S5:E6 - Reimagining Education in Small Towns with Darcy Bakkegard

You are listening to the Growing Small Towns Show, a podcast dedicated to supporting you, the person who really cares about the future of your small town. We believe when people get better, everything gets better, and our episodes offer the ideas and actions that prioritize people and small communities. Thank you for listening. We're so glad you're here. Our guest on today's episode is Darcy Bakkegaard. Darcy is the co-founder of The Educator's Lab, and she's spinning off a bit more. She's doing a longer-term incubator for teachers along with a 1-day intensive called— intensive makes it sound intense, but it's intense joy. It's called the Joy Lab. And when I first met Darcy, we met through a mutual acquaintance. I sat down with her and immediately basically kind of fell in love with her, the way she thinks about teachers. So the Educator's Lab is actually— and when you ask her, what are you trying to achieve, like, with the Educator's Lab, with the Joy Lab, with your teacher empowerment incubator? And she literally says that we want to revolutionize education. We want to empower teachers as catalysts for change. And so this extends beyond just how they show up in the classroom, but also how they show up in community. And so very clearly, there's a lot overlap between the way we think about our work in small towns and the way Darcy thinks about education and the teachers that she wants to help. There is so many takeaways from this, and again, I think it comes down to recognizing that when people get better, everything gets better. And just what would happen if we could tap into more joy, more purpose, and more meaning for our teachers? What if we could help them reconnect with the reasons they became educators in the first place? People like Darcy, we need them, and we need We need teachers. And so enjoy this beautiful conversation with our friend Darcy Bockegaard. Hi, Darcy. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, it's so fun. And you're physically here sitting right across from me. It's my favorite.

In this gorgeous, gorgeous space. If anyone hasn't gotten to Oakes, this is such a great excuse to come down to this area of North Dakota.

Oh, thank you. It's— I'm super excited to have you here. So why don't we start by having you just share a little bit about what you're working on, and then we'll just see where that takes us.

Sure. I am working on supporting teachers with better professional development. Better is not maybe a fair word because that implies that what they've had isn't good, and there is so much great professional development, but as a former teacher, what I felt was missing was a little bit more of the heart in professional development, and how do we support educators holistically? So a couple of years ago when I started thinking about what I could do to better support teachers, the words that kept coming up, the words that I put on the back of my business card before I really thought too hard about it were purpose, implementation, and joy. It was just this gut feeling that that's what we needed and what teachers needed. They needed to reconnect to their purpose as educators of why they became teachers in the first place. They needed structured time to focus on implementing their own ideas to improve teaching and learning. And by doing those two things, they would feel more joy. And then the reciprocal, this feedback loop would happen. When you have more joy, you are able to implement your ideas, you are able to dive deeper into your purpose because you have the energy of doing that. So I started creating professional development that leaned heavily into those three key pillars, and that's taken the shape of Joy Labs, one-day workshops that I do to support teachers to spark joy and help them reconnect to their purpose while designing a solution to a challenge they're having in their classroom. But it also sparked a deeper— I was thinking like, if I could do anything, what would I do? And I came up with this idea called the Teacher Empowerment Incubator. And the idea is very similar, but it goes deeper to bring together a cohort of 12 to 15 rural educators, maybe people who are starting to feel burnt out, help them reconnect to their purpose, all of the things that I just said, but to harness the power of joy to support their whole communities. So to help them connect to that purpose in education, but to empower them to work with their students to create positive change in their communities. And that incubator is launching. It's actually happening.

Yeah, so exciting.

And so the application is available now for rural educators to apply, and I will be able to start and see what is going to happen when we get out of teachers' way, give them the time, the space, the support, and the financial backing to create something positive for themselves, their students, and their communities.

Okay, so much to unpack there. You and I met last fall, and when you were first telling me about this, There was a few reasons why I was like, oh, this is amazing. First of all, with my background being in organizational development, the language of workplace culture is often framed around the concept of engagement, but that's essentially what you're talking about, right? You're literally talking about connecting people to something bigger than just the task of the thing in front of them, right? And teaching is such a, It— again, I'm not a teacher, right? But I look at it and I think it's clearly such a passion-fueled profession. People don't go into teaching to, like, make a million dollars. Like, we all— I think we all kind of know that. But we are also facing a bit of a crisis. And maybe that's some of what sparked this for you. So you can talk about that. But, like, there seems to be quite an exit of people. They're like, or there's fears about more and more teachers leaving the profession and fewer young people going into it, going into the profession. Right. So was that—

things are happening.

Yeah. So is that part of what, like, okay, so on, on the, on the surface, it's like, who would argue with any of the things that you're saying? And you're probably like, oddly enough, people do. Maybe not, but I mean, they do. It's this— so that's, that's a little bit a part of it. It's like, I just think the things you're talking about to me seem obvious and like basic. Like, of course we want our teachers to feel purposeful, to feel empowered, to feel like they have the time and the ability to implement their ideas and to feel joy, right? So what's— maybe, okay, so maybe let's start with what created this in you that you were like, this is necessary? Was there like a crucible moment, or, you know, was there something Like, where and how did this come to you? Sure.

Part of it started while I was a teacher and experiencing professional development. And I'm a dork, and so I got really excited about professional development.

Fellow dork here, all about learning.

Like, give me a brain spark any day. Like, any spark. And I would kind of go, "Oh, okay." But I started noticing a pattern with all of those sparks. They would happen, and I would get really excited and energized, Frequently my colleagues would be annoyed because it'd be like, "What did that have to do with anything?" And I'd be like, "Oh, well, I focused on this one tiny piece of this hour-long presentation." But even the best professional development felt like it didn't make it back to my classroom because of the reality of life, and changing patterns is hard. Changing habits is hard.

Right.

Right.

So you kind of just fall into, "Okay, well, this is what I've done, this is what I'm doing. And so really implementing a new idea was much harder than I ever thought it would be, just because of the time. Yeah. And just forgetting. And so I wanted to create spaces for teachers to actually immediately implement the inspiration they were receiving. So that piece, the implementation piece, came first.

Okay.

And then I watched what happened during COVID from the sidelines. I had triplets couple months before COVID started, and so I was already at home on lockdown for a few months before the COVID lockdown started. But watching what was happening and how exhausting, how hard teachers were working to make a very sudden shift to online learning, and then watching this huge reaction of In that March of 2020, teachers were heroes, right? Like everyone was posting, I don't know how people do this. I don't know how teachers like, 'cause everyone was suddenly at home with their kids and struggling and teachers were figuring it out. And by that next fall, teachers were being demonized as part of the problem, as if they had the authority to cancel school. Like it all became, it was this, huge swing from teachers are amazing heroes to, oh my goodness, these people don't know what they're doing. And it's kind of true. I mean, there was no playbook. Educational pedagogy is rooted on physically being in a room with kids. The pedagogy of teaching online is completely different. And there's very little training on it. That is not how the average teacher is trained to teach and the mechanics of it. I mean, so everything is different. So teachers were faced with this Herculean task, given no resources to try to do it, and then had to just slog through. Right. Right. And I was at home with my babies watching this. And as schools started to go back to quote unquote normal, I kept thinking about this tension between the opportunities we have to reimagine when things are completely in upheaval, upheaval.

Mm-hmm.

And the safety of the familiar. And that tension between let's just go back to normal because normal is safe and familiar and comfortable and we know what to do, and seizing this opportunity to reimagine. To find something better and different. And that's really scary and time-consuming and uncomfortable. And it's uncomfortable because everyone wants their kids to have the best education possible. So trying something new is really scary. And through all of that, I just kept going, what could I do to help my fellow teachers? And I kept coming back to the words purpose and joy. I need to help them create more joy because when we have joy, we have the energy to make those positive changes. And it's not about putting on rose-colored glasses and just pretending that everything is joyful and happy and fine.

Right.

It's about acknowledging the joy that does exist even in the hardest moments. And harnessing that positive energy in order to make critical changes to make things better for everyone around us, including ourselves.

So, uh, that— I literally— we could swap out the word teacher for like a small town advocate. Yep. In my brain as I listen to you, because It's a challenging— it's challenging to be a person that sees either the decline of something that you care about. So in this case, not the decline, but maybe—

The limitations or some of the ugliness. Right.

And you see people leaving something that you deeply care about. Yeah, deeply care about. That is like what's happening with small communities, right? Right. I think a lot of people leave them. My work feels really aligned. Just obviously the target audience is different. Right. But connecting people, it starts with us and this ability to do a little bit of internal examination for one. I've often joked that the last 5 years I kind of feel like I've taken every single thing inside of me and laid it out on a table and just kind of looked at it and was sifting through it, kind of going, Huh, like, okay, so all of this was still needed. Is this— did I give myself this? Did somebody else give it to me, right? Like, all of those factors of just conditioning, how we were brought up, the things that we thought were true, are they still true, right, of ourselves, kind of. That's valuable work, and almost nobody takes the time, because we don't— you have to take the time.

You have to take the time, and you have to have the energy and the strength, because that is very uncomfortable.

Daunting, confronting work for sure. But I think what you're talking about then is that, that doesn't have to be done in total isolation. In fact, the more you can do it with other humans— we were having this beautiful conversation earlier about just the very things that make us human are the things that we— I, I believe, and I would love your take on this— like, if we do not figure out how to double down on those things and intentionally get better at the things that only humans can do, we are going to get overrun and taken. But AI is so scary to people, like this idea that it's going to take our jobs and it's going to take this and take that. It's like we— the interpersonal nature of humans is something— it's so precious.

It's so precious. And we were talking about all of those things. What you just said about the taking our jobs remind— there are AI tutor bots, right? And they have already said, and Elon Musk has proposed that for $30,000, he can create an AI teacher that can be in the classroom and a school can just buy these robots and just replace their teachers and they don't need breaks and they're never sick and all of these things. And I do laugh at that idea. My greatest contribution as an educator is not the content that I help teachers— students uncover or that I now help teachers uncover. I was the theater teacher, so my classroom was always tucked back in the different side of the building. And my greatest accomplishment as a teacher is the fact that almost every day, some kid walked all the way to my classroom just to get a hug.

Yep.

And that safety, that connection, that space where they could play with these ideas— they can play with these ideas with AI, they can play with these ideas at home, they can play, they can read these things and they can learn facts. They cannot learn how to communicate in isolation, how to negotiate complex situations, how to work collaboratively, especially to work collaboratively when people have two completely divergent ideas on what the solution should be.

And even, or ways of being. Yes. Like, you know, so you, there's all of these things are relational. Yes. And you can't, you can't practice those in isolation.

No. And you can't ask an AI robot for the hug that you desperately need to make it through the rest of your day. And so while I do think that I helped students develop critical skills of the things from a textbook, quote unquote, and to think about literary analysis and some of the skills that an English teacher helps a student to develop, it was ultimately the human connection that you foster with those people of creating a safe place where they can take intellectual risks.

Yeah.

And, and that I think is the other commonality of what you are creating with Growing Small Towns is creating the safe space where people can take intellectual risks.

Mm-hmm.

And if we can't take intellectual risks, we're never gonna grow. Like, right? No new idea will ever be fostered and be allowed to flourish if you can't take intellectual risks. And have someone there to support you and nurture you and question you to make sure that what you're doing—

like, right?

It's good to have that tension and feedback and pushback a little bit.

Totally.

But that is something that is so fundamentally human.

It is. And it's— and that's— I hadn't heard that this is what Elon Musk's idea was. I'm not— I mean, I'm not surprised to hear it. But it is preposterous. It's like this— because the fundamental crux of education isn't just knowledge-based.

Correct.

Right?

That's the part that everybody thinks of.

Right.

We're learning information.

Right. But more and more, like, AI will take over a lot of that. That's actually— there's a whole lot of truth to that. But it's the nav— it's the real-time navigation of the unexpected response reaction of the other humans in the room with you. Like, right, that's, that's skills that again, so like even thinking about getting a hug. I also just, I think about the power of a meaningful smile, like when, you know, and you feel it and we— I will not, cannot give that to us.

Correct, and that is a fundamental part of teaching, right? We always— like, when you think about design thinking and you identify a problem and you try to see what are possible solutions, I always tell teachers, even though we were not trained in design thinking in this scientific research cycle, we do it. Because every time you teach a mini lesson and are met by confused blank stares, that is data that you then react to in that instant and go, "I feel like I need to try something different." And so you reteach in a different way, or you ask a couple questions, you see who did get it, and you have them explain it in a different way so that you have more light bulbs going off. Right. And that is the real-time, real-world human connection that is so fundamental and so beautiful about being in a collective classroom where you're all rooting for each other and you have each other's backs of not leaving anyone behind and not catering to just one set of ideas, but really trying to make sure that everyone is growing and advancing in the way that is necessary for them. And I just don't think that that can be replicated by an AI sitting there.

Well, it can't. It can't. I would argue that it can't. And I guess when I think about my background and the fact that, you know, we— what we need to be preparing students for, too, like at least some of them, are positions of leadership. Meaning, correct, other people in a working environment are going to be looking to you for direction. I don't want a leader that— I don't want to— I don't want my kids to be led by somebody who their entire understanding of how to deal with other humans was given to them through AI.

That's—

I mean, that's— that should actually— that's the part of AI that should terrify us, is if we actually misapply its value, right?

Because there is tremendous value.

There is. There absolutely is.

In education, there is tremendous value at at personalizing learning, at helping students—

Agreed.

Gain and catch up on different learning gaps and drilling information and drilling some of the base level in education. We talk about Bloom's Taxonomy, and it's this pyramid of skills. You have to have the knowledge foundation before you can advance to the higher order thinking of applying and creating new knowledge. And that, that foundation is some of the places where AI can really be fundamental and helpful. And so it's not an either-or situation, right? But it is about maximizing and doubling, like you said, I'm doubling down on those uniquely human skills. And right now it does feel like we're swinging away from what makes us so fundamentally human, and we need to get back to these powerful human connections. And it's one of the reasons why for the JoyLab and the incubator, I insist on having an in-person component.

Yeah.

It's hard. AI has been great and, um, things like Zoom and virtual meetings and all of that have been amazing because people in the remotest areas can still participate. And I think we need those connections. We also need to be in a room together.

Yeah, you and I were talking about that. It's— there is an actual exchange of energy that happens when people are in physical proximity. And I think, you know, the other thing too, just thinking about this from a student perspective, we've been talking about kind of all the positives of human interaction, you know, like receiving a heartfelt smile, receiving a hug, getting, getting, getting somebody that actually sees in the moment that like, oh, this isn't landing, and like switching. The other massive benefit of doing things in person is dealing with people that you don't like. Yep. Dealing with people that don't behave in a way that you appreciate. Like, how on earth do you develop the skills to, to manage that if you're like— what does an artificial intelligence version of that understanding. Like, what the heck does that even look like?

Correct. And not only that artificial standpoint, but I would argue the more we isolate ourselves in these silos and these echo chambers of people who think only like us, we are exacerbating this problem and we continually forget. And I know this is so cliché to say, but we continually forget that there is so much more that unites us, then divides us. My family, we were just in Disney World with our kids. So I have 5, now 5-year-old triplets. And we took them on It's a Small World. And before we went on the ride, they kept saying, oh, are we going to the little people land? Like they in their head, they thought it was about like little people, like little tiny people. And I was Like, it's not little people, it's small world. And then they were like, what does that mean? And of course, because I'm who I am, I was like, it's a beautiful metaphor about how even though we are so far apart and our worlds can seem so different, we are more connected to each other and have more in common with each other than we're sometimes willing to admit. And by seeing that it's a small world, we can see all the beautiful things that connect us. And by that point, their eyes had kind of glazed over and they're like, can we have ice cream?

Yeah.

But like, I'm in that.

Can we just get on the ride?

Can we just get on the ride, lady?

Mom?

Yes.

I love it.

And then they were mesmerized by the music and by all of the smiling, happy, you know, all of the beautiful animatronics. But it did remind me of like, yeah, like there's a reason why that song and that ride resonated, and there's a reason why it exists in the first place. And you know, it's not a bad reminder to have from time to time that it is a small world and we are so interconnected. As people.

Right. And I think that's a key. I think it's a key in education. So with your teachers, you're trying to make sure that they get exposed to all different kinds of thinking, people that come at it from all different perspectives. I feel the same way about small communities. Yeah. I just think the more afraid we are of people that don't either look like us, talk like us, sound like us, think like us, right? The more afraid of that we are, the more the— I think the phrase I used before, the word I used to describe it, is richness. There's such a richness when we're, when we're open to different ways of thinking, different ways of being. Yes, different. And this isn't just, this isn't just diversity and kind of the, the standard, you know what I mean?

But it's shifting how we do— that's a piece of it, but it's also about shifting. As you were talking, I was I was thinking about a conversation I had so many times as a teacher with colleagues. The idea I was constantly met with, a standard response of, "But we have good test scores. We have good test scores. Why would we change anything? We have good test scores." And I would say, "What if they could be better?" Yeah. Right? And also, is that the only metric? Do we have happy students?

Right.

Do we have happy teachers? Do we have people who feel like they are being fulfilled? Do we have students— are we ensuring that every student is achieving their highest level possible? Are we only serving— so you're right, but that one metric in one moment of time only gives us a limited amount of information.

100%.

And I think that same metaphor is true of small towns and our communities. Communities, it's not, like you said, it's not just about diversity, it's about this idea of change. And I get it, it is really scary and it's tiresome to do something, to change something. And when you look at something that feels like it's already working, the idea of changing it feels really weird, like why would we even bother? Mm-hmm. But by examining those great pieces of what is working and doubling down on some of those joys and things that are vibrant and vital and are energizing, we can look at some of those pieces that aren't as great and some of those frustrations and where we are not serving everyone. And usually when we embrace an opportunity to better serve one small part of our community— think of when the trend of installing ramps, handicap-accessible ramps on sidewalks The intended audience for that was people in wheelchairs.

Right.

Think of all the other people who benefit from that.

Right.

A, it's just easier to walk.

Right?

I'm a klutz. Do you know the number of curbs I have tripped over because I'm just a klutz? But then anyone with a stroller, anyone who's going on a bike ride with small children, the impact of thinking more holistically and shifting— Sidewalks worked. Before, right? But they didn't work for everyone, and by making them more accessible to everyone, we actually— to this small group of people, we actually made them more accessible for everyone. And I think thinking about education, that is really true. And thinking about our small towns and how what has been working, it's important to grow from that, but if we're only limited to that, we're gonna be stuck with old sidewalks that are only useful for a small percentage of our community members.

The Growing Small Towns show is recorded locally at the Growing Small Towns podcast studio located in Oakes, North Dakota. It's produced by Pheasant Canteen Studio in Aberdeen, South Dakota, with marketing support from Cassidy Johnston in Canyon City, Colorado. Our intro music was created and produced exclusively for Growing Small Towns by James Bergman, singer and songwriter from Fargo, North Dakota. Local and small, it's what we support and it's who we love. Get your community a shout out on the podcast. Call 701-203- 8337 and share your small town success that you just don't feel is being celebrated quite enough and let us shout you out. You can also share your biggest people challenge and we'll dedicate an episode to offering ideas to help. Hell, you can basically tell us anything and we'll do what we can to answer. We can't wait to hear from you. Shout out to Tionesta, Pennsylvania, population 415, and Julia McCray, who was an artist that was a part of this specific project. So I encourage you to Google the Market Village in Tionesta, Pennsylvania, so you can actually see it. But what Julie added to this project, um, initially they were just going to put up these series of sheds, and Julia came along and said, what if we made them cute AF? And that is the kind of thing where we love it so much. We love seeing an artist get involved and help make a business or economic development project better. And also, we just love that she insisted on making them cute. People want to shop in and be surrounded by things that are cute. They make us feel good. And so big shout out to Julia McRae in Tionesta, Pennsylvania. Thanks for making things cute AF. Right, I think that's this whole concept of like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, which is what you're saying, right? I think the question is like, who decided it wasn't broken?

Sure.

You know, like, there— and if you, if you zoom out a bit, I think that's what you're talking about, this idea of a holistic approach, is really asking asking ourselves, well, what— how do we define success? Because, like, in a school, high test scores means— says nothing about whether it's a joy to walk into your building.

Correct.

What it feels like to be there, if people, teachers and students alike, if anybody has a sense of belonging. Right. Right? If they feel truly safe, if they feel heard, if they feel valued. Like, test scores are just a metric. It's super fascinating, because so much of this feels like a lot of the same conversations that, you know, I was in economic development, you know, up until just the end of this last year. And this conversation of like, if the only metric of a success of a community is tax-based growth, we're, we're wildly missing metrics that relate to quality of life. You know, like you said, happiness, happiness of, happiness of residents. And I get it. It's so a little bit of what we're talking about is like, creating new standards of metrics, like, yeah, and being open to that conversation. And I, of course, I'm here for it. I think it's amazing. And at the kind of at the start of this, I said, on the, on the surface, who on earth would argue with caring about joy? But people, what kind of, what kind of, if you're getting any pushback to this idea, where, where is it coming from? What are you hearing? And again, say as much as you want about it, Darcy, you don't have to like call anybody out specifically, right? But I think it's important, you know, to somebody like me, I hear this and I'm just like all in for it, right? But we also have to recognize we don't necessarily live in a world that is— is—

Embraces that.

Yeah, right.

So the main pushback is that change is scary. And what I'm ultimately advocating for is respecting the professionals who are in the room to make the best, most informed decisions that they can in that moment. And while we do need to acknowledge that any professional— we don't know what we don't know, right? Right. Not to quote Donald Rumsfeld, of all people, but we don't know what we don't know. And so we do need outside experts to give us new information from time to time. But ultimately, what we need is teachers in the classroom to be able to make real-time decisions and modifications to adapt and accommodate to what isn't working in the classroom. And over and over again, what I have heard in workshops is teachers come up with these really great ideas. They identify the problem, they identify possible solutions, and when I say, "That sounds awesome," they go, "Yeah, but..." And they preemptively stop themselves from even trying something new because the idea of overcoming all of those questions of why are you trying to change something, all of the judgment of, well, we already have— what we're doing is already working. They are preemptively— they're so exhausted that they don't even want to try something else. At this point because they are just like, I might as well maintain the status quo because at least then I don't have to put myself out there. I don't have to be judged. I don't have to be attacked.

Right.

And I get that on a personal level and a professional level. But the problem with that, as we were talking earlier, is now you're in a position of stagnancy. And complacency, and there's no growth there. And of course teachers are going to get burnt out and leave the profession, right? If their purpose was— like, I became a teacher because I wanted to help kids, right?

Right.

And my tool for doing that was the art and science of English and theater, and that was my way to connect to students and to help them develop the skills that I thought were for them to succeed in life. But fundamentally, I just wanted to help every student get better.

Yeah.

So that they could be successful in whatever they wanted to do.

Right?

So the kid in front of me who wanted to be a welder, I just wanted him to develop more basic writing skills so he could be the best welder possible.

Right.

I didn't care if he mastered Shakespeare. That wasn't the point for that particular kid. But we get lost in that, and I didn't always have the autonomy as a teacher to make those adaptations, so I was forced to do certain things that felt like they were detrimental to individual students' growth and goals in order to maintain the status quo.

So do you think more of the pushback, kind of that internal, um, the fear, I guess, or the obstacle, the obstacles to a teacher like you You said you didn't feel like you had the autonomy. Is it more administration? Is it more parents? Is it just kind of an overarching system? Like, where do you think the average teacher is feeling that tension most often?

Sometimes within, just within the system, for lack of calling any specific things out. Yeah, exactly.

And I'm not looking— Right. I mean, I'm not trying to pinpoint.

Correct.

Just trying to better understand, like, where, you know—

For me, the tension came from anyone who was really resistant to just trying something.

Right?

And I kept saying, "Just let me try. I will still do all of the standards that I'm required to do." Right. But what if I did them in a slightly different way so that I could help these other kids in a different way than the way you were doing it? I was really wanting us to acknowledge that as teachers, We all do have individual strengths.

Mm-hmm.

So at the time I was in a department of 14 teachers. I was like, why would we all do the exact same thing?

Right.

That is guaranteeing that we could be replaced by AI, which was not on the horizon when I was having these conversations 10 years ago.

Right.

But that is guaranteeing that anyone— and that's part of the problem. Is there's this desire to guarantee that every child has equal education, right? And in this quest to make sure that everyone gets the same, we sometimes lose sight of the individual in that equation, in that story, and so we lose sight of the individual educator and the strengths that they uniquely bring to their classroom. We lose sight of the, the individual talents in our community by trying to ask everyone to just fit, right, to these traditional roles. We're missing out on the dynamic and the growth that we can be harnessing right within our own communities and in our schools. And I struggled personally with that and saw just— I felt like a lot of students struggling with that. So I would say some of the biggest pushback I got was actually from colleagues And I think that it comes, again, from really understandable places, right? If I'm trying something new and they're not, how does that make them look?

Right.

Yeah.

That there's, there's so much comparison and judgment in our society that part of our fear of change is rooted in our own insecurities of, well, if that person is doing that, "how does that make me look?" Right. Instead of going, "Yeah, they should be doing that because I sure can't. But look at what I can do in my community that there's no way Darcy can do that. So thank goodness we have Rebecca who can do this and has this unique talent that she brings to our community." And what a blessing blessing it is that she can complement these other skills that I bring.

Right.

But we're in, we're just trained, I feel like, in so much competition that there's a little bit of that tension inherent in what's going on. And then from the administrative level, like I said, there's a general goal, a really valuable, true, and authentic goal of, well, we want all kids to succeed. And so we want to make sure that everyone's getting the same thing. But that forgets that not every kid is going the same direction, right? Not every kid needs the same thing. Because some kids— as a high school English teacher teaching 11th and 12th graders, in one classroom I would have students who were reading at a 5th grade level and students who were reading at a college level.

Right.

Those kids need different things. Yep.

And, and so why wouldn't it hold?

Our communities need different things.

And why wouldn't it then hold that teachers need different things? Correct.

And so part of the JoyLab is helping them identify what is it that you need to reconnect with your purpose, right? What is it that brings you energy so that you have the energy to stay in the classroom, that you have the energy to continue to make these positive changes for your students. Right?

Right.

If you became a teacher in service of your students, and I had this conversation with myself a couple times where I was like, I'm just dropping it. It's not worth, like, I'll just toe the line and be a square peg in a circle hole, and I'll just make myself fit. And then I would reach this point, there was a really clear moment where we were in, teachers are required to go through suicide prevention training as part of a cycle every year or two so that we can try to be advocates for our students and help prevent student suicide. And I was sitting there listening to this presentation going, If I am not trying to advocate for every child to be their best self in this school, what is the point? And my uncom— my being uncomfortable is worth the risk for me, and for me to be uncomfortable so that more kids can be successful and that I can continue fighting for what every kid needs. And that's what I'm trying to do now for the teachers that I work with and I serve. I can be uncomfortable, mm-hmm, and I can take some of the blows so that they can have the fertile ground to try out some new ideas, but to try out new ideas again in this safe space, right, where they get feedback from other teachers who have done and been through the same challenges that they've been. It's one of the powers of the Growing Small Towns community too, of where you're bringing together people who have different perspectives but have experienced a lot of the same challenges. So how do we learn from each other?

Right.

We don't need to keep recreating the wheel. I can share some of my resources and experiences to help you grow. And if there's something that I have created that would help you help more kids, Use it.

Have it.

Have it.

Right? You're speaking to something that I think is so— it is such an important part of growing in any capacity, and it's that idea of psychological safety. Yeah. You know, like actually having a— and again, like the idea of like quote unquote safe spaces, right? It's like it's been kind of co-opted by pop culture and it's ridiculous, but it really It really is, though. There is something very, very important about feeling like— you used the phrase earlier of taking intellectual risks. What has to accompany that is intellectual humility.

Yes.

By actually saying, I don't have all the answers. And that wading out into that uncertainty, of course, that's uncomfortable. It's so much less scary when you're linking arms with other people that are doing it with you. To me where community, it's, it's so rich and it's so supportive and, and growthful, right? Because you know, you know that you can take a risk because everybody's cheering you on. And if you make a misstep, you've got a group of people that you can ask. You can say, hey, this is what I tried and this is what happened, what should I have done differently? There is just so much value in that.

There's so much value. And we We say that we value a growth mindset. This is—

We do say that.

The Carol Dweck research in education, but I think it has expanded beyond the education realm of really acknowledging—

It really has. Yeah.

That in general we either can have a fixed mindset of I am who I am and like this is just what I can do, or we have a growth mindset that says I can't do that yet.

Right.

And that we can practice skills and we can, we can learn things and practice and gain more skills no matter how old we are. And no, I am never gonna be able to play basketball at the level that Michael Jordan can play basketball, but if I practiced, I could get a lot better than I am right now.

Right.

And that is true of any skill, but you have to be willing to go out and have a whole bunch of air balls before you get better at doing that. And that, I think— you're right, that takes a lot a lot of humility to be able to say, I don't know. And when you're a teacher or when you're a leader, I think we feel the pressure to always know, right?

I think it just—

that's—

I think I'm actually fairly repelled by, by people that claim to know all the things about a thing. Like, I just generally want to say, well, Seriously, don't you tell me. Yeah, exactly.

As a young teacher though— That's stupid.

No, you don't. Yeah.

As a young teacher though, especially as a high school teacher, because I was in my mid-20s, I was slightly older than average when I went back and became a teacher, but still I was in my mid-20s when I was teaching 18-year-olds. So the feeling of not knowing was really uncomfortable.

Yes, I can believe that.

Because I was supposed to be the expert expert and the person in the room who knew. As I've gotten older, oh, now I don't care. Now I'm just like, "I don't know. I'll find out for you. That's a great question." Right. And can lean into that with more humility and humor and grace, I think. But it's still hard to be the person in the room who everyone is looking to for an answer and to say, "I don't have the answer." I've actually heard that from teachers who have come to the JoyLab. One teacher last summer She said to me, "I thought you were gonna tell me what I needed to do," because that's so common in professional development that someone from the outside comes in and says, "Here's how to fix it." Yeah. And I'm coming in and saying, "Yeah, we all have problems. How do you want to fix it?" Right. And let's explore some ideas together. And she was like, "At first I was so mad at you that you wouldn't just tell me what to do." And now, having been here all day, and now this teacher had ownership of the solution, and she had taken from multiple different teachers different pieces that felt right for her and her students, right, and cobbled them together in a much more viable and authentic solution than anything I could have just handed her.

Right. Well, and I think that's That's the beauty of any sort of professional learning. Yeah. If somebody comes to you with a prepackaged, do this, perfect step-by-step thing, I literally, even with like the, the business, young business owners that I've worked with, you know, in starting this business, I'll look at them and say, yeah, but until, until you do it, it like, it, their process may or may not work for you. Because they're them and you're you. And so, you know, just—

and right, in your business, in your business, in your specific community, yes, there's going to be a ton of crossover. Yeah, and that's why we can learn from each other. But fundamentally, a second grade classroom with Teacher X in Oakes, North Dakota is going to function very differently than a high school classroom in California somewhere with Teacher B, because those teachers are different, they're in different environments. I mean, like, there are just so many variables.

Totally.

That yes, a lot of the same broad strokes are going to apply, and there are universal truths. I've taught in multiple states, in multiple countries, everywhere, 7th grade through 12th grade, everyone from strong struggling learners to AP, you know, Advanced Placement, really smart kids. The whole spectrum. And I always say the reality is that teenagers are teenagers. It doesn't matter where they are in the world. Like you think, and there are cultural differences and there are differences, don't get me wrong, but fundamentally teaching teenagers is teaching teenagers. So there are broad strokes that broadly apply, but the specificity and the individual connections and what truly makes any individual kid tick and fire is unique, and teachers need to be able, and leaders need to have the capacity to see that and to have the flexibility to weave in those different ideas.

I think the other thing you're speaking to that I think is so important is, so along with intellectual humility, it's just truly not being so damn precious about your thing.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? I think what's absolutely true is when you were kind of talking, I was like, "Yep, and humans are humans." Right? Yeah. So whether we're here, we're in California, we're we're in a high school or we're in an elementary school. We are just fundamentally humans. But I think the other thing that's really powerful is that sometimes, like, if you put teachers with, let's say, like, a whole group of manufacturing people, the way that they're doing something in a manufacturing environment could actually translate to the classroom. 100%. So it's also— it's opening up, I think, Helping people realize that good ideas live.

Are good ideas. Yes.

Yep. And the best ideas are the ones that get done and tried and tested. So you're also giving people that permission to play, which I think at our core, it's who we are. Don't you think? Like, we— that's again, that's a human difference versus a robot difference. Robots don't want to play. Robots want to perfect a thing and be precise in that. Yeah.

And you're 100% right, because when I started teaching A, I thought my content was the most precious thing in the world.

Right.

Like, right, and it was very important that every student know who these characters are and what they do and like, because my content was so precious.

Yeah.

And the longer I taught, the more I have just let go of that and I'm like, yes, those characters are important because of the skills and the lessons that they help us explore and the ideas that they help us unpack, and I've just let go of that. But as a young teacher, I also had this super misguided idea that as a high school teacher, my needs in the classroom were somehow unique and different, and that I needed to learn from other high school teachers. And in meeting a couple rockstar— I have learned more about good teaching from rockstar kindergarten teachers— I believe that. —than I ever have from fellow high school— because they have blown the lid off of my thinking and made me go, "Oh, that doesn't only work for kindergarteners. I could take that same concept—" Right. —and adapt it for my high schoolers, and they would be far more engaged." And it has worked. The best ideas that I've gotten in education came from people that I least expected to be inspired by because of my blinders and my own biases that I wasn't like exploring those areas. And it's part of why we need to have these in-person experiences. It's part of why we need to have diverse experiences and see what other people people are doing, 'cause you never know when this one idea might not be implemented exactly the same. Like, right, a kindergarten station rotation is going to look different in a high school English room than it does in a kindergarten room, but the basic mechanics of it are the same. And it made me a better teacher by opening my horizons and seeing what I wasn't as good at and borrowing and adapting some of the best strategies from these other people.

Yeah, and without abandoning your strengths of skills, talents, and desires too, right? The things you love, the things you're good at. I just think this is, I mean, we're talking about two specific audiences, right? We're talking about small towns and we're talking about schools and teachers, right? But this is, these are fundamental things that I think if Again, especially to kind of face the uncertainty of what's coming down the pike with automation, with technology. And just, it's funny, from a workforce development perspective, this young generation coming into the workplace is just freaking everybody out. Nobody knows what to do. And nobody, you know, we don't know what they want. We don't know how to treat them. And we don't, all these things. And like, literally, I have said, if we could just crack our minds open and crack our hearts open just a little bit, there, there, good things can flood in. And you can, you can take some of these changes and some of this stuff that's coming up that feels scary and unnerving. It's so different. Yeah, so different, right?

You can take it all in a bit more stride and see that all of those big scary changes in history can be embraced for positive benefits for all of us. Right. And I think a lot of these things, I try to apply these things even to my marriage, of thinking about what— of the grace of understanding that my husband's brain operates differently than my brain, and how do we balance those as we are coexisting in our family unit and in dealing with my kids and seeing them as unique individuals, even though they're triplets and two of them are identical twins, that we're all so different. But as a family collective, our strengths blend together and make us a much richer, more dynamic, you know, unit than any one of us is individually. And there's just so much power in that. But there's so much more collective power in acknowledging that we have more to gain by loving on and trusting and embracing each other than we do in fearing and framing each other as competition or some— even worse, as a potential threat or enemy.

Right, like an other of any kind, right? Like, I think that's a phrase. Yep, othering. Like othering. But it is, it's just— and it misses It to me, it misses the value. Correct. Of being human.

Right, and some of this, when I started focusing on joy and purpose, I felt, I would kind of say it of like, I know I'm being cheesy, and like this sounds, and I almost— Like apologetically. Yes, very much so. I felt like I had to apologize, and having done a whole bunch of research now on the power of joy, I lean into it of, "No, no, no, like this is fundamental human characteristics." And I think a lot of what we're talking about could feel a little too touchy-feely, too soft, too all of those things. But the reality is this is human. And there is so much data and research and evidence and science on why these these things work, the power of human connections, the power of growth mindset, the power of being stronger together than we are in isolation, that I've stopped apologizing. I love that. For being a joy expert. And I'm trying to just lean into like, no, this is a mindset that helps us continue to thrive in challenging circumstances, continue to move forward and try to better ourselves and our community, because we know that, that by putting that positive energy out in the world, we get positive energy in return, right? And that helps us continue to fuel positive growth, not just for ourselves, but for everyone around us. And we need, we need that joy. We need the joy of the beautiful mural that's across the street in Oaks. We need the joy of these spaces and these people and these connections. And we can weather any kind of obstacle when we harness that power and are focused on creating that collective joy for others.

I am so grateful for you coming down today, bringing your joy with you. It's not like even in a backpack or anything. Like, you just kind of wear it and it's pretty great.

Well, that's kind of you.

I— it's— there's always going to be things to be a little bit afraid of. Absolutely. There's always going to be things that are— that make us feel more scared maybe than hopeful. And uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah. A lot of discomfort. But what you and I have just talked about, like, that this is the ticket. It is. It's the key. It's hope. It's joy. It's love. Yes. And I think if people take any one thing away from this conversation, I hope it's that. Like, if you even just ask yourself, like, when you're really struggling, right? What— you know, where can I find more love? How can I show more love? Where can I find hope? How can I root down into hope, right? Where can I find more joy? How can I create more joy? Those questions of just how can we, how can I, what if we, what if I, right? Those things to just get us thinking beyond— Proactively. Proactively, right. Beyond the pain and the discomfort and the uncertainty of the moment. That is a uniquely human thing. And it's so powerful. It really is. Thank you so much for joining me, Darcy. I can't wait to see where the Joy Lab goes. And the— what's the name of your incubator? The Teacher Empowerment Incubator. The Teacher Empowerment Incubator. I'm so glad that there's somebody with your heart doing this work in the education system. Thank you. We need you. Thanks.

I'm so excited to be able to do— fulfill my purpose by helping others fulfill theirs.

Uh, for sure we're gonna have you come back.

Okay.

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