The Minimalist Educator Podcast
A podcast about paring down to focus on the purpose and priorities in our roles.
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 093: Reaching Kids Beyond The Box With Pete Hall
The school year can feel like a rolling storm of demands—new curricula, behavior challenges, data deadlines, and the quiet fear that there’s never enough time. We sit down with Pete Hall to cut through the noise with a minimalist mindset: do fewer things, done better, on purpose. Pete shares how a single “so help me” goal can anchor your choices, reduce cognitive overload, and turn urgency into clarity. Instead of glorifying grind, we talk about building resilience through shared responsibility—leaders who create space to practice and reflect, and teachers who align their attention with what matters most.
We dig into the power of strong core instruction and thoughtful innovation at the edges, especially for kids who don’t fit the traditional box. Pete previews ideas from his forthcoming book on reaching and teaching disengaged learners, outlining five root causes of disengagement and practical ways to wipe assumptions clean, identify strengths, and design targeted supports. The conversation reframes success beyond test scores, urging us to see kids as kids first and students second, and to celebrate the talents that school often overlooks.
Along the way, we get concrete: how to protect deep work by shutting off distractions, how to sequence change without overwhelm, and how to partner with families to pursue the real outcome—capable, caring, curious humans who contribute to their communities. If you’ve felt spread thin or pressured to do it all, this is a focused, humane blueprint for sustainable teaching and leadership. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your “so help me” goal so others can learn from your focus.
This episode is sponsored by Education Hall - Where leadership and learning connect.
Find our book The Minimalist Teacher and Your School Leadership Edit: A Minimalist Approach to Rethinking Your School's Ecosystem at the links!
Follow on Instagram @PlanZEducation and @minimalist_ed_podcast.
The Minimalist Educator Podcast is a Plan Z Education Services adventure.
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, where the focus is on a less is more approach to education. Join your hosts, Christine Arnold and Tammy Musiowski, authors of The Minimalist Teacher and your school's leadership edit, a minimalist approach to rethinking your school ecosystem, each week as they explore practical ways to simplify your work, sharpen your focus, and amplify what matters most so you can teach and lead with greater clarity, purpose, and joy.
SPEAKER_02:On this week's episode, we are joined by Pete Hall. He talks to us about his new book, all about reaching and teaching kids who don't fit in the box. His peer-down pointer is taken from Plato's wisdom, Know Yourself. Pete is a former teacher and principal, and he's the author of 14 books that have sold nearly one million copies worldwide. He now serves as president and CEO of Education Hall, a company dedicated to empowering educators and improving education systems. Pete speaks, provides professional development, and coaches leaders. His 15th book, Reaching and Teaching Kids Who Don't Fit in the Box, is expected in summer 2026. He and his wife live in Kir d'Alen, Idaho.
SPEAKER_03:Welcome to the show, Pete.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Tammy. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the word prolific. It is right. That's a fun word to use. And I appreciate that you used it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, you've done a lot of writing and it's reached all of your writing has reached a lot of people, which is what's needed, especially right now. We're still in this. I don't even know if it's a phase of education anymore. It's just like the the landscape of education is just really tough. And so building resilience is a skill that we all need to participate in. And it takes a lot of work. So before we get into that work, can you let us just give us kind of your background and like how you came to this idea that you really wanted to focus on resilience?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Well, I can tell you that first of all, going back to being prolific as a writer, that pretty much just means I I don't have a day job because no one can write as much as I write if you're going to work every day. So I was an early retiree. One of the, you know, the thing about getting into resilience is exactly what you said is this is a hard time in education. And really, honestly, it doesn't matter when you're listening to this or watching this. It's a hard time in education. This could have been 25 years ago. And I would say the same thing. It's a hard time in education. Education is not an easy field to be in. It's not, it's not a nine to five, it's not a clock in, do you work, clock out kind of business. So we as professionals need to have resilience. We need to have that strength and that endurance and that ability to, you know, withstand the stressors because there will always be stressors. So I got into this work knowing that it's hard and wanting to support people and being able to be at their best. And I was fortunate enough in my travels to meet people who gave me tools and gave me strategies and gave me approaches and mindset shifts that allowed me to share some of that message with other folks, to find, you know, to share what works and to give people an opportunity to process their own strategies and their own approaches as well.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. And thanks for pointing out about it's it's hard to work full-time and write. That makes me feel better about the fact that we only have two books and not many more. But, you know, what you were saying there about wanting to make things a bit better for our colleagues in education, that really resonates with us because that's so much of what Tammy and I are doing is talking to people and picking up ideas and strategies about yeah, how can we make this a sustainable profession to be in and something that can continue to bring you joy year after year as you work in the in the profession? So, in that sort of mindset, what sort of connections do you have to your work with the ideas or the strategies of minimalism and and really focusing on priorities?
SPEAKER_00:You know, that is the question because one of the things, and you know this better than anybody, is our profession is so laden with research and strategies and ideas and approaches. And even, you know, the great speaking of prolific, John Hattie's research, he's he would say everything works, right? In the right circumstance, in the right context, utilized in the right way, it'll work. There's nothing that works for everybody. So what we have to figure out is what, and I and I just love this term simplexity that Michael Fullen coined all those years ago, is this idea of do the things that make the biggest difference, right? Start with the practices that have the greatest impact, and then is when we start being creative. And it's a I think it's a kind of a funny thing because we try so hard in education to be innovative and creative. And I think there's a there's a certain avenue for that, and there's a there's a right time to be creative and innovative. And there's also so many tried and true practices that work in like your your core instruction, your your classical providing of information to a lot of people that works for a lot of folks, and then we get creative on the sides as opposed to trying to be creative from the get-go. And I think that's one of the things that that gets us sideways in education is we're trying to do all these different things all the time. And everybody's trying to do everything, and then nothing gets done well.
SPEAKER_03:That is a definite just working with a lot of new teachers this year and how they're so stretched with trying to learn a new curriculum and trying to manage behaviors and working with kids who come from challenging backgrounds and all of these things. And we're kind of at this point right now, you know, it's kind of like that typical roller coaster of a year. We're in this kind of disillusionment phase where it's like, man, this is really hard. I don't know if I can do it. I'm super overwhelmed by everything. And, you know, report cards are getting written and all of these things. And so when we think about at this time of year in particular, and people are getting sick too, right? We're getting germs or, you know, they're hitting people. What are some things, some things you would say to a new teacher to help them kind of build some of those resilience practices? Because we know it's like a muscle, right? We have to, we can't just be resilient. We have to practice it. So, you know, I'm working with these teachers and I'm, you know, being encouraging and, you know, all of these things, but sometimes like, I don't know what else to say because I feel like, you know, there's just it's a muscle you have to build.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And you know, part of that muscle needs to, you know, shared responsibility, the system needs to help build that muscle in folks.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So, I mean, and that's one of the biggest things about you know, the last five years or so is that we've put so much of the emphasis on individual resilience. Like you have to build your own resilience because everything is hard and it sucks and it's overwhelming. So you better figure it out. And that's a little much in addition to all the other stuff that we have going on that we have to take care of. So the system needs to share a little bit of that responsibility. So, and one of those, one of the things is not asking everyone to do everything perfectly immediately. This is such a funny profession that we never practice things. Like if you think about a like a football team or a volleyball team, or something, they practice and practice and practice before their first game or their first match. We almost never do that in in education. We we do provide PD, we tell folks how to do things better and we give them expectations, and then we're like, okay, go to the most high-stakes environment you could possibly think of, a room full of kids, and do it perfectly tomorrow or this afternoon, right? And that's that just adds to the stress. So part of this equation is the system understanding that teachers are in a different spot developmentally, and to a certain extent, we have to get our feet wet just doing stuff. Like the first go-through of things, we just have to do stuff. We have to muddle through it, we have to make our way through it. And it has to be okay sometimes if it's not perfect and it's not great, and it doesn't result in fantastic results, outcomes. Because if we simultaneously, this gets back to the idea of reflection that you touched on early, is if we give folks a method for processing what they're doing and how they're doing it, and give them the right questions to ask about, well, how could I do it differently? Then they can seek out the answers and strategies that help them to do a better job next time. And if we incrementally add and increase our the quality of our work, the outcomes will follow. So that's that's a system thing from an individual side, which is what your original question was. I mean, it it sounds a little overdone, but the idea of being really clear about why you're doing what you're doing and what you're actually trying to accomplish. So there's, and it, you know, I've seen them all the memes online that say if one more administrator tells me to remember why I'm doing it. Because the reality is the work doesn't change. Right? You've got this kid causing this trouble, and this kid's so far behind, and you got this parent yelling at you, and this administrator setting this, and your teacher down the hall is doing this, and your coffee machine doesn't work, and you haven't peed since August. I mean, you have all those things going on, no matter what, right? So if you can reframe in your own head the purpose behind it, the rationale for doing it. I I always like to come back to this quote from Mother Teresa wash the plate, not because you were told to wash it or because it is dirty, but because you love the person who will use it next. And I that really speaks to me because there's so many times in education that you have to do something that's it's drudgery, it's it's unpalatable. You you're not excited about it. You have to do it. And if you can remember why you're doing it, you can remember the impact that you can have as a result of doing it, you still do it. You just do it differently. The spirit in which you do it changes, which changes the end user's experience, which is the kid, the family, your colleague, your class, whatever. And that is a huge change, a huge shift in the way we go about it. Because you've all seen teachers and you've heard from teachers and and parents, and I'm a parent of kids who've gone through school that you can tell when teachers are just checking the boxes and going through the motions of just doing the job. And you can tell when the teachers are truly committed to changing outcomes for kids. And the work that those two teachers doing is fundamentally exactly the same. The way they do it is different because one of them is connected to a deeper purpose. And so, I mean, that is the number one strategy I would use to build resilience, is that. And I got a whole, I got a whole litany of them, but I don't think we have a three-hour podcast episode today.
SPEAKER_02:Unfortunately, no, no. What would what would you say to a teacher who really feels the urgency of, you know, I've only got one year with these kiddos, like I can't afford to take it slow and practice while I'm doing it and you know, really take my time with it. They feel that real extreme pressure of the weight of having a limited time with the kiddos to have an impact and see some growth and progression. How would you respond to them?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that comes back to the what you mentioned earlier, it's about priorities, right? So you can't have a hundred priorities. You can have one. You know, by definition, you've got one priority. You can tend to many things, you can really folk only focus on one thing at a time. So, what is the priority? And it's I I frame it for teachers that I've worked with, with the expression, so help me. Like, I may not get all these things taken care of, but so help me, my kids are gonna learn this. So help me, my kids are gonna develop this. So help me, we are gonna get to this point. And so if you kind of keep that, so like, what's the so help me? Like, what is the thing that no matter what, kids will walk out of here with? Is it self-confidence? Is it the ability to read? Is it some problem-solving skills? Is it the ability to collaborate? Can you identify the thing? And if you start with that and focus on that, and then start to weave all the instructional elements into it, or all the character building, or all the resilience, you you start weaving those other bits into the one so help me. I think you'll find that folks will feel accomplished at the end of the year. They'll feel confident, they'll feel equipped to take it on for another year. And because you can only focus on one thing at a time, you have to identify what is that focus that so helped me, my kids are gonna get this.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. We talk about that so much, and we use different strategies to help people see that, you know, like if you're using a diamond ranking strategy, you can only have one important thing at the top, and that's it. So, you know, but it feels so hard. But when we come down to it, yeah, we can only really focus on that one thing and do it well. Otherwise, everything is just, you know, it it's not quality. I'm thinking that one of your so help me's is the work that you do to reach students. So you've got a new book out that kind of focuses on kids who don't fit in the box, right? And so can you talk to us a little bit about what that means for teachers and how you talked about creativity, right? So this sounds like a creative lens for teachers to take when we're trying to reach students that sometimes, you know, we know that they're struggling, whether it's socially or emotionally or academically. And we feel like, what else? What do I do? I feel like I've done everything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, and this has been a real passion project for me to work on this. And and I was asked to kind of encapsulate the biggest messages I could probably possibly share in one resource. So I'm really excited about this because there are a ton of kids that are struggling. There are a ton of kids that are having a hard time. And the reality is they're going to grow up and they're gonna turn 18, they're gonna turn 21, they're gonna go out into the our communities. So the question is, what do we want them to be like when they they exit school and enter the communities? And so often in school, we are so focused on academic outcomes and the state test, the the national test, whatever. And that becomes the sole focus and our sole point. And it's not the point, right? It was designed to be a metric to determine, well, how well are we doing, preparing kids to be great citizens and great neighbors. And I like to think of this in terms of the kids that are in our schools today are gonna sometime at some point grow up. They're gonna be the ones that change our tires, they're gonna be the ones that change the valves and our hearts, they're gonna be the ones that change our diapers in the nursing home. So we want them to be great human beings, right? We want them to be equipped to be fabulous neighbors and friends and community members. That's a much broader goal than the limit of academic success. So when we talk about, and you mentioned the so the working title of my book that's coming out is called Reaching and Teaching Kids That Don't Fit in the Box. And there are a lot of kids that don't fit in the box. And we all know that there's a box, right? Like you come to school and you can do this, you're gonna be just fine. And if you can't, we're gonna try to cram you back into that somehow and fix you. And the reality is you got a lot of kids that are outside that box that are still amazing and talented and have passions and have interests and are going to do great things in their world, they may not ever pass the standardized test. And that has to be okay with us. When what happens is we've got kids that are outside that box that don't pass the standardized test and still have these passions and interests and strengths. And instead of leaving the school understanding themselves and their passions and their interests and their strengths, they leave school feeling like a failure and feeling like an outcast and feeling like they haven't done it well enough. And the shine on those skills and strengths and passions has been diminished, right? It's been dulled a little bit. And so they're less likely to become great community members and neighbors for us. So what we want to do is we want to enhance and identify and recognize and celebrate what those things are to put our kids in a position to be successful in school and for the rest of their lives. You'll notice the the work and title of the book isn't just reaching kids who don't fit in the box. It's reaching and teaching kids who don't fit in the box. So the whole idea is can we be, and this is where the creativity comes in. We'll teach a solid box, right? Like our core instruction, the things that we do for most kids is going to be great. And that's one of the things that I address in here is one of the things we need to do as a profession is just teach better. Like our core instruction just needs to be streamlined and solid. Then we can say, okay, so we got other kids that are struggling outside. What is it about them that is amazing? What is it about them that is incredible? And why are they struggling? Like what's happening? What's going on? And so what I've done in this book, just to kind of wrap this up, is I've identified through all the research that's out there, the the five reasons that kids disengage or drop out of eventually drop out of school. And then we've identified them. We go through a process of cleaning our wiping our slate, right? So taking all the predisposed notions that we have, the assessments that we make, the prejudices, whatever they are, get them out of there and say, what's actually going on? And then when we come back and say, okay, so in order to address that, here's a handful of strategies. And this book is just full of tools and protocols and templates to help educators do that. It's it's basically a giant intervention book, but it's it's all about creating systems and practices that help every kid feel successful and be successful in school and beyond. That was a lot.
SPEAKER_02:That was that was very cool. That was very cool.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so excited. I'm so excited about it. I mean, it's a fabulous, fabulous resource, and I'm so excited to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's so true, though, you know, the amount of times I've been present at some extracurricular activity. And, you know, that kid that we've had all these, you know, almost crisis meetings about, we're just looking at the deficits, the gaps, what do we need to work on? And then you see. them in this completely different setting and you're like, wow, you're a star, like you're you're so talented in all these other, these other areas. It's not just about where we need to help you catch up on. It's it's also about, you know, really tapping in and giving them the chance to shine in those other ways.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And I think we probably all have like if if I were to ask you and all your listeners to say, go back through the annals of your education history and your career. Can you think of kids that struggled in school but were awesome kids and had these amazing skills and did fantastic things with their lives? And we all can, right? And the question becomes why does it have to be so abnormal? Like couldn't that just be part of what we're trying to do in our education system is uplift kids so that they're incredible adults. I mean I that makes it sound super easy, right? And really simple like, oh yeah, just do that. The reality is it's really hard and it's complex and it's tricky to do that. And I think a lot of us aren't even thinking to try to do that. So one of the one of the reasons that I'm invested in this project is I want to help shape the way that we think about kids that don't fit in the box. And instead of thinking them as oh they've they've got all these deficits and they're so far behind, we think of them in terms of oh what amazing things this kid can can and will do with the proper support.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah and and you mentioned like it sounds simple because it kind of is in a sense but when we're trying to change a system it's not no but as a teacher in a classroom or even an instructional coach or anybody who has who works directly with kids we can all just change the way we think about our approach with kids right so like okay yes they might not be reading grade level books right now but I do know that they can do this other thing really well. And so if we all have that mindset that helps the shift.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely so you kind of have echoed what I've said a couple times because I've been talking about kids a lot of talk about kids. I really try to not use the word student in this book. So this is a book for educators. And as educators we look at our kids and we think well they're my students right because that's where we how we typically see them. Let's do the math real quick. So think about how many hours a kid is alive from birth to age 18. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 hours, right? Is that right? 15,000 day 150 I I've done the math but I don't have it in front of me. We're just going to go with percentages anyway. So the number of hours a kid is alive from birth to age 18. And then let's assume perfect attendance in kindergarten through grade 12, six hours a day times 180 days times 13 years. Right? That's a little less than 9% of the kids life up until age 18. 9%. And so we think of childhood as being this overwhelming focus on school like you're always at school. We go to school all the time and I understand there's a huge chunk of time kids are asleep. But there the reality is though it's a tiny percentage of the kids' life that is actually spent at school from birth to age 18. So I think kids are first and foremost kids. And then students is a portion of their lives. So we need to focus on raising and developing healthy and and happy and excitable and incredible and curious kids as opposed to just focusing on how are you as a student because I think that's a really limiting mindset. So in the book I use the term I use the word kids all the time and I very infrequently use the word students unless it is specific to the classroom setting.
SPEAKER_02:I like that that's a good mindset shift I think is to remember that that they are young people first and foremost not just their only identity being as students in a school for sure. Absolutely yeah have you come across like parent communities that sort of struggle with that shifting of priorities or de-emphasis on the academics at all?
SPEAKER_00:That struggle with that? Absolutely there's you know that that's a you know for generations we've been raised and reared to believe that you know we have class rankings. I mean so and we prioritize that we have you know awards for kids that are on the honor roll and there's all sorts of grade inflation. I mean my kids went through school and there was extra credit if you brought the teacher whiteboard markers. Like how does that have anything to do with their grades and that's going to affect their class ranking that's going to affect their GPA that's going to affect what college they get into whether or not their parents could afford to buy whiteboard markers to bring anyway there's so many bizarre things that happen out there in the education system that we forget what we're really trying to do. So yes there's there's a premium on academic achievement and certain certain populations just thrive off of that and certain individuals and families will thrive off of that and will push their kids and of course they will and there are others that say hey I want my kid to be a well-rounded incredible kid. Academics are going to be fine and that okay and what we need to do is figure out in with partnership with families and partnership with our communities what do we really want? What are we trying to build? And I think that's that's the question that has to drive everything that we do is what are we really trying to accomplish here in education?
SPEAKER_03:So powerful Pete and it it is complex. It's a complex system to work in we sadly have to wrap up our show with you. I figured no I mean we get talking with people and we're like man how has our half an hour gone already but if there you've said a lot of things that could become what we ask our guests to kind of pin down a pear-down pointer just like one strategy and it could be from your personal life it could be something that you do professionally it could be anything that you think do this if you just really want to focus on this what would you offer our listeners as your pear-down pointer you know there's so many different things that I could probably say right now.
SPEAKER_00:I'm going to go back to the big idea of so help me like are you clear about what the actual goal is I think that's that's got to be the starting point is what is the actual goal. And then when it comes to really being able to focus yourself you know in the wise words of Plato know thyself right so you've you have to you have to know what you're trying to accomplish and then what works best for you. So one of the things that works best for me is if I really have to work on something and you mentioned I'm a prolific writer if I'm working on some writing that I have to do I have to shut everything else off. Like I have to and you know Christine you'd mentioned before you don't feel bad anymore that you got a full-time job and you got two books. That is fantastic really that really is our my first book I wrote I would journal throughout the course of my school school year and then I published a book called The First Year Principal I don't advise anybody goes back and reads that you don't have to my second book though Building Teacher Capacity for success that was about instructional coaching and leadership was was done at from 1 a.m till 3 a.m in the morning four nights a week for about a year right so and I had a co-author in that we would be on the phone in the middle of the night talking through all the different stuff we were doing. The the point being you have to shut I have to shut everything else off in order to be able so phone put away notifications turned off shut my email completely off my my computer focus on the thing you got in front of you right and I actually learned that lesson as a principal sitting sitting in my office working on my computer and a teacher came into my office and knocked on the door hey hey Pete you got a second and I'm I'm typing yeah I the person's behind me I'm typing I'm like yeah go ahead what's up and she she doesn't make any sound at all and I type type type type type type and I looked over and she's still there and I'm like what do you need tell me type type type type and she's silent and eventually I stopped typing I turned around and she said oh now that now that I have your attention we can talk and it was such a powerful moment for me I'm like oh thank you for you know doing that in a respectful way you could have said hey Pete you bleep bleep beep turn around but she did it so respectfully and it was a powerful lesson. If you're going to do something do that thing that would be my piece of advice identify what it is you're doing and then do it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah thank you so much for that I needed to hear that in this moment in time so many things going on for your for your conversation today Pete we've got all your links they'll be in the show notes so people can check out your writing and your new book that's coming out thank you for being with us.
SPEAKER_00:It's my pleasure thanks for having me I hope you have a beautiful day.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you you too this episode was sponsored by Education Hall. Education Hall partners with schools and educators around the world to strengthen leadership, instructional coaching and professional learning in meaningful practical ways. If you're looking for thoughtful research based support that actually works in real schools visit educationhall.com to learn more.
SPEAKER_01:If today's episode helped you rethink reimagine reduce or realign something in your practice share it in a comment or with a colleague. For resources and updates visit planzed com and subscribe to receive weekly emails. Until next time keep it simple and stay intentional
