Hi, everyone. Stay on the podcast. I'm talking with Doctor Don Parker who is a transformational keynote speaker and professional development provider. He specializes in SCL supporting teachers to build trusting relationships with students, restorative practices, trauma informed practices, and improving the culture and climate of schools to enhance students and teachers feeling of belonging. Doctor Parker is a former principal and served at Posen School in Posen Illinois where he improved the school climate, staff, collaboration, parent engagement and student achievement. Before that, he was the principal of Lincoln Avenue School A K A school in Dalton, Illinois, where he improved the culture, implemented a resilience program, managed the implementation of restorative justice and increased attendance at student achievement. Doctor Parker has a strong belief in creating a school in which the entire staff strives for excellence to meet the academic and social emotional needs of each student. He is presented throughout the US at distinguished educational conferences including A S CD. Every student succeeds Act conference, the National Principals Conference, Illinois Principals Conference, Oklahoma Secondary and Elementary Conference, the raising a student achievement conference, transforming school culture conference and the innovative school summit. Just to name a few Dr Barger is the author of the book Building Bridges, Engaging students at risk through the power of relationships and his newest be the driving force leading your school on the road to equity, which we'll talk about in just a moment.

Let's get to the episode, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor John Parker. Welcome to the Time for Teacher podcast. Thanks for having me, Lindsey. Good morning. Good morning. I am so excited for our conversation. I was just saying before we hit record, your book is excellent. I loved it. So I think there's so many things that you might wanna share your new book being. But I think a lot of times like I, I like to ask the question right off the bat, like what is important for listeners to know either about you or like something that you've been doing or thinking about lately that's gonna ground our conversation today?

Ok, great. All right, thank you. So, um I am, I am very passionate about working with students and working with teachers to help teachers become more trauma informed, that helps students with their social, emotional learning to teach students prosocial behaviors. And so teachers can, you know, touch the heart before they touch the brain. And so that's what my expertise is in. I've had experiences being a high school health teacher. And if you know anything about the health curriculum, it really teaches students how to make healthy choices, teaching them problem solving their skills, critical thinking skills, all those things that students need in order to be successful, not only in school, but also in life. And so that position transitioned me into being a dean of students where I was teaching students prosocial behaviors, doing a lot of authoritative counseling, building relationships with students. And that's what led me to this work now is helping other teachers be successful with those students who may have challenging behaviors. Oh, I love that. And actually, I don't mean to go into your book so soon, but I want to because it was so good.

One of the things that I did not know but makes so much sense having just been in schools was that one of the things that you decided to do was to use Mondays as like an extra relationship building time because often the researchers found that the trauma could spike in the weekends and I was like, yes, this makes so much sense. So let's make space for it. Absolutely. So, um, when I was the principal of my school, I noticed that we had students who had a lot of trauma and teachers were having a lot, a hard time. They said we want to build a relationship, but we don't have time to build relationships and we want to attend the students, social emotional learning, but you know, we don't have the time. So in order to make anything successful, you have to automate it and you have to sys systematize it. And so I just built a system where I worked with the uh president of our teachers union. I say, hey, look, this is what my teachers are asking for. I wanna do this at my school instead of having home room where it's only 15 minutes in the beginning of the day where teachers come in, take attendance and basically transition students to the next class I wanna build in an hour on Monday mornings.

So my teachers can have time to do social emotional learning activities and build relationships with students. So during that time, we did morning meetings, classroom circles and there was a time where teachers didn't have to feel rushed, they could really talk to the students find out what was going on in their lives, find out what kind of social academic support that they needed. And it really just set the tone for the rest of the week because there's a phrase that says you're gonna pay now or pay later. And so if we don't tend to these, our students social emotional learning needs, we're worried about this reference throughout the school day. It's like if we can settle them down at the beginning of the morning, you know, uh, give them what they need in order to be successful, give them the coping strategies that they need. It just helps the smooth day, the uh the school day go a lot smoother. I, yes, I love it. And I love that you use circles as the specific practice within that time. Just so much of what you said, like teachers not feeling rushed. Like so to be able to say like we have the the system or the structure built in a lot of times I hear from teachers that it's like, I don't have that system structure.

So now I have to sacrifice the content that I'm teaching or whatever, just squeeze it in and then I feel rushed and it's not really authentic. And like I just love that this was a school wide initiative to be like we're doing it. We're giving you the time here. It is right. You're right because everything has to be research based, evidence based. And what the research says is that Monday mornings are the most traumatic time for not only students but also teachers like teachers sometimes have a lot of anxiety coming to school on a Monday morning. This does give everyone the opportunity to just breathe, you know, and you know, just getting the right mind frame in order to have a good school day. I love that. And so yeah, like backing up a little bit because I think we just dove right in there with like a concrete thing that people could do as a takeaway for this episode. But I also want to know at kind of a larger scale. I love how Doctor Patina, love talks about freedom dreaming as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so I love thinking about schools and educational change and leadership in this way.

I'm wondering, and you've touched on it a bit, I think, but what is that big dream that you hold for education globally? Wow. You know, um it goes to the title of my book. So the title of the book is Be The Driving Force leading Your School on the Road to equity. I would just like equitable schools, equitable uh classrooms and just equitable opportunities for students so that students can get what they need in order to be successful. All right. So we're talking about funding, we're talking about curriculum, we're talking about experiences. All right, every student deserves a high quality education and I know it sounds pie in the sky, but that's really uh what would be my big dream for education and that we can provide each student with a quality education, support their social, emotional learning needs, and really truly help them reach their highest potential, such a simple but powerful and massively effective dream. I love it. So when we think about the path that that takes, I love, I love all of the the the big metaphor of cars that you use in your your latest book.

And so I think about, you know what that path looks like on the road to that dream for, for leaders, for schools, for districts, right? As, as they're kind of making all those changes and you, I mean, we could even just like read through your table of contents because it, it really lays it out right there for each of the sections. But what are the things that you think are, are most important or come first to mind when we think about kind of those stepping stones or those pieces to, to put in that path? Sure. OK. So we're familiar with the phrase that starts at the top and so be the driving force in your school on the road to equity is really a how to book for school leaders on how to promote equity and enhance equity in their schools. And so what I think is the most important is the chapter that I write when I talk about vision. And so, as you know, throughout the book, it's a metaphor that has to do with the car or have to do with driving. Uh and I tie that to a school leadership principle. And so when we talk about vision, when we talk about driving, ok. Um I used to teach driver's ed. I was a driver's ed and pe teacher.

And when we taught students how to drive, we would teach them to look further than just, you know, one or two cars ahead, we teach them to look as far down the road as you can. All right, you have to have vision in order to see far down the road and what we teach them is that it helps you to avoid hazards and it, it keeps you focused on where you're going. And so when it comes down to school leadership, uh school leaders have to have a robust vision and they have to not only have a vision but they have to have their school staff, students and community buy into the vision that they have for the school right now. We know as, as teachers and you know, even like uh student support personnel, how there's a lot of work that needs to be done and we're doing a lot of work. But leaders, yes, you have to do the work. But at the same time, we, we're paying you to think we're paying you to be a visionary. Like my boss used to tell me, Don, you're the CEO of this school. So we have to think about innovation. We have to think about the future. We have to establish the vision and then we have to influence all stakeholders in order to work towards that common vision that we have.

And so just like a driver has to have vision far down the road, a school leader has to have a vision that's far down the road of what you're trying to accomplish and what you want your school to be and then influence everybody to work towards that end. I, I love that and I, I particularly love, I think it's page 83 that there were examples you have like a whole table of like the equity based vision statements. And I love this because I cannot tell you how upset I get when I look at someone's website and they have like this really like ineffective equity statement. And I'm like, yeah, no, you're not, you're not doing that work like, and I just know right. And so it, it is so cool, I think for leaders to actually go in open the book to that table and just be like, hm, does our vision statement that we say is like ra ra equity actually effective. Does it dig in or is it just super surface level? And I, I just loved some of those examples that you shared because I was like, this is it. Thank you. I love it.

You're right because you know, when you have a vision statement that encompasses equity, uh it has to talk about what outcomes, all right are going to be accomplished as a result of that vision statement. So you may have a vision statement that may mention equity in it. However, the outcomes it was really determines equity, what results are we getting? Are we really accomplishing what it is that we're setting out to do and not just saying it absolutely. And I mean, some of them to really like one of them is like, do you mind if I like read the first word? So one of them is ineffective would be we strive to treat everyone equally, right? And so it's just like, oh man, like we're, we're gonna not even say we're going to do something, we're gonna say we're striving to do something. And then, but like also the thing that you're saying is like when it's effective, it's not just like treat everyone equally or even treat everyone equitably, but we're recognizing and addressing systemic inequities. So we're actually identifying the thing and um we're recognizing that they've created disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes for historically marginalized groups.

So you're saying, like, we're not just saying it surface level equity is good. We're saying we recognize and we're going to specifically identify in our community. This stuff is going on behind the scenes and we're committed to consistently digging it up identifying it and making that part of our equitable process, which I just love. Exactly because the, the thing is we can say a vision statement. But in order to really accomplish the vision, you have to do the work. So I have attached the work to what the vision is and telling people what you have to do in order to accomplish this. These are things you have to do. You have to really look at historically marginalized groups. How can we better serve these students? Right, uh inequitable policies, how can we change these policies so that they're not harming, you know, certain groups and then you have to do that work in order to accomplish whatever the vision vision is. So I attach that to the vision statement. So people know exactly what needs to be done in order to promote an advanced equity. I love it because you could just, you can be looking at a policy and say, well, does this do the thing that we say we're doing?

Right. And, and that was one of my favorite chapters is chapter seven where you talk about revising school policies and procedures. There's so much in there that I loved. I mean, just kind of high level, you talk a lot about student voices being central to the process of uncovering and digging into some of those policies and co creating or revising policies. You talk about restorative practices, you talk about A P enrollments, you talk about like what are the structures and mindsets and things that we have to work through to do that better and give everyone access like it was just amazing. And so I don't know if there are pieces that you want to talk more about here to kind of illuminate for listeners. But I, I just loved all of those pieces. Well, here's the thing, Liz. When we talk about equity, people are used to talking about the achievement gap and the opportunity gap. But some people don't even wanna discuss the acknowledgment gap where they don't want to even acknowledge that their inequitable practices or inequitable policies are things taking place that actually harm students. And so we have to look at the barriers, you know, that are in place that need to be removed and dismantled so that students really can't get that quality instruction and have opportunities.

And at first we have to acknowledge and say, you know, what um are we even recognizing, you know, how we are either promoting our students to be successful or how we are hindering their success? And once they acknowledge it, then you can start saying, OK, ask those deep questions of what do we need to do in order to make a more equitable school environment for all students and not just historically marginalized students, not just low income students, not just black and brown students, but all students. It's for everyone. We want to see every single student be successful. Yeah, I love that you included research in there too, right? That like white kids are massively benefiting from having like teachers who are a different race than them, of learning about diverse stories and histories and authors. Like it is beneficial to everyone like the end. Right. Like you're exactly right. 100%. And so I was talking to equity expert and they explained it like this. All right. Um There was some law where we had to make sidewalks accessible for handicapped people who had to use disabled people.

I should not say handicapped for disabled people who needed to be pushed around in wheelchairs or roll themselves in wheelchairs. And so you know how they had the curb, but now they have this ramp. And so they said now this was built for a person in a wheelchair, however, just think about a mom pushing a stroller and they could just easily push that stroller up. So it not only benefits the people who are disabled, but it benefits people on a larger scale. And so that's what equity work does the same. Um, the same, I guess what do you call it the same uh accommodations or modifications and variety of teaching skills that we're using to help students from a different group will also help the majority of students. So we're doing it for everyone. That is such a good example that you shared. And I, I also reminds me, I'm pretty sure, I don't know if this is a base of research, but I heard this from someone that uh texting came about because they were trying to create a support for people who are hearing impaired and couldn't use the phone like auditorily.

And it was like, now look at texting, like people, there are like young people who are like, refuse to call someone on the phone. I only text. That's a great analogy. You're exactly right. That's another perfect example. Lindsey. Look at you. Uh So there are so many different things in this book where you really, you really break it down for people. And I, I love that like, you know, there are surveys in there so people can just grab the book, take the survey, assess where they are and then figure out the next step for them. Is there anything else as people kind of think about going through the the pieces of this book or how to engage with the book that you would recommend for people kind of on a um process level of work through some of this stuff? One 100%. Yes. So, absolutely. Um when you read the book, look at the research that's included in the book, this this book is research rich. However, I understand how people need a more practical breakdown of the research and how can they actually put this research in action for themselves? And so what I do is I talk about what this looks like in the real world and I'll talk about my experience and uh doing these evidence based practices in order to promote equity in my school.

And then, uh, the book gives a survey where it asks you, ok. Well, how effective is your school at, you know, at XY or Z and promoting equity? But then beyond that, there's another section of each chapter that talks about action items where it gives them clear activities, clear actions that they can take to advance equity or to um, accomplish whatever topic there was in the chapter so that they can promote equity and equity practices in their schools. Hi, everyone. It's Lindsay, just popping in here to tell you about today's episode. Freebie, Dr Parker and I talk about all the resources and reproducible in his book. He is sharing one of them with you for free on leading equitable practices. You can grab it at the blog post for today's episode at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 53, fact, the episode, whatever you want to call it that you can actually use in action right now today. And, and I love it because it, it spans the whole range of like the person who is research minded. I'm thinking of a leader who's like, you know, kind of leading this team of individuals who have different affinities for like just give me the action right now versus I need to be convinced that this is even worth doing, right?

And I think individual leaders the same, right? Some leaders are gonna want the convincing of give me all the research and tell me why I need to read this chapter and then other people are like, oh, yeah, I'm familiar with the research or I don't need to be convinced. Like, give me the list where you're like writing in bullet points. Give me the reproducible survey and I'm going for it and, and you know what, why that's important is, is because when it comes down to change, whether it's organizational change, whether it's systems change, whether it's change in schools, ok. Uh But I've learned when we talk about managing change in schools, they say the first step, the very first step in promoting change is creating a sense of urgency. And so we have to state the problem and we have to show uh what the problem is and why that problem exists and we have to show if this problem continues, you know, how detrimental it can be to the school or the organization. So if we continue to, you know, go to school every day and you know, do school the way we've done in the past, right? And to sweep the problem under the rug, the problem is just gonna grow and when it comes down to school equity, what the problem is, the students are gonna have uh less sense of feeling of belonging, right?

You're not gonna get a quality of instruction. And if you can, if you just imagine if you forecast about 5, 1020 years. If, if students don't like school, if teachers aren't enjoying teaching the curriculum and, and uh attending to students, social emotional learning needs, then imagine what school will look like 10 or 20 years down the line. OK. We have to have a sense of urgency in order to not convince influence but have teachers to buy in and say this is the right thing that we need to do for our students, staff and community. Absolutely. And I, I often think about like the structures like you were talking about systematizing things and I think if you have those structures and, and it's systematic, like when we, you know, regularly review our policy, we include student and family voices, right? Or like whatever the pieces are. And it's like if this is just the way we do things then like those systems and structures aren't just for this year's policy that we're reviewing or whatever it's for every succeeding policy we review.

And so you're really kind of laying a foundation for doing this work more smoothly, more quickly, more efficiently, later and more equitably, right. You're exactly right because like you said, it's ongoing and becomes part of our process. And it's just, you know, the thing that, that, that we do where that isn't hard anymore because it comes so naturally to us now. Absolutely. And, and so one of the things that I think is there's two kind of questions, I, I wonder if they kind of will have the same answer. I'm not sure, but I'll, I'll pose them both to you and you can choose which one or both if you want to answer them. One thing I'm wondering, especially with equity work is like, is there a mindset shift that you have seen kind of unlock action or um uh the new way of thinking really like moves the path forward more quickly with that sense of urgency or something. So one question is about the mindset shift, is there a mindset shift that you've seen be effective for leaders in this work or two? Is there like a big challenge that you've seen districts face, you faced as a leader, you know, a team has faced and, and you would recommend like a way to like get through or move through that challenge.

So yes, it's absolutely a mindset. So when we talk about the New Year and people setting goals that they want to accomplish, whether it's fitness goals, professional goals, personal goals, all right, whatever it is, you have to make the decision that this is exactly what I'm going to accomplish this year. And it has to be a mindset because uh Oprah has a quote that says you should create the highest vision for yourself because uh what you believe is what you become. Ok. So it all starts with how you think, what you uh think in your head and what you believe in your heart. All right. So a perfect example would be my wife. She loves running marathons. Ok. I hate long distance running. I love weight training. Right. And so my wife one year asked me if I would run a marathon with, but for all my life I never like, really, I never liked doing long distance running. Even when I was a high school pe student, we had to do the mile run. I would always come in last place because I would get tired. It's just, I'm just not good at long distance running.

However, I'm really good and I learned this when I was a pe major when I studied kinesiology is that some people genetically have what you call, um, quick fire muscles. All right. And some people have what they call like long distance muscles where the body is just built where they have slow twitch muscles. All right. So we have fast twitch muscles and slow twitch muscles. And I just imagine that I have fast twitch muscles because when it comes to birth to speed or just like, you know, high power reps, I'm good at that. So I told my wife, you know, what if I had to go to increase my bench press by £50? Like I will, I believe I, I would do that. I would be enthusiastic about it. I'll be energized to do it because I believe I could do it when it comes to long distance running. I don't believe that I could do it because, you know, and then we was, when it's time for us to train, you know, I would have a bad attitude, you know, I wouldn't be enthusiastic about it and I would just pull you down. All right. And so the bottom line is all right, our actions, all our beliefs dictate our actions.

Right. So when it comes to mindset, if we don't believe that we can accomplish something, if we don't believe it's important, we're not gonna work hard towards it. But if we believe that we can accomplish it and we adopt the mindset that this is something that we can do, then we're going to do it. And so think about it, if I said I was gonna do equity work, but I really didn't believe in equity and I really didn't believe that I have to take in order to influence my staff and my community that this is what needs to be done. Then when I step into my school every day, I'm just going through the motions and here's the harm in that Lindsey if I'm a school leader and I step into the building and I'm just going through the motions, then imagine what would my staff community and students do? They would step into the school just going through the motions. However, if I really believe in this, then my actions are going to be dictated by my beliefs. And so I'm gonna work hard towards equity. I'm gonna uh influence my staff that this is what's going need to be done. They will see my actions and then they could follow. And so belief and mindset is so important because your actions are dictated by your beliefs, uh what you think in your mind and what you believe in your heart.

I love that response. And I was, I was smiling because you're literally describing the dynamic between you and your wife. The same conversation happened like a year ago. I'm a marathon runner. My partner is a Kines theist and he is way into weight training and not long distance running. And literally, I don't know what it was about the last year, but he like did some long distance writing and he was like, you know what I'm gonna do it did, it loved it. Now he wants to do a half iron man. And I'm like, this is your future there. It is his mindset switch, right? And that's what has to happen, that mindset switch because people, they're either whether they're aware of it or unaware. What really happens. What the bottom line comes to is that your mindset dictates your act? Absolutely. And I'm wondering, do you think that is the biggest challenge that that people have with this work is just like right off the bat, just not believing in it, believing that they could be effective in doing the work. And so they just don't even kind of get to the second step of the process. But think about it. Yeah, because if you looked at a task and it was so overwhelming, right, then you're gonna procrastinate.

Are you're gonna come up with every excuse as why not to do it? OK? But winners when they look at challenges, they look at it as opportunities for growth and they look at it as these are things that I can do in order to improve. And so they take that challenge on because they know the importance of doing the work and they know what the outcome would be. And so a winner isn't um discouraged by the problem, they're motivated by the result. And so that's what school leaders, teachers, community members, they have to be motivated by the end result as opposed to being defeated by that challenge. I love that so much. And I think about your book and the way that it's laid out and the case studies that you kind of share of just like, here's what my experience was and here's the result that we got. I just sometimes I think that leadership can be so isolating, right? If you're just in your own space and you don't, especially if you're in a like a smaller district, there's not as many people doing the same work as you or something, you might not be in a PLC with like other leaders or principals or whatever it can be really hard to know what is possible unless you pick up a book and see this person did this, this was the context, this is the action subs they took, this is the result.

And then that can even if you've never met the person, right? Just reading about them or listen to a podcast about something like can give you then the picture of what is possible and then allow you to be motivated, I think through that, which is 100% 100%. And what you're describing is called vicarious learning. And so where we may feel like it's not possible for ourselves, but then once we see somebody else have done it now, we can say, hey, you know what he did this or this person accomplished this, I can accomplish this too. It's like the person who first run a marathon, who would you a marathon runner who would think that it's possible that you can run 26.2 miles. And then they found that uh I forgot the person's name who broke the uh what was it? The six minute mile and then the four minute mile. They're like, wow, this is possible to do. And so when we can sometimes do experience vicarious learning, we can say, ok, this is a huge challenge. We know that it would be a huge undertaking yet we can be inspired because we've seen that this has been done. And so it's a process and So, since we're talking about the workout analogy and getting in shape, we know that you can't just go to the gym once and get in shape.

All right, we understand that it's a process. And so what we know about getting in shape that it's comes down to consistency and it's setting that vision of what our goals are. And so it's the same thing with the school, what school leaders need to do is sit down with their staff and community and write out what are three or four important goals. And now we have to think about what is the work that has to be done in order to achieve this goal. And now we're gonna step into our schools and to our school districts and we're going to just consistently work on achieving this goal. And next thing, you know, like I said, it's a process, it's not gonna happen overnight, but a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, we could be proud that we accomplished the goal. Excellent. I think we've talked about so many different things that I'm wondering as a, as kind of like a final call to action or action step. What is the starting point for someone listening to this episode and then saying like, OK, I'm, I'm going to start, I want to do one thing, start building that momentum like that first trip in the gym that usually happens around new Year.

So like that went well. I'm doing another one. What does that first action step look like? Or could it look like for a listener? OK. So it can, it can look like going to talk to a student and then say, OK, that's what empathy is, is putting myself in someone else's shoes and learning uh what their experience is and just asking students who may be from a historically marginalized group, who may be LGBT Q plus, right? Who may be low income or just AAA struggling learner? And just asking them, what are some of the things that we can do to better support you academic? What are some of the things that we can do to better support you socially and emotionally? OK. And ask them what has, what has your experience been in this school? And how could we make it better? OK. And then just, just taking notes, writing down some of the things the student says and they're taking it back to a committee, you, you can establish an equity committee and say this is what we're learning from our students experience. OK. And so what can we do in order to create a more um environment that supports student success and start there and then have your goals drafted because each school is going to be different that each, each um school district has its own unique set of challenges that schools leaders can do in order to uh overcome.

So that's one place I was, I was start. It's simple. It's practical and everyone can do it. Anyone can do. Yeah. As soon as you're done with the episode, walk down the hallway, find a student, right? Or you can find groups of students and survey them through the same questions and then uh take that data and say, OK, what are the themes that we're seeing here? Ok. What are, what are the things that continue to come up? And so these are obvious issues that we know that we need to address and then they can pick up a, a copy of Beta Driving Force and they could find that issue in my book, whether it's policies, whether it's uh you know, something that has to do with uh school vision admission statement, whether it's something that has to do with uh curriculum, whatever it is and they can look for that in the book. And they could say, OK, here's some, some solid action items that we can take in order to achieve our goal. I love that reminder because people aren't just like, you know, getting, collecting the information, learning about the challenges and the experiences of students and not knowing where to go next. There are several ideas of where to go next in your book. So excellent point.

And I think to, to wrap up and you're kind of leading us down that way. I think this is a perfect opportunity for our close two questions. I usually ask people. So, so the first one is something that you've been learning about. So we talk a lot on the show about like, how we're helping people learn on this, in this conversation for people who are listening. What is something that you have been learning about? And it could literally be anything does not have to relate to education? Ok. Well, you know, I am gonna relate to education because it's just so uh poignant for the time that we're in right now. All right. So I started my career in 1997 as a pe a health teacher. And I love that job. I love the school where I got hired in because you could walk from one end of the hall to the next end of the hall and you can hear about six or seven different languages. The school was so diverse and I love that. So I was a pe teacher for like five years before I became a dina students. And when I became a dina students, I worked in an all black school. And then when I became an assistant principal again, I moved to a school where it's an all black school. And my first principal job was in an all black school.

But my second principal job was in a school that was 70% Hispanic and 30% black title, one low income school. And so I had to learn more about the uh Hispanic culture and how I can accommodate them and build equity for them. So they have a sense of belonging. And even now when we talk about, you know, immigration in the United States and how many diverse students that we're getting? Ok. So I'm learning more and more about different cultures about how they learn about uh how they do things. And so what is teaching me is teaching me to be more informed about uh how to better accommodate these students in these student groups so that I can, you know, support their education in a way that they see it as support in a way that helps them that accelerates their learning. I love that answer. Thank you for sharing that. And I think the last question is just where can people get in touch with you? I think people are going to want you to read your book, learn from you, continue the journey with you. So is there social media website anything like that where they can 100%?

So my website is Dr Don parker.com. That's my website and you can email me at Doctor Don Parker at Dr Don parker.com and they can follow me on Twitter at Doctor Don Parker one. And so I keep it simple. So as long as you know me, you can find me as long as you know my name, you can find me beautiful. Thank you so much, Doctor Parker. This is a great conversation. Thanks for coming. On the show. Thank you, Lindsay. I appreciate it. I love your energy. I love your enthusiasm and I love how you want to just uh share great tips and things that your listeners can do to become better educators to create a better experience for teachers and students. Thank you. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapir and Jamila Dugan, talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm.

How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network. Better today. Better tomorrow. And the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.