this was such a fun episode to record. I have chris and Alison here. Chris Chatterton has been serving as assistant superintendent for Boyd I. S. D. In Boyd texas since january 2020. He also invited a principal in his district district Allison Adcock to come on with us so it's two guests that I got to interview. So exciting a little bit about chris. He grew up in Farmington Iowa Irving in Keller texas and completed an undergraduate degree in psychology at Abilene christian University. After a 14 year career in student and worship ministry, public speaking and starting churches in 2011, chris began working for Burlington I. S. D. In Burleson texas as 1/4 and fifth grade math and reading special education teacher at jw Norwood elementary School here in the Master of Education degree in Educational leadership and policy studies from the University of texas. At Arlington was promoted into administration in Berlin and I. S. D. Where he served as academic associate principal at centennial high school and academic associate principal and principal at middle school, currently pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership at texas Tech University with an expected graduation date of May 2020.

For chris's passion about leading empowerment organizations designing innovative instructional systems and accomplishing both in the context of meaningful team oriented relationships. He has been featured on the teach better, aspire, lead teachers on fire and many voices of great podcasts. Furthermore, he was the parody writer and voice of Burlington I. S. D. S school year. Launch videos from 2016 to 2019 business like Heidi celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on july 25th 2022. They have five Children. Tori is 21. Ryan is 15 Hudson who's 12 ava. Grace is 10 and sam seven. They live in Boyd texas, their two dogs, two cats, two snakes and one goat. That is a fun family. Thank you chris for that introduction that you've shared with us. That is amazing. Allison, I'm going to share a little bit about Next. Alison is headed into her ninth year in education. Previously serving special populations through special education and student services. Allison is embarking on her second year in leadership as a middle school principal in Boyd America and she strives to bring community and culture to a campus through strategic planning, vision and innovation.

Let's get ready to hear from chris and Alison, This certainly is an amazing guest duo. I'm educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for teacher ship 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 nursing out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Alison and chris. Welcome to the time for teacher ship podcast, awesome Lindsay. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having us of course. So I'd first like to name that. I read your professional bios, but is there anything else that you just want to share with listeners to kind of kick off the episode, get them to know a little bit about you?

Well, um, I'm just excited to be a part of today. Um, as far as getting to know me. Um, I do have, um, you know, 13 years of marriage under my belt, two kiddos that are in the school system right now and I'm just excited to be here. Thank you Lindsey That is super impressive Allison. Um, you know, I've got 1/7 grade boy and 1/10 grade boy that are doing offseason football workouts, uh, this summer in the heat and for some odd reason I have allowed them to talk me into doing the same. So I have found myself either in the weight room, which has been an adventure because I'm pretty sure I was their age the last time I lifted weights because let's be honest, weights are heavy and I've also, when it gets too hot to find myself on the basketball court and my knees aren't quite what they used to be, but spending time with with my three boys because I've got an eight year old boy as well and then a 21 year old daughter working on a degree at texas tech to become a teacher and a 10 year old daughter as well. And then my wife and I will celebrate wedding anniversary on monday.

Super impressed by your, your family accomplishments here. And as a new parent myself, my kid is turning five months on saturday as of this recording. So I am very much looking forward to being as successful as you all are as parents. That's awesome. My knees and my hamstrings say otherwise. So let's talk a little bit about the amazing work that you're doing in the vision that you have for your district. So I think the, one of my favorite quotes of all educational, anything is dr Bettina love talking about freedom dreaming. She says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so with that context in mind, what is your big dream for your district for curriculum and instruction? Um you know, I'm going to come right back at you with a quote Lindsay um because I think from a district standpoint, um, I could definitely answer that question. However, I'm gonna give you a quote from a book called the superintendent's field book that says, it goes without saying that you must develop your school's principles, you will succeed or fail as a leader based on the quality of the leaders that you put in place in schools.

Good schools require good principles, The role of today's principle may have changed even more than yours and today's principle must be a hands on leader of learning. Uh So in light of that quote and your question I'm going to defer to Alison on that specifically to her campus context because she is uh not just responsible for but excitedly entering into vision development and casting for two schools uh and unifying those two schools under the leadership of herself and her assistant principal. So um Alison, how would you respond to that? Yeah, so thank you chris. Um so like he kind of said we are rolling into next year with two campuses are intermediate middle school campus, obviously we have our district standpoint for what curriculum instruction means but I think as a new principal and setting some foundation work for our campuses here curriculum instruction is going to be a massive under taking, we've done some really good work with Mr chapman and his crew the last couple of years but moving forward really curriculum instruction is going to be um at the fourth of of everything that we're doing.

So it's really taking our instructional coach, utilizing different people in different ways to create this cohesive bond of what we can do do when we have a good understanding of curriculum instruction and how our students can achieve when they understand what they're supposed to be doing. So it's really taking that big that step back, looking at the big picture of how how are we, you know, ensuring that our students are receiving the right curriculum instruction, how do we know that we're teaching at the right trigger and what are we doing to feel that those intervention gaps and and obviously with anything in education, what what are we doing to ensure that all students are learning? I would I would say from the district standpoint, I'm going into year three now in our current district and we've taken a vision approach of creating engaging learning. So creating, has really focused on Takes learning targets, success criteria. Um do we, do we know our learning standards? Do we know the verbs in our learning standards? Do we know the actions in our learning standards?

And and do we know what mastery demonstration looks like? And that was that was primarily the focus across the district of year one. Along with that our curriculum coordinators created uh documents where, you know, they were breaking takes apart, they were showing examples of what the verb might look like, showing examples of what the actions might look like and how to design instruction that aligns to the learning standards as we moved in the year two, then we we began to focus on assessment and so were we were in a context where assessing um at the the level of yes, the state assessment, but but also at the level of the verbs was was a little bit of a new concept and so we threw the curriculum coordinators created unit assessments for math and reading courses and then utilize that to model assessment creation for for teachers. So year two was really the the year of assessment, some of which was some motive, some of which was formative. Now as we enter into year three we're we're kind of I guess focusing on the middle of the sandwich and and zooming in on instruction.

I can't, I feel like I can't um discuss and model instructional best practices too much until I can ensure that we're teaching at the level of the learning standard and we're assessing at the level of the learning standard or beyond um based on student needs. And so uh this has become the the year of the instructional best practice. So for example the elementary school is focused on small group instruction, uh the high school maybe more focused on ensuring the level of the learning standard and reinforcing that from like a four a four level rubric approach. Um But this will be where um we're really looking to continue our support, deepen our support of teachers, facilitating instruction through a best practice focus which also layers on our shift into campus based instructional coaches. So for at least for the first time in the last three years, maybe the first time in a while. Um each campus will have an instructional coach. We're really looking to Jim Knight and a lot of his work on the impact cycle uh in terms of preparing our instructional coaches and again taking a a best practice focus where we're looking for evidence of growth and implementation of those best practices and then finally we have a at the district level of director of instruction who part of her work is the curriculum documents and the reinforcement if you will of the last couple of years of our implementation, but then also coaching the coaches as they do their campus based work as well, wow, there's so much you're doing and I love that you basically just laid out like a three year plan for someone who's just getting into this work, what does that look like?

So I love that you're starting with standards. I feel like we have so many standards typically right that are like C C L. S and N G S s and the state standards and the content of the skills and all the things and it's like, okay, first let's get real clear and like what are the priorities, what are the standards? I love that you move to mastering next. How do we define what this looks like when you're proficient when you're approaching brilliant and I love that. Now you're focused on like the pedagogy of the instruction, how do we do this well and and that the culture of coaching that you're building, having the coaches there and then taking time to coach the coaches and using evidence I think is huge and a lot of schools will say, you know, we don't we don't have an instructional coach or or or you know we have to leverage peer coaching. I think that idea of coach, the coach um can also be really valuable for peer coaching. I think chris you had said you you'd have to experience right with supporting, I'm just thinking of, you know, the challenges that someone listening might say, well I don't have those instructional coaches, you know, can you still do something like that if you don't have that coach role formally?

Yeah, so what I was able to do in a previous life was I received executive coaching as the principal of the campus and yes, that was at the time, a paid for service and I experienced a year of that, but going forward, um I began to become a part of a uh an executive coaching, if you will, that I'll share at the end of my answer to your actual question, um but that that executive coaching coached me in terms of how to coach teachers and develop teacher leaders, that would in turn um coach their peers. And so when the, when the emphasis was on evidence and on best practices as measured by a four level performance indicator rubric, it was not, oh my know it all teacher friend is coaching me how great it was, we're all in this together, this is a culture of coaching as as your teacher leader coach, I am being coached as well as your principal who is coaching teacher leader coaches, I am being coached as well.

So so this is seeking to develop a culture of coaching and so the way along with what what Allison and I both mentioned in in response to your first question um last year and part of the year before um I also implemented a call it an executive coaching model where I coached each campus principal, the and the athletic director um through uh taken franklin, Covey's work with the four disciplines of execution. And so it's a um you know, 20 well I get to talking as you can tell, so typically the sessions might go a little longer as Allison is like, heck yeah, they do. Uh but the the concept would be 15, 20 minutes, it's focused on a wildly important goal uh a from X to y by win style goal and then we're talking through weekly commitments that the principal is making, just one is fine too, if you if you want to get zealous, but just one is fine.

Um and we're making those weekly commitments to each other, then uh we're we're celebrating when, when we check them off. Um and and measuring milestone progress toward the goal and so what we've been able to see is that executive coaching has occurred. Now we're starting to reach layers where um the director of instruction coached a couple of teachers using that model. One of our principles, coached a couple of their folks using that model. Uh, and so the point being trying to create a culture of, of coaching where we're all growing and we're all in this together, serving each other for the benefit of our students. Hey everybody, just a quick reminder that you're a free resource for this episode with chris and Alison is a relationship centered learning website. There's a bunch of good stuff there. You can grab that link at lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 93. Let's get back to chris and Alison. Excellent. And Allison, as you kind of see what's happening at the school level, I want to kind of like jump back just a second to, to think, we dove right into like, you know, what can people do?

I'm thinking, you know, like if we were doing all this stuff, we're making all these changes district wide, you know, as, as an individual teacher in a school, um, you know, are there, are there challenges with that, are their struggles that come up, are their mindset chefs that need to be made that you kind of saw play out as those pretty large changes were taking effect? Yeah, absolutely. And um, I think specific to our, our district and our campuses, it looked, it may look a little bit different than what you may see in other areas just due to our circumstances. However, um, I jumped, you know, right into our wig sessions and even as a recipient of a wig session from central admin down to campus level level leadership. And it took a lot of purposeful planning, a lot of, a lot of intent with that, to stay on track, to maintain those weekly meetings, to maintain my goals and, and you know, really dive into if, if my goal is going to change an outcome or not, um we can sit here and talk about, you know, x and y by win, but if we're not going to formulate a change with that, then it's kind of pointless.

Right? So moving that mindset down to my teachers as an interim principal was definitely something that, and chris can kind of, you know, support me on this, it was it was challenging because we haven't had instructional coaching here, we've had instructional leaders, our principles are obviously our instructional leaders, but we haven't had a mentorship model. And so it's something where teachers really had to, you know, take a step back and say, okay, you're not in my room as a punitive measure. It is more of here, I'm supporting you, we are one in and how are we going to ensure that we're getting better. So our students can get better. Yeah, that's such a great point about the punitive because I think a lot of times when we are in classrooms, like as leaders, when you're in a classroom, it becomes this punitive piece. I recently heard someone say like, numerically speaking, the more that you're in, the the less that it feels punitive? Absolutely. Do you find that to be true? 100%. They, by the end of the year I'm sitting on the ground watching their their lecture and they think nothing of it.

So the more I'm in there, the more our leadership isn't there? It's absolutely a very true statement. Okay, so that's that's a that's a big piece, like just make it kind of normalize that make it common. And then is there also, I imagine there's a lot of foundation trust building, like there's a foundation that has to be built before. You can just kind of go in all of a sudden you're in the classroom all the time. Can you speak a little bit to that and what that looks like and how you saw teachers adjust to that. Yeah, so for me, it was making sure that I was in every single PLC. Um So it started at that level of hate, I'm part of your group. Um and then it turned into, hey, I'm part of your classroom and then how can we plan to build that relationship? And so it was very intentional, we are creating more frequent PLC's, we're creating more deliberate P. L. C. S. And how are we turning that work into our vision in our classroom, and so really my teachers just really caught on with that and they were accepting of that and and that's kind of where we took off. Excellent Christy. Do you want to jump in? And also I directed those questions and I would just say two things.

One of the one thing I appreciate about Allison is she is high expectation and she is high support. So when you talk about significant changes and and this is all happening during worldwide pandemics and um the adjustments you know that that even um rural schools are having to make in those regards. Um you know she is and last year being in an interim role herself um setting the bar high and giving the y to that but then also walking alongside teachers and students to say and here's how we're gonna accomplish these things together modeling and reinforcing that as a leader. I think one of the one of the ways that I try to um I guess lesson, I'm not quite sure how to phrase it lessen concern or oh my gosh it's the assistant superintendent on campus like that kind of stuff is uh singing and dancing and being allowed um That is my my three pronged framework to uh to uh enjoying my visits to campus.

So um the the first day even uh this is I joined the district uh I think about a year before Allison did my first day on what is now when I heard campuses. I actually got in trouble by a teacher because I was loud in the hallway? And there was, there was a test going on and I didn't know it. Um and so the, the teacher comes to get onto me and then it's like, oh, this is an adult and it's like, oh who, well who is this? Which is awesome. But you know, whether it's um singing songs or rapping in the hallway or high fiving kids or uh, just just being, being loud and jovial on purpose uh, to, you know, infuse fun and excitement into the school experience. I hope that that also helps folks understand that, that when, when we are about the business part, uh that you can know that my, my heart is in the right place and my heart is that, you know, that we're unified and that we're about continuous improvement and that we're about the kids.

Uh, so that's that and a guitar sometimes is how, how I approach evidence based classroom walk throughs. That's excellent. I love it. And I think Joy is such a huge piece that's often missing from these conversations, right? Like when we think about designing even just curriculum, um, dr Goldie Mohammed her framework, her historically responsive literacy framework. You know, she has like the four pieces that are in her book cultivating genius, but then she added like I've been watching her on twitter and she added 1/5 which is joy and she's like, this is often missing, right? We have to also talk about joy and we have to talk about joy from an equity lens, right? We can't always be talking about like this deficit, you know, of students and whoever we're talking about that have been historically marginalized, whether that's race, ability, language, identity, nationality, right? Like it has to be about joy. It has to be about celebration. That has to be like this balance of like critical inquiry and also like we're here to have fun and enjoy the experience of learning, right? Like that's so critical for kids to come back.

I know at the high school level, you know, your parents don't drop you off, you come to school or you don't. And and a lot of times like my students, I remember this is embarrassing to say out loud, but I remember one class, I taught ninth grade class global one as my like third year of teaching. It was not engaging and I had one student show up one day. It was just like once you're out of a class of roster of 38 and I was like, what is happening? It was just a wake up call like this class is not fun, change some things. So I guess as I think about that challenge specifically as a teacher but also so many other, you know, challenges of this work. I feel like you, you all have done so much. Is there any anything else that you would in terms of like giving advice to someone who's facing a challenge in doing this work or some wisdom that you could share from your experiences over the last three years of this massive transformation that you would, you would share with folks listening. Mhm. That's a good question, I'm looking, I'm looking down at Allison to see if she's gonna buy it first.

Yeah, I think I know for me I can get very focused on the the work um in terms of like goals, I want to accomplish our tasks that need to be done and there is this constant, this constant struggle between wanting to check all the boxes to get whatever it is, you know, the goal or the initiative done and remembering that our work is about people and when, when I feel stressed or squeezed or low in confidence or low incompetence as a leader, I tend to retreat into the tasks because that at least as it pertains to what I'm responsible for, I can mostly control that, whereas when I'm, when I'm in a better place, in terms of my own identity and my own uh confidence and competence of the work, but also, perception of myself, I find it easier to remember that the work um is is with and through, you know, people that that I enjoy working with and that I enjoy being around and that I I want to grow to accomplish more in the field uh than than I have and so um I think that you know, I got to visit with shout out to um vernon right the right leader, the right speaker, um I got to visit with him and I would definitely recommend his stuff, check him out on twitter, but um we had a conversation one time where we talked about um we talked about identity kind of being the foundation of the work and sometimes I know I get lost in thinking that the work is how I'm going to achieve identity when identity is already something that I have or that I contain and I can be free to work from it rather than to work for it.

And so as a as a leader who's a three on the India Graham who loves him some mountains to climb and some things to accomplish and you know um those kinds of things, I also have to remember that even if even if we're not as high up the mountain as I want to be or I'm not as high up the mountain as I want to be, I still have to schedule time um to be with people to encourage people to support people because that whether it's adults or kids that is the focus of our work. Yeah, and I'll jump onto what chris said um I obviously am very early in my career as leader and um and and chris can kind of back this up as well, I am very results driven, I need to see that progress and so we all know this and it's a simple concept, you know, just ensure that we are, we are driven by, by data, by progress in regards to what small steps are we doing, we don't have to take the whole mountain at once, we can, there are small steps up there.

So um you know I am working on a campus that we have very high achieving um teachers who who have 88 90% passing on star, but we also have some teachers that are not performing that hi and how are we bridging that gap and how are we making sure that we have progress is not all going to be 90% at the end of the year, but what what steps are we ensuring to make sure that there's progress, How are we celebrating the small steps. And so for me it really goes back to um data driven instruction, data driven, um just pieces of leadership. And so um for me really, whenever we look at actions to take is what can we celebrate along the way. Um it's difficult for me to do sometimes. However, I know that there's there's meaningfulness in that process and so for me it's really just stepping back and taking a quick look at the small progress in celebrating that as we continue. I love that both of your answers speak to again like the joy and the energy and like the positivity of like, you know either being a community, taking care of self celebrating those wins and I'm wondering is there any kind of like joy or um success in terms of curriculum instruction that you'd like to shout out that you've seen recently in your district or your schools that you're working in, you know, for me, um there there's the typical responses uh to that question, you know, like increased test scores um and and there are those things to celebrate which is phenomenal.

Um we've got we've got one of our schools that we're we're really hopeful and and predictive that could possibly um basically achieve a milestone that it it hasn't in a few years and that's a super great accomplishment um at the same time, I think what what I, what I most celebrate right now is times like, so we had this meeting yesterday that Allison and I were in with a couple other colleagues and it was, it was a very serious meeting about very serious things and when it was time to be serious, we were, but there was a like a contagious excitement and laughter and storytelling um that was vibrant and that was authentic and that was encouraging even in the midst of a of a difficult meeting and it seems like those, those things are happening more and more and I think that that is exciting me most right now Um, a very trusted mentor of mine when I was first in ap, he had me read a book by the old san Francisco 40 niners coach Bill Walsh and the book was called the score Will Take Care of itself and basically in the nutshell, the book was, was like build a culture focused on honoring people and focusing on best practices and the score of whatever game you're playing will take care of itself.

And um, we, we do have, uh, you know, uh, standardized test scores to celebrate, but um, you know, from a, from a, creating the kind of school that adults want to work at and kids want to come to, you know, there's much more work to be done for us in those areas, but we're accomplishing more and more in that regard every day and I would say that that excites me the most right now I have, I have an idea Alison, so are you familiar with dude? Perfect at all? Okay, Okay, cool. So, so dude, perfect, right? I'm sitting at home on my week off whenever that was, it feels like a few months ago, but I think it was like a week and a half ago. Um, and I'm sitting at home watching dude Perfect in the afternoon with my kids and I mean hilarious, right? And they have this segment called the wheel the wheel unfortunate and it's this complete spinoff of wheel of fortune and the, I don't know one of the guys dresses up with the seventies haircut and suit and glasses and the whole bit, but the, but like the real dude, I'm assuming it's real cause it's on youtube, it's gotta be real, right?

The real uh the real dude, perfect guy talks to the character right? And he spins the wheel and it lands on, you have to own a cat. And so then the next scene is like they go to the shelter and this guy is literally picking out a cat and he comes home and his daughter is so excited and his wife is like you got a cat, what's up? And yeah, the guys told me I had to get a cat and she's like, yeah, we could have talked about that first. Anyway, hilarious. So my idea is instead of the wheel unfortunate, my idea is the wheel so fortunate and I dress up in seventies garb uh might, I might have my, my trusty uh director of instruction as a trusty assistant and we show up unannounced on campus and character and in costume and whether it's an adult or a kid, they, we completely interrupt class because I can and that's the fun part of my job and you know, somebody at random gets to spin the wheel so fortunate um what do you think we'll be guinea pigs, super cool.

So you know, I mean Lindsay just trying to think, trying to think about things like that that in in our context have not been as prevalent and you know, those are the those are the things that you remember and those are the things that make you want to come to school whether you're an adult or a kid and so we want to do more of that. I love that, that idea just came to life on this podcast. So I'm really excited to follow up with you and see how this goes. I just want to be like the extra dude perfect person and I think I'm a little bit past that opportunity, so I'm just trying to find ways to connect with kids. Yeah, that's a, I love it. Alison, did you have something to add to? I want to make sure you got a chance to. Excellent. What about your, what about your green circle stuff? Yeah, yeah. You know, I've dabbled in restorative practices for a couple of years just through my previous position, but you know, we recently went to a relationship learning conference, my apologies and um you know, I definitely look forward to implementing some something like that.

Moving into this year. I know this is curriculum instruct however we know instructional needs can't be met until our students relationship needs are met and so we're really excited to kind of lead that this coming up year, we have a special plan for our sixth grade class and they're really going to be our our our leaders of of the implementation of relationship centered learning and so um you know, making sure that we take care of those needs prior to our curriculum instruction needs, I think will be exciting as we navigate this year. That's super exciting to hear and I have a background in in bringing resorted practices to schools as well and so it's just so critical. I think recently I've been kind of playing around with this framework of curriculum development, like thinking about the stages and it like it has to be every time I come back to the stage that comes first has to be that foundation, that relationship building, that resort of peace, like we have to have that space before we talk about the pedagogue or you know, the standards and the rubrics and like all of it is so important, but you just can't get to that final place or even to level 23, you know, anywhere until you have it.

So I really appreciate you naming that, I think for anyone and maybe this kind of goes into this question I was about to ask. So as a listener of the podcast, if if people are listening, thinking what do I do with all of this great stuff that we've just talked about, what's the next step that I take to kind of build that momentum, I think people could be at different stages of this and so feel free to speak to any stage that you think, you know, someone might be in or if, you know, maybe the first step is identifying the stage and you know, how would they do that? Um, feel free to, to kind of give some advice here for any listeners about what to do as they kind of hang up the, the airpods and go about their day and try to make some change. I think for me this coming year as a district leader, the practical first step is to schedule time to do some of the things that we've been talking about. So if you, if you really do want to do a wheel, so fortunate like when are you gonna do it? Put it on the calendar, get it done. Um, you know, there will always be, uh, data to crunch, There will always be compliance reports to put together.

Uh, there will always be that next email, uh, to, to open and take action on and those things are important in, in, in and of, you know, in the right place at the right time or whatever. But if you don't put it on the calendar to do the things that, that bring people joy like you were saying, and then also bring yourself joy, It's not gonna happen. Um, one of the things that we tried last weekend and we'll try it again this weekend is as a family taking roughly 24 hours and putting putting phones and ipads and google homes and xboxes to the side and doing things together that bring us joy. Uh just just you can, you can make it without youtube for 24 hours, I promise or me, you know, I can make it without that instagram hit for 24 hours. Um and so focusing on what, what brings us joy as a family and I think in our work the same as the case, you know, setting aside some of those other things that are, they might be important, but they're not as urgent as we think they are and focusing on how can we bring joy to our people and to ourselves um whether it's um we also fortunate or or just just taking time to notice people and to talk to people and to call them by name and to learn about their families, et cetera.

That's so critical and I think I would argue too that when you do that for yourself and your family, that energy comes into your workspace too. And it just enables you to be better at your job. Absolutely. And then, and then going on that, just kind of making sure that our community is, is built, you know, prior to us receiving our kiddos back at school, um really figuring out how our community is going to reflect our vision and our goals for this year and so making sure that we have those shared and um I want to say that team feeling as as a unique opportunity for me this year, you know, the two campuses under one leadership and so just making sure that we have that that aspect and that trust there that, you know, our shared experiences are better than our individual experiences. That's brilliant. I love that for for anyone at regardless of what stage you are at, right as a leader in this curriculum development journey. Just thinking about how do we create those joyful shared experiences right, for ourselves and for our kind of culture building that we're doing because you can always use a tune up right? You're not just like, oh we did the culture thing now onto curriculum and instruction right?

Like I think it's so important at all stages, so that's brilliant. Um and something that I I think we've been kind of going back and forth between like kind of the personal professional this episode which I absolutely love and so I'm curious to know personally or professionally what's something you've been learning about lately? Oh man. Uh personally, I think we've been learning my wife and I together and by proxy our kids on how to live lives of less hurry um how to be and I say learning on purpose is hard, but um learning to be less defined by how busy we think we are or how many things are on our to do list, uh like I mentioned, you know, last weekend and um what was funny was at the beginning of that 24 hours, the kids were not happy with us. Uh And um my wife has been reading a book and and by proxy I started reading it etcetera about how to do some of this and why to do some of this. And you know, one of my kids was like, so how about we we make a commitment to read less so that you guys won't read about crazy ideas like this, which is pretty funny.

Um but by the by the end of that day long process, the when we gave them their their devices back, they didn't immediately go to them, like they check them whatever, but within 15, 20 minutes, uh they were playing games um you know, which was, they weren't doing things that involved the devices and it wasn't just about the devices, but uh trying to, trying to live a life that's less hurried. And then I would say professionally, like it comes down to scheduling the times two to bring joy to others or joy to yourself. Like those two things are connected I think. And so you know professionally, how can I be less hurried? Um even though the reality is we all have a lot going on that reminds me of a, I don't know where I heard this, but some sort of advice that I've put into practice that's like at the end of the day instead of inventorying the things on your to do list and what you accomplish what you didn't inventory how you're feeling, like how do you feel at the end of the day?

And what I've learned personally is that I often feel like rushed and hurried and all the verbs you were saying you're trying to let go of, right, and it's like okay when I take a step back, like if my goal at the end of the day isn't accomplish all the things, it's too feel good to feel joy to feel healthy. My day looks very different and I still feel productive, but I just feel better too. So I love what you said and I think that just reminded me of that practice. So Allison author read to you, what is something you've been learning about? Yeah. So personally I vividly remember a question that Mr chapman asked me at the end of the year, at my interview evaluation, he said what are you doing for yourself? And I said well I have to think about that and I couldn't give him an answer. I was Nothing for myself this summer. And so um ironically this summer it was get my shoulder surgery taken care of and so I've kind of been out of pocket for a while, but it's allowed me the time to slow down to read my 20 books that I've wanted to read. And um so personally what I've been learning is that, you know, it's ok to slow down sometimes in our lives don't have to function um in a state of hurry kind of like what you both said and so for me that that's what I've kind of been challenging myself with.

Beautiful, oh my gosh, this is gonna be so good for leaders to hear. And the last thing I'll ask is just where can people learn more about either your district, you individually connect with you? Um just kind of follow the great things that you're doing. For me. It's twitter and instagram uh C. H. R. I. S underscore C H A P P O T I N. Uh in both places I'm not as and posted as much as I have in the past but um some of that is just trying to be less tethered but in terms of connection, those are great places. Yeah and then for me I just go on twitter and text in math one um and that's that's where I communicate and collaborate with others awesome and we can add those links to, to the show notes that people can grab those and follow you guys. Thank you so so much both of you chris and Alison for being on the podcast. This was inspirational and I feel more joy just being in community with you both. Thank you, Thank you so much for that was a blast and definitely something that was fun to share with Allison. Yeah, absolutely thank you so much Lindsay If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp.

I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burned out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact until next time leaders continue to 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 dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode