Latest / The Thriving School Podcast with Jenni Awesome / Creating Your Own Growth: The Rise Within Summit
Transcript
- Jenni Awesome: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Jennifer Awesome podcast. Today's going to be a little different. So lately I've I've had guests on the podcast or have a topic really organized and outlined, but today I just want to have a conversation. So wherever you are, maybe you're driving, maybe you're driving to work, maybe you're out on a walk, maybe you're folding laundry, maybe you're sitting on a porch with a cup of coffee. I know that's where I'd like to be. But let's just imagine that we're sitting together at your favorite coffee shop. No stage, no presentation. No PowerPoint. Just two people having a conversation. Because over the last few weeks, I've had so many people ask the same question. Jenny, why are you creating the Rise Within Summit? And honestly, it's not because I wanted another thing to do. If you know me, I know I already have plenty going on. I work with schools, I coach leaders, I speak at conferences. I run my consulting business, I host this podcast, I'm involved in nonprofit work, and I care deeply about building stronger communities. Not to mention I play disc golf, I spend time with my family, and spend a lot of time with my husband and dogs. So why add something else? And I've really been thinking about this for years, how to get this information out there. And the answer has been growing inside of me for all of that time. Because I think that we as a society have forgotten how to see ourselves. And I think that's one of the greatest challenges that we are facing today. We as a society have become experts at seeing what's wrong. So can I ask you something? If I asked you to tell me five things you wish you were better at, how long would that take? I don't think it's gonna take you very long. You might say, well, I'm not organized, I'm not confident, I'm not good with money, I wish I was healthier, I procrastinate, I compare myself to others, I'm jealous of what the other person has, I don't think it's worth posting on social media, so on and so forth. We can usually come up with these pretty quick, but if I asked you something different. Tell me five things you're truly gifted at. What are five of your strengths? What are five ways that you make the world a better place? What are five things that make you uniquely you? Most people pause. A lot of people get uncomfortable. I know I was challenged to write fifty things that I was proud of that I had accomplished. And I was able to find the first ten pretty quickly. And then I didn't want to face it. I didn't want to look into it. I procrastinated. I asked for more time for my coach to be able to come up with what were the fifty things that I created. And by the time I hit forty, I felt like I was really, really digging deep. And I started pulling up things that I I didn't think mattered. They were just things that I knew I was gonna do. And it made me really wonder why am I so uncomfortable focusing on the things that I have done, that I've accomplished, that I've done well? Why are we so much better at recognizing our flaws than our gifts? And I've been thinking about this question for years. And honestly, I don't think it's because we're broken. I think it's because this is what we have been trained to do. Especially after an interview I just did with Jenna Ditch. I think schools accidentally taught us to focus on the negatives. And I don't know if it was accidental, but I definitely know that this has happened. I don't know if it's by the design of the way our our Current school system works, but I've spent most of my career in education. I'm a natural-born teacher. That is one of the few things I can say very quickly of the things that I'm proud of that I am and I've accomplished. I know I'm a natural teacher. I've worked with students from all kinds of backgrounds, kindergartners through adults. I've been a teacher, an instructional coach, a school administrator. I've sat with students after they've made what we would call terrible choices. And I've celebrated graduations, I've met with families during truly heartbreaking moments. And I've watched students discover confidence they never knew they had. And one thing has been standing out to me. We spend so much time looking for deficits. I mean, think back when you were in school. If you get your math test back, I won't even get into the fact that kids always come into my class telling me how awful they were at math and how they hated math and so on and so forth. So you get a math test back. Maybe you got a ninety-two percent. What did your eyes go to? The eight percent that you missed? Not the ninety-two you got right. Those little red marks had a way of pulling all of our attention. Now, I want to tell you what I actually did in my classroom is I highlighted the grade, the percentage, in five different colors. Blue meant that they were doing really well. They understood the material enough to teach it. Green meant that they were doing well. They have some areas they can prove. Yellow meant that they were. just getting by. They understood the content. They might want some help. Orange, I highlighted for man, you may want to talk with me, come see me. What are some ways that we can help you improve in this area? Maybe you didn't understand the questions. And I highlighted in pink of hey, you could use some help. Why don't you come to my study session? Why don't we focus on this? How about we give you a little extra support? And I wrote that on the board of this is how I grade. It was less about the letter grade or the percentage. It was more about their learning and connecting it to the content and making it accessible of, hey, you get to come back in, we get to spend a little more time on this topic, and we're going to figure out where do you still get to learn? And I'm gonna tell you what, the feedback matters. I also graded all of my papers in blue or purple. I did not use red. Because I did not want kids to have that negative impact of the color red. And we can talk about that another time. But feedback matters. Our improvement opportunities matters. And learning is pivotal in our life. Somewhere along the way, many of us started believing that growth only comes from fixing what's wrong. And that mindset has followed us into adulthood. So Instead of grading tests, now we're grading ourselves. I'm not enough. I've failed too many times to count. I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm behind. I've missed my chance. I'm out of opportunities. I shouldn't be here. Well, we become really good at collecting evidence against ourselves. And that's truly heartbreaking. Because I've met some extraordinary people who simply forgot how extraordinary they are. Appreciative inquiry changed everything for me. Years ago, when I was in my master's program, I was introduced to appreciative inquiry from my principal, Kathy Wales, at Fairview Middle School. I think it was Fairview Junior High at the time when I was there. They switched to middle schools later on. when I first heard about this process, she had read a book on appreciative inquiry. And she said to me, Jenny, this is perfect for you. I want to see you embody this in the classroom. So when I heard about it from her, I was like, okay, this sounds interesting. I need something to focus on for my master's program. I'm, it was a fairly short read of a book. And the more that I time that I spent studying it, The more it has changed the way that I look at people, it's changed the way that I look at opportunities, So one of the core ideas in appreciative inquiry is that people and organizations grow in the direction of the questions they consistently ask. So think about that. Let's unpack it. If every day I ask myself, why am I failing? Why am I such a failure? Well, then my brain's gonna start looking for proof that I'm failing. If I ask every day, what's wrong with me? my brain becomes really good at answering that question. But what happens if I ask a different question? When have I been at my very best? What strengths was I using? What gives me energy? What kind of impact do I want to have? Suddenly, by asking these questions, my brain starts searching for possibility instead of deficiency. The questions we ask shape the stories that we tell ourselves. And the stories we tell ourselves shape the lives that we build. They shape who we become. And I want to tell you that failure is not the enemy. Another thing I've been thinking about a lot is failure. And it's come up a whole bunch ever since I started playing disc golf and found that I was in fact healing by playing this very frustrating sport. And I don't know about anybody that enjoys talking about failure. Social media certainly doesn't. And we scroll through highlight reel after highlight reel, promotions, perfect vacations, happy families, big wins, perfect bodies. And if we're not careful, we start believing that everyone else has life figured out. And with AI, we don't even know if it's a real image, if it's been edited, if it's been changed. We don't know. And I'm gonna tell you what, those people. Don't have everything figured out. Every person you admire has failed, and probably more than you realize. The difference isn't that successful people avoid failure. The difference is that they learn from it. They use failure as a key to success. It's feedback. I've had failures, I've made mistakes, and I've had plans fall apart. Quite a few times. I've questioned myself and I've started over. And I'm in one of the biggest transformations of my life. So talking about this transformation, talking about the failures, talking about the mistakes that I've made, some of those moments hurt deeply. And when I look back now, I can honestly say they taught me things that success never did. I have learned more from failure than I have from success. I know you fall off the horse or the bicycle in order to get back on, and what did you learn about it? So failure has taught me humility. It's taught me resilience. It's taught me compassion. It's taught me to ask better questions. It's taught me to reframe my failures as feedback. And feedback in itself is a neutral event. And that's why I love the phrase. Fail forward. Now this is I've created a four-step program on fail forward that you can use easily in your personal life, you can use easily in your schools, but that's not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about failing forward, not because failure is fun, but because failure doesn't have to be final. Sometimes it simply is feedback. Sometimes it's preparation. Sometimes it's a very thing that develops a character that you will need for what comes next in your life. It's what the end of July right now when I'm recording this and I'm really thinking about my teachers. I'm thinking about my principals, my administrators, the school staff, everyone finishing up their vacations and getting ready to go back to school. And with the conversations I've been having lately with other people out there in the education system, I'm pushing for educators to be taught this. To have the moment where they recognize, hey, these things are happening and we're allowing it to happen. So why this matter so much for educators, I'm talking to the teachers, the principals, counselors, paraeducators, coaches, our support staff, who I don't think gets honored enough. The support staff, you are the heart of the school, the office manager, you are the make the school the school. So anyone working with young people, or even if you're working with adults and you're in adult education, first off, I want to thank you. Thank you for showing up every day. Thank you for believing in students, even on the days when they struggle to believe in themselves, especially on the days when they struggle to believe in themselves. Sometimes you're the only person there that recognizes them, that says hello. And you have a bigger impact on those kids, on those students than you recognize. Thank you for staying after school. Thank you for making the phone calls, planning the lessons, solving problems, wiping away tears, celebrating victories, and doing a thousand things that most people never see. They're certainly not videotaping you when you're at your best moments. And I recognize that. I see you. Education is one of the most meaningful professions in the world. Education is everywhere. Doesn't matter what business you're in, you are an educator. You are sharing your knowledge, your information with another person. You may be an educator and you don't know it. So education, while it is one of the most meaningful professions in the world, it's also one of the most demanding. And every August, at least here in the Pacific Northwest, we spend countless hours getting ready for students. And it's usually in a rush of maybe two or three days before school starts, trying to get it done before open house. We're really trying to get it all done. We organize the classrooms, we write the lesson plans, we attend professional development that maybe isn't quite hitting what we're aiming for this year, but we do it anyways. We decorate bulletin boards. We set goals. We prepare our curriculum. And it could be the third curriculum that you've had in two years. Yes, that happens. We make sure that everything is ready. But I'm gonna ask you a different question. Who's preparing you? Who's asking how your heart is doing? Who's helping you reconnect with your passion? Who's helping you reconnect with your purpose? Who's reminding you of your strengths before you walk back into that classroom? Because students don't just experience your lesson plans. They experience you, your presence, your energy, your patience, your curiosity, your encouragement, your hope. Students experience who you are as a human being and not what you do as a human doing. Students remember people far longer than they remember worksheets, unless it was a really awful worksheet. And I'm so over worksheets. Anyways, years from now, they probably won't remember the assignment you gave on a Tuesday in October. Right when counts happen, right when hopefully everyone's got their schedules finalized and everything starts running smoothly. And then you have Halloween. But they'll remember how sel how safe they felt in your classroom. They'll remember whether they felt seen, whether someone believed in them. Whether someone noticed when they were struggling, whether someone truly celebrated their successes. And here's the truth. It's incredibly difficult to create belonging for students if you've lost your own sense of belonging. It's hard to model resilience when you're running on empty. It's hard to inspire curiosity when you're emotionally exhausted. And that does not make you a bad educator. It makes you human. And that's one of the reasons educators receive a special rate for the Rise Within Summits, not because they need fixing, because they deserve to be invested in. When educators are healthy, students benefit. When educators reconnect with their purpose, entire school cultures begin to shift. And culture is not created by the posters on the wall. It's created by the people in the room. So why rise within? I've realized that information doesn't usually change people. Experiences do. I can stand on the stage I can give you great ideas sitting here at my desk. You might remember a few of them, but when you experience something, when you're with a group of people and you experience something with them, when you reflect, when you are open and vulnerable and authentic and you tell your story. When someone asks you a question you've never considered before, when someone calls you out for something that you don't like about yourself either. When you realize something about yourself that has been there all along and you just forgot where you put it. That is what creates transformation. Rise Within isn't about giving you answers. It's about creating space for you to discover your own. We will explore your strengths. We'll look at your setbacks through a different lens of neutral feedback. We'll use appreciative inquiry, and we'll practice the fail forward mindset. We'll reflect, we'll connect, we'll dream. We'll build a community that we can connect to and we'll build a vision for what's next. You can take this right back into your classroom and do this with your homeroom kids, your middle school math class. You could do this in wood shop too or PE. And I'm gonna tell you what, this vision that you build for next, it's not because you're broken. It's because I believe every person already has gifts. wisdom and resilience within them. Sometimes we just need the right environment to uncover them. So I've got a couple of questions for you before we leave this conversation today. And I don't want you to answer these right now. So sit with this for the next week or so. Maybe month, you may come back to this podcast later and and hear these questions and it may stir up a completely different answer in you. So the first question When have I been at my absolute best. Question two, what strengths was I using during that moment? And question three, if I trusted those strengths more often, what might become possible? So take those questions seriously, journal about them, talk about them with somebody you trust, and you might be surprised by what you discover. So, if this conversation resonated with you, I'd love to invite you to join me at the Rise Within Summit. It's not about becoming someone you're not, it's about rediscovering who you already are. We will spend three hours together discovering strengths, reframing setbacks, building meaningful connections, and creating a vision for what's next. Whether you're an educator preparing for a new school year, someone navigating a transition, or simply someone who Wants to stop surviving and start living with greater intention, I'd be honored to have you there. Thank you for spending this time with me today. And remember this: you are so much more than your mistakes. You are so much more than your job title. You are so much more than your fears. Your story is still being written. And maybe, just maybe, the next chapter. Begins the moment you choose to see yourself differently. So until next time, keep leading with courage, keep choosing connection, and never stop believing that growth is possible. I'll see you next week.