 So welcome and today very excited about our admin lunch and learn with the expert. You're going to have a chance to meet to kind of a surprise in the email you might have thought we only had one guest but now we have two experts, and who will be sharing their research on creating schools where teachers thrive. When we were thinking about putting this webinar together. When we were thinking about how we could support educators right now. We first started thinking about hosting you know we're thinking oh maybe we do some virtual yoga sessions for teachers or what if we sent out stickers to schools and maybe that would you know inspire a little bit of hope right now but through conversations with Nathan and Alicia. We started realizing the realizing that there was more that we could do we could be more intentional and more impactful in supporting educators so yes offering the yoga it might have been a nice gesture, but it only would have been a band aid for the larger problem that's happening right now. So today we get to spend our time with two experts who have helped me understand the power of hope in combating burnout and education. My name is Tracy myself my name is Tracy pretty and I am the training and professional development manager here at Seesaw. I'm a former fourth grade and sixth grade teacher and I'm located in the Minneapolis area. I'm joined by my colleague Mia. Hello everybody my name is Mia Leonard and I am the training and professional development specialist here at Seesaw. I am a former kindergarten teacher. I'm in Chicago. I've been in my kindergarten previously for 10 years so shout out to all my kindergarten. My Chicago people that I see in the chat Chris, Tiffany, hello, and I'm excited to be here with you as well. And now we're going to turn it over to our experts so that they can introduce themselves let's meet them. So, so much hi everybody my name is Nathan Eklund, and this is just a real thrill to share the work that we've been doing really for a dozen years and a lot of our emerging work on hope which has really been over the last two years so I was a high school English teacher for what a dozen years and then I went on to do research on workforce development workplace culture and teacher job satisfaction. I've done my own consulting practice called Eklund Consulting now since 2011. And in the course of that time we've gotten to work with schools all around the country on just really creating great places to teach and lead in public education and in all settings frankly. And then over the last year via my, my work with Alicia who you will soon meet have really come to see that our work. We've been articulated for years around culture or engagement really was deeper than that and really had to do with with these these research around hope and burnout and really how we sustain our profession and and our beloved educators who we are desperate to keep and to serve and to really to keep our profession so in the last nine months we have begun the transition from sort of a consulting practice really building a network of schools that measure and care and and work together in community to create great schools for for educators so that is what is now the vital network which you'll see in the corner of the slide so we are. We're really thinking differently about our own work but also differently around how we connect schools and how we can better serve at a bigger scale because we have bigger problems and bigger ideas to share. And so this is just a really exciting data to to provide some some background and what we've discovered and what we're actively working on every day right now. Alicia, who are you awesome thanks Nate. I'm so excited thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of today this is just so thrilling. Yeah my name's Alicia Collins and I'm from Omaha Nebraska, I saw someone from Omaha in the chat. I am the head researcher for the vital network, and I'm also an international facilitator for mental health at work in the United Kingdom so I work between the United States and London. So I'm coming to you tonight from London. I'm also a trained and nationally certified school psychologist and administrator, and I truly enjoy working with students teachers and families to help support their mental health. And I actually just got my doctorate degree and educational leadership, in which my dissertation included studying hope and positive psychology during coven, and I'm also an adjunct instructor for university psychology classes. So I'm just really extremely honored to help organizations bring hope to schools and assist employees and bringing their best selves to work so I'm just really excited to be with you today. Yeah, well we are very very excited to have the both of you join us and share your expertise that is so needed right now so let's go ahead and dive in and let's talk about how we can begin to increase hope, decrease burnout and retain staff. I find, I think in our work that this first bullet point is so central to how we move forward together. And I think whether it's on Facebook or just in conversations with people we we all the time here. I think I am burning out or I think people are burning up but I'm not really sure we really know what we're talking about. And so I think part of big part of today's desires for you all is just to really get at your firm grasp. So we're really talking about when we think about well being, and when we think about our mental and our professional and our personal space on how we navigate teaching and leading in schools. And so it's for us, I think just that having those core shared research based definitions just really important. Another, I would repeat that same motive when we think about hope. I was introduced to this kind of the research and the work around hope. Only recently, and when I first heard hope it just sounded like something nice to have something that would be. Well, if we had hope if we could increase it. I didn't realize that it was actually such a well formulated documented research and frank and measurable component of our professional lives and so for me this has been deeply inspirational in my own work and I think part of what is fascinating for us on our end is that we've defined maybe some of the outcomes of our work around workplace culture job satisfaction teacher voice, a number of these kind of objective outcomes. But I've come to realize thanks to my work with Alicia is that that is all true, but we're actually serving people at a much more fundamental and based level than that. So things like increasing teacher voices not just voice for voices sake it actually increases hope it actually increases our engagement decreases burnout so it has some mental and professional kind of health outcomes that I didn't even understand and it's been sort of humbling to realize that I, I haven't done anything wrong for the last decade but I haven't always defined some of the outcomes of what we've done. And so that's just been transformative and how we think about serving our schools and working together so what we want to do today is really help define some of these these strands of what really impacts people deeply really changes how we go to work how it is that we've worked together and community with one another. And, and leave you with some strategies and some sort of analyses to go back and look at your own organization look at your own culture your own engagement with people and maybe begin to rethink and reformulate and why we go to work in the morning and how it is that we that we work together and so we hope that today is just a chance to maybe look at some of those stresses and pressures and fears that we have and be able to flip them and think about them in vastly different terms, then maybe sort of the dark complexions of what we oftentimes approach these kinds of issues. And we have a very simple sort of mantra that we as we develop tools resources measurements in our own work in that we have always wanted to impact people's lives you always want to make sure that that educators and leaders feel good about coming to work and want to go and want to stay. We have a number of webinars looking at data that suggests that retention and recruitment are as big of problems as we think they are. But as we work together and connect with other partners work with the schools, we just hold ourselves to say we are here to improve the lives of educators. And so it is with our apology, and it is, we're sort of militantly focused on that that we're not going to make it print it write it create it develop it it doesn't fundamentally help humans, and that has been a monumental shift but rather than the place the organization really how do we impact people and that that little twist really informs all of the work that we're doing right now. One of the biggest takeaways and sort of learning that we've that we've done is that and we know this we know this from our work especially with students that if we can measure it we can improve it so we have a nuanced, wonderful measurements for student health for student academic performance for students social emotional health. We can gather that data and infuse it into our planning into our programming and what what we do at school. It turns out, and I don't know if this is as as noteworthy maybe to some of you as it certainly has been to us is that we can accurately measure. Burnout we can accurately measure hope. And if we measure it that means that we can plan against that data we can use that we can use that learning to to infuse everything that we do when we go to school and so these are not the floats out in the ether burnout does not just sort of show up one day and hope doesn't just sort of ebb and flow given external factors. These are strategic organizational personal measures that we can take that tend to it that grow it to teach it, or in case of burnout, actively combat it as as as clinically and as strategically as we would with anything else that we do in our academic and school life so that's for us really transformational as we as we look at how does the schools can move forward and really impact people. So Nate how would you define burnout. This is a huge. This is a mean that's a bigger question than I think maybe even we consider sometimes in the field, but burnout is just in our vernacular we read it in the paper we read it on social media we it's a term that we use sort of consistently, but I don't think we're always talking about it as as incisively and frankly as clinically as we can. When we think about burnout oftentimes you just think about exhaustion. We just think about being tired. And when we approach it that way then we then rightfully we said we should get more sleep, or you should go to yoga, or you should not grade papers on Sunday that we we treat it, almost as if we are saying to someone who maybe was clinically depressed cheer up but no this is actually a clinical condition that we can that we can measure that we can track and we we've learned enough about mental health. Over the last decades where we wouldn't say that to someone we recognize it as a condition that we can actually treat and measure. It's really important that we understand that around burnout. So the working definition of burnout and there are a few but this is actually has been in. It is accepted by the American psychological association this is an actual definable trait, and it is that state of exhaustion that comes with working too intensely. It's a concern for your own needs. And so it that is sort of the opera that's not ours. That's not my definition of it. That is an operating definition that we can move forward from. But we don't treat burnout simply by just making a couple personal decisions or or or drinking more water. Those are all important things. They're not actually what we what we look at so we can define burnout in three core traits. It's important to understand sort of that that we have sort of verticals within it that we can pay attention to in our own life and in our own school so one of my go to the next slide. Burnout is measured by three core constructs so one is just emotional exhaustion that feeling that we can't give as we used to give that feeling that we are depleted or fatigued, but not just in terms of being tired, but really like a deep sense that I can't. I'm empty I can't give anymore. That's something we can track in our own lives our own experience daily, like where am I today on this is this is not this is gradient, this is not binary. And so we can really, we can really look at how we track that depersonalization is that feeling of being cynical or negative towards people in our world parents, students, colleagues. Other good community. So it's that sense of disconnect from the relationships that infuse our work and finally diminish personal outcomes just that I, I'm just not as good as I used to be at this work or I don't feel as accomplished or as motivated to do extra or to to serve others. And so these, these are, again, measurable. These are fluctuating. And when we recognize them, we then are able to to be really thoughtful about how it is that we address those during the pandemic in particular. And I get on a zoom and there's 20 people on 20 educators on it, or if I'm meeting somebody that probably we're all at a heightened state of burnout, more than we would want. And that, therefore, I'm at a heightened state of that sort of a universal place where we are. And therefore, if someone's going to be short with me, or someone is not as enthused as they used to be, or they are frustrated or angry, whatever it might be. They say, well, this is a bad person or a mean person or someone who's doing something wrong. I simply say this is a person higher on the burnout scale than they would want to be. And I'm going to approach that person and that relationship with that same sort of empathy and understanding and lack of judgment because burnout is a guilt free condition. No one's doing anything wrong, you're not, you're not, you haven't failed somehow that exhaustion is not a personal weakness. It's a condition that you're going through what are, and how are we going to work through it. What we're learning increasingly is that if we had scales that burnout would be on one side of the scale and hope would be on the other. And the balance between those two is really remarkable. And as we measure and grow hope, and it goes up, we see the burnout go down. And that's really what Alicia has brought to our understanding of how to serve teachers and educators and leaders in schools. Yeah, so as you can see on the screen and Vital Network, this is our working definition of hope and such a passion area of mine. It's the belief that the future will be better than what's going on right now, better than the present. It's a positive motivational state that moves people, keeps moving them forward, continuing on, even in the midst of obstacles or challenges. It's not optimism. It's not wishful thinking with hope. We can do something about it. We can have control over it. What's so important is it matters. It can be learned. So if you're low in hope just like what Nate said, it's okay, you can get better. It's important. It can be shared with other people, other educators, other students, especially in the times of change with COVID uncertainties. Hope it increases so many things like productivity, job satisfaction, inventiveness, flexibility, problem solving, self efficacy, among gosh so many other things that I've learned through our research and fostering hope right now and educators is so vital. So if you're such a large obstacle has impacted everyday life of staff and schools all around the world. So how can we measure hope there just like what Nate was talking about there are also three core components of to hope, which are agency pathways and future casting which again you can see on the screen. It's really important today that we break these down for you. So you can think about how you can impact these areas within your staff. So that's just the ability to make things happen. If you think about it with educators you could think about it's their mental energy or motivation towards personal goals so it could be personal. It could be goals for students, or it could be overall goals for the organization pathways. What are we talking about when we talk about pathways. It's just the means to reach goals. So how are we going to get there. And we think about it with teachers or educators, teachers or educators engage in multiple ways to reach various schools. And what's really important here is they believe that none of those paths are free of obstacles because things get in our way. It's also important to note that when higher hopeful individuals experience a barrier or stressor, they can generate additional or new pathways to help continue them forward. And those high hope individuals can tackle barriers or stressors as challenges, which I think is so key right now, instead of negative thoughts that could potentially derail them. Future casting, that's just future thinking. And if we're thinking in terms of educators, it's just that educators have the ability to see a future of working in a school. That's so important right now that gets them excited again to be a teacher or an educator. And so all of these components are vital in the overall concept of hope. Measure hope, therefore it's really important because we can do something about it. We can impact change in our organizations, right Nate so please tell us more about burnout and ways we can continue to cultivate hope within our educators. And I just want to say that I had some great questions already in the in the chat around from a leadership perspective if our if leaders are burned out. How do they, how do they create an environment, a hopeful environment, or within their own within their own buildings and I think this is there's nothing about the work that we're sharing today that is easy. And there's nothing about this that's frankly very Polly Anna it, it is hard work, it is strategic work. It is work driven by by planning and execution and tracking over time. So hope is not something you hope for burnout is not something you hope goes away that we actually how we organize ourselves as leaders. How it is that we leaders work together to impact policy procedure behaviors. I mean that this that this is work that is as fundamental to from a leadership perspective and from a from a school perspective, as any other work that we're doing and I think we can share more about that. The challenge that I think we face is that we have a misplaced sort of common vernacular and public vernacular around how to combat burnout in education. Tracy mentioned early on this idea of like care packages, or, or taco Tuesday, or nice notes in the in mailboxes. Those are important. Those are, those are, those are, we are not anti donuts in the staff lounge those that it is good to treat people well. And we're certainly not against getting more sleep exercising more spending time with your friends and family where you have a rich and full life as part of being a good educator that your own life outside of school is important. That said, we're sort of after years of doing this work and and and months of researching it we're sort of a 28 year rule. This is not a hard and fast number by the way but for nothing 20% personal behaviors it is a it is a component of it. But the ecosystem in which people operate the organizations in which they serve the external forces and systems vastly outweigh what we can control only at the individual level. And so we are never going to yoga our way out of poor decision making. We're never going to deep breathe our way out of of communication that doesn't share important information with us in a timely manner so those are structural pieces that actually infuse the hope that actually decrease burnout. So there's the ways that we are able to sort of coalesce around these kind of shared visions and shared future of what is a positive state look like and how to be reverse engineer from that is really important. And that's why I think when we see so many schools right now maybe hyper focused their energy on that 20% just like being nice to teachers, but don't pair that with like structural components that actually work together in community to create a really rich, hopeful environment. I think we're missing, we're kind of missing the ball on that one. And so from our perspective, we really want to pair really good personal practices, really good personal intention, but we want to be even more committed to how it is that we lead and work together on a daily basis in schools. And that for us is, I think maybe the biggest shift we want to share today is just really rethinking kind of reprogramming our brains that this is not just well be nice. This is actually about something much deeper that we can that we can impact. So a common misconception that we hear often is simply that hope and morale tend to be confused a little bit that when we think about morale with that sort of a mood of feel a tone, and so we teacher morale is really low. That probably is true at a macro level, and that that teacher morale is indeed. reports and data suggesting that is that at a acute level that morale is low. But what we want to reframe I think and have you think about is that morale that feeling that that that energy is something again that we can undergird with like hard thoughtful work around increasing that engagement level so this is not just a mood. It's a feeling that it's actually something that we design and measure and grow within our schools and that's a really important piece. I think morale is a great place for parent teacher work, for example, we am I at the high school or my son goes we raised a couple thousand bucks for teachers we gave them gift cards to local like deli and coffee shop everything. Awesome. Great, great way to pick up people's moods and that's that's important. It would not suffice, however, if they also then went to work and weren't weren't involved in making decisions that affect their own classrooms for example, there are no gift cards. generous enough to overcome that so I think morale maybe is a way for us to look at supporting educators from outside the classroom outside the school, but we have to do deeper more fundamental work in our organizations themselves. So, let's take a moment. If we could. And maybe in the chat or even just in on your on a post it note there your desk. What. What does a burned out educator say, what are they, what would you say they're a burned out educator is experiencing, maybe on a daily basis and how does that maybe manifest itself in the ways that people show up to work so maybe in the chat. If we could just get a few kind of, what are some common traits maybe of that experience. I can't do this anymore. I'm stressed. I can't do this exhaustion. Time management, personal priorities and organizational priorities exhaustion. I don't want to take on anything new. I'm always doing work. I'm just had enough. Why am I doing this, doing the least amount of possible. My plate is full. Doing this chat is not hard to come by for us right now in across our profession. Negative attitudes from parents and students feeling disconnected, blaming others for struggles that were that were snapping at children just not not being as present. I will say it's snapping at children isn't interesting when we have a question on one of our baseline survey tools that we use that says, I like the person I am at work. It's interesting because we also have a question said I am good at my job, we can have people be really strong in how they view themselves as an educator I am good at this job. And but not like who they are at work. So these, I think you've all hit just really strong overtones and undertones of what that experience is. I'm not good at this. I don't like who I am. What I do is not good enough. I don't have the resources no one listens to me, all things that you hit on in your in this chat. I'm not good enough to flip it though. What does it sound and look like though, when we are around where we are in the presence of someone who is full of vitality full of hope, and full of maybe still feeling connected what is what is the sort of the opposite experience that's that's put that in the chat as well. Believe they can make a change want wanting to try new things. Asking the question how do I improve. Let's try something volunteering to help. They have expectations they're energetic. They support one another. They have teamwork. They participate and engage other than silence. Absolutely. Happiness growth mindset. Self advocacy. Social emotional engagement with our students. Having fun. Thank you Jenny I think fun can be a four letter word right now and it's just great. Yeah, having fun at work. So yeah, let's, let's, let's, let's share our sort of similar rendering here. So, we want to know in our sort of view of vital education vital educator that they're not only feel like they have a voice but they actually are actively involved in making decisions that impact them. And I think that that sense of agency that Alicia spoke to that they actually have a sense of control. A sense that when they have an obstacle, they know that they can tackle it with in community so there was a lot of talk in your chat around collaboration and connection. A sense that they are enough that the sense of adequacy like I can do this. So this is a, you'll note in your own chat and our conversation today that that balance between personal kind of behaviors and beliefs as well as sort of organizational and structural components that lend to hope. What are you seeing Alicia in the chat anything I'm missing. No, just some really fantastic examples which makes me hopeful. Absolutely. Yeah. When we think then around the 8020 rule, but we want you to really think about it. As a result of our time together today is that whole organizations can be structurally more hopefully run that we can actually manage hope differently in one organization than another. We don't want you to know this is important. We want you to know that in the schools where we have worked and they have committed and we have committed to one another and partnered and really thought deeply around the processes of communication and decision making processes and practices of binding people together the processes of setting goals for the organization setting goals for individuals that when this happens. People burn out less and are more hopeful. So we are not presenting today, some sort of dreamscape. Wouldn't that be nice. Oh, it'd be so cool. No, there are vital schools out there right now you are maybe working in one leading one right now, but that didn't happen by accident. Hopefully places don't happen just because you happen to hire more hopeful people. Hopefully places happen because of the way that that we that we are organized in the ways that we're structured a burned out organization for us. Some of the hallmarks and there are more than these but oftentimes it said we aren't communicating together. It's more declarative maybe decisions are made and announced but we're not actually collaborating to make those decisions, or that they're stuck in sort of this is just what we do. Sort of a resignation to to a current state as opposed to that sense of future casting that Alicia share in vital organizations. We know strong codified practices for decision making active teacher leadership groups. We could add more bullet points to this administrators who are treated as professionals and are able to have impact on what happens in their own buildings, where they have an influence over district or even state policy. And so for us, a vital organization is not again something we wish for, but that we work toward, and that when we begin to have these structures in place these shared beliefs in place and really mindful practices about what we do each day. Things change. So I can't stress that enough that if the outcome of listening or seeing some of this communication today is well that would be nice. Would be wonderful if we could say that will be nice. When we, when maybe we think differently about about how it is that we work in in partnership. Alicia anything to add to that. No I just think that yeah vital organizations are where we need to be and we can, we can make that happen together so it's a great place to be. Thank you for sharing all of that. If we were if you were to summarize into some key takeaways that you would like administrators to walk away with from this conversation. What would those be. Yeah, and we have some questions some guided questions for you for all of the attendees are to think about in light of today's conversation. Hold dear the liberation mentally professionally spiritually philosophically organizationally. When we understand that the thing that we fear burnout, and the thing that we want hope don't exist somewhere in the universe just again kind of as I said earlier sort of floating. Then we hope that we just maybe we stumble across that. I think it's unbelievably freeing when we understand that these are components of our professional organizational life that we can teach. Measure, pass on grow tend to strategize. Again we can be as mindful around these practices as we are around students social emotional health for example, we have a lot to learn from our own work with students. If we could just take the top 10 things we do that work for students and translate them even into our own lived experience. What would be different. How would we actually think differently about our own work for kids and own our own work with one another as adults. Above all, this matters that that our teachers matter our leaders matter educators matter and that we. We are vital that we are important, and that our own health and our own connection with one another allows us to do great work for students. We get accused on over the course of a decade plus of doing this work effect. We have a what about the kids what about the students. Why are we talking about the adults. And I think we're having inquisitive thoughtful empathetic strategic conversations about adults, of course we're talking about students. So our, our work in this realm in this arena is so that we can have places full of adults who want to be there, who are fulfilled and able to do their best work for students. I sometimes joke that when we apply for our jobs. The night before we get a good night's sleep in the morning we get up we have a healthy breakfast, maybe go for a walk to clear our head so by time we show up for an interview, we are as awesome as we can be. We are this is that this is the version that we want to present ourselves with. And then something crazy happens. I don't know. Where somehow we can become a depleted version of that self and somehow that is an honorable perspective somehow we've gotten to the place where somehow me being tired cynical angry overwork stress actually has value, as opposed to like that person I was when you were tired. And so I'm not asking anyone to be better than they were when they were hired I'm asking you to be as good as you were when what does that look like how is it that we kind of that we that we think about it in those ways. We have whole stones where we compete in misery like oh you think you're tired, or you think you work, you were only work 18 hours I worked 20 like I must love kids more. So we actually praise and sort of, you know, we kind of monetize a burnout behaviors as opposed to hopeful behaviors now, what does it look like to sort of sort of lead with those. So we have a few questions, and I want to leave some time maybe for some for for some chat questions as well but we love for you to go back into your own thinking, go back into your own schools and begin the process of kind of mystifying and deprogramming maybe some of what we some of the present ways that we behave your behave and operate and what are some new ways that we can behave and operate I would love to share some of those. So let's go through this are three hope strands of agency pathways and future casting and let you sort of see some of the kind of machinery within your school that maybe is is leading, maybe it's unwittingly increasing burnout and decreasing hope, or allow you to see things that are working to increase hope and better understand why. At least you want to talk a little bit about goal setting and read and re goal setting. Yes, so it's really important that we think about goals just like what I talked about with agency. And so on your screen you can see just a few kind of guiding questions that you can have with again it's just as Nate said with yourself maybe it's a just reflection time with your senior leader team. Or it's a quick email out engaging information from your, your staff because so often we leave those important people behind. So review, how can you set goals for your school community. What does that look like. So again that agency piece is really important because it's that in that motivation that I can I can do this, that energy to propel individuals forward. And yeah maybe it's reviewing how you set goals for individual educators. And there's some questions there on your screen. With goal setting to right Alicia, it's important because if one of the key components to burnout is diminished personal accomplishment. But if you're working towards something you didn't choose, or working towards something that you don't believe in it's going to be hard to increase your sense of personal. So then when we have these moments where actually, I have an opportunity as an individual or as an organization to be really deeply involved in what we're working toward. And you know what, what, what is, what is that future state, all of a sudden I start feeling better about my, about myself so that is a, most of the hope strategies are causing hope to go up and simultaneously, sort of some of those traits of burnout to go down and that's sort of that I think that's sort of the secret sauce of that, of what we're talking about today. Absolutely. I'm a little bit about pathways so my favorite thing that Alicia has taught me about about pathways and I, this has changed my life, I sound like I've drunk the Kool-Aid because I have. When we think about pathways we're talking about finding an obstacle and finding ways around the obstacle. Now, clearly we have, we all share one big obstacle right now. Not on any given day. And so I think it's what, what pathways really invites us to do is to say, Okay, here's an obstacle, and not only what how are we going to get around it but how am I going to engage my colleagues my partners my employees and figuring out. And my favorite thing that you've taught me is that none of those obstacles is in and of itself free of trial or struggle. So it's not we're finding like the easy path necessarily, but we're opting into the path and seeing that we have options, and it might be hard work that got there together. And so we don't want you to necessarily leave this and think that you have to go now as a leader, for example, and say that maybe burnout is an obstacle and figured out your way around it you need what are the processes. What are the forums you have where we meet with our own people and say, let's work through this together and figure out which one feels the best and is informed the best by what we know and understand and can coalesce around. That's a really transformative way of thinking about ideation. I would also say that early in the pandemic, we work with so many schools where leadership said well we have to decide X, Y and Z because teachers already have too much on their plate. And so it came from a place of empathy and of care and of nurturing, but I fear at times that some of that ideation around like, how are we going to operate, unwittingly sort of also decreased hope because I wasn't involved in making decisions that I was being called upon to enact. And so I think a hopeful approach towards this is, we have an obstacle, we have a problem, we have an issue. Let's meet together. Let's figure out what are these pathways together. And can I add something here, Nate, I think this is so important when we think about re-golling that things come up and we have to change course and that's okay and how as an admin can you share that with your staff that there are struggles that maybe you're going through or that you can share with others that it's okay. It's okay to change course. It's okay to try something new, as long as you explain that and communicate that with your staff so that they can see that too. I think that's really important. And so I think that's really important when we think about re-golling. I just love that one. The last one I think is this idea of future casting. And I think we all do strategic planning and we set, we set, we have structures around, around goal setting, organizationally and personally, but how often do we actually sit in to dream what a future state might look like. Like ourselves and students. What does it actually look, sound and feel like? And so I think future casting is that capacity, that kind of creative capacity to picture that a better day is ahead. Which obviously given our current context with an education is more vital than ever. That ability to see a future state. And I think that's the design from that kind of a human centered design around what are the conditions could look like. And I think that is that, and that tangibility of it. Right, Alicia? Right. Yeah, that's so important. These sounds like great faculty meetings. I want to sit in these conversations. I was just going to say, I am definitely invited. Yeah, I want to sit and I want to be, I want to do that. Thank you so much, Nate and Alicia. We really appreciate you spending this time with us to share what burnout is to talk about how burnout can be measured. But also to talk about how we can decrease burnout by increasing hope and giving administrators those actionable steps that they can take to improve the quality of the teacher experience. We have created a one pager that summarizes the three key inquiries that Alicia and Nathan discussed to increasing hope. Each inquiry is defined in the one pager that you will be receiving. We're going to drop that in the chat in a minute looks like that has already been done. Thank you so much. And it also includes key questions to answer to start creating a school where your teachers really want to not only stay but to thrive. And this will also be included in the follow up email as well. The goal for you as you leave the session is to really think about what that vision is that you have for hope in your school or district. We have created a seesaw activity that you can link through through the handout that will help you share your vision and gather your teacher's insights to really guide you as you begin to take those steps in fostering hope. What you do is copy and edit the activity to add your personal vision for your school, and then you can share it with your staff to ensure that your teachers voices are at the forefront front of really reshaping the teacher experience. Yes, do you mind if I jump in real quick. Yes, please. And one of the things I was thinking about too is that I mean at seesaw we use seesaw all the time for our students to set goals that maybe you want to flip it that now you're giving your teachers the opportunity to set and share their goals through seesaw where it's visible to you you can hear them. You can track their goals over the year as well so we encourage you to think about that as well. That's an awesome idea Tracy yes. So Nate, is there anything final as we wrap up and we begin to take questions that you want to share. What your hope for maybe administrators is after this webinar would be. Yeah, I know that on the last slide we can we'll we have our website where people certainly can love for you to go and and we all that is an opportunity to sort of learn more from us as we continue to evolve and develop our own resources and and work I just want you're all invited and and as we share writing research practices and findings from the field it's just it's sort of electric work it's so exciting. And I do want to make really time for questions I just want to say one thing that probably should have said 45 minutes ago. This is hard, but we're where we where we are as a profession, and I noted that someone said that Melissa noted that it doesn't matter for in America, Chile, Africa, Europe, it does not make the state of profession, the state of teaching and leading in schools right now is a challenging one. And so, none of our work is born out of fluff and and and and and light work we be honor and respect that this is hard work, but that is work that matters and so I hope. I don't want to say I hope I know that we can leave this session today, maybe just thinking a little more deliberately, and that you have more agency in everything that we've spoken about today then sometimes we give ourselves credit for or understand that we can impact. To me that is hopeful, knowing that we're just not out of control and out of our control but we actually can impact really meaningful ways. What we do and how we do it, and I think that and with whom. And this is so important, but I would love some questions if we have time that'd be great. I think that we're all taking this in I can see my even I've had multiple conversations with both you and Nathan and Alicia and I still have a page full of notes here. You know just taking it all in and really hoping that everyone's having a chance to process and think how they can use these very clear strategies to start. You know introducing more hope into their schools and districts I think I think one thing I don't know if you can touch on just a little bit more. I know that you did touch on this before but I think if there are any other little tips that you can share for leaders that feel like they are burnt out themselves of how they can start doing this work how they can start being inspirational and hopeful and do this work even if they are feeling burnt out. Yeah, it's a great question and I would, let's be, let's be real honest here, a little bit burnt out probably doesn't capture the state of leading our schools either. The rates of turnover and and some of the indicators of burnout amongst our administrative peers are as acute and as alarming as they are in the in the in the teaching workforce. And so this is a that is a not only a valid question it's really central to it. This is not easy. This is probably another webinar so I don't want and I don't want to sugarcoat my answer but I will say this. We are guided in this work by the notion that we don't want teachers. Sort of suffering might be a little bit too harsh a term but suffering for the good of kids we don't think that that is not for that is not for the health of children to be around adults who are not themselves in a good place. It's probably the same for administrators, but their capacity to be in a good to be in a place where they feel like they have agency, a place where they feel like they have accomplishment, where they have connection and community. And that doesn't take anything away from staff that allows us to do even better work for staff. So part of it, I think is for us has always been sort of this, this freeing and sort of liberating notion that investing the time energy and strategy into your own professional practice in life does benefit your educators and that, and that benefit then goes down to our to our students. And so I think it's, it's important that when we ask what is a burned out educator look like we talked about their plate being too full, we heard about isolation. I heard we in the chat mentioned just feeling of being stuck. And I would say if we had asked on that slide what is a burned out administrator look like guess what it would have sounded like my plate is too full. I'm in isolation. I am, I'm, I'm, I'm suffering from those same traits. And so, let's honor that. And let's be, let's be, let's be. I think that we build up an administrative culture within a district for example where they, where they have agency over policies and procedures, how do we build cohorts of leaders who support one another and the same ways that we want to build for staff. So there's sort of a downward up kind of picture here, all of these great practices we do a binding students together of helping student hope of student voice. And those same traits are good for faculty and staff, and those same traits are good for administrators says that that scaffolding is sort of universal as we as we sort of explore like how it is that we can engage people throughout the whole the entirety of that system and I think that's really a key thing when we listen what's a vital organization look like when we think about voice agency pathways in a future casting. That's for everybody. There are other benefits that that are that are ubiquitous within a school setting. Awesome. Thank you for that. I think that that's great advice and I would encourage anyone who has more questions to reach out to the vital network. And you can connect with Nathan Alicia there. I know we are coming right to the end of our time I also know that you are all extremely busy you have a lot of things going on. I'd love to have you share your feedback on this session with us. As I said this is something new and different that we've done it's our first admin lunch and learn with the expert so we want to know what you thought of it. We want to know your feedback we want to know if you want to join us for more sessions on, you know, burnout and hope. So please give us your feedback very quickly that'd be great it's just a very quick survey you might have to actually it looks like it's not linking in the chat so you might have to just quickly copy it and paste it into a browser window. And then you'll be able to fill out that so we really really appreciate all of you taking the time to join us today, Nathan and Alicia we so appreciate you sharing with us this is all incredibly important information for us and it's really helpful to giving us steps and understanding that you know, I have one of my things I think that I've taken away is really, you know, approaching with empathy and understanding that burnout is not personal, I think that that's been a huge huge takeaway for me. Thank you for all the opportunities to, you know, sustain refresh and inspire your own practice and I think that you gave us some clear steps for that so thank you so much for joining us and any final thoughts Nate or Alicia. We shall let you go first and if you have anything. Thank you for letting me be a part of today I think this is just such a vital time for schools and educators across the world. And we can still do something about it it's not too late. We have tools, and we can create a more hopeful, hopeful world of great teachers that enjoy, you know, being at work and loving what they do again so it's not too late. That's the key. I think that week. I hope that I hope that just by virtue of our conversation today that maybe there's more hope for those of you were able to attend and I want to thank seesaw. We don't. There is not enough of this conversation in our field. We are not accentuating this enough and so things like this are critical and we're so thankful that you committed the time and energy to this conversation. And just, again, just really want to encourage all of the attendees live or we're going to watch it later to connect we would love to learn more about your experience and also lend to you our support as for as we're able. We, to Alicia's point and then and then we'll wrap up I would just say that in terms of not too late and something we can do. We believe that at the macro scale teaching is an amazing profession being a school leader is an amazing career. We just, we just have to continue to down the path of creating contexts for that is true. And, and we have seen that transformation we've been we've gotten to sit in the passenger seat watching schools rethink that and it is inspiring and it is hopeful and it's own right and we're just, we hold on every day to just a passionate belief that for our own future casting that better days are ahead in our within our own profession and that means a lot to us so thank you. Wonderful. Well, thank you all for joining us we hope you have a great rest of your day and we'll see you again soon. You're at seesaw. Bye. Thank you everybody. Thank you.