[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:13] SPEAKER_00:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program my good friend, William D. Parker. Will is executive director of Oklahoma's Association of Secondary School Principals and Middle Level Educators Association. He is a nationally known author and speaker who uses his expertise in school culture, leadership, and communication to equip educators with solutions and strategies for motivating students, inspiring teachers, and reaching communities. He is the host of the Principal Matters podcast and the author of three books, including Pause, Breathe, Flourish, Living Your Best Life as an Educator.
[00:49] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:51] SPEAKER_00:
Will, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[00:53] SPEAKER_01:
Justin Bader, I am so glad to be back with you. It's just, it thrills me every time we have an opportunity to have a conversation. So thanks for inviting me.
[01:01] SPEAKER_00:
Well, it's great to reconnect. I know it's been a couple of years since we've done an interview together. But the new book, I was lucky enough to get an early review copy of it and see the manuscript as it was coming together. And I think certainly this is a time when we all need to pause and breathe and hopefully flourish. Well, what did you see happening in the profession at the time that you started working on this book? And how did what was going on in the world shape what went into Pause, Breathe, Flourish?
[01:30] SPEAKER_01:
Sure. Well, first of all, Justin, thank you so much for the time you took to read the book and give me feedback and write an endorsement, which is inside of the book cover. I just got a hold of my own copies this week, so I'm really excited to have it in my hands, and I so appreciate your generosity. you know since i have been writing books for education leaders and speaking with education leaders and just talking to aspiring principals just like the work that you do justin there's been a common refrain over and over again in the conversations i'm having and especially when i start talking about self-care and the question that people consistently ask is what have you found to help you not burn out? What have you found to help you feel like you still can be the person that you were before you stepped into this position? And we could reframe that question in lots of different ways.
[02:20]
And so as I began to hear that question over and over again in the presentations I was doing, I spent a lot of time giving people answers and writing content about that on my blog. And finally, I just decided I need to put this in a book. These are just conversations I keep having over and over and over again. And Justin, the image that was in my mind was the one that I have when I'm sitting in an airplane and the flight attendant begins to give instructions on what to do if the cabin loses air pressure and that oxygen mask that drops down. And she says, or he always says, who should put it on first? You should, you should be the one who puts it on first before you assist the person beside you.
[02:58]
And that every time I would hear that image, I would think about that question that people were asking me. And I began to think why, and I know the answer to this is something you and I would share together, but why do educators consistently always put the oxygen mask on other people first? Why is that so hard? And I think it's because we're called into a life of service. And so the whole reason that we get up in the morning, the whole reason that we're in school leadership or in education is because we want to help other people. And so when you see a crisis, you run to help.
[03:29]
But the problem with that is that we are consistently running to help others. And then at some point, we run out of oxygen ourselves. And that's why I think the turnover in both teaching and education that school administration is so alarmingly high. I mean, most principals will drop out of their profession within the first, well, sometimes the percentage is high just in the first year and then most teachers within the first five years. And so it's just alarming the number of people that step into this profession and then leave it because of burnout. And so I wanted to just try to put together a book that would assist leaders who want to just take time to pause and to breathe and to flourish, to just meditate and reflect on what are some of the practices that each of us can be revisiting in our own lives so that we can stay inspired to serve others.
[04:21] SPEAKER_00:
Well, I'm glad you're drawing attention to this, Will, because I think we have this perpetual sense of guilt that we're not working hard enough, we're not doing enough, we're not getting back to people fast enough. And if we give ourselves even a moment's rest, if we put our own needs even on the agenda, much less at the top of the agenda, that, you know, critical work for kids will not get done. You know, we have that fear that, you know, that we're just barely keeping up. We're treading water anyway. How can we practically make time for that in the day? When do we do this?
[04:55]
If people are listening to this saying, well, that's nice for you two guys on a podcast to say we need to take time out, but if I've got buses coming and buses leaving and all these different things, kids need me now, people need me now. What does that look like on a day-to-day basis? And how do we think about that in terms of time? Because I certainly, as much as I would like to, can't take a break at 10 a.m. to go do yoga.
[05:17] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question. And I'm going to say something that if anyone's ever heard me speak before, it's probably an answer that I've given in other contexts too. And I believe it first starts with mindset. And let me couch that in a personal story. So Justin, when I was, you know, I was a classroom teacher for 11 years and a high school principal for 14 years. But in my first year as a school administrator, as an assistant principal at a large high school with over a thousand kids and lots of responsibilities and in that incessant drumbeat of student discipline and attendance and parent meetings and IEPs and after school activities, I was burning the candle at both ends and I was the father of young children and I would get home I'm barely in time to help put them to bed.
[05:59]
And then I would set up for hours just working on emails and get up super early the next morning, sometimes at three or four in the morning, just so I could catch up on my emails and have my list ready to go for that day. And my wife was so patient with me throughout that first year. But in year two, one night I came home and that was the same process. And she sat down beside me one evening when I pulled out my laptop to begin work. And she just said, well, can we talk for a few minutes? And I said, yes.
[06:29]
And she said... And she said this without resentment or she just said it with resignation. She said, Will, the kids and I have just accepted that you are a husband and a father on the weekends only. And frankly, you are a shell of the man that you used to be.
[06:45]
And when she told me that I was a shell of the man that I used to be, I knew what she was saying was absolutely true. And that night, instead of working, I actually sat down after she went to bed and I wrote a letter of resignation. And I took it to work with me and I placed it in a folder and I set it on the corner of my desk in a file folder. And I told myself, I'm either going to find ways now that I can re-engage in other parts of my life that matter, like my nutrition, because I wasn't even eating lunches, I was just running all the time. Or if I was eating lunches, it was while running down hallways. I'm gonna reconnect with things that I used to enjoy doing, like running and exercising, because I'd stopped exercising and gained a lot of weight and my blood pressure was super high.
[07:32]
I'm going to try to find times for things that bring me joy. Like I love to do music and I love to read and I wasn't doing that anymore. And even though I didn't find the silver bullet, what I found was a new mindset. I began to slowly be aware of how I was not investing in any of those other areas. And something else I did too was accountability. I reached out to some of my fellow educators and shared with them, this is where I am.
[07:55]
And they were kind enough to hold me accountable to begin doing some things for myself and my family that I had been neglecting. So Justin, that's where I always start is with mindset, because I believe that that's the first place we have to start before we're able to, because we can't, you can look at your schedule and find no room within it at all to do anything that will change how busy you are, but you can change your perspective. And that's where it begins, I believe, because if you don't change that perspective, then burnout is inevitable.
[08:26] SPEAKER_00:
Absolutely. Well, let's talk about some of those areas that we tend to neglect, you know, when we're giving 110% to the role, to the school, to the students, to the staff. What are some areas in our own lives that we tend to overlook that you draw attention to in the book?
[08:41] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, and this is what was really fun for me in the book was to just take time to take a lot of those conversations that I had been having with friends and educators and just quietly write down those things that I had already been talking about. And so I really, I break this down into 10 chapters. I have a chapter on your body. How are you tending your physical health? I have a chapter on your mind, the intellectual growth that each of us needs. On your influence, making sure that you are a positive and healthy influence to those around you, not a toxic one.
[09:16]
To your time, and I know, Justin, that you're an expert on time management, so I have an entire chapter that I dedicate to that topic. To your friendships, because I think we neglect so often those meaningful relationships that are so important for who we are as persons. For your spirituality, because for people of faith, especially, and even if you're not a person of faith, being aware of how important spirituality may be to the people in your community. But it's certainly been important for me personally. So I wanted to include that as an area of my own growth. Your resources, how are you using, frankly, the money and the degrees that you've been given?
[09:53]
How are you using those things in a wise way and stewarding those in ways that can still help others and guide your career? Your intimacy, I talk specifically about for anyone who's married, how important that relationship is. And if you're not married, if you're single or divorced, how important your closest family relationships are because they're going to be the people who are going to be with you, not your Probably not your school secretary when you're on that dying bed someday. And so how are you going to make sure we're investing in those people? And then I have the last two chapters are on your future, which is providing mentorship and strength to those around you. And then your legacy.
[10:34]
How are you making sure that you're investing in things that are going to live on beyond you? And so I know that's a tall order. I do end the book with an epilogue on laughter, Justin, because I also think that there's no way you can do any of those things unless you can look for the joy throughout your day and make sure that you're not taking things too seriously.
[10:53] SPEAKER_00:
Well, let's dive in if we could to those last couple there about the future and the, you know, the impact that you make and the legacy that you leave behind. Because I think right in there is hidden a little bit of the the secret to all of this right i think so many of us start our careers as educational leaders thinking it's my job to personally solve all of the problems it is my job to be the hero to rescue uh you know this teacher from this situation or rescue the student from the situation and you know fix the problem and eventually we're all going to depart No one will be in their role forever. There is so far no immortality pill available to school administrators that allows them to continue in their role forever. And to me, that speaks to some of the answer. Talk to me about that future and providing a focus to others as part of the equation of achieving a measure of balance for yourself.
[11:50] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I remember when I was writing that chapter, it was, believe it or not, I've been working on this book for two or three years. And so this was right after the death of Arizona Senator John McCain, who left such an amazing legacy. And obviously, most of us won't leave a legacy that's so historical as his. But he was asked by a reporter once, like, how do you want to be remembered? Or what would you like to have on your tombstone? And he said he would like the words, quote, he served his country, and hopefully he added one word, honorably.
[12:25]
And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking about how do we want to be remembered? And so often I think what we forget is that, and there's two things I want to say here to leaders, and this sounds really contradictory, but stay with me. First, I think sometimes we need to remember we're not as important as we think we are. someday your school is going to run without you. And so even though you think you're sometimes the most essential part of making sure that everything happens exactly as it should, and you invest all your time and sweat and tears into this career as you should, because that's what service is about, you need to remember the perspective that really it's not about you. It's about the place and the people that you're serving and how you can empower them to become the things that you dream of them becoming.
[13:14]
And I know that sounds so ethereal, but the point I'm trying to make is that leadership isn't about you. It's about others. And so keeping your focus on those others reminds you that your ego doesn't have a place in the room if you're going to build a true legacy. Because a true legacy is building a place that can live on after you're gone. And Justin, this is one of the hardest things I think for school leaders, and it was for me too, but it was something that I began to realize as I was moving into the later years of my school administration was that ultimately I should be working so that my school can work without me. And I know my presence is super important and being visible to every student, every teacher, every staff person every day is one of my goals.
[13:59]
But ultimately, if I'm empowering and building others on my team to help create this incredible school, then I should be able to step away and watch it work without me. And hopefully when I step away for good, it's still going to be a stronger place because I was there. And then the second thing I would say that sounds contradictory to the first is that you need to also remember you are more important than you think. And this is what I mean by this. All of those small little things that you do that you don't think matter, they do. So your attitude, those little words that you say to people when you're passing by them in the office or the hallway, the trust that you build with others, that they can depend on you, they know that you are ethically reliable.
[14:42]
All of those things matter because there's no easier way to destroy an organization than to be untrustworthy or to forget that the small things still matter too. So I don't know how you keep those things in tension, but I think it's important that your service is focused on others, but that you realize that your own responsibility to yourself is to maintain those trusting relationships in ways so that others can grow. I guess the easiest way to say that, Justin, is to remember that it's not all about you. But the actions and the decisions that you make are going to either positively or negatively affect others. So even though it's not all about you, the decisions that you make, they matter. And so that's an important tension that I like to keep in play as I think about how important it is that we leave legacy.
[15:28]
So again, that's kind of the mindset as I think about legacy. How do we leave the kind of place where we want others to flourish?
[15:37] SPEAKER_00:
That's such an important question for us to come back to, because I think for anyone who began their teaching career after Harry Wong's book, The First Days of School, was published, we've all read the story about the sub not showing up and the kids just following the lesson plans that were left by the teacher. I think that's in the early chapters of Harry Wong's book, somebody wrote in and told him that that happened. And on the one hand, you could be insulted by that. You could say, well, nobody really needs me. I don't really matter here. But to look at it from the other perspective, it's because of that work, it's because of that modeling, it's because of that capacity building, because of that teaching that students were able to do that.
[16:19]
And I think for any principal who does leave that legacy, if you disappear for five years and come back and see that everything is in excellent shape and pretty much the way you envisioned it being, even though you weren't there to make it happen, to a great extent, it's that way because of the actions that you took and the example that you set and the systems that you put in place. How do we make sure that the people around us are doing the same? Because it's easy to kind of pass off the stress? You know, if you're a principal and you have great assistant principals, it's easy to kind of delegate some of the things that are stressing you out. But how do we make sure that we're honoring that need for every member of the admin team and not just kind of passing things to someone else?
[17:03] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I love that question. And I think the easiest way to answer that is by maintaining meaningful relationships. There's a lot of ways to unpack that, Justin. Here are a couple. First, don't make decisions in vacuums. You shouldn't be making decisions by yourself.
[17:18]
You should have a guiding coalition. You should have advisors. You should have people that are surrounding you, consistently scheduled meetings with the others on your team who are also leading and serving so that you're not just handing out orders and asking people to do things. Together, you guys are regularly having conversations about what's a priority. And then giving others the ability to lead and the freedom to make mistakes. So empowering them to do things and then not...
[17:45]
planning to scold them if they do it wrong, but guiding them into better decisions. Although sometimes we have to take corrective measures, I think it's important that we build that kind of trust with our teams. And then redirecting feedback back to people too, so that you're teaching them how to how to reasonably delegate themselves. Because I think a lot of times other admin members and teachers as well, we're all guilty of trying to do it all ourselves. When one of the most empowering things is to realize that we can share our instruction and our leadership with those around us. And I'll give you an example.
[18:17]
As a classroom teacher, when I finally began to realize that my students had just as many great ideas about instruction as I did, and I began to involve them in the lessons or them in the teaching or them in the classroom responsibilities, it took so much of a load off of myself because we had a shared classroom experience and now apply that school-wide. And I think that those kinds of relationships, as we're building them with our teams and we're applying them across the board, then we're sharing those things and not just serving selfishly.
[18:44] SPEAKER_00:
Well, I know there is much more that we could talk about. If you could issue just kind of one brief set of recommendations for people based on the book, what would you recommend that we do?
[18:57] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, Justin, I want to give everybody a free self-reflection practice. And so here's what I'm going to just tell you that you can do right now. There are four questions that I regularly ask, especially education leaders when we're meeting together in masterminds or executive coaching or if I'm doing some training. And here's the five questions. Score yourself a one if you would mark this no time or little time to this or a five if you would mark it as lots of time given to this. And here are the four statements.
[19:29]
Statement number one, I have been visible with every student, every teacher, every day this past week. Statement number two, I have been meditating, listening to, reading, or reflecting on helpful books or lessons. Statement number three, I have been making healthy choices in my sleep, nutrition, and exercise. And statement number four, I have been faithful to my loved ones with my time and attention. Now, if you scored yourself one out of five on each of those, then out of 20, where would you find yourself in that self-reflection practice? I would just encourage you to sit down every single week and walk through just simple questions like that, because they're going to cause you to step back and take a look at those areas of your practice and your own personal life.
[20:10]
and reorient where you need to probably be paying a little more attention. So don't beat yourself up. Give yourself grace. Find something every single day that will bring you joy and then take time to pause, breathe and flourish.
[20:24] SPEAKER_00:
Beautifully said. So the book is Pause, Breathe, Flourish Living Your Best Life as an Educator. And William D. Parker, if people want to go to the website and learn more about your work or more about the book, what are some of the best places for them to visit online?
[20:40] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, you're certainly welcome to visit my website at williamdparker.com. You can find a link to the book there. You can find access to my podcast and all the resources. Thank you so much, my friend.
[20:51] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
