The Minimalist Educator Podcast
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 042: Unlocking Intentional Leadership with Peter DeWitt and Mike Nelson
Unlock the secrets to intentional leadership in education with our special guests, Peter DeWitt and Mike Nelson. This episode promises to transform your approach to educational leadership, as we dive into their book "Leading with Intention: How School Leaders Can Unlock Deeper Collaboration and Drive Results." Learn from Mike's game-changing experience in professional learning during the pandemic, which led to his fruitful collaboration with Peter and the creation of the Instructional Leadership Network. Together, they reveal how to foster deeper connections, enhance self-awareness, and achieve impactful outcomes in your educational setting.
Discover how to build systems that support intentional leadership, starting with the innovative practice of setting the next meeting's agenda at the end of the current one. We explore the powerful concept of de-implementation, encouraging educators to reflect on their actions and abandon low-value practices. Peter and Mike discuss the importance of partnerships, visual aids, and self-evaluation as tools for educational leaders to maximize their effectiveness and support continuous improvement among staff.
Finally, get inspired by effective habits and inquiry cycles, drawing from James Clear's teachings. Peter and Mike provide practical examples of habit tracking, both personally and professionally, and stress the importance of nonjudgmental, evidence-based coaching conversations. Learn how the Instructional Leadership Collective fosters collective efficacy through continuous professional development, and discover how you can connect with our guests and join the minimalist education movement. Don't miss this enlightening episode that promises to elevate your leadership skills and transform your educational environment.
Episode Sponsor:
Instructional Leadership Collective - The mission of the Instructional Leadership Collective is to help educators develop their internal and external self-awareness as leaders, foster human interconnectedness, and develop collective efficacy through ongoing professional learning so they are inspired to be their best selves.
Website: https://instructionalleadershipcollective.com/
Book: https://us.corwin.com/books/leading-with-intention-287548
Buy The Minimalist Teacher book on Amazon.
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The Minimalist Educator Podcast is a Plan Z Professional Learning Services adventure.
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher Book, Tammy Musiewski-Bornemann and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:In this episode we talk with Peter and Mike about their work on intentional leadership covered in their new book. They discuss what this means and how we can become more intentional through connection, self-awareness and so much more. Peter DeWitt is the founder and CEO of the Instructional Leadership Collective. He was a K-5 teacher for 11 years and a principal for 8 years. For the last 10 years, he has been facilitating professional learning nationally and internationally, based on the content of many of his best-selling educational books. Dewitt's professional learning nationally and internationally, based on the content of many of his best-selling educational books.
Speaker 2:Dewitt's professional learning relationships are a hybrid approach that includes both coaching and facilitating workshops on instructional leadership and collective efficacy. Dewitt's work has been adopted at the state level, university level and he works with numerous school districts, school boards, regional networks, ministries of education around North America, australia, europe, asia, the Middle East and the UK. For almost 40 years, michael Nelson has been an educator. He's served in the roles of principal teacher, district instructional leader, superintendent and currently as assistant executive director, developing programs and initiatives for superintendents and district leaders in the state of Washington. Michael has received many state and national awards during his time as a principal and superintendent, including the Washington State Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development Educating the Whole Child Award Together. They wrote, leading with Intention how school leaders can unlock deeper collaboration and drive results, recently released by Corwin Press.
Speaker 3:Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast Today, christine and I are really excited to be talking to two other co-authors today, peter DeWitt and Mike Nelson. Welcome to the show today.
Speaker 4:Thanks for having us. It's great to be here.
Speaker 3:How is everyone? I know we're spanning time zones here, so how are we doing?
Speaker 5:It's morning here. Still, peter, you're afternoon, correct?
Speaker 4:I'm afternoon, so it's around lunchtime for me. But, yeah, doing well actually, thank you. Good, christine, you're afternoon, correct? I'm afternoon, so it's around lunchtime for me, but, yeah, doing well actually, thank you.
Speaker 3:Good.
Speaker 2:Christine, you, I'm doing well. It has been a very miserable day here in the Netherlands and of course, right as I'm recording, the sun has come out, so of course that is the way that it happened, yeah, so, while this conversation will be a ray of sunshine, so that's good too.
Speaker 3:So we're excited to have you both on our podcast for this episode, because you have a new book that's come out, and so, before we get into the topic of intentional leadership which really coincides with a lot of the work that Christina and I do and talk about as well that intentionality and focus we wanted to know a little bit about how the two of you started working together on this work together.
Speaker 5:Well, that's a great question. Thanks for asking that. I have had the great pleasure of serving as superintendent in the town that raised me, so for almost 14 years. I'm still in this little small town, 45 minutes southeast of Seattle, washington, and thought that's where I would end my career.
Speaker 5:But after nearly 14 years as superintendent, I was applied and was selected to lead professional learning for the state of Washington administrators across the state of Washington and we received an incredible opportunity to do that and, as a result, I got the job right during the pandemic and needed to completely shift professional learning and we normally have professional learning where a big conference in June and this conference is a huge revenue source, so we needed to do it and we turned it on its dime and did it all virtually throughout the month of June, rather than just a two or three day conference. And the guy on the screen here was incredibly kind to the association and said yes, I'll come and do a Zoom. And that's the start of the story and he did a beautiful job, really resonated with educators across our state and from then we built a relationship and Peter can talk about the network that we created.
Speaker 4:Yeah, mike actually asked me. We started to talk quite a bit after that and he said hey, how would you feel about doing professional learning for district directors of teaching and learning from across the state? We're thinking we're going to get a grant next Friday and I kept thinking, oh, this guy's so nice, that's not going to. I've heard this before. He's really nice. Though. And the following Friday he called me and said hey, we got the grant. I was like, oh, so we, along with Chris Beals and this retired superintendent who might new name, tom Murphy, and Jenny Donahue, who I've been friends with for years, we put together what's called the instructional leadership network, and we did it. It was a two-year grant, so you know, we did it for two years and it was fantastic. It was just it was monthly hybrid approach got together a couple of times in person, virtual the other months, and, honestly, mike and I became very, very close over those years, and we did a third year outside the grant.
Speaker 4:And last year we were talking and I've never met a man who loves books so much in my life and I just, like you know, he was superintendent of the year for Washington state. He was doing this amazing work with WASA and I just said I'd really like to write a book with you, would you be interested? And I think he thought I was joking at first and I he said I don't know if I know how to write a book. And I said, yeah, you do, I'll, I'll be able to help you, don't worry. And we did. We started talking about the work we had been doing, about just being more intentional and it really honestly at the beginning of the book.
Speaker 4:I talk about the fact that to me it's kind of this reflection of our relationship over the years, because what I really appreciate about him is I came from building leadership. I was a school principal for eight years and Mike came. He was a building leader as well, but he was also district and then he was in this position with WASA and his perspective was different and he would just ask me these questions that I couldn't immediately answer and I really enjoyed that. I liked the push and pull of the relationship and sometimes you know I've been doing this for 10 years when you get into your facilitating workshops and you're doing it alone and stuff, to have somebody who you collaborate with, who can actually look at you and say I'm not sure I'm fully understanding where you're going with this, or what your success criteria is is just amazing. So that's sort of the quick synopsis of our relationship.
Speaker 2:It's always cool to hear the backstory behind these co-author partnerships. So your new book that's coming out is called Leading with Intention how School Leaders Can Unlock Deeper Collaboration and Drive Results, and obviously over here at the Minimalist Educator podcast, we love thinking about intentionality, so can you tell us a little bit about what being an intentional leader is? What does that mean?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we start off with. You know, in the book we actually start off with the whole idea of internal and external self-awareness, which we think is really important because it's a part of emotional intelligence right to be able to understand our own actions and then self-regulate. And that's a huge thing for leaders and they don't think about it enough. Actually, there's been a lot of journals lately, like Harvard Business Review and James Clear has talked about this as well where leaders don't take enough time to do the self-awareness piece, and we've also been exploring the idea of external self-awareness. So it's not just though, how other people view us, although that's really important.
Speaker 4:You know, we know from research around trust that we have there are three core drivers of trust authenticity, empathy and logic. Do people feel like they're seeing their authentic you and you understand and you care about them. But also they understand your logic and how you're making decisions. But the external self-awareness, beyond just how they feel about me as a leader, is also about what do they understand about our initiatives, our meetings, the strategies we're using? Do they really understand our logic behind that? So we start off by talking about internal and external self-awareness, because it's important for leaders to understand that, and then we go into what Mike has coined as human interconnectedness.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and we, you know it's just this thought of. We all know and have heard and read a lot of books using the word relationships and we really talked about, okay, it's relationships, but plus, or relationships plus and that's where Peter said we did coin the term human interconnected. And the importance of how we work with each other in a congenial and in a collegial type of situation is critically important for the end result of student impact. And we liken it to the analogy of you know, there are some leaders that go in and say I'm just going to build my own identity and strong essence as a leader and it's like an oak tree.
Speaker 5:An oak tree has that tap roots in particular tap root and in particular the first 10 years of life. That root just goes in strong. And so we talk about, okay, there's an oak tree leader, but contrary to that is the great redwood. The root system and basically the root systems are somewhat shallow in comparison, in particular, to the oak tree, but how they stand tall in weather storms is their roots are completely interconnected and we share that analogy throughout chapter two of the book. In that critical importance of you know, not only do you need to be self-aware internally and externally, but you need to be able to build that team and recognize that team essence, that human interconnectedness is vitally important in intentionality.
Speaker 4:And you know, we know that teachers are leaving the profession and we also know from Bandura's research that anxiety diminishes efficacy. So the idea of human interconnectedness and developing a space where we've got psychological safety you know, we know there's a lot of research out there about that but we also go into collaborative inquiry because it's something we engage in, both from long-term hybrid work that we're doing but also in the coaching work that we do, and tying it into that very practical sense of collaborative inquiry. What are a leader's greatest priorities? What is their academic plan? Where is their focus for academic plan? That's where the self-regulation piece comes in and do and you know the logic and all the things that we've already talked about and then just focusing on more than just how we come together that's important and how we come together, but it's also about what we do before we come together.
Speaker 4:Mike and I both had a lot of experiences where people don't necessarily know why they're in the room or why they're going to professional learning or workshops.
Speaker 4:We've had people say no, we don't know why we're here.
Speaker 4:And so we actually do pre-engagement letters and pre-engagement surveys with success criteria and learning intentions.
Speaker 4:We ask them to think about the learning intentions and think about their own learning needs.
Speaker 4:We do exit surveys where we're really looking at formative assessment that we can tie into the next learning that we're going to be able to do, because we find that a lot of people look at meetings as just a meeting where they're going to be talked at or they look at. They look at workshops as this one and done kind of thing, and because most of our work is hybrid, long term we have a real opportunity to make sure people are and Mike always coins it as the dash. It's not just about the moments we show up and we're working with one another, it's also about what is the work they're doing in those in-between spaces and how can we help support that. To just make sure that it's just a very holistic but also well-rounded and practical way to look at professional learning and tie your meetings into the fact that your meetings and coaching, those are all professional learning too, but they also need to be tied around your academic plan and your priorities, and that's where the other part of the intentionality comes in.
Speaker 3:I have so many thoughts and questions and I'm having a hard time like pinpointing what I want to come up with bring out next. But I think one of the biggest things that we've heard from principals and teachers is the time factor right. So like, yes, we want to be intentional, yes, we want to prioritize, but we have all this stuff to do Like I got to get my reports done. I, you know we have this meeting to get to, and so sometimes that intentionality gets thrown out the window because you're just in a rush. So how do you work with building leaders to help them understand how important it is? So, like, clearly, like you've got them, you're connecting with them. So you're like, okay, we're going to do this work, but how do you stay focused on, like we really have to be intentional about how we're moving forward with professional learning and growing our community into this very intentional space?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, I think that's a fantastic question, and Peter mentioned that. A lot of our work ties to long-term work where we're working with either provinces or states or school districts over time in a hybrid as well as in-person model, and so we try to model what we think could happen in buildings or what we did as superintendent and principal in the buildings. And so here's one quick example for you, a very practical one, and that's the. We believe that principals in reading could know their staff meeting agenda at the end of the prior meeting, Because we think that staff meetings should connect to one another and build upon one another. And what we often hear is principals going oh no, I have a staff meeting tomorrow. I'm going to be up all night trying to figure out what I'm going to be doing for my staff meeting. Or staff in the parking lot going oh, we have a staff meeting in the morning. I wonder what's going to occur at that staff meeting.
Speaker 5:But if we build a system where you basically knew what the next meeting was going to be at the end of the last meeting, it frees up time for the principal, it focuses the staff, and what Peter talked about, that dash, is what we find is at the end of that meeting. You're a whole different staff at the beginning of the next meeting because you have continued that learning through incidental classroom observations and connectedness there. And all of a sudden things are connected. But time frees up because, oh, I've got a staff meeting tomorrow. It's a natural flow of what we're doing. I already know the two or three big items that we're going to be doing that will help propel us and make the most impact for us in our learning. So that's one practical example to share.
Speaker 4:And I think both of you know this because when you have a really good partnership and I basically worked alone for many years, so having Mike as a partner over the past few years has been one of the best decisions I've made. So I'm glad that he said yes and one of the things that he often will say like he's a big fan of using pictures to just make sure that we're connecting. Remember what we learned in February, Remember what we learned in March and the beginning of all of our sessions with this long-term work is really going through the past few months so they can see the image of some of the things that we focused on, just to make sure that we're anchored in the fact that they're connected. But we also push each other to make sure that we're not getting waylaid, because it's easy to right, even for us. You write a book, you have all this work that you do and it's easy to get waylaid and go for the next shiny new toy. But it's really coming back to what are we anchoring our work in?
Speaker 4:And one of the other practical pieces that we focus on, too, is that of de-implementation, the abandonment of low value practices. So when Mike is talking about how these things are interconnected. It's also about talking to leaders about what is it that you can suspend. In the past few years, we've done research around. You know what would people want to abandon? And 100 percent of the time and we've surveyed thousands of educators 100 percent of the time people are talking about how they would want to abandon something they feel is being done to them. They're not looking at their own actions. And that's where that self-awareness piece and the human interconnectedness piece comes into, and your academic plan awareness piece and the human interconnectedness piece comes in too, and your academic plan, because when you're only looking at things that you think are being done to you as the things you want to abandon, then you're ignoring the power you have over abandoning some of the low value practices that you're engaging in.
Speaker 4:So we will ask two questions when we're facilitating workshops, when we're coaching, number one is going to be how do these actions actually have a positive impact on student learning or on your teachers? And number two is going to be how do you evaluate the impact of what you're doing? And we make sure that evaluation of impact is something that's been cornerstone to the work that we're doing as well. So you know, tammy, your question is very nuanced in that way, because it's certainly not easy. I mean, I think you know people will look and say, sure, we can get rid of stuff, but it's always something they don't have control over, and that means you need a mind shift to let's keep going back to look at your own practices, and are they giving you the bang for the buck that you expect them to?
Speaker 4:And how are you involving other perspectives into this work as well? Because it's also really easy in the day-to-day action that you're talking about that you know I get mad at Mike because he's my resistant teacher, when really Mike's not resistant. Maybe he has a low level of self-efficacy in what we're talking about, or maybe my logic has been off in the initiative that I'm focusing on and Mike is the one who's questioning that. And instead of putting Mike at arm's length, I need to find ways to engage with Mike to understand his understanding of the logic that I think I'm using, if that makes sense too. So those are a part of the nuances of that question you asked too.
Speaker 2:It's just like how we work with our kids, right, if they have some choice and some ownership in what they're doing. We know, we've seen how much more powerful that is for them. So it's the same for us adults as well, for sure. I just want to go back again to that self-awareness point. Adults as well, for sure. I just want to go back again to that self-awareness point because I really do love thinking about that, about the internal awareness, being aware of what you're doing yourself and how you're feeling, but then also that external awareness part how other people are viewing you, which I think you know sometimes we do overlook a little bit as being super important. And one of the suggestions that you write about in the book is having a habit of writing down what you're doing in your day and then, as you say, the positive impact, negative impact, neutral impact. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and how that can be really helpful for intentional leaders?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So there's a little bit of a trajectory with that work because in the coaching that we've done, especially with school principals and Mike with district leaders, is that we will ask them to track what you're doing every day, how are you spending your time, and that's something that we both have been doing for years and I, you know, when we're talking about, say, school principal, and we ask them to track their, their actions over that week. It's a nonjudgmental experience. It's not supposed to be. You're going to self-judge because there's a lot of self-judgment. That's happened. It's just really looking at what are the actions you're taking and getting an understanding of where you do spend your time. I say it's a trajectory that we've been on because we both have read it by James Clear.
Speaker 4:One of the things that he has talked about obviously is habit tracking. So within the book, what we did is took that idea that we've been engaging in for a number of years, but adding the James Clear piece which is how is this positive, is this a negative habit or is this neutral? It's not giving you any. You don't see the impact of it at all To me. I liken it to you know, years ago I remember looking at pictures of myself that people would post. And I'd see pictures and I'd say, wow, that picture makes me look heavy. That picture makes me look heavy. And then I realized, no, I'm just heavy because I've been on the road and I'm eating really bad food and I'm not exercising. So I started with a lose it app and it's easy to judge yourself when you're going in and you're tracking the food that you're eating. But it really helped me understand where I'm spending my or, well, what I'm putting in my mouth. To just be very blunt about it, we're asking the same thing. We're asking you to fairly look at how you're spending your time, and is that giving you the bang for the buck that you want?
Speaker 5:If I just were to add one little piece of information from a superintendent level and I have principals that would come in my office and just say I'm not connecting with this parent and I just feel like something's not going right and I really would draw them back to okay, what is it that you have control over? And you kind of have control over your internal and external self-awareness. You have the ability to build that understanding. So we would just kind of talk through what are you feeling about this situation? What is it that you Now, what is he or she feeling about this exact situation in regards to you?
Speaker 5:And there would be some ahas and based on that, all of a sudden the meetings would shift and I'd get a call after the meeting and say I'm so glad that we had this coaching conversation for 30 minutes because I was more aware of what I was doing and how I was reacting to her reaction or his reaction to me. And all of a sudden we set this trajectory going in a positive, or the spiral went positive, rather than ending the meeting and knowing it's going negative, and ultimately her child, his child, our student, is going to be more successful, if that makes sense now that's really thoughtful.
Speaker 3:just thinking about, um, some of these the the kind of silos we can get in, especially especially principals, can work. You know they feel very alone, but you talk a lot about cycles of inquiry and collective inquiry in the past as well, and how obviously collective inquiry you cannot do alone, but you're a cycle of inquiry you should not do alone. So can you talk a little bit about how the leaders that you work with or others can really use cycles of inquiry to be very intentional when they're building this, almost like shifting the mindset around things that they're doing in their schools?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, one of the things that comes up for us a lot is, I think and I'm speaking for myself on this, I don't want to throw a mic under the bus I feel like people make cycles of inquiry way too difficult. I think they make it so complicated and convoluted that they kind of lose track of what they're focusing on. And this whole idea of inquiry really comes down to four things, right, which is what's the problem you're trying to solve. And we ask them what's your success criteria? What would success look like if you actually were able to achieve this? And honestly, that's not a question that used to be asked, because every time they're just like I don't know if we've thought about success. The second part is what's your theory of action? If you're going to do this, then what do you expect to happen? Or if you're going to do this, then what do your teachers need to be successful? And then, of course, we go into the evidence and Bernhardt, I think, has done a fantastic job with talking about evidence and when we're talking about things like demographic data or perceptions data or student learning data or school processes, data, and then it's a reflection part what went well? What might we change in the future when you can keep your coaching conversations to those pieces.
Speaker 4:Sometimes people don't even know they're going through a cycle of inquiry when you're actually asking those questions, because they expect it to always be this thing right that they've got in front of them. So for us, it's about making sure that we use those four points of conversation within our coaching conversations, but also within the workshops as well, and we ask people bring evidence with you. So they honestly have like sometimes just getting to their main priority takes a lot of time because what they might think is their priority isn't. It might be, you know, it might be an outcome of their priority. And then when we start talking about the actions, that goes back to your original question with when we can go back to a couple of actions that they can engage in, they can let go of some of the other things that they've been doing. And then when they're actually bringing evidence with them to the table and it's a nonjudgmental experience it's what growth have you seen? Maybe you haven't seen growth, and let's talk about why that might be happening.
Speaker 2:When you can do that in a nonjudgmental way. That's the psychological safety that people want when they're showing up. Did you want to add anything to that, mike, or are?
Speaker 5:you happy with Peter's response? I think Peter did a beautiful job. It's the. You know the cycle of inquiry. I'm into little analogies so this may or may not work for you, but there's so much about a school's academic plan or school improvement plan that's static and it's done and people are not aware of it and it sits on a shelf. I see this cycle of inquiry, if it's constantly talked about, it's like these speech bubbles that are coming out from that academic plan. It's the action part of this static plan that you turn into your supervisor. You're turning in and all of a sudden, you know, speech bubbles begin to connect with one another, and that's how I see it working.
Speaker 4:I want to add something to that, because this is a perfect Mike-ism actually. So over the past few weeks we have been using together and then I've had some work that I've been doing alone as well. Mike created what's called the AWE Protocol and it's really just about because this goes back to the whole idea of intentionality and being practical. So often we hear leaders talk about their academic plans as if it's just going to go up into the cloud, right. And we've actually had experiences where we're working with leadership teams and the teachers on the team have never seen the academic plan, even though the principal put it together a few months before. Once again, nonjudgmental, although a little bit hard at those times. Once again nonjudgmental, although a little bit hard at those times. And one of the things that Mike created was this AW protocol and it really with a group virtually yesterday, actually in Hawaii, and they have spent so much time on their academic plans that I said I want you to use the ALT protocol.
Speaker 4:What are the things you agree with here and you don't agree with everything in your academic plan.
Speaker 4:Let's be honest, some of the things you feel like you're being forced to focus on, what are those things you wonder about, like you wonder how teachers are going to engage in this work.
Speaker 4:You wonder about you know how parents are going to react to this focus and then explore what are those things that are within the academic plan that you do control, that you're really excited to explore in the next year.
Speaker 4:Because, let's face it, if you're not excited to explore some things in your academic plan, we've got a problem. And I am telling you, after they did that, they started talking about oh my gosh, we have to be able to use this with our teachers. We can figure out a way to use this with our parent community, and it made their academic plan something they spent hours and hours on, to be this very practical document that no longer is just about what they're going to put on a shelf, but they're going to use it within conversations at their faculty meetings and their leadership team meetings and their parent nights. That's pretty awesome, and that's because Mike created this protocol, because he looked and said you know, I really want people to be able to look at their academic plan as a livable, workable document that they should be excited about, not something that they have to do, it's something that they do. So that's just one example of the intentionality that he has brought to the table around this whole idea of the cycle of inquiry and the academic plans as well.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately. I think it's about time we start wrapping up. It's such a shame. I've really enjoyed talking with you both. Before we go, we do ask our guests for a pare-down pointer, so it could be connected to things that you're already talking about or something else from your life or your work. Just a little tip for our listeners about something that helps us pair back and become a bit more intentional I'm going to give mike some pairing time, so I'm going to use the word pair.
Speaker 4:you know what? Collaborate find, uh, to me, find somebody that you can collaborate with. I've had a real luxury over the past 10 years of doing the work that I've been able to do around books and, you know, working with some pretty amazing people like John Hattie and Jenny Donahue. But it was also I was doing it alone too, right, I was running workshops and I was working and partnering with organizations, but not in the way that I've been able to do over the past few years, especially with what I started doing with Mike with the Instructional Leadership Network.
Speaker 4:But the past year and a half, just alone, from writing the book together, when you find a good partner and collaborator to work with, I kind of had the aha moment of going, oh, this is what this is supposed to feel like. So find somebody to collaborate with because it can truly and I don't want to embarrass them, but it can truly change so much about your perspective and about your inspiration to do the work. So I guess my pairing conversation would be when you're going to pair up with somebody, find a really good collaborator, because it can be life-changing. No pressure, mike, you don't have to tell me whatsoever, you can just skip right past it.
Speaker 5:Peter's been great to work with. As you can probably see in our relationship, it's pretty easy to work with somebody so brilliant and I often stand in awe. So the protocol's kind of named after him, I guess. So you know, I'm going to end with how's that, Peter? Was that good? Oh, it was perfect. Yeah, All right.
Speaker 3:It's recorded so you can re-listen.
Speaker 5:I'm going to end with my one of my. It is my favorite quote and um, the secret to success is to stay in love, and it's john stanford. He was a army general and then he was superintendent in seattle public schools and he just talked about keeping that inner fire in, in what you're passionate about going all the time. And when you have that, everything becomes easy. I don't know how else to describe it, but there's something that it doesn't mean. I don't know if that's a minimalist point of view, but it's just this. Just it becomes. You know, some hard stuff becomes easier. So secret to success is to stay in love, always, keep, ignite that passion. And for us it's education, student learning, staff learning.
Speaker 3:That's really insightful, I agree, because when you do love something, it doesn't feel like work. Then right, because you're like, is this actually what I do? This is my job. It doesn't feel like work. So, yeah, thank you for those pare down pointers and for a great conversation. It was really great to chat with you about things that we're very passionate about, so thanks for being with us today. Thanks for having us, thank you.
Speaker 2:This episode was brought to you by Instructional Leadership Collective. The mission of the Instructional Leadership Collective is to help educators develop their internal and external self-awareness as leaders, foster human interconnectedness and develop collective efficacy through ongoing professional learning, so they are inspired to be their best selves.
Speaker 1:Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for more episodes of the Minimalist Educator podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with them at PlanZPLS on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaia Moretti.
