we set up a free consultation and kind of talk about what we need as far as, you know, which of the packages they’d like to select.

And honestly, at this point, it’s great because we’re doing mostly word of mouth with our business. Our clients have been super happy. And this is the best time of the year, by the way. We’re recording this in December and a lot of my early action clients are getting those acceptances from their schools. And getting all the celebratory emails and texts from everybody. So like one of my clients just got into one of her reach schools, Texas A&M today. So she’s ecstatic and it’s really just becomes like a self-perpetuating thing. Kids just get really happy with the results. The kids coming behind them are like, “Oh, how’d you do that?” And that’s when they mentioned future fighters.

Angela Kelly: Yes. I love this because I mean, I can remember one being way back when I was, I’m the first person to go to college in a four year university in my family. So this really matters to me that you’re connecting kids, especially if kids haven’t had the pathway led for them or like if they don’t have that guidance to connect them from what do I do after high school other than like getting a job and getting married and kind of this, you know, role playing out just one option. I love that you are out there connecting with kids who might not have that guidance otherwise.

And then I was thinking about my own experience as a single mom when my son was in, you know, junior year, senior year looking into colleges. That was overwhelming. And I was a principal and I thought to myself, one, I’m a single mom, like, how am I going to run my school and go on all these, you know, visits or whatever. And then two, you know, if I’m this overwhelmed, and I’m in the field. What is it like for families, families of second languages, families who aren’t native to the system, families who just aren’t familiar with education or they don’t have anybody directly related in the field to guide them? Like, it’s a really daunting process for students and families.

Warren Buck: It absolutely is. And I mean, yeah, you’re a former principal and navigating this was super hard for you while you were in a school building. So that just lets you know that this is a very complicated process. We can all hem and haw about whether or not it should be, but the fact of the matter is that it is. So having somebody that can get in there and really get to know your student and your situation is totally invaluable. And that’s I love working with first generation college students, also one myself here.

And I just I know that this is a core belief that we all have is that parents want their kids to do amazing things. Sometimes they just don’t have the skills necessary and that’s when a third party like me can come in and work with a family. And I also want to say like a lot of so much get put on the plate of principals and schools these days. It seems like every time that there’s a societal issue, people want the schools to fix it. So we’re in a situation where so many educators and especially poor school counselors in high schools have these tremendous student to counselor ratios and there’s this expectation that parents can go to school counselors for college admissions advice. And I know all the counselors want to do their absolute best with that, but the numbers are just daunting. So, you know, really just having third parties like me, free resources like Future Finders puts out. You know, I know there’s a lot of us out here that are trying to flood the zone with as much information and help as possible because it really does take a village not only to raise a kid, but to get them to college these days.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Yes, agreed. Agreed. And that’s just the starting point, right? Then that’s a whole another journey on, you know, once you get in, then you’ve got to go through the process of like getting yourself physically to and from school and getting in and settled and then on you go to that next adventure. So, okay, so what are you had mentioned there are different packages or levels? I’m just genuinely curious like, so what are the services that you provide and what are those different levels? You don’t have to go into detail, but just in general, like so that principals can maybe, you know, understand like what are the services that a student might need or what’s what are families looking for so that they could point them in your direction.

Warren Buck: Well, there’s two things that I really prioritize with every single client and every single communication that I put out there anytime I talk about this topic. First, parents need to have a very realistic budget for what they can spend for college as early as possible. I have a tool that’s on my website that’s for free that leads families through planning their own personal finances, looking down the road at what they can expect from the FAFSA process, and then other potential financial aid sources through net price calculators that schools have available. So that process needs to be as realistic as possible as early as possible because there’s nothing as heartbreaking as a student that’s worked four years to get into a dream school.

And then the parent has no idea how they’re going to pay for it. They just assumed that it was always going to work out or that federal financial aid would take care of it or the mythical full ride scholarship would come through. So I always start with that. Just please have a budget when you start this process. And then the next thing that I really would tell anybody that’s working with this age is please, US World News Report does fantastic work at a lot of things, but their rankings are not what you should be basing college choices off of. Really take the time to diligently look at what your student wants from a college experience, and then use tools that are available, like on my website, to do that process of finding schools that are actually a really good fit for your student.

We know how teenagers are. I mean, they watch SEC football every Saturday or they get, you know, they go on a campus tour that’s all rah and looks like a lot of fun. And a school can seem like the absolute best destination from the marketing that goes on, but if the fit isn’t there behind it, it can really lead to some wasted time and effort down the road. So those are the first two things.

And then, you know, as a former language arts teacher, getting those personal essays to be as good as possible in the Common App, hugely important because they’re one of the few true differentiating factors. There’s a lot of kids with high stats these days. I look at some of the SAT scores that students are cranking out these days and I won’t tell them what I got back in the day because it’s just a little embarrassing, but there’s just so much talent out there and you really need to have some personal statements and other materials that stand out from the crowd. So that’s where you can really kind of focus some of your energy to make sure those little differentiating factors make this process happy from the beginning. Realism with a budget, finding a really good fit, even if it’s not a highly ranked university, and then making sure those little differentiating points are spot on and really thoughtfully done.

Angela Kelly: This is brilliant. Just what you’ve shared right here for both educators and for families. One, like I mean, those were points that I hadn’t considered. One, I wish we had been more realistic in our budget. Fortunately, we only had one child, so we were we’re able to make that work for him. His dream come true. But he didn’t pick a school on ranking, although it was highly ranked, but I do remember that conversation with kids like being very concerned about the image of the school and the rankings.

And even with our, you know, and I coach school leaders day in and day out, we get caught up in these rankings and these listings and you know, we need to look at what we’re making them mean and the truth of that, those could change at any moment. Anybody could come up with a list of ranks or different, it depends on the criteria and it changes from year to year. So it’s really a matter and at the end of the day, 10 years from now after you’re out of college, nobody cares what your school was ranked, right?

Warren Buck: Yeah, absolutely. I’m thinking of one student in particular that I worked with in this past cycle. He was such a cool, chill young man. He’s a surfer, so that kind of gives you a hint about his personality. But he has amazing stats. He has all the extracurriculars. His essay was brilliant. And there was so much pressure in his school for someone like him to go to the University of Florida or go to Georgia Tech. And all along for him, he was so level-headed and smart about this and the approach that he took with his mother is he wanted to maximize the merit aid that he could get.

Get into a good program that would lead to being a physical therapist like he wants to be down the road. And then he was like, “I’ll I’ll apply to those other schools, but I really want to make sure that my mom’s not having to stress out about paying for college for me.” So we got him connected over at University of Alabama, Birmingham, which has some tremendous pre-medical programs. And sure enough, they saw his application and his scores and they just started throwing money at that kid. And he is thrilled with the whole process because now he’s got his undergrad paid for the next four years. He’s got a 3+1 program that they have at UAB that’s going to lead to him getting a master’s within that four year award that he’s got. So because he took that time to like just tell everybody in his high school, “That’s fine. You go to UF, you go to Georgia Tech, you go to Duke. I’m going to go over here for free and we’ll see each other in four years and see.”

Angela Kelly: Exactly. I love that. That is such a great story and really, it does, and he can put his heart and soul into that program and become the best physical therapist out there. It doesn’t matter the rank, it matters what you do with where you land, right?

Warren Buck: Amen. Amen.

Angela Kelly: And the third thing you said was about the essays. And that’s interesting because I think about it, I coach aspiring school leaders to land their first job. And there are people who are just like, “Oh, they just kind of like do a cover letter and whatever.” And or they get over obsessed with it. And it’s interesting because I think some of the kids out there might think like, “What difference does the essay? Is it really going to make the difference?” But hearing you say that really solidifies like that part of the process and the value that work that you invest into that essay provides.

Warren Buck: Well, you know, one of the most interesting things about this is there’s so many misconceptions about what makes a great essay for this process. There’s so many kids and parents that psych themselves out thinking that if you haven’t overcome some great big obstacle or challenge in your career, that your personal statement’s not going to be any good. And I’ll tell you the best essay I read this past cycle was about erasers. The student that started collecting those little erasers all throughout her childhood and how they marked time for her and they marked major milestones in her career and with within her family.

And she just wrote it so beautifully and it was no giant, you know, revelation. She didn’t cure cancer or anything, but she told a really authentic story about who she was and how she’s going to contribute to this campus that she wants to go to. And it legit brought tears to my eyes. I was just so blown away by this writing. And I want students and families to understand, there’s no formula for a great essay except being yourself. I love AI for tons of things, but not this process. Like AI will never be able to tell your story like you can. And that’s what those professionals in the admissions office are looking for, is genuine, wonderful kids that are great citizens and are going to be great citizens on their campus.

Angela Kelly: And I really think that because of AI, that the authenticity in your writing and the genuine story from your heart, I think that communicates energetically, that just communicates so much more honesty and transparency and openness and willingness as a human, from a human to human connection, which is what you’re trying to create in these essays, that matters more than the perfect articulation or, you know, the which word choice or you know, all of the getting everything correct grammatically. It matters more than perfection, right?

Warren Buck: Well, and these admissions officers, they know what they’re doing. These are highly educated people that have been doing this for a long time and they know what a 16 or 17 year old sounds like in an essay. And there’s a certain realism that needs to be there and a certain affectation to the writing and the storytelling that’s just not going to be reproduced by AI. And you know, honestly, one of the most fun things about this is I’ve seen so many students that do this personal statement process with us and this is really the first time they love writing because we don’t tell them how to start.

We just tell them, “Tell us about yourself.” One of my tricks and I’ll give this one away for free, I always tell students, “Get out your phone, open up your voice app, put it on record, and just start talking about the topics that you’re thinking about. If you can talk for five minutes about a topic, you have probably got a good topic there. Click it off, copy and paste that transcript into a Google Doc, and you’ve got a rough draft. If you think you had a great topic, but you can only talk for a minute or two about it and you’re I don’t, it’s not going to be a good topic. So move on.” So a lot of the time it’s kids really starting to think about themselves and their story very legitimately for the first time. And I think it’s another one of those light bulb moments that I’ve really come to enjoy. And I also enjoy not having to give feedback on 120 essays at a time. That’s definitely another perk about this process.

Angela Kelly: Yes, yes. There’s a check for the teacher right there. That stack of papers coming home with you on a Friday. Oh boy. Oh, ouch. I know. I remember the days. It was painful. Yes, and so this just really, I guess, and for educators out there, it really does kind of highlight the value of having kids maybe sooner than junior or senior year, start to write stories about themselves in a way that’s authentic and where it’s not about, you know, I get it. There’s standards that have to be met and grammar this and that and whatnot. But having them get this free writing opportunity where maybe it’s a little less structured and a little less graded and just more exposure to storytelling, authentic storytelling in a way that’s connecting human to human, and getting them to really think deeply about who they’re becoming as young adults.

Warren Buck: Yeah, I think we could probably go off on a completely different tangent for a couple of hours just talking about how AI is changing the game for teachers. And I think that’s I hear so much frustration from teachers and rightly so because a lot of what they’ve done doesn’t really fit into this AI paradigm anymore because students can get the answers from ChatGPT or they can write the technical writing or the expository writing in ChatGPT and you know, they wash their hands of it. So I think, you know, my initial thought is, let’s get a little more analog and just get some paper and pencil out and really challenge the kids with prompts that can’t be answered by AI, things that come from themselves.

Get them comparing and contrasting and cause and affecting, just based on their own experience in the world that’s around them because I think that’s where kids are going to have a chance to excel is those kids that are more generalist in their approach to their education. They’re able to take from their math class and combine it with their science class or there’s a beautiful generation of kids that are really engineering focused because they’ve had a lot of STEM education, but they’re super talented artists and they see connections that aren’t there to these old folks. So I think we’ve got to we’ve got to lean into the creativity of kids and show them a world outside of AI and how fulfilling that can be for them to really be on that journey of personal discovery without any kind of device next to them.

Angela Kelly: Yes. I really believe this. Becca and I have had these conversations too where at the end of the day, I don’t believe that AI can replace human energy, like the human story, the human experience. It can try to emulate it or it can try to encapsulate it, but it isn’t it. And there’s a difference between like a story about it and then it, the actual experience. And so I love that. I do agree. I think like just bringing it down and I’m not anti-artificial intelligence at all. It’s just there’s a time and a place for it. But when it comes to the human expression and the forms of human expression that we that we invite kids to participate in and to engage in, I agree with you. I think like and their story, like their story deserves to be told because it’s a unique story. There’s no other person on the planet that has or ever will have your exact experience through the lens of your life and who you are. So.

Warren Buck: That is just so true and it’s I talk to my clients about this all the time because I tell them up front, I use AI in my practice. It’s something that does more research in a blink of an eye than I could do in hours on Google. The difference is that I’m 50 some years old. I have a master’s degree. I have taught for a long time. I’ve had multiple careers, and it’s that blend of expertise that I have and the speed and research of AI that makes it an effective tool. If you just go to AI, it’s going to miss so much of the nuance that makes these kinds of things important. There’s just reading body language. There is understanding what’s left unsaid in a conversation that can be a key to the whole process working or not working. So it really has to be that balance of human experience, human expertise, human knowledge with the cool research that AI can do. But if the balance goes too far in one direction or the other, you’re just going to miss out on some tremendous potential.

Angela Kelly: Exactly. So shifting gears a little bit, I understand that you have recently written a book.

Warren Buck: I have.

Angela Kelly: Can you tell us about it?

Warren Buck: It is College Admissions for Overwhelmed Parents. And it is a relatively short and breezy 150 page ebook that really takes families all the way through the college admissions process. It’s probably like a lot of other products that are out there in that regard, but there’s a couple of things that I think really make this unique and it’s something that I’m very excited to get into the hands of parents and to educators. First, there is a family in the story, Samantha and her parents, you follow along with them as they go through the college admissions process, which kind of gives you characters that are relatable that you can latch on to throughout reading the book and cuts through some of the more technical aspects of the book because this has got to be a book that you start in junior year and you’re not finished with until spring of senior year.

So you want to make sure that it’s engaging. But then I know there’s a lot of books that tell parents how to do this process. My book shows them how to do this. So on the first page of the book after the table of contents, they can download a workbook that they do alongside with the reading of the text. And then there are AI prompts in there that show them very specifically how to do some of the key steps along the way. So a family can spend seven dollars and ninety-nine cents on the ebook. They get basically a concierge that leads them through the entire process. And then with that intelligent infusion of the workbook and the AI, they can really get expert level results.

It’s probably not the best business decision I’ve ever made to put this all in one place and to give this all away. But I think it’s so essential that families have more tools that can kind of level the playing field for them. I think it’s really helpful for educators and those heroic counselors that are in our high schools doing all the work that they’re doing. So putting a few of these on the shelf and, you know, we’re in some workshops with them, it can be really powerful that families have a common text that they can go to, a common language, and then this workbook that leads them through the entire process step by step.

Angela Kelly: Yes, because for some families, seven dollars and ninety-nine cents is what is accessible. And that just like you said, it does level the playing field in a way that probably no other service has yet to offer, which is outstanding. Like I had no idea that Becca mentioned you wrote a book. That’s what the message I got. I’m like, hey, let’s have him on the podcast. I had no idea like the depth of the book and the intention behind the book and the services that are included in this incredible, like almost no-brainer offer for families to have access to the process because boy, if that book would have been out when I was going through it with my son back in 2017, I would have purchased a copy for me and everybody I know.

Warren Buck: Well, and at the end of the book, they get an invitation to join our Facebook group. You know, that embarrassing amount of time I spend on Facebook, going to double down on that and invite them into my Facebook group where they’ll have access to me and my team answering questions that they have. So not only do they get the book, but they get the ongoing support in case something’s not clear or they have something that pops up along the way. They can, you know, keep accessing the community, keep accessing our experts to really guide them along the way because if we’ve learned anything in the last few years, chances are we’ve got some curve balls ahead of us and the more that we can lean on each other as a community to navigate those, the better it is for everybody.

Angela Kelly: That’s wonderful. The question that just popped in my mind, I’m wondering, do you have connections with the colleges at all or is it strictly through the student and parent? How does all of that work?

Warren Buck: Well, fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to work for City Year and Jacksonville Public Education Fund and some other organizations. I did a fellowship at Harvard for a year. So in my work with those organizations, I developed quite a few relationships in higher education across the country. And then I’m that guy that as soon as I start working with my clients and they start narrowing down the schools that they want to go to, I call up an admissions officer and have a conversation and introduce myself. So I don’t have a lot of experience working on the higher ed side, but I have lots of friends and I’m not shy about making more.

Angela Kelly: And the reason I asked that question is I was curious about the college, the admissions perspective of this work. They must really appreciate you helping families through the process because it one, it helps on their end, but two, you’re helping a greater number of students apply to their school, which is it’s just another win for colleges and universities given, you know, all that’s going on in the world of education right now, right? There’s a lot of uncertainty and I think that having those connections and looking through the lens of all the different perspectives of all the players on board really helps provide students with like a holistic experience and understanding of that process from, from you start thinking about school and what you want to be when you grow up and all of that into like the technical aspects of it and the hoops you got to go through and deadlines to meet and requirements and all of that technicality into like landing that position and then also having to interface with admissions on the other side.

Warren Buck: Well, and that’s where so much of it comes back to that concept of fit. And, you know, we have kind of perfected it to a mathematical formula at Future Finders. And we give every school a fit score for each of our students. You know, we dive into the common data set and learn as much as we can from the information that’s put out there. And really, we want students not just applying to schools that are a good fit, but we want them showing up on campus prepared on day one to be successful because that’s ultimately, we all know that you can fall into a pretty big student debt hole pretty quickly. You can waste lots of money dropping classes because you’re not prepared for certain things. So we really, you know, based on my own personal experience, I graduated high school in 1991 and graduated college in 2006. So I’ll let your audience do some math there about who was unprepared to go to college. And I’m really just very passionate about making sure that our students are going to schools that are a good fit and that they’re going to be academically successful from day one. That’s a hugely important thing to me.

Angela Kelly: I love that. I love that. So where can educators, parents, where can they find this book online and where can they find your services? You are on LinkedIn, but where else can they find you?

Warren Buck: So it’s college, college for overwhelmed parents, college admissions for overwhelmed parents. I should probably have that pitch down a little bit better. College admissions for overwhelmed parents, it’s available on Amazon, but it’s also available on my website, which is pretty simply FutureFindersLLC.com. You can go on there. Right now, I’m running a little special where you can download a first chapter for free, just to make sure that it’s something that you think is going to be a valuable investment. So you can get that first chapter for free and then hopefully download the rest of the book right there or purchase it the paperback copy through Amazon.

Angela Kelly: Oh, wonderful. That’s great. Is there any other wisdom before we go? I just want to make sure that you’ve been able to share your words of wisdom and connections with educators because this is primarily school, site and district leaders who listen to this, aspiring leaders, but many parents, I also have, you know, teachers out there who are listening to this. So.

Warren Buck: Well, and just as a former principal, I think naturally wanting to talk to the principals out there and just saying that I know your plates are full. I know how difficult that seat is and how much there is that you’re balancing every day. So hopefully finding resources like the ones that I’m putting out there and other companies are putting out there, it’s such a great area to delegate and to bring on some contractors to work with you so that you can really stay at that high level, focusing on the relationships with your kids and your family and knowing that they’re working with people that also care about them and are going to make sure that they get fantastic results. So I know sometimes it’s hard to look outside the building for help for your kiddos, but this is one area where there’s a bunch of us trying to do our best to help out and we’d love it. And anything we can do to make a principal’s job easier, trust me, I’m there for it.

Angela Kelly: Absolutely. Amen to that. And that’s what we’re here for. And I think I remember being a school leader and being overwhelmed by I knew there was, you know, support out there, but it felt like hard to know what this is why I do the podcast because you get to know somebody, you get to and we’ll put all of the links to his content, all of Warren’s content, information, the book. We’ll put all the links in the show notes so that you guys have immediate access. But this is a place where you I curate the people who come on to this podcast, people who are in it with the right intentions for the right reasons, in service of students, families, education, school leaders.

And this is just one layer of research that will hopefully help you out there listening to this, know that this is a service in the best interest of your students and your families. And if it’s something that can be taken off your plate, amen to that. And this is what I do. Like I offer support to school leaders to help you, even though I’m on the outside, and Warren’s coming in from the outside, we are at heart educators here to help, here to serve, and here to provide a service that makes life and your work easier for you and helps students learning and connection to higher learning easier for them. So we are here to help and support.

Warren, thank you for your time today. I know we did this kind of last minute, but I really value the work that you do. I’m really impressed by it and honored to have you on today and I look forward to future connections and really seeing like where this takes kids because I’d love to hear like you mentioned some stories about kids coming back, getting their dream, you know, connection with their school, having it be a match. And imagine just the trajectory of the contribution that these kids are going to provide to the world in the upcoming years.

Warren Buck: It’s exciting stuff and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it today, Angela. And anytime we can talk about amazing kids and the cool things that they’re doing with their futures, I’m happy to hop on and talk some more.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, we’ll do it. We’ll have to come back and have a whole another conversation about that. So that’s it, folks. Warren Buck, it is again, just tell them the name of the I just want to make sure we got it right.

Warren Buck: College admissions for overwhelmed parents.

Angela Kelly: Yes. And the website is?

Warren Buck: FutureFindersLLC.com.

Angela Kelly: Okay, write it down, look it up, leverage these resources. Have a beautiful week and we’ll talk to you guys all next week. Take good care. Thanks so much. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 429.

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 Kelly.

Well, hello, my Empowered Principals. So happy to be here with you today. Welcome to the podcast. Happy Tuesday. If you’re new, we’re so happy you are here. And we are continuing our conversation around all things HR. ‘Tis the season, and I was coaching this week on the topic of the moving of employees.

Now, this is the time of year when all things HR go into full motion. There are retirements, there are leaves of absences, FMLAs, there are resignations, and that opens up positions. There’s a lot of employee movement. So, there might be people who choose to move to another position within your school or over to another campus within your district.

And each district, each corporation, wherever you work, they have specific policies and procedures, protocols for choosing to move that allow, you know, the free will of your employees to apply for or raise their hand and be offered a different position for the year. So, this is normal. There’s a lot of movement this time of year.

Again, I feel like a broken record, but if you’re starting to feel unhappy, uncomfortable, if there is negativity inside of your body, check in with yourself. What are your thoughts and feelings around it? Now, sometimes when people move, you’re happy. You’re happy for them. You think it’s a best fit for them. You think it’s a best fit for students. It’s a best fit for you. It’s all around a grand slam. It feels like a really good fit for the person, the students, the community, the school, the team, and you’re thrilled about it. So it’s a best fit for you, right?

That’s pretty easy to navigate. Now, you might not feel as enthusiastic about the decision if you don’t believe it’s in the best interest of either your students, your staff, the grade level, the department, the community, or if it’s impacting you in a way that you don’t prefer. So, for example, let’s say you’ve got a really great teacher who decides to accept a leadership position. And you’re like, no, I love this teacher. She’s so great. She runs the grade level or the department.

And of course she’s going into a leadership position because she’s such a great leader. It’s good for her, but I’m so sad. You can feel both the joy and the pain of this movement of employees, right? So, it’s just really important to acknowledge that you can feel both things about the same situation. You can be joyous for her and excited for her new adventures, and feel sad at the loss because it impacts you and it will impact your school. And you may have to hire someone new or rebuild the team or move some staff around or something, okay?

So, in this case, just be mindful of your own thoughts and feelings that come up. Honor them, acknowledge them, of course. But if you lean on to reacting to that disappointment piece, even though you are happy for her, technically, but if you’re more disappointed because you have another position open and it was such a great teacher, you might not interact in the way that you most desire.

And it can come into the hiring process where you’re frustrated that you have to hire and you’re disappointed that she’s leaving. And there might be that little tinge of bitterness and discouragement. And people can pick up on that. They can feel that and it might drive ideal clients away. So just be mindful. Just notice, am I a little irritated, am I a little sad for myself? Feel the feelings, acknowledge it, and then shift back into, okay, happy for her, and what do I want? What’s the next chapter going to look like? What’s this phase of this position going to be? And what if somebody is amazing and is out there waiting for just this job? You never know, right? So just acknowledge that it’s okay to be glad for them and disappointed for you.

And they actually are in alignment. When you think about the duality of these feelings, they’re actually in alignment. And it’s because you care. You care about the teacher and you care about you. And you’re sad. It’s because you care about them, because you enjoyed working with them. You want them to stay. You love them. You care. You care about your students, you care about their impact, and it was a win-win. So, of course, you’re happy for them and you’re sad for you. You are capable of feeling both that mixture of disappointment and happiness, okay?

Now, there are situations where someone you’re not so fond of moves into a position under your leadership. So, let’s say somebody from another school says, I want to go work at her school. That’s a great school. What an empowered principal she is. Well, person’s coming in and you’re like, oh no, this is not a match. It’s not, it doesn’t feel good for me. I’ve heard these things, or I’ve experienced this, or I’ve witnessed this, or here’s my take on this person.

Now it’s time for some self-coaching, okay? You’ve got to be willing to explore what about this individual’s bothering you? Why are you focusing on what you don’t want versus what the possibilities could be? Because one thing I tell all of my clients, and I said to my teachers was that just because a person isn’t a fit for one position within our school, or they weren’t a fit at another school, doesn’t mean they can’t shine here, or doesn’t mean that if we let them go, that they can’t shine somewhere else. They still are a person with talent and gifts to offer. They just have to find the right match for them, okay?

Just like dating, not everybody’s a fit for everybody and not every position is a fit for everybody. So, be willing to notice, have you already decided this person is not going to be successful at your school? What is it that bothers you? And maybe you have genuine concerns that you do want to bring up with your leadership team. But if it’s just this, I’ve heard, it’s hearsay, or somebody told me, or you know, I used to teach with them and I didn’t like them. You know, we have a lot of feelings from the past. So, consider what’s coming up for you and notice how you’re reacting and how you would like to respond, okay?

Also consider how a leader, when you are in your most empowered state, how would you handle yourself? How would an empowered principal handle this situation? How would they leverage this as an opportunity to create a relationship with them, to build them up, to put them on the right seat on the bus, and to coach, mentor, and support them into their most empowered version as a teacher? So think about that as well.

Now, there’s another aspect of employment, of employees moving around, and that’s really the reason that I wanted to record this podcast and address this topic. It’s happened to me personally. So when my client brought it up the other day, I really felt the burn of emotions that came up for me with this situation. And I had to really put my emotions in check and coach from a squeaky clean place because this has happened to me and I can remember the feelings that came up when it happened.

So, one of my clients in EPC brought up the topic of her staff being full. She had worked really hard to attract and retain support staff in her district, in her school. She did the hiring, she did the interviewing, the hiring, the onboarding, and she felt very proud of her capacity to create this staff. Well, the district came in and said, oh, across the board, there are more support staff positions filled at your school than there are at other schools.

So, when the district gets involved into your hiring and starts moving people around because they don’t see it as equitable or they need somebody over here, and you have done all of the work, it can be quite frustrating when there is an employee decision made at the district level, somebody you’ve hired, you’ve attracted, you’ve curated, you have onboarded, you have coached, you have mentored, and you’ve integrated them into your staff as a productive, welcomed, contributing member of your team. And then they’re asked to be reassigned to a different school, different team within the district, it’s a real blow and it can bring up genuine frustration and some resentment.

And I know this feeling. It feels really unfair. And I feel that the emotion of injustice, when something feels unfair, when it feels unjust, it’s such a challenging emotion because we’re wired to want to make it right. We’re wired to want to bring justice to the situation, but we don’t always have the authority or the power or the agency to do what we think is just, okay? So I want to acknowledge that. I’m not saying it’s not fair. I’m not saying it’s not a form of injustice, because you worked really hard to get your staff full. So what do we do when it happens, right?

Now, from the district’s perspective, you might be able to coach yourself and say, look, they’re not doing this to me personally. They’re simply trying to solve a problem from their level, their perspective. I guess over at River Valley, they don’t have enough people, but over here at Sunnyside, we have enough people. And so they email you and they say, hey, you know, here’s the situation. We really need somebody. We need two people reassigned over to River Valley. I’m making these names up. They just sounded fun.

So you might be disappointed, be frustrated, but then they, okay, I understand mathematically that they’re trying to plug the leaks, fill the holes, whatever, and that from an equity standpoint, that whatever I said, River Valley needs a couple more people than you. And they move them. You might be able to understand it from a math standpoint, but nevertheless, you also are going to feel frustrated and disappointed. And you’re like, what’s the point? Why do I do all of the work to attract and curate and hire and onboard and get these people on board? And I’m doing that work to have them pulled. Acknowledge those feelings. Know that you can see the math and also be frustrated, okay?

I just want to say it’s okay to understand the math and also not be happy about it. So what do you do? Bottom line. You can, number one, you can be mad about it, and you can go and blow some steam off at people. So from a place, from the fuel of frustration and anger, you can go into the district office, you could fire an email, you could make a phone call, you could go to somebody directly, and share your thoughts and feelings. Before you do that, you just want to ask yourself, does this end up presenting the version of me that I want to be?

Now, some people would say, yes, it aligns to my style. I don’t mind expressing my anger to others while I’m in the emotion of anger. Even if I have to apologize for it later, I’m mad. I want everyone to know about it. I’m going to blow the steam off. I’m going to go and tell them what I think and whatever the consequences. Some people work that way. If that feels in alignment for you, by all means, do you, boo.

However, before you do that, just be mindful of the potential outcomes. And some people don’t even mind, like they don’t mind getting mad, blowing off steam, having to apologize, they don’t even mind what people think about that because it works for them. If that works for you, of course, by all means do that, but do it with intention and do it with the understanding that it could have outcomes. I don’t recommend that in The Empowered Principal programming because I want to be in an emotional state where I feel I’m being proactive versus reactive.

So just be really tuned in to, is this a short-term feel-good solution? Like it feels good to say it in the moment and to get it all out, and then you get called in because you were on a rage? Or do you think twice about it and figure out what to do with those feelings, okay? So option one is to react and to be in the emotion of anger as you’re communicating your frustration. Option two, you can be mad, but you don’t say anything about it. This tended to be me. I would stew, I would complain, get into my head, I’d spin out on it, and I don’t recommend this. Here’s why.

When you’re mad, but you don’t acknowledge it, and you’re mad and you don’t say anything about it, maybe you can coach yourself to like, okay, they took them, I’ll just hire two more people. If you don’t need to say something because you’ve self-coached yourself all the way through and you’re like, you know what? I’m a principal who can hire anybody, I can onboard anybody, I can bring anybody onto my team. If they keep taking my people, I can handle it. Brilliant. Beautiful. Godspeed to you. Go be forth and be merry.

However, that’s not all people, and you have to be authentic with yourself. Are you angry? Do you want to speak in anger? Or do you want to be angry and not say something because you can handle it when really you’re not actually angry anymore because you’re proactive and you’re empowered and you’re just going to go hire more people and not worry about it and it’s not even a problem for you? I’m talking about the kind of silence where you’re angry and you’re silent. And it doesn’t get resolved. You just get more and more angry every time they do it to you. And because you don’t say something, they don’t know you’re upset, so they think it’s okay with you and then they just keep plucking your people away. You get more and more upset and then you wonder what’s going on. Okay? Be clear about the difference.

Number three, you can be mad, you can be frustrated, you can be upset, process those feelings, honor them, acknowledge them, validate them, feel them in your body, let your body vibrate with anger, and at the same time, ask yourself, who do I want to be? What do I want to do? What is the goal here? Get below the surface of what’s bothering you and why, align to what feels true for you, decide the outcome that you want and how you want to articulate your concern. If you want to articulate it at all because you can handle it or if you do want to articulate it because it’s an ongoing problem and you want to open up the conversation because perhaps it’s happening to somebody else and they’re not sure how to communicate it and you can be an empowered leader, you can be the role model of, here’s what it looks like to communicate my frustration around switching employees and moving employees around without conversation or without input. Here’s my thoughts about it. I would like to invite us into a conversation around input and staffing as a whole district.

So, I know it can be hard. I know when you’ve put your time, blood, sweat, and tears, energy, focus into curating a team that works well together and you’ve got a well-oiled machine in terms of staffing, and then people get pulled to different sites, that can be discouraging. So, think that through, self-coach, work on it, really find out what’s coming up for you, and in the end, align to the version of you that feels the most empowered.

Good luck out there. Love you all. Have a beautiful week. We’ll talk to you next week. Take good care. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 427.

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 Kelly.

Well, hello my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. You are going to enjoy this week’s podcast. I did an epic interview with a couple of experts in multilingualism, bilingualism, and teaching in multiple languages. It is so fascinating. It is so valuable, especially considering what we are going through, particularly in this nation, but across the globe. We are a global community, and we want to honor and respect the culture, the language, and the value that being able to connect and communicate in multiple languages has for children and adults alike. So enjoy this episode.

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Angela Kelly: I have Eric Bethel and Dr. Maggie Marcus here with me today. And today we are discussing a topic that is near and dear to my heart on bilingualism and multilingualism. And I have two experts here in the room with me. We had a conversation a week or so ago offline, and I wanted to bring this topic to the podcast. It’s very relevant in today’s educational world, all that’s going on in our educational system, and just the global aspect of our humanity now and the ability to connect with one another across the globe invites us into instructing in different languages. And so we’re here to talk about that today. I’m going to turn the mic over to Eric and Maggie and let them introduce themselves, tell you a little bit about their backgrounds, and we’re going to dive right in. So Eric, I’m going to start with you.

Eric Bethel: Angela, first of all, thank you for having us on. It’s such a pleasure to be part of The Empowered Principal podcast. My name is Eric Bethel. I am a native Washingtonian and a lifelong DC Public Schools educator. I’m in my 25th year in DC Public Schools. I taught for about a decade at a wonderful little school called Marie Reed, which happened to be a school that had a dual language program.

I taught for about a decade, and then I moved into school leadership, where I met Maggie, who’s also on the call you meet very soon at Powell Elementary School, where I was an assistant principal for a few years. Then I became a principal, which was my absolute joy of all jobs that I’ve done. It was the hardest but most rewarding work. And I now sit in a role of an instructional superintendent, which means I’m responsible for a portfolio of 14 schools, eight of our schools in my portfolio of schools are dual language programs, which brings me here with you today. And outside of my work life, I’m a father of two beautiful little humans, a second grader, Naomi, and my oldest son who is a seventh grader figuring out middle school. So thank you for having me.

Angela Kelly: Oh, it’s such a pleasure to have you, and I’m so glad to have met you. Dr. Maggie, welcome.

Maggie Marcus: Hello. Thank you, Angela. It’s, as Eric said, it’s a pleasure to be here and a special honor to be here with Eric, too. So this is really fun. I don’t have quite the same path. I admire and always kind of wished I was a principal, but I was a public school teacher first in Puerto Rico for two years. I didn’t really think I wanted or would plan to be a teacher. And then went to, I moved to California for a year. I went to grad school for international relations. I was brought to DC by the Central Intelligence Agency, and I’ve been here for almost 18 years, which is pretty hard to believe.

So I was an economic analyst there for a couple of years, and then very smooth and normal transition to a second grade teaching position in a DC public school. I had earned my teaching certification in Puerto Rico, so it was a relatively straightforward return, which is interesting to go back to the classroom. And I was there for a couple of years where I met Eric at Powell Elementary School. And then I transitioned to being an instructional coach for Spanish literacy teachers at a bilingual charter school. And from there, I went to University of Maryland. I spent a year at AU at American University earning a certificate in bilingual education, but then transitioned to University of Maryland in 2015 as a student and finished my doctorate work there. I’ve stayed on as adjunct faculty, and I also run our family foundation, which is the Sullivan Family Charitable Foundation. And we focus almost exclusively on multilingual learners and equitable access to dual language education. And I do a lot of work with Eric and his team in DC Public Schools. And sorry, I forgot, since Eric brought his children, I have three bilingual daughters that are eight, 11, and almost 13. So Eric and I commiserate over the middle school seventh grader.

Angela Kelly: Oh, the middle school years. There’s nothing quite like it.

Maggie Marcus: That’s right.

Angela Kelly: Yes, yes. So we are all parents, we are all educators. We have a lot in common. And we’ve all worked in schools or school districts that have one, served students with multilingual backgrounds or at least bilingual backgrounds. I know I worked in a school where Spanish was a common second language or primary language for many students and they were learning English as a second or third or fourth language. And then we also had a program that was a dual lingual program within our district. And many, many students were served through that program and continue to be served through that program. It’s still thriving.

And we’ll talk about this in the podcast, but it’s very interesting the shift from the perception of bilingualism, and I would love to get into that with you. But for listeners who may not have experience with bilingual school, bilingual education, can we just cover that base real quickly and give an overview of what bilingual education is, multilingual education is in case there is a listener out there who is not as familiar with the concept.

Maggie Marcus: Yeah, sure. So I think of bilingual education as a really big umbrella. And then under it, you have different kinds of programs. So the program that we talk about the most and I think in DC, Eric can add to this, is a two-way immersion, dual language immersion or two-way immersion, and then there’s also a couple one-way immersion programs. What distinguishes dual language programs is that you have maybe not equal, but at least ideally 30% of target language speakers. So if we take Spanish and English, ideally you have a population that’s like 50% English speakers and Spanish speakers, but at least 30% Spanish speakers, that being the target language in my example.

And so one of the main pieces aside from having peer groups that speak the target language and English is also having content in the second or the target language. So you might be learning math in Spanish or social studies in addition to like a Spanish language arts class. And that’s what really creates that dual language model for students where they have to not only know the language but learn to manipulate the language in a in a content relevant to whatever grade they are in.

Angela Kelly: Right. So there’s that academic language on top of just the vernacular. Okay. So it sounds like what you’re saying is there are children whose primary language may be English, primary language may be Spanish, and they’re working together. So some are learning Spanish as a second language, other kids are learning English maybe as a second language, but they’re working together, and they’re receiving content in both languages.

Maggie Marcus: Correct. So the teacher would be already fluent in both of those languages. Yes, or you have two different teachers in many cases that, you know, one is the English teacher and one is the Spanish teacher. The cool thing also with having those kids that have different primary languages is that then they get to be experts in their own language. So it really changes the dynamic in that sense in that both groups of students are learners, but both also get to be the linguistic experts of their. Yes.

Angela Kelly: And how much fun is that for kids to be able to take turns supporting one another in a classroom explaining, you know, math in Spanish to an English speaker and vice versa, maybe in science or social studies, and just the beauty of that combination really allows students to take ownership of not just learning, but supporting their peers.

Eric Bethel: Yeah, absolutely. That’s where the magic falls, Angela. Just to add a little more texture to the idea of dual language programming, it’s really an instructional model that’s designed around four pillars. And we really try to anchor our programming around the idea of bilingualism and biliteracy, but also really reaching high levels of academic achievement. And the fourth pillar, which absolutely brings a lot of joy, and I hope makes its way into our conversation today, is around cross-cultural competence. It’s lifting that language is identity, language represents culture, and it creates a holistic school community and environment across languages.

Angela Kelly: Absolutely. And that is actually the depth of this conversation today because I think most people can understand that we have different languages around the globe and different languages that families come into our school districts with as their primary language. And our goal is to connect with those families, to welcome those families, to include them into instruction, but to help empower them and make them thrive in a way that feels that their language isn’t a detriment to their capacity to learn and their access to learning, but it’s actually an asset. And using language and teaching various languages in a way where we leverage that asset and we value it, we understand its value and we celebrate it in a way that is, I always talk to my school leaders about, you know, a grand slam win.

So making it a win for students, for staff, for the school district, the leaders in the district, but the community at large. That makes the grand slam win when it’s a win-win-win-win. And this is what I hear you addressing is how do we help students from any language come in, feel welcome, feel included, have access to education, connect with their peers, and to establish, it really empowers kids to have this global presence because they have the capacity to connect and communicate in multi languages.

Eric Bethel: Angela, we say all the time in a dual language community, and I’m sure you know that language is a superpower. And what we see in our own district data, and I think with trends nationally, is that the longer students are in dual language programs, we see long-term academic success and outcomes across both languages. Particularly we see the advantage for our English language learners. And in DCPS, we adapted a dual language models out of the sense of creating a strong service delivery model for our English language learners. And so something that you’ll also hear folks in the dual language community talk about is that dual language instruction and language instruction is additive and it’s not subtractive. So students develop English proficiency while strengthening their own home language, not in place of their own language, but in addition to, which is very, very powerful. It sends all kinds of messages and it actually helps build skills that are transferable across both languages.

It also helps students, you know, we see often, we have seen often times where English language learners have become isolated learners. They’re either pulled out of general ed content instruction to receive some intervention for English language, and what gets lost in that sort of a shuffle for students is access to grade level content, the study of some historic time period, or the analysis of some great literary text because we don’t think they have access to that content via language. But in a dual language setting, we pair content across languages. And so students whose L1 is not the targeted language of instruction for half the time, maybe 50% of the learning, it is for the other 50%. And what Maggie and I are working very hard to do is support teachers in creating an amazing bridge that really services, builds the students’ full repertoire in the context of content.

Angela Kelly: That is amazing, and that is the goal. It’s not just about the English language portion of your day where, I know in elementary schools, it’s, you know, we tend to cut the day up in terms of content. And then when we get to middle and high school, kids are shifting around, but it’s still very content focused. And what you’re saying is you’re blending the two where it’s language and content together, and it’s an addition to, it’s like academic language in the sciences, in the math area, in history, in, you know, spoken language, debate as you get up into the high school levels. And really being able to be completely literate in at least the two languages, if not more, depending on, you know, how the programs are set up. And so in the programs, I guess this is a new question that I have for you, Eric, in the programs that you are overseeing, are they limited to two languages? And is it, would you consider like a separate program from a general education school, or is it integrated into what you would call like a traditional public school?

Eric Bethel: Thank you for that question, Angela. So we have eight elementary dual language programs that in six of the eight schools, all students that attend are attending the dual language program. So all students in that school. In two of our eight schools, there are two schools in one. We have one school for students who are learning only in English, and we have some students in that school who are learning in English and in Spanish. And what we found is that our students in our dual language programs, especially our English language learners, are having greater academic success than our English language learners that are not in dual language programs. Does that make sense? And so part of what we’re learning to do as a district is to think about how we create more opportunity and expand and think more about creating this kind of dual language learning environment for more schools and more students in the city.

Angela Kelly: That’s wonderful. I love hearing the stats and the success rates of these students because I can see how an educator or a school leader might think, isn’t that confusing them? Isn’t that complicating things? It’s hard enough to teach in one language, let alone and teach in two languages. But it sounds like the data is speaking for itself where the kids aren’t being more confused or more bogged down. They’re actually maybe connecting in their brain, like developing, you know, those connections where they are expanding and opening and evolving their brain to think in two languages, content-related, academic language, and also be able to access, you know, keep their primary language, but access an entirely another language at the same time.

Maggie Marcus: I would add too that what Eric was referring to, like the two schools in one, like the strand programs, tend to have, and there’s some research that documents just how there’s more of a division because you have these two different programs in one school, whereas if you have a whole school model where everyone is participating, it feels more equitable, and it also feels more cohesive. I think sometimes in what we see is there’s then some like have and have not issues in the strand programs, but there’s also a lot of political will that plays into if you can have a whole school model and what the community really wants. So in some cases, it’s not, it might not be feasible to have a whole school model, even though that might create more of a like a more cohesive school. And so yeah, so sometimes that’s part of the difference too.

Angela Kelly: Yeah. No, I’ve actually experienced that. We’ve had strand programs in our district, and then we also, here’s what I found so fascinating is that when I first started teaching, the English-only families were kind of shying away from wanting their children to learn another language. And over the course of time, people started really seeing the value, people started appreciating bilingualism, multilingualism, and they were seeing the benefits of that. And it has become something, at least, you know, in the state of California where I taught and was a district site and district leader, it became a coveted, it became like a sought-after skill and a sought-after environment to be in. And people want their children in programs from an early age to learn to fully integrate the second language into their identity and to be able to be fully literate in that.

So I really embrace that change. I love seeing that. And I’m curious to know your experiences with shifting from maybe a strand type of model into like a whole school model. And are there schools out there that are traditional public schools who have, you know, a percentage of language, you know, differences and languages on their campus, and how might a school principal just even start addressing this topic, approaching the topic to leverage the skill and the talent that they have on their campus as it is right now?

Eric Bethel: Angela, it’s such a great question, and you’re right, it can be counterintuitive to think to put your child in front of content or academic skills in a language that they are not speaking at home that they’re not proficient in. No one wants their child to accumulate gaps in their knowledge or in their skills because they don’t have access to the language of instruction. And what we’ve learned is that educating or trying to have collaborative dialogue with families is critical to thinking about either introducing a dual language model or thinking about integrating across merging two strands into one strand or even getting folks to realize what is available to them in terms of their options in school.

And so we spend a lot of time engaging families to talk about the research, to talk about the data, to talk about the experience, to help people understand, help families understand what metalinguistic awareness and cognitive flexibility and what a full language repertoire does for a child’s literacy and overall academic growth over time. And again, it’s not intuitive. The other question or concern we often get from communities and families is around, how do I support my child at home? What do I do when my child brings home, say, homework in Spanish or an assignment in a language that I’m not proficient in? And parents want to be able to support their children at home. And so we’re really creative and thoughtful about how we offer support to families to support their children in the way that we partner academically with families.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Thank you for highlighting that because I can see where families might be afraid that they’re not going to be able to help their students. They’re their student might get lost kind of in the shuffle of the two languages, but also that they may end up like leaning towards one language over the other and perhaps losing their capacity to speak their primary language, which I know Spanish speaking families have expressed that concern for decades, you know. But English, I can see how English families might have that same concern. So by you communicating with them and giving them the skills and the tools and the understanding of how they can support their child as the child’s navigating the two languages at school, that can ease a parent’s mind and heart so that they can continue to focus on the value that their child’s receiving and when you were speaking, what came to mind for me was, you know, we’re looking at ways we can expand and evolve education to meet the current demands and the needs for students as we’re preparing them for adulthood.

And this is one of the pivots that we can make to create educational programming that is in alignment with the globalization of our humanity, basically, because we can go anywhere, we can talk to anybody with the internet, we can be online with anyone, and the ability to communicate and to interact, it only expands and enhances your capacity to serve in the world as it would with just, you know, being limited to one language. So I really appreciate that you guys are taking time to work not just with kids, but with their families as well.

Maggie Marcus: I think too, Angela, one thing I notice is that the message that you just shared about being able to be more economically successful, have more opportunities available, seems to be the message that resonates more broadly than the cultural social justice message that might be at the center of the why I do and support this work. So it’s really interesting also, and you know this very well in California, is to really think about the how we can like market dual language for all students, but primarily for our Spanish-speaking students who would have the most to gain from that sort of program.

And there is a one of my favorite academic studies, Eric, I don’t know if you’ve heard me talk about this before, but it’s an old study. It’s the Schecter and Bailey from 1997. I’m happy to send it to you, Angela, to link in the notes, but it looked at the difference between families in California, Mexican-American families in California and Texas and what they thought of the role of the school in language education. And there was a very big difference in the California families really believing that Spanish native language education was the parents’ responsibility, whereas the families in Texas really had a different opinion that the schools should also participate in the maintenance and cultivation of their native language. And so I think that’s also a piece that Eric and I think about with the work is trying to have that conversation with families and hopefully show them the value that having that language in school can add to their child’s education.

Angela Kelly: Absolutely. And that’s why I love the approach that you’re taking. And I know that the Sullivan Foundation financially supports schools and empowers schools to, I feel like what’s happening is like you’re one, you’re like helping people understand the value and bring in the language. But underneath that language, the foundation of the language is the culture, is the way that we interact, the way that we communicate, and the human to human connection regardless of the language that we speak. It’s about developing the culture, developing connections, the way that we communicate, and celebrate one another and honor without asking people to leave certain parts of them at the door as they walk onto our campus, but to bring all of you in, including language.

And language is one way that we connect at a global level, but bringing in the culture into the culture of the school, right? So that it becomes a part of the school culture at large when people are speaking a second language, they’re not just linguistically, you know, communicating and listening, you know, learning and listening in the language, they’re also taking in all of the language that the language has to offer. Is that what I’m hearing?

Eric Bethel: Absolutely, Angela. You know, that idea that language is inseparable from identity and that dual language education in our schools in DCPS really affirms students and families is so visible. It’s visceral. You can feel it in our communities, especially now. I mean, we know that validating home language as an asset makes students feel a sense of belonging, and that’s just foundational to learning. You cannot learn in a place where you don’t feel you have a place. I think that our promotion of cultural reciprocity and mutual respect and the way that it garners trust from families does a whole lot both in the academic environment but also just in a broader school community. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t, you know, just speak to what some of our migrant communities are feeling right now in this day, some of the anxiety and uncertainty around some of the immigration policies. And I think in our settings where we have already affirmed people based on how they show up with their authentic language, families and students, that we’re creating the spaces that are buffers to some of the stress that folks are under right now. Would you say you’ve seen similar or feel similar in our schools here in DC?

Maggie Marcus: Me, right? Yeah, I guess I’m the one that is in the schools with you in DC. Yes. I really and I think I hear so much anecdotally from school communities and school leaders about how their community members are showing up for each other during this time of uncertainty and providing a space and a feeling of safety for families. And I don’t know, I can’t speak to how that’s happening sort of generally across DC schools. I think certainly in the dual language schools, you really see the community rallying around the more vulnerable populations and really supporting, you know, supporting access for all, but supporting their other community members that are now facing some really anxiety-producing times, especially, I mean, across the country and I think especially in DC being a nation’s capital.

Angela Kelly: Absolutely. And, you know, I am so glad this topic has been brought up because while we’re not a political podcast, education is impacted by politics, has, you know, it has some political power over decisions made in the Department of Education and all the way down. So, but we speak to what can school leaders, school leaders and district leaders do to, number one, I was just having this conversation with a colleague over the weekend around the purpose of school and people are a little bit struggling with the purpose of school because it’s it has evolved and we’re catching up to what that is. And, you know, it comes down at its very basic to safety. Our campuses are designed for every child to feel safe. And a part of what I love about these programs is that when you come onto a campus and there are other people speaking the language that you know how to speak, that is a level of safety that you feel as a student on that campus. And if there are teachers speaking it, that’s even feels safer and even more comforting. And now you have content in that language, there’s another layer of comfort and safety for students.

And that’s where you start to feel valued, you feel acknowledged, validated, you feel more equity in who you are as an individual student, that your community is not just paying lip service to like we’re putting a poster up for Cinco de Mayo, but that there’s actually cultural conversations happening from the minute you step onto that campus day one and in the classrooms, in the content conversations, in the staff meetings, at the district, you know, level, it’s throughout the culture of the district that maintains the emotional, mental, and physical safety at this point of our students, our staff members, and our families. And that is where this conversation on bilingualism, it goes beyond a student learning a second language or, you know, the privilege of being able to learn Spanish as an English-speaking child. It goes into actual community that is tethered when times get tough, when storms come through, when families are going through something difficult or a staff member, it bonds us.

And that goes far beyond just being able to say, hola, you know, and ask where the bathroom is like when you’re on vacation. It’s beyond that. And I think we really want to address that. This is more than just language. It’s more than just asking or being able to order at a restaurant. This is not Duolingo or whatever the apps are. I mean, not to put down those apps, but just it’s more than that. It’s the human to human connection and the building of community that creates a sense of safety, a sense of protection, a sense of comfort, but a true sense of belonging and I kind of picture like gathering, you know, circling the wagons when the time comes to protect all of our kids at our at our campuses. So this goes beyond just being able to communicate verbally in another language. And you tell me you’re the experts. That’s just my personal take on it, but that’s how I feel about it.

Maggie Marcus: Two quick things. One is the National Academies of Sciences just put out a beautiful letter to DHS and ICE about the impact of immigration raids at schools and civil rights going back to schools exactly to your point, Angela, of being safe places. And I’ll share that link with you as well. I thought it was very well done and just very articulate as far as like this is not good for any student because schools are, you know, places of safety. And then I would the my other piece I was going to say was, I personally do this work for social justice. I think it is a language is a right and I think that Spanish-speaking students in particular, being the second most popular or most widely spoken language in the US, should have access to these programs that are research-based, proven to help them not only maintain their native language but also acquire English. And so I love working with Eric and I’m so glad he’s in this position. And I think, I don’t know where I was going with that. I was going to say like if Eric were in a different like capacity, I might follow him there too, but my but my heart is really in this idea of these programs being a linguistic right for students. And I think it’s great when English speakers, I mean, my girls go to a bilingual school, it’s great that they can learn Spanish as well, but primarily, I think of it through the social justice lens.

Eric Bethel: You know, we are tremendously lucky to have a partner like Maggie because of that compassion. I know we’re on a call and this is audio, but I’m sure Angela, you saw that glimmer in her eye. She does have quite a heart and passion. And that is, you know, dual language schools are small, they’re not many, right? We’re small, small community. And so we exist in a monolingual education system and it does take the kind of partnership that we have to really create the conditions for our educators and our school leaders to really be their their absolute best for kids and create the kind of community that you both just described.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, it sounds like the two of you have developed this beautiful partnership. And I’m wondering for the listeners out there who may be, this maybe the first time they’ve had this conversation or they’ve had it in their heart, they have a social justice, a lot of educators are in it for the social justice aspect of this and for the equity and for just the justice of the empowerment that education provides an individual. What might a principal or a district leader do if they currently don’t have this option in their school, but they have students who are coming in with primary languages other than English. What might be some steps they could take or some resources that they could access to give them either more information, connect with one of you or with the foundation, or some actions that they could take that might help students feel more safe, feel more included and to open a conversation up around more equity and more access to the right to education and the celebration of the culture and the language in which they speak.

Eric Bethel: Well, Angela, is just starting at a really, really, really basic level, I think understanding and getting to know your community and your students. I’m just speaking of as if I was a district leader or a school leader is incredibly valuable. And whether you have 14 different spoken languages at your schools or just two, understanding that there is language diversity at your school, ensuring that you match and meet that language diversity even if it’s learning a greeting, learning a goodbye, learning what someone your student is speaking in your building and just offering that comfort because again, your home language represents and reflective of your identity and if students feel like they’re being their their language and their identity is being valued, then they’re going to take academic risks, they’re going to take social risks, they’re going to be their full selves. So I you know, starting at a very basic level there and then, you know, there’s there’s so many great resources available to support teacher development in language acquisition pedagogy.

And, you know, finding what you have available to you and accessible to you in whatever district or school you’re leading or working in is critical and building and figuring out a professional development sort of plan for for your teachers because not everyone, you know, you don’t get that in all teacher preparation or teacher training programs. It’s something that that you absolutely have to support teachers and teachers want it and you have to create those conditions if you’re a principal or a leader.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Those basic elements that can just, one, it’s something you can do instantly to help students feel welcomed by greeting them. You don’t have to go and immerse yourself in Mexico to learn the language fully to come back and then be the leader. You can just incrementally learn these steps and connect with families too. I think that opening yourself up like you said to the community and just meeting with them, talking with them. And if that requires like hiring interpreters so that you can have this connection and communication and to listen and to understand. We had meetings monthly called ELAC and I loved those meetings because my moms would come and all the kids were there and I would get to not just communicate with them, but I got to see the culture.

We brought food, we had conversations, we talked about home life, we talked about what homework felt like, we talked about who was working multiple jobs and who needed support before school, after school. So the conversations ended up opening up about so much more than just report cards and, you know, mid-year assessments or something like that. It became about the experience of learning, the experience of education for the family. So I love that you, like anybody can do that. Anyone can offer that and take those little baby steps and celebrating and acknowledging students where they’re at right now and where their school is right now, right? If they’re not ready to bring on an entire program, we can just start with the acknowledgement of the languages, the acknowledgement of the different cultures in their school. So thank you so much for that.

Maggie Marcus: I was going to say along the funding lens too, since schools never, never have a, there’s never enough money in district budgets. And I think one sort of strategic piece could be for and this is work on the school leader or on their team, but is to find out which nonprofit are operating in their in their space. If they already have relationships with nonprofit organizations that are in the teacher professional development space, and then also who are local funders or national funders that are interested in the in the issues that they want to address. I know like in DC, for example, we have a DC Public Education Fund, which is only funds DCPS. So, and that, I know, like Montgomery County in Maryland has one, New York has one. So they’re not universal necessarily, but these branches of funding that help district, they’re set up really for districts. And so thinking through some of that like strategy or more specific partnership options for funding that that may not be right just through your school budget that that the district is giving you, because some of the work, I think definitely goes above and beyond what the district would be able to do.

Angela Kelly: That’s actually really important to know because this might just be a level of awareness where people didn’t realize there were agencies out there available to help. Could you speak to the foundation specifically that you’re working with, which is the Sullivan Foundation, correct? Could you speak to the services they provide and what this foundation is about? Just to give listeners like a background in what this foundation is.

Maggie Marcus: And I will say, it’s kind of funny now, but I took this position. I started in 2022, and I remember thinking at the beginning, like very naively, like, well, I’m going to fund DCPS. Like I’m just gonna I’m gonna write them a check. So I was like, why is this so complicated? You know, like this is the work I want to do. How do I pay for it? And it sort of took a little while to learn about the Ed Fund in this case as the financial partner because to really to navigate the bureaucracy of a public school system and making sure that the money goes to where it’s supposed to go.

But now we’re there. So that’s good. So our foundation, it’s a private family foundation. It was started by my parents. My parents were the founders of our foundation. And I’m the only employee. I’m the oldest of three children, but the only one that is involved in the family foundation. So luckily for me, because of my passion, I can really focus on what I want to focus on. Of course, we have some family legacy, legacy gifts and things that we do to support interests of my family members, but having written my dissertation on equitable access to dual language programs, I knew I wanted to one, increase the amount of dual language programs so that there’s more accessibility in that route for multilingual learners.

And then two, think about the teacher pipelines because we know that we don’t have enough teachers to fill the demand for dual language programs. So a lot of our work focuses, I do, I mean, the the bulk of my work is with DC public schools where we’re doing this work with the learning labs which which Eric can share with you. And then we’re doing some work with a nonprofit called Ensemble learning on the secondary programs in DCPS, the secondary dual language programs. We have I think one partner or one, I’m in a funding collaborative with other funders in California. So I do some work around the same sort of issues with a group of California funders.

And we do also fund some immigration work in specifically in Mexico, helping a couple organizations. One, the International Rescue Committee and two, a smaller organization called Solidarity Engineering that both address the issues of vulnerable migrant and people on the move communities and supporting them with with basic needs and what they need. And I think about that a lot because I think then to being a teacher and the students that I’ve had and that Eric sees who made that journey and sort of and trying to think about at that very, at that moment when they’re in a very vulnerable position, what can we do to make it a a smoother trip and and help them navigate, you know, they’re fleeing from violence or political circumstances. So that, you know, there’s all sorts of of reasons and then just so I always think about that connection because then they come and they, you know, a lot of them end up in in our classrooms. But yes, the majority of our work is really DC centered with Eric and his team.

Angela Kelly: Nice. And when you mentioned the teacher pipelines, are you working with universities on developing programming for like incoming teachers who are preparing to become teachers? Eric, do you have sufficient teachers? Do you find that to be a challenge and how might schools across our country, you know, be able to solicit, advertise and attract teachers who are interested in this type of teaching.

Eric Bethel: Angela, you really know the core of our like challenges and where we spend a lot of time thinking and grappling. And it’s both of those things. I heard you talk about like teacher development in specific to like language acquisition and dual language and I also heard you talk about talent like where do we find the people? And it’s true that dual language programs are so unique and we’re a small subset of all the types of school programming that’s offered. And one of the the magic benefits of having an ally and partner like Maggie in the Sullivan Family Foundation is we are able to in addition to what dual language allocation funds we get, we have the opportunity to design and create and build, be scrappy and create the the kind of professional learning environment we want for principals and for our educators in the classroom. And so, you know, the professional learning piece, we know people don’t come in trained. People don’t come in with some certification that says I can do dual language instruction. We have to build their capacity and create an environment that does so. And we’re doing so in DCPS in partnership with the Sullivan family.

And in terms of like recruitment and selection. So, right, we’re looking for bilingual candidates. We’re looking for candidates who may have some dual language pedagogy experience. We’re looking for leaders that have this kind of experience. And the pipeline and the pool for that is shallow and it requires us to be really resourceful. So we look across the nation in our recruitment and selection. We look internationally for recruitment and selection. And it’s not easy, but we’ve been fortunate enough to build some pipelines and to have some markets that where we can find teachers from, but it’s it’s scarce and it takes a big, you know, a big part of our our work.

And then Angela, we have to keep them happy and retain them because it’s a competitive space, right? When there’s a huge demand but not as much. And in the teaching profession in general, right? In general, nationally, I wonder if you’ve probably have covered this in your many conversations, but, you know, nationally, we’re looking at, you know, teacher shortages and trying to attract our smartest and brightest people to a field that, you know, is competing with the tech industry and everything else. So, you know, you can you can multiply that in the dual language community, the challenges.

Maggie Marcus: I was just going to add one thing to that because something that we’re doing in addition to the work that Eric and his team are doing with the current teachers and coaches and school leaders is we’re working with – the National Center for Teacher Residencies in conjunction with Ensemble Learning and then two California funders to develop a teacher, an early childhood bilingual teacher educator pipeline. And so we’re hoping we have a couple sites in California and then fingers crossed, one in DC that will really help us see like can we work with the paraeducators that are in the schools, in the communities and build up the skills that they need so that they can be teachers of record. And really thinking through like the community assets and members as opposed to, you know, especially now it’s very challenging to recruit internationally. So I think there’s, I mean, like Eric said, it’s a national issue and and it’s it’s really once this program gets off the ground, the next phase is like a residency design Academy. We’re hoping to have some takeaways from how this could work in other districts and cities or states.

Angela Kelly: This is so brilliant. You know the work that you are doing –  now, just hang with me here for a second because I know this like everybody wants the urgent solution. Everybody wants to fill the positions they have right now, but what I want to acknowledge you both for is the work that you’re doing now and the brilliance of the programming that you’re doing is setting students up to be eligible, to have the desire, to have the passion to then become teachers and college instructors and to promote this and advocate for this and work with foundations and expand the impact that this program will have because the reason it’s so difficult or my speculation is that because let’s say like I didn’t learn a second language growing up, therefore, to have to go and learn it as an adult feels like a lot of effort, a lot of time, like am I going to be as good as if I had learned it when I was.

So there’s a lot of barriers or there imposed barriers that that maybe adults have perceived, but as kids are learning this as they go when that brain’s flexible and, you know, like they’re very resilient to all of the learning and just able to capture it as their identity as a child and then going into adulthood, it will expand the pipeline, it will expand the conversation and my hope is that it becomes more mainstream in our schools, that, you know, 10 years from now, 20 years from now when we take a little snapshot, this is the norm, this is the mainstream, that it’s a normal and natural part of our public school system because it is actually designed to serve the public, which is all kids in our schools regardless of where you live, the color of your skin, the language that you were born into and the, you know, the cultural identity that is yours to claim.

And the work that you guys are doing now is really setting kids up to become the champions for this type of learning, this type of environment at the schools and I think it’s really brilliant and I’m excited to hear that you’re tapping into the community. We had so many members of our community that were extremely bright, extremely, you know, capable of teaching and becoming a part of the team, as you would say, in, you know, maybe a more advanced capacity. But allowing that and inviting them in like that’s magnificent. It’s brilliant.

Maggie Marcus: Yeah, we could give a shout out to there’s one of the assistant principals that we work with at CHEC, which is Columbia Heights Educational campus, Evert Diaz, who was a product of a bilingual elementary school in DC and now is a system principal at a dual language middle school. And so I think that’s really powerful, right? To have people who are in the community, who went through the school system and see the value of it to then be in leadership positions. So yeah, I hope that we can work to grow those sorts of pathways too with the students as they, you know, go in high school, off to college and things like that.

Angela Kelly: So wonderful. Are there any final words of wisdom, anything you would like to share with our listeners who are eager to learn more, eager to try something, eager to take their school, even if it is already in a program, to take it to the next level? What would you like to share with them?

Eric Bethel: You know, we continue to try to lift the narrative of dual language instruction because we want to bring attention, resource, community to it. So my final message would be that, you know, dual language education is not simply a language program, but instead it’s high impact and advances academic outcomes, it affirms culture, it strengthens community and it really helps the students prepare for a very interconnected world. So happy to talk more. I really appreciate you inviting me on the show. So thank you, Angela.

Angela Kelly: You’re so welcome. I feel like this is just the beginning. I feel like we could have hours of conversation on this, but I really want to highlight this episode. I want people if you are interested in this, please share it, share it with your colleagues, share it on your social media platforms because it is, one, I think it’s just essential. I think it’s like you said, like it’s a basic right of all students to have access to this, to have academic content in their language and to merge and to create a culture that isn’t two separate cultures in a school, that becomes one culture of the community, a married, a blended version of the community that it isn’t separate.

I know sometimes you might have different cultures within a school campus. It’s bringing everybody together and also bringing our families in and our staff members in, it just feels so much more cohesive than trying to take students out of the classroom, teach them English, and then plop them back in and then have them try to catch up. And then these students are wondering where these students were, and these students are wondering what they missed. Like that model, and I’ve taught in that model and I’ve led in that model and it it felt very just disjointed. So the work that you guys are doing to marry and bring in into one school culture, one student body, one school community, it’s hopeful. It’s bringing heart and it’s bringing the humanity back to teaching and the humanity back to learning. And we get away from the conversations around the test scores and we’re talking about how students feel, their student experience, teachers experience, and it’s a collective experience versus this disjointed, segmented experience. So thank you, thank you, Eric for sharing your wisdom, your experience, your brilliance with our community. And I really invite listeners to share this. Dr. Marcus, any last words of wisdom for the listeners out there?

Maggie Marcus: Yeah. Well, I was just thinking about in some cases, I mean, this is very district dependent and state dependent, but there are some mechanisms if a principal feels like the best way to serve their community would be through a dual language program. There are like Texas has a law, the rule of 20, where if you have 20 students who speak the same language in the same grade level band, you can advocate or petition for a dual language program. And I think in some cases with district, with school leaders I’ve seen in locally in Arundel County and in Richmond public schools where school leaders say, I think this model’s the best for my population.

And so I mention that to think like strategically and think through like if you want to do a dual language program, what are the options available to you like from a policy lens and from a community lens and I love that kind of stuff. So I’d always be happy to be like a brainstorm thought partner on that because I know it’s also, there’s of course a lot of challenges there, but that’s what I love to do. So I would say I would encourage school leaders to really think about if that sort of model might be a good fit for their community.

Angela Kelly: Absolutely. What a beautiful invitation and extension of your, you know, of offering your thoughts and services and expertise. I really believe this conversation is cracking open a new door, a new set of opportunities, a new set of approaches that it might just be a solution that you didn’t realize you wanted or were looking for or needed, and it may solve some of the problems that you’ve been kind of like, you know, banging your head against the wall trying to figure out. Perhaps, you know, looking into this approach, researching it, starting with some essentials, reaching out to Maggie or to Eric, it may just be exactly what your school needs. And don’t be afraid to explore that because it might be exactly what your kids need, what your community needs, and in a few years from now, you never know the possibilities that could emerge when we start looking into expanding our inclusivity with our community versus trying to find ways to keep it all, you know, separate.

So it’s a courageous conversation. I think it’s a vulnerable conversation, but I think it’s the most loving and empowered conversation that schools can be having, especially during this time and season of the institution of education at large. So thank you both for your time today. I really appreciate this. I know we had an extended conversation, but I appreciate the time and effort that you put into the work that you’re doing, the service you’re providing to students, staff members, and families. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Maggie Marcus: Well, thanks for having us, Angela. It’s really a pleasure to be here with you and with Eric and to share in this conversation. So thank you.

Eric Bethel: Agreed. Thank you.

Angela Kelly: Yes, thank you all. Thank you all. And I look forward to being in touch and talking with you again soon. So there you have it, you guys. Just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to conversations around dual language programming, the value of multi-language programming, and really, it’s about culture. It’s about creating a culture on your campus that goes beyond just learning another language. So if you’re at all interested, we’re going to have many resources in the show notes. We’ll have contact information. We’ll have like website links and such so that you can explore this more on your own. Have a beautiful week everybody. Have an empowered week, and we will talk with you next week. Take good care. Bye.

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