Chapter 5: Be One School

They can't all be winners. As Chris and Zac continue re-visiting their ideas and writing from 10 years ago, they meet their first regret. The idea? Yes, still important. The execution of the chapter? Well, this episode can serve as an upgraded replacement.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:53 Chapter 5: Be Once School
• 3:57 Chris and Zac admit they could have done this one better

Transcript

Zac: 0:04

Hi, I'm Zac Chase, and welcome to the Rebuilding School 2.0 podcast. Ten years ago, my friend, colleague, and co-author, Chris Lehmannn and I released our book Building School 2.0: How to Create the Schools We Need. It's a collection of 95 theses Allah Martin Luther detailing our best thinking as school builders, teachers, school and district leaders, and policymakers on what we can do to make schools better, more humane places for the people inside them. In each episode, we revisit one of the chapters from the book, and Chris and I sit down to examine how our thinking has shifted or stayed the same in the 10 years since the book came out. In this episode, we'll be investigating Chapter 5. Chapter 5. Be One School.com article, Confessions of a Bad Teacher. In it, a would-be career changer details his one semester as a teacher in a New York City high school. He talks about his struggles with classroom management and how his principal was a of little support. Quote: A large round woman in her late 30s, Miss P kept her hair pulled back tightly. Her eyebrows were long, thin, and very expressive, moving up and down like a caffeinated drawbridge. Miss P's large mouth, set between grapefruit-sized cheeks, was in a constant frown. At least that's all I ever saw. What were you trying to do? she asked the next day in her office, not waiting for an answer. Assign the children's seats? My effort at classroom management was dismissed for what it was. A total failure. I told her about detention, dean's referrals, and my conversation with Miss Rashid. She waved her hand. You need to have lunch with the girls, she said. You need to show them that you care about them. I realized I was living a nightmare. If taking a student who isn't being productive in class out to lunch to get to know the student better is a good thing, and we believe it is, then shouldn't principals and teachers share lunches and learn about each other's needs and ideas? The writer had a bad boss, yes, but not in the way he thinks he did. It's not that he got bad advice, it's that there was a profound disconnect between what the administrator wanted for the children of her school and what the administrator wanted for her teachers. It's hard sometimes. Teachers are adults and they get paid. So as administrators, we want and expect more from them. But the values that administrators hold will be reflected in the values teachers manifest when they work with kids. Both kindness and cruelty flow downstream. You cannot want one thing for students and another for teachers. The principal in the article tried to bully the teacher into caring about the kids, when everything we see about her behavior showed that she did not care about the development of this teacher. If we want classrooms to be active places, our faculty meetings must also be active. If we want students to feel cared for by teachers, then we must care for teachers. If we want students to be able to engage in powerful inquiry, so must teachers. The biggest crime of the story is that the principal wanted the teachers to treat the students with kindness and caring, but was unwilling to do the same for the adults in her care. We must endeavor to be one school. Christopher Douglas Lehmann. Again, so close. So close. So Chris.

Chris: 4:05

So Zac.

Zac: 4:07

Be one school.

Chris: 4:09

Yeah. Talk about underselling a really important idea in a channel.

Zac: 4:14

God, we shit the bet on this one.

Chris: 4:16

Oh god, like salon.com? Really? Yeah. This is one of the most practically important.

Zac: 4:25

And you sold it last week, too. I have to say, you sold this chapter. Like, oh my god, you guys, you've got to tune in.

Chris: 4:32

And then I because the conversation we're gonna have about is so good, and like how vital this idea is and how missing it is in so many places.

Zac: 4:44

So let me just start okay saying to anyone who's listening, I'm so sorry. Writing a book is hard. Yeah, because you just listened to me read this and you didn't hear this part yet. And so you heard me read it, and you thought, Wow, those guys really talked about this chapter like it was gonna be really good, and it's not, and we quit. There's like a paragraph where you're like, Oh, yeah, no, that's what we meant. That's what we meant. And then we were like, nah.

Chris: 5:16

And we had a really good editor, but why didn't she say to us, like, guys, this one?

Zac: 5:20

Maybe she's like, you know what? There's 95 of these, they can't all be winners. This idea must not be important to these guys. Because half of the chapter is somebody else's writing.

Chris: 5:31

Yeah, yeah, that's the other thing. This is yet another one where you're like, really? You you you didn't think of more than a page on this one? When I go out and talk about schools and how we change it, this is like a major thesis. What's the chapter we wanted to write about this one, right? Like, because that's that's the that's this for such like we were sitting here saying this is such an important idea, but we've gotten meta very quickly, and we should actually talk about the idea.

Zac: 5:58

You know, what we want for students, we must also want for teachers, right? That is the like yeah, that's the place where we got where we we were like, yeah, this is the thing. And then we went far, far away from it.

Chris: 6:07

The point is that you have to carry that through for everything you do. It's not even just in the way you treat people, it's the systems you build. It's like, what are your best ideas?

Zac: 6:17

Right.

Chris: 6:18

And how do they live in every single thing you do? So when you wrote this chapter, yes, I wrote this one, people. The bad ones. I know we said several episodes ago that we don't remember who wrote which chapters.

Zac: 6:31

I I wrote this.

Chris: 6:33

I wrote this crappy chapter.

Zac: 6:35

Yeah, I would also say, so this doesn't feel like I'm blaming. I didn't edit it. I clearly I clearly didn't read it and think I could punch that up for him. Um thanks, buddy. Yeah. Well, my name's on it too. So the thing that occurred to me is you, I think pulled that salon.com story to talk about this principle. Um, and I think that this is a really not just a chapter on kind of how we treat kids, but this is a chapter for around leadership in a way that we haven't touched on in the previous four chapters. Yeah. This is a space where it says if you are going to lead a school, and and we're using a principle as the illustration here, but any way, shape, or form, then the thing you envision the people you are leading doing for the people you are ultimately serving should be the thing that you do for those people themselves. That's exactly right.

Chris: 7:29

That's exactly right. And I think it's it's funny because like when I was rereading and thinking through, like what struck me is this is the first time in the book where we are actually being super practical, which makes me all the more annoyed that it's it's not a great chapter, because it's so important that we don't just talk about the big highfalutin high concept ideas, but actually then say, like, well, what does this mean to operationalize? And what does this mean practically to the way to this, like, you know, whether it is, as you say, the leadership stances we take, whether it is the thing we didn't write, which is about the policies and procedures and structures and systems that like you know that exist in your school. And I think so it is on some level, you know, and we do again, like as we keep saying, like there are mother other moments in the chapter in the book where we say, here's a here's a here's a through line, right, about how these things have to add up. This is the first time we're we were we're saying your point, this is what it means to lead the schools we need.

Zac: 8:36

So when I was in Colorado, and I ended up running library and media services for the district, and we had over 50 schools in the district, and they the libraries had been kind of without leadership for a good number of years. And without getting to into the minutiae of running a good school library, one of the pieces that needed to happen was we needed to weed books. There were too many books, which is a hard thing for an English major to say. And yeah, but if you want circulation to happen in a library, you can't have too many books because then it is a paralysis of choice. You can't feature things, right? Those kinds of things. There's also an issue, as is the case across the country, is that there were basically library techs or library clerks who are charged with running the entirety of these elementary school libraries. And what that means is that they had whatever training the district had provided, but did not have a degree in library sciences, right? Didn't have formal training as a librarian and didn't have formal training as an educator.

Chris: 9:43

But they were And this, of course, is because of the massive underfunding of school districts and that libraries are often the first place districts have to cut.

Zac: 9:52

Right. Because why would you want to really support the person who runs the library in an elementary school? Anyway, so saying to those teachers, we are those those librarians, you need to weed your collection, that's what that's called. Was a Herculean task. There were tens of thousands of books in these places, and they all of them loved dearly. And so the piece that I said to the team that worked with me in the district was we're gonna go out where anybody asks us to go out and to help them do this. And if they don't know how to do it, we will do it for them. And then what happened was those folks then volunteered, like they loved it, and then they volunteered to help. And so then there were like weeding parties that popped up across the district, as librarians would say, you know, I need to weed my collection, and they were and the people who had started were like, you know, it was really helpful. I'll come help out with that. And so that that piece started, and I had no actual supervisory positionality here. If I just said you all need to weed your libraries by the end of the year, it wouldn't have gotten done. That's right. And I will say, weeding libraries was not the only job I had on my on my docket. I was also head of English language arts instruction for sixth through twelfth grade. So that's not a heavy lift. I mean, that's read books, write papers. Yeah, there you go. But that was the piece of like, well, this is how I want folks to operate. I should, I should do that too.

Chris: 11:19

I think the language that is also in here, but is not quite the same is that wait, wait, wait, don't don't gloss over what you just kind of mumbled the last thing you said, and it was really, really important. What did I mumble? You said, like, this is what I want people, I want this, you know, in some people to see me doing. This is what I want, you know, and I think that teasing that out a little bit, there is something lovely and wonderful about people like reading libraries while helpful and good is also, as you said earlier, for all of us who love books, incredibly difficult. As I'm sitting here arguing with my wife, we are both English majors, and I'm like, oh, our children are getting older, we're gonna have an extra room, let's build a library. And she's like, so books can gather dust. And I am like, okay. Yeah, no, she's not wrong. We all know she's not wrong.

Zac: 12:08

But yeah, if anybody wants to just comment on this episode, if you want me to come to your house, I can help weed any collection.

Chris: 12:15

The point is that there's something amazing about all these people who love books, knowing this is good, but then going through this process together. Right. Right? It's not a it it becomes not a cruelty. Right? It actually becomes an act of love and an act of service.

Zac: 12:33

And when we get to ethic of care, we're gonna reference this episode again. Awesome. Because we're gonna talk about that a lot. But I mean, I think that's this is the first piece. Okay that I the the last is words that we don't use is that of servant leadership. Well, because we want oh go ahead. I uh let me ask you this. We're both so excited about this chapter, we are struggling tonight. We I'm speak for yourself, I'm amazing. Um you're 20 years in as principal of SLA. I am how and I'm sincerely curious about this. How are you living this in your practice?

Chris: 13:21

That's actually harder than you would think for me to unpack because it is so much how I think about leadership that it it it feels to me like I don't I don't like command and control, right? Like that is, which is sort of the opposite of servant leaderships. But my favorite question to ask people is what do you need? And that's a sort of that's what you want for your teachers to be saying. So this is a later chapter, right? This was that moment many, many years ago at an Educon where we were doing a workshop and we were talking about these two big strands of thought that that powered the school. One was this idea of inquiry and an inquiry-based education, inquiry-driven project-based education, and the other was this idea of the ethic of care. Uh, it was, I think, Ben Wilcoff who said, How do I engage in my own inquiry? I'm an elementary school teacher. I just know more than the kids. Like, I there's not, I don't get that sense of inquiry. And I said, You don't know what they're thinking. And that was when we sort of started workshopping out this idea of the three big questions that teachers and administrators can always ask, which is, what do you think? How do you feel? And what do you need? And those three questions, right? And and as I've sort of teased this out over the years, inquiry without care is can get very, very clinical, right? It almost just becomes like Socratic, which is cool, cool, but like not passion-driven. And care without inquiry is paternalism because we assume we know what other people need. And that's a dangerous place to be, right? And I think that for me, 20 years in, I think the really important thing to remember is to be open to remembering that I don't know what the person across the table from me is is thinking. This becomes a thing that as you get older as a as a teacher, it becomes easy to sort of bucket kids in your brain, right? Like, oh, this kid.

Zac: 15:20

I've taught you before. You're one of those. Exactly.

Chris: 15:23

And that's a dangerous place for servant leadership because you can get to the point where you assume you know what someone needs. And I don't want my teachers to ever assume they know what a kid needs. I want them to ask the question. If that's what I want them to do, I have to do that.

Zac: 15:39

What's the hardest piece of this for you? Command and control is not your fave. Right. But I would imagine there are times when there is an overriding voice in your brain that's that says, we need to do, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna act this way, even though it is not how I want the school to work.

Chris: 15:57

Not often, believe it or not. I mean, there are times when you know you have to tell someone who is not doing well, do this, here are the deadlines, and this is what I need, because six other people are for an entire staff is waiting for you. So there are moments where you have to remind other people of their servant leadership and that they have to get their job done. I think there's a couple hard parts of it. The biggest thing about asking people, how do you feel is people will tell you. In year two or three, we like kids were just we felt like every single kid was in crisis. And we were in a faculty meeting, and we were like, there's something about what we built that just is attracting every broken child in Philadelphia. And what we realized is that there's kids in need everywhere, right? But most schools aren't asking the question. So that kid who looks fine, you assume is fine. And we were asking the question, and then kids were telling us, no, that being a teenager is incredibly hard, and here's all of the things. So I think one of the hardest pieces of it still to this day is servant leadership requires you to carry other people's weight with them.

Zac: 17:14

Yes, as a person who has learned a lot more really specifically around this topic, is we were creating a space that provided the chance for students to heal from trauma, from educational trauma and neglect and other kinds as well. I'm gonna say a thing that I think you do poorly. I'm gonna answer my own question here. I think you would tell your teachers to go home and stop doing the thing. Not to stop caring, but you would hope that they have lives. And and I think this is inherent in being the principal of a school. I think it is inherent in having that ethic that you just talked about, and I think it is in inherent in caring for the individuals, and I think it's inherent in creating the school. Sure. But I think that taking that off is probably the hardest thing. But I think that you would want and realize the importance of your educators taking that off. This isn't to say you don't do it ever.

Chris: 18:10

Yeah.

Zac: 18:11

But I think that maybe that is the struggle I would say, like, as your friend, as somebody who's known you for nigh-on 20 years. How is that possible? I think that that is probably the thing.

Chris: 18:21

I think that's right. I I think that, but I also don't want people listening to think that like this is some weird martyrdom thing. I think it's really important that people figure out how to manage the the emotions of a caring school and the sort of weight of a caring school. The only thing I disagree with what you said is that yes, I would encourage teachers to go home and be home. But there are teachers we have and people we have who I know go home and think about this stuff, but that's where they process this and that's where they are able to come back the next day. So I think it's I think the question becomes not go home and leave work at home or leave work at work. Like, and I've never figured out how to do that. I joke around that I work-life balance is this weird dichotomy that I think is sometimes gets us in trouble. But I think figuring out how to do this and be healthy is the thing that I would push my teachers to do. And if that means go home and you've got, you know, a cappella night and we have a bunch of teachers who like we just have a bunch of teachers who go do that, and you don't think about this at all, phenomenal. If that means go home and journal, because that's how you make sense of it, phenomenal. If that means wake up at 5:30 in the morning and go practice ultimate frisbe with the kids because that's where you experience joy with kids, and that's what'll give you the energy and strength and and sort of resilience to go in the next day and do the thing, then I think that's okay. And I think that there are moments where you do this better than others. Obviously, when SLA was going through the asbestos crisis, I was doing this horribly. I was not okay.

Zac: 20:04

Right. For folks who do not know, SLA is now located in a building that it was that in its second home. And after or while moving in, asbestos was discovered throughout the building, which causes a bit of a crisis if you want to bring humans inside. Correct. Uh, and so that makes the managing of a school all the more difficult.

Chris: 20:25

And we were moved into our 1.5 home for six months, and it was crazy. Like, and that was I mean, I was not healthy. Yeah. So I think there's times, yeah, this is when you do it wrong, right? Is is is a is a servant leadership, you have to figure out how to not I think that there's also sometimes a permission to serve yourself.

Zac: 20:45

It it it this is the martyrdom piece, right? Is that I can only serve you in so much as I'm I have the capacity to do that. And so I have two kids, adopted them right before the pandemic. Don't recommend. I mean, adopting the kids totally recommended if you can do it now during a global pandemic, don't do it.

Chris: 21:03

So, one of the pieces my mom talked about when I was kind of talking about I mean, I know the love you poured into those two children, and imagine how much worse that pandemic would have been for them had you not adopted when that them one day.

Zac: 21:15

Yeah, no. My mom says it this is she said, This is probably the best thing you could have done and the absolute worst thing you could have done. She also says, This is how cults start. So this is like my wife there.

Chris: 21:30

Yeah, it's like my wife who said, Please, I know you're gonna start a school someday. Just promise me you won't do it when we have a young family. And I said, Of course, only a fool would do that.

Zac: 21:39

I remember holding your little babies in my arms when you started the school. But the other piece, as I continue to quote my mom here, and I think that this is important around parenting, but I think it's also important about being an educator, is she said, the reason I started journaling was because I was so devoted as a parent that that journaling helped me to recognize what I was feeling in that moment. And that has shifted it for me. Like I journal now for a completely different reason because as a parent, I need to tease out the difference between being angry alongside my kids, being angry at my kids, being angry about, right? I need like is that anger, is the anger that I'm holding my anger, is the happiness I'm holding my happiness, right? All of those kinds of po pieces. And I think that that's the piece. I just went to therapy, you know. Yeah, I do that too. I think that that's the piece of the kind of don't be a martyr, be a servant leader, do what you want the people you are leading to do, including taking care of yourself.

Chris: 22:44

You quoted your mother, I will quote my parents, right? Like, so the mantra in my house, as you know, growing up was the purpose of life is to make the world a little bit better because you happen to live in it for a while. To me, servant leadership is a way to do that. You create the conditions by which people are able to do this thing that they love for someone else, for other people really well. I want to pivot though, because the better title for this particular chapter should have been You Can't Bully Teachers Into Into Caring for Kids, right? That's the that's the the real thesis of this chapter. This chapter is like, this is a principal who is not listening to a mediocre teacher and is dismissive and mean, and the rest of the article, which I remember, is like her behavior is worse, and his behavior towards her is table, and it's that toxicity that we see in so many schools where the teachers don't like the principal, the principals don't like the teacher, it's this just sort of nastiness, and then oh, let's go take care of children. And how anybody thinks that ever works is beyond me, you know, to quote every plumber, poop flows downhill. But then there's this other big idea that B1 School actually is about, which is whatever you are about. It has to live in every single thing you do.

Zac: 24:11

I think the piece that I realized as I was reading this chapter that we did not necessarily intend, but that strikes me as incredibly true having 10 years more experience in multiple roles is this idea of and it's like the truism of like they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Right. We talk about that with students all the time, and it's very cutesy and lovely. But it is also true of the adults, yeah. And they are always watching you, right? Like people are taking your lead. Yes, and I think that piece is in is important as well. We are talking about being a leader from a position of authority as the principal, but there's also the leadership from within, right? There is also the opportunity, and maybe not in this particular scenario, but I do recall several moments in my life when I have said to you, Chris, this isn't working, while you were my principal, or you know, pushed back or challenged or had the conversation. Part of that is because you invited that space. You wanted pushback. Sid Lehmann was your dad, so that makes sense. But you did it this time. Yeah. Um, and we worked with Diana Lofenberg. I was worried we weren't gonna get to that in there.

Chris: 25:30

Bing! You know, another piece of this puzzle is this is like deeply Nell Nottings, who is the sort of educational philosopher most responsible for what we call the ethic of care, is that care is trans is a transaction. And that's the piece of this puzzle. And you have to know as a as a teacher as a principal, part of my job, and like you asked me earlier, what's so hard about it is part of my job is to hold everybody's bag of poop for them. So here's this teacher coming in, he's a young teacher, you know, he's failing, he knows he's failing. Where's her inquiry?

Zac: 26:01

I think I and I and so I think the different one of the pieces that's different here is that you are a principal of 20 years, and you hold that so deeply in your own ethic, and that as somebody who in schools has only worked for principals, it is also, I think, in my ethic to say there's a there's a managing up, a leading up that that was incumbent upon him. You know, like don't be a wet noodle, a wet blanket, don't be wet, don't be soggy, moist, it's not getting better. It's just getting so much worse. I I think that your position and your identity as a principal and the leader of a school has very much as you looking at this at this principal and saying, I'm looking at that and saying, like, yeah, it wouldn't work for her, but we must be one school isn't only the principal's job. Yes, a thousand years. You sign on to be a part of that community in whatever way, shape, or form you are, it is also your job.

Chris: 27:06

Still to this day, the three rules of SLA are respect yourself, respect your colleagues, and respect that this is a place of learning. And don't ride the elevator, and don't ride the elevator because it breaks. That, as a sort of code of conduct, if you will, is a positive one. It holds us to a standard of how we treat one another. What will we do? That's right. And again, that has to be cross-cutting, that has to be for everybody. I we one of our new teachers, you know, when I was talking to her during PD week, she was like, I've never been in a school. And she's not new to teaching, she's new to SLA. She was like, I've never been in a school where people treated each other this well and seemed genuinely happy to work together. Right. And like, those are not accidental things. I mean, yes, you like, I mean, we talk about this idea all of the time, and I think this chapter is one that that hammers at it. If you do not do this, if you do not have a North Star of what you believe and what that means for the way you treat everyone, then you waste the intelligence and energy and kindness and care of everybody who works there. And that's the thing. You do this because it's good and it's nice and yada. But you also do this because if you don't, the amount of wasted energy that goes into the toxicity of school is it just it sucks. I know. I was going so well, I was going full Josiah Bartlett, and then I lost it at the last. But but I but I mean I it there's no better word for it. It's this is you do this because this is what it means to actually honor the energy and intelligence and intelligence and care that everybody walks in that building with every day. Students, teachers, parents, custodians. Like it's important to me that our school safety officers know what our mission means for the way they do their work. It is important to me that our building engineers and our cleaners understand what you know that what the inquiry-driven caring model means to the work they do. And it is important to me that they know that I care deeply about their part of the puzzle. And that I want them to do it really, really well and feel good about doing it.

Zac: 29:40

I think it is also important. Which is why it sucks that this chapter was so bad. That's okay. We got it right. We we we almost did a part two, like do over, because chapter six is Vision Must Live in Practice, which is almost the same thing, and we did that one better. So much better. I think it is. Also a permission. And I think this is why I say, you know, like I don't work at schools I don't believe in, or systems, or those kinds of things. Because it doesn't have to be bad, right? I think there are so many folks, so many educators in those horrible toxic situations. Where it just doesn't have to be that. Like we can be better, we can do better. And it's not that hard. This is my frustration in the school district where I live, where my kids go to school. Is that I just see so many missed opportunities for quick, easy culture setting wins. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be like it really, you could have done that. Like every communication that I have received from my daughter's school so far has been either here are the rules, here's what happens when you don't follow the rules, or a reminder, here's when we're gonna talk about the rules. That is like that is how we have started the school year.

Chris: 30:57

Right. And and the first letter I sent out to the parents, which unfortunately was about dealing with massive SEPTA cuts and how are we all going to get to the city. We are each other's footnotes in seriously important ways. But you know, and I knew I was writing an email that was like, hey, we're all about to engage in this great big suck that the city is going through. But I still started about with like, we can't wait to see your kids. And actually, and I was really intentional in the way that I ended it because I was like, you know, this is very procedural, check this map, do this, da-da-da-da-da-da. But then I said, like, the school that SLA is on right now, our front, our we are one block, the the building itself is pretty big. And we are a block away from a big thoroughfare, and our front door is on a very residentially smaller side street. And I, because I wanted to make sure that the Ethic of Care even came out, like not just it's caring to say hey, check the maps, da da da da, but like I wrote to everybody, upper class parents. If you're driving your kids in, you know, on Monday morning, maybe drop them off on the corner of the big street.

Zac: 32:14

Uh upper class parents doesn't sound like what you actually meant to say.

Chris: 32:17

Oh, no, no, no. As in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade parents. I'm so sorry.

Zac: 32:20

I wasn't returning parents.

Chris: 32:23

Hello, those of you drinking your tea. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. That is yeah, talk about like school speak. Right. Parents of of upper class student of 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. Returning children, sure. Maybe drop your kids off on the big street and let them walk a block to school so that way our little side street that we're on doesn't become snarled and we're saving the traffic there for the ninth grade parents who are dropping their kids off to high school for the first time. And I really thought about like, what is my in this crappy email I have to send, what is my hopeful message? And I wanted everybody to remember that there are 125 kids coming to high school for the first time, and that a lot of the parents are gonna drop them off and have a little have a good little cry. And that that's a beautiful and to do that at the front of your school is a beautiful thing, right? And that like it's just a to your point, it you know, it took me, I don't know, 10-15 minutes to think of something good to write at the end of that email. But it was a you know, it was a way to say this is sucky, and we're gonna get through it together, and we're gonna make space for an important moment.

Zac: 33:36

And and as we'll talk about next week in Vision Miss Live in Practice, you stopped and measured the message you were about to send against what you want for the school. And that doesn't take too long. And the and and like a muscle, the more we do it, the easier it is. That's right. Christopher, no middle name. You don't get it one at the you don't get you one per episode.

Chris: 33:56

I coming up with uh 184 of these would be, or 190 of these, excuse me, uh would be a lot.

Zac: 34:03

Christopher Douglas, uh, thank you so much. This was lovely.

Chris: 34:08

Indeed. Thank you, Zac.

Zac: 34:10

Hey everybody, come to EduCon. It's educon.org. Uh EduCon is a fantastic conference. I got to help start when I was a teacher at SLA. It is in the dead smack of winter in Philadelphia, a wonderful time to visit the mid-Atlantic. It is uh a chance for folks to tour SLA when teaching is going on. And I think this is a unique piece of this conference. Also, these aren't sessions, these are conversations. Educon.org, go there now. Christopher, thank you so much.

Chris: 34:43

Thank you, Zac. It was wonderful to get to tease out a big idea that we didn't do really well the first time. And to your point, we did better the next chapter.

Zac: 34:52

It's all uphill from here.

Chris: 34:55

I'll see you next week, Zac.

Zac: 35:03

Thanks everyone for listening. Chris and I will be back for our next episode with the next chapter, Vision Must Live in Practice. If you're interested in reading ahead or reading along, you can find Building School 2.0 wherever books are sold. And you can find us on Facebook. Just search Building School 2.0 and like our page, where you can read my writing, Chris's writing, and catch all episodes. Please make sure you subscribe, like, and review the podcast wherever you got this episode. It will really help other folks discover the podcast and join the conversation.