Wins, Labels, and Focusing on Strengths

What's going on everybody, I hope this finds you striving and thriving and doing absolutely amazing. The summer is winding down my friends, and every week I see more and more educators headed back to school. And for myself, I have about two more weeks left as summer vacation, and then it's back to the grind. And the other day, I was watching a video put out by Dr. Joe Sam Phillips off, and then this one minute walk to work. He was so spot on. And in the video, he talks about how his school is two weeks away from opening day, and that the teachers, they're busy setting up the classrooms. And he said he remember when he was a teacher. And he spent so much time making sure that everything was spot on, from the posters to the name tags, and all those other details that you do to make sure that your classroom is looking phenomenal. And he said that you put so much time into that. The by the time the students show up, many of us are already exhausted. And he said, it's important that we remember that we do everything that we need to to get ready for the school year. But to never forget that the most important thing in the room is you that you need to be taking care of yourself leading up to school, that you need to make sure that you're getting sleep to make sure that you're connecting with others in the build. Because the kids, they're gonna show up, and they're gonna find their name tags on their desk, they're gonna find the cubbies and then they're gonna look for you. And they're gonna want to connect, they're gonna want to make sure that they belong in that space. And it's hard to do that. To let them know, if we're already burned out. And then he hammered it home by saying that we need to be there for each other. Because it's hard to take care of kids, when we're not taking care of each other. And this was such a great reminder, there's ton of excitement for the school year. And it's always important that we remind ourselves, that it's long, that it's going to be stressful at times, and that there's going to be a ton of joy. But we need to make sure that we start that school year fresh and ready for the road ahead. Now, every now and then, it's good to look back to reflect the thing back on some of the lessons that we've learned recently. And I know for myself, that it's necessary, because if I don't do this, the lessons that I've learned, they end up getting pushed to the side, and sometimes easily forgotten. So I went back through some of my most recent guests, episodes, and I've reflected on them in some of the things that they shared. And there were so many gems, but I decided to take a one jam from each of them and share them with you. And hopefully, as we roll into another school year, the these little nuggets will make you think a little bit about how you approach the day. And the first gem comes from my episode with Dr. Amy Matthew Perez, and she was talking about the labels that we assigned to our students. Because when we talk about LD students or EDI students, we need to be careful. We need to be careful about how we label them. Because how we label our students is going to affect how we view them. And that can trickle down to how we treat them. And as Dr. Perez said in the interview, she told me, you don't want to be known as bad temper Brian. And that's so true. And you probably don't want to be known is an unpleasant label either. So we have to be careful, we have to be cognizant of the labels that we placed upon our students. And Dr. Perez also share that when we think about the services that we provide to our students, we shouldn't viewed as extra, but as unique to meet the specific needs of the child. And she equated it to a hamburger. And she said, you may want your burger with just ketchup mustard. But for herself, she might want a burger with cheese, ketchup, mustard, and some pickles. And it's not about extra. It's about being unique to you. And those champions that walk into our classrooms is not about extra for them. It's about knowing who they are. It's about knowing their needs, and providing that to them. A second gem that I've taken away from a recent interview comes from Coach Brad steps, who's the head boys varsity basketball coach in Fayetteville, Arkansas. And for myself, being a former coach, I love listening to coaches and the perspectives that they bring. And we can learn so much from them. And one of my favorite takeaways from this interview was when Coach stamps he talked about where we put our focus. And he said, when he's dealing with his players, that he's aware of their weaknesses, but he chooses to focus on the positives, their strengths, the things that they do well, and he talks about how he tries not to just do that for himself. But he along with his staff, makes those strengths visible to that individual player. They also make those strengths, visible to that player's teammates as well. And think about how that's gonna make you feel to be in a team huddle. In your coaches sitting there, lifting you up, bringing your strengths to the forefront, in front of all your peers, letting everyone know the value that you bring to the team, letting you know how you make that team better. And by making those strings visible and present for that individual player and teammates. How do you think that player is going to view themselves? And how do you think those teammates are going to view them? How hard do you think that players gonna play? Think about the effort that this player is going to give knowing the value that they bring to the team. Now, I think if coach stamps only focused on the negative, and he's zeroed in, on only where that player lacked, think about how that player is going to view themselves. Think about how their teammates are going to view them. And I always go back to a quote from Tony Robbins. And he will always say where our focus goes, our energy flows. And off. And if all we do is focus on the deficiencies, that's all that we're going to see. And if we push that on our players, if we push that on our students, what are they going to see? So when we're in the class, do we make the strengths of our students visible for them? Do we lift them up? Do we show them the value that they have, how they make our classroom communities better? What we make visible what we focus on for our students? It matters. And I think it's safe to say that even as an adult, we feel more empowered when we build off of our strengths, rather than constantly focusing on where we fall short. And the third gem that I love came from a conversation with Dr. Joe Sanfilippo. And we were talking about the importance of telling our stories. And Dr. Sanfilippo discussed how we're in a profession where we always don't get that immediate gratification. And because we don't always see that immediate gratification of our work that is easy to start questioning the value of our work, especially in a field where you Horse so much of yourself into it. And Dr. Sam flip will talk about how we need to be cognizant of all the wins that are happening around us. And to not just say that there's smaller ones, or big ones, that wins or wins, winds, and there's winds happening every single day, in every school in every classroom. And when we take that time to recognize those winds, and when we take that time to celebrate those wins, we're seeing the value that we bring the purpose that we have. And as we go into another school year, for our own emotional well beings, it's important that we need to do this. Another fantastic conversation I had was with Dr. Chris Jones, and one of my favorite takeaways from this conversation was all about relationships. And he says that he's learned to hold off on making assumptions. He talked about an individual that he met, when he first crossed paths with them. They came across is conceded. Very smart, he said, but conceded. However, he came to learn that this person is actually a really nice person who is funny, who's family oriented. And he talked about the if he had not taken a step back and gave this person a chance, they if he would have just stayed with his first assumption from the start, that he would have missed out on having a great relationship with this individual. And I think that's such a powerful reminder for all of us. We're always making assumptions. It's easy to pass judgment, without getting all the facts. And this is just such a great reminder that we need to give people a chance and understand that each and every single one of us has things going on in our lives. And that lots of people have no idea about these things. So as we head back to school, think about the assumptions that we make. Think about leading with grace, think about connecting with others. And the last step I want to share comes from an interview with Jamie Brown. And one amazing takeaway that I took was how we can look to build relationships with the community. And he said being new to his community, that he was going out to the local restaurants in introducing himself there. And he was doing the same thing with local businesses. Then he talked about creating Win Win situations where the students in school could benefit from a service that the local businesses could provide. And the local businesses would benefit from the publicity and business that the school could give them. And the neat part about all this was how Jamie talked about having the students involved all throughout this process in modeling, how to build the connections with the community. And he discussed showing the students how they can use social media to give these local businesses shout outs and to have these students create written letters to give to them to show their appreciation. And think about all the life skills that Jaime is going to be teaching his students with all this. From paying attention to the labels we place on our students to the power of focusing on the strengths of others, celebrating the wins, giving people a chance to creating Win Win moments between the school and the community. These guests brought so much wisdom and a big shout out to Dr. Perez, Dr. Sam Flipo, Coach stamps Dr. Jones and Jamie Brown, for giving the teaching champions community's such great conversations. And my challenge for you is to think about one of these gems that these guests gave. What is the one thing one takeaway that you could do today that will make your day over relationships within the school better. Thank you for being here for being part of the teaching champions community, we support we encourage we lift each other up. And if you think someone would benefit from this message, please pass it on. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so all new episodes could come straight to you. And if you could leave a review, that would be so appreciated. And always remember, doesn't matter whether you're from rural America, to urban America, to Canada, to Spain to Bahrain. We're all on that same team. We're all on that same mission. And we're always better to get keep being amazing, my friends, and as we go on to the week, May step into your strength may step in to shine, and let's build our champions up. Have a great week, everybody