S4E04 Rethinking Educator Well-Being

So how are you all approaching this work?

Well, culture is, is built in the micro moments.

Culture is the collective capacity of who everyone shows up as.

There is no culture in an empty building.

And so when we think about how cultures are created and the collective capacity of who we are as human beings, owning who we show up as and, and creating that environment creates this solid foundation from which to operate from.

And so when we have that solid, safe foundation, now we can actually infuse the different tools and strategies and, and learning modalities on top of that.

And I love how you're speaking about micro moments because I think we often, even here at the Education Foundation when we're speaking about boosting our team culture, we don't often think of it in the micro.

So give us some examples of that on a school campus.

So when you think about, um...

I hear this, we'll talk, uh, at the adult level first.

Uh, educators saying, "So-and-so walked past me and they don't even smile," or, "They don't even say good morning," or, you know, "I smiled intentionally at them and they walked right past me.

They must be angry with me." That's the story we make up in our heads.

And yet if we lead with a generous assumption in that micro moment to be like, "Oh, they must be really stressed out in this moment.

Maybe I'll circle back with them later." Or in that moment being intentional when you're walking down the hallway to notice your colleagues and to be able to say, "Hey, how you doing today?" And to have that micro moment of looking each other in the eyes to say, "You matter, and I see you," and go, "Yeah, we got this today," a little fist bump.

Whatever it is, like, that little micro moment builds trust and resilience in our educators to know that they're not alone.

And then when that translates to the student level and them doing it...

So we see these, um, TikTok reels or whatever where, where the teacher's standing outside the classroom and greeting-

Yes

...

the students coming in-

Yes

... and the different ways to say hello.

Beautiful, right? And how does that translate into every day interactions when learning is happening? How does it translate into the ways that, that we see some educators, like, kneel down and actually speak to the student eye to eye? Like, those are micro moments.

But how are we doing it at the adult level to ensure that the adults are feeling seen, feeling heard, and feeling valued?

So what does that look like then? Because you can't give what you don't have.