Episode 190: The Power of IOU Leadership with Dr. Joe Famularo

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

All right, everybody, welcome into Episode 190 of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. My guest on the show today is Dr. Joe Famularo. And I'll tell you what, Joe was going to share with us on this episode, a leadership framework that could truly transform the way you lead both personally and professionally. Now I'll tell you this about Joe, he is a seasoned educator. He is a superintendent.

He is someone who has spent over three decades in the same school district. I know what you're thinking, right? Like, how does someone stay in one place for that long and just continue to thrive? Well, Joe has some incredible insights that he's going to share about building a culture of trust, about continuous improvement, and ultimately about intentional leadership. You know how much that means to me that intentional leadership.

In this episode also, Joe is going to introduce us to his IOU leadership framework, which stands for inward, outward and upward leadership. It's a really powerful way to align your values, your relationships and your impact to create that thriving school culture. So whether you're a principal, district leader, or just somebody aspiring to grow in leadership, you are going to find so much value in this particular episode. We're also going to talk about that move

A little bit further, we're to talk more and more about that intentional leadership. And what Joe is going to share with us is, is we want to make sure that we build school culture that doesn't happen by accident. And so he'll share his pH two e life propeller assessment. And that thing can really help identify the key areas that we need for growth. So really, this is going to be awesome, folks, stick around. This conversation is packed with some incredible insights.

some really actionable strategies, things you can go and do right away. And don't forget, if you love the show, if you enjoy what you hear, if you're coming back to me on a regular basis, and you continue to be one of those people that just listened to the show over and over, please do me a favor. Take a moment, go and leave us a review on whatever podcast platform that you are listening.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 02:24

go in, hit that five stars, write a review, I'd love to hear your feedback, but just as much those reviews help to really drive that algorithm to get the podcast in front of that many more people. So if you're enjoying the show, if you love the show, please share the show with other people who definitely could benefit from leaning into leadership. All right. So with that said, it is time for us to dive into my conversation with Dr. Joe Famularo.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

So today on the podcast, my guest is Dr. Joe Famularo. And I'm really excited about this conversation because Joe and I've been sitting here talking for a few minutes. We've had previous conversations and what we've been talking about, we probably should have hit the record button from the very beginning. We were talking about his framework for IOU leadership. And there's so many great pieces in here, but one of the things he said,

ou know, we're early still in: 2025

That comes from that space of knowing ourself. And that just really resonated with me. So I'm excited to jump into this conversation today with Joe. But first, before we do that, Joe, let me just welcome you in. Thanks for joining me here on Leading Into Leadership.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 01:15

Darren, I'm very excited, big fan of all your work and looking forward to the conversation. Thanks.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 01:21

Yeah, well thank you very much. And I would tell you this, folks, if you're not watching and on YouTube, just go pop over to the YouTube channel just so you could see Joe's background. I mean, it is spectacular. I absolutely love it. There's a lot to be said for your backdrop when you are recording a podcast and the video is included. So make sure you check that stuff out. So Joe, let's do this just really quick.

share with my listeners, just a little bit about who you are about maybe a little bit of your journey, whatever piece you feel like you want to share to maybe kind of set us up for this conversation.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 02:03

Yeah, great, sure. Yeah, and the backdrop, you try to represent who you are, right? And that's a good tie in, and I try to put things that are important to me. But I would say I'm a teacher. I like to always start off a teacher and a learner. I really believe in continuous improvement and how do we get ourselves to the next level. And not that we always think when we hear, you need to improve, that we're bad. No, we're good. And how do we get better? then we're

get there, how do we get to the next level. So I started off as a teacher in my district, been there 34 years, but the last 18 has been superintendent. Great environment, love it there and taught many different subjects, reading, special ed. I have five certifications. Music is my passion as well, so I taught music for a while, like to incorporate that in everything I do.

But I just love being around educators. We have the best team, you know, recognized and just love writing about it and discussing it and having, you know, good discussions about leadership and how do we continuously improve in our lives.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 03:15

Yeah, absolutely. so, so I want to make sure we don't lose that. So you've been in the same district your entire career. This is this would certainly qualify you probably as a unicorn because that doesn't happen very often. But from from teacher all the way up through superintendent, what what is the secret to that type of longevity in one place?

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 03:24

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I've been asked that a lot and yeah, started as a teacher then and then moved to an assistant principal, director, principal, assistant soup and then again soup. And I think that the trick is that you realize that it's a team effort that when you're side by side as a teacher, then you become say a principal that you don't take on that, I know everything about the, no, you left that.

Now they're the experts and that's important that you reach out, we're a team, you need to have relationships, that outward living that we're gonna talk about, the trust that you build. And then being side by side with all my principals and then becoming the assistant soup. Now again, technically you're supervising them, but again, you need to go back to them even though you may think, have trust, work with your team that they're the experts.

It's just about building a culture and that's what it's all about building a culture of trust if there's trust things move fast things move quickly you know everyone is is reaching their potential and more if it's not a Culture of trust and everybody's on edge and and then you don't get the best out of everyone There's a great saying that you know you could buy people's back, but you can't buy their heart right? They'll come do their job and leave, but if you want to buy their heart

work together that's that's built on that trust factor so you get as much as you can so I Try to create that environment where we're a team It's it's you know, you're the experts and let's get to that next level. So it's been a great experience I love going every day. I'm just very fortunate and blessed to be in this position

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 05:28

So you and I were talking before we hit the record button and you were sharing it and we're going to get to the IOU leadership, IOU culture, all of that stuff here in just a little bit. But I know that at least a piece of that comes from an anchor, if I can steal one of your words, you being anchored very much in your whole district, being anchored in Leader in Me, the seven habits through

I'm curious and I work with a number of districts that that have done similar work. I think it's fantastic work. I'm curious. When did that leader in me work the Covey work come into your district? Let's let's start with that. Let's let's start with you kind of how that came about.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 06:19

Yeah, it's

ed when the book came out. So: 1990

this whole idea of being principle centered. My studies, I've heard about it, but it really put everything together. So when I got back and I was teaching, I started incorporating that in the classroom. And then when I became principal, that's when I really started discussing it with the staff. Now there was no leader in me at that time, so we really were innovated. How do we incorporate? How do we use this information with kids? And we started doing it. We had our core values.

So we really came up with a program that was different than Leader In Me, but using those principles. And then later on, Leader In Me came about, got connected with Franklin Covey, we have a great relationship. So we do have a little twist to it, and they love that it was sort of a parallel to A.B. Combs, which similarly happened there, and that's how the Leader In Me came about. So we do have a little variation of it, but it's...

it's again, it's principle centered. So how you know, the strategy doesn't matter as long as you have the principles. So that's been really the foundation of what we do. And that's how this, you know, the seven habits came into about. But I've used so many pieces, especially, you know, the mission statement with family, the seven habits of highly effective families, you know, very powerful book. So that's where it shifting with me. And, know, it's basically an inside out approach.

to living and leading. And then I started getting ideas of the IOU, how I can incorporate that in my own thinking and taking it to another level.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 08:19

Which takes us to that IOU, which now is your own framework that you have kind of adopted or built upon that work with.

seven habits with being very principle driven. Let's talk a little bit about maybe kind of how, well, first let's talk about the framework. And then I want to talk about how maybe you started to develop and build on that. And eventually I want to get to, then you decided to write a book about it.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 08:53

Right, right. you know, IOU stands for inward, outward, upward, right? So everything starts inward. Who we are, the inward is being self-aware, understanding yourself. It's based, you know, on the principle of self-identity, who we are. Outward is when you move out of your inward understanding and relationships.

So inward living is really just, it's sitting in a room by yourself thinking, this is your life, we live inwardly, we have our principles, our vision, our goals. It's not doing anything, it's just the definition of us. Then, as soon as you step into a room and there's another person, now you're outward living. Now you're having, it's about relationships. How is that interaction? Does your inward living match your outward living? And based on your inward living and your outward living, there's a byproduct, there's always a byproduct.

every conversation right now there's a byproduct. Is it upward? Is it uplifting? Is it an upward success? And that's what we strive for, that upward living. So IOU stands for the inward, outward, upward living. Now the opposite would be inward, outward, downward living. Sometimes our inward intentions don't match our outward living and then it's downward where your life ship is sinking. I like to use the analogy of ships where upward living your ship is on course. But then there's also one in the middle.

which I call IOW. I know we're throwing a lot out, but it's inward outward wayward. It's just sort of not upward, not downward. It's just sort of living by default. So we're always striving for IOU, upward living. And how do we do that? So that's what developed a framework to help push us up and continually move to upward living. It's OK to be wayward. We're in that mode. It happens a lot. But we don't want to live there forever. We want to keep pushing ourselves to a higher level.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 10:44

Yeah, no, I like that a lot. I think the big key there obviously is that living with intention. You talked about when it's wayward, it's just much more that reactive, right? It's more of that responsiveness in terms of how you're going about things versus really being intentional about what you do. Now, let's maybe take that framework a little bit further and talk about how

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 10:52

Yeah.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 11:13

how you go from one to the other, or maybe talk about some of the principles in each so that as listeners, people are starting to maybe take that, you know, the inward, the outward, and then the upward a little bit further in terms of their understanding.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 11:26

great. you

know, again, inward living, who you are outward living, there's a byproduct we hope it's upward, which I, you know, one of the things that I try to capture around it is what is upward living? Well, it's these four areas, peacefulness, happiness, healthiness, and excellence. Anything we, you know, when we think about our goals and what we look for in life, you could put in one of those four areas, whether it's peace, you know, whether it's happiness, whether it's being healthy and excellence being the best you can.

That's what we're pushing for that upward living pH two E. we, we call that again, the opposite would be it's not peace. It's anxiety, right? There's your downward living. Do you get anxiety? Not the piece. Is it happiness or unhappiness? Is it a healthiness or unhealthiness? Is it X-list or ineffectiveness? Right? So there's a big gap there. Right. And we want to just keep, how do we push to that pH two E the upward?

And then there's the in the middle, right? It's not peace, it's not anxiety, it's just apathy. This is, you know, where we may be. It's not happiness, it's not unhappiness, it's just indifference. It's not healthiness, it's not unhealthiness, it's just unfit. Or it's not excellence or ineffective, it's just mediocracy. And that's where you start, you know, we live a lot of our life in default. We go to work, right? We come home, we eat dinner, we put the TV on, we go to bed, and then we wake up and we do it again.

and we get into this wayward living, that I-O-W. Again, pushing us. How do we get out of that? How do we get out of that default mode, living with intention, like you said, and I know you use that a lot, intentional living. Again, that starts inwardly, knowing who we are. Our most important asset in our life is ourselves. It's taking care of ourselves, knowing ourselves.

We need to spend some time and look at what is our purpose? What is our vision, our mission, our personal vision? Excuse me, you can apply this to schools, you can apply this to family, but first start with yourself. And that's what the first book is really all about, is just knowing who you are and defining it. And you have to go to it. It doesn't come to you, right? That's the problem with this.

Life comes to us the outward world comes to our inward world, right? And we have to react to it We have to take the time to look inwardly and if we don't go to it, it'll never come to us So it's really powerful when you really take the time to look inwardly and try to think about you know what my vision and my personal Mission is principles values and goals and then get that foundation and then is my outward intentions matching it and then when that happens

you'll get one of those areas of PH2E, guaranteed.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 14:17

Yeah, absolutely. I love that so much. So let's talk a little bit more about pH two e because I know there is an assessment that people can go and, and check out it's a free assessment where they can kind of get an idea of, of where they are in each of those four areas. You actually sticking with your nautical themes you had told me earlier that that is kind of like a propeller. So

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 14:42

Yeah,

yeah. Yeah, sure. So think about how a propeller pushes a boat through the water, right? It's got four blades. This particular propeller, some have three, but let's say it has four blades and it's pushing through. But if one of those blades is bent or, or, or, you know, nicked, the boat's going to vibrate. It's not going to push the boat through effective. The boat starts vibrating and then the engine could break down.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 14:43

Maybe share a little bit of that and let's talk about where people can get that assessment.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 15:09

Well, we all have a life propeller, which I like to call that. And each one of those blades is the PH2E. So one blade, it's peace. One's happiness, one's healthiness, and one's excellence. And we need to look at other areas that we need to improve. I created this assessment called the PH2 Life Propeller Assessment, where you go on ph2e.com. It's free.

and you answer questions yourself and you don't know which category you're answering it for, so you go through the questions and it doesn't take that long. And then you'll get back a personalized result. You're personal life propeller, if you will, and you see, wow, my peace is really down, or my healthiness is down, but I'm really thinking my excellence is high. I'm really focusing on improving and studying, but I'm neglecting certain areas. So it's just a nice way to look at the self-assessment.

for where you are in the PH2E life propeller category. And again, is that propeller pushing you through life at maximum speed and maximum force? Again, it's a way to look inwardly on your most important asset.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 16:17

Yeah, absolutely. No, think it's great. And obviously, I mean, this is the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. So we love to talk about leadership here. And this is certainly really focused on that individual or that self. But you've got a new project coming out that now leans a little bit more into the school, a little bit more into the school leader and how these different principles really connect to them.

Let's talk a little bit about that. And first, just share with me, mean, Joe, what was it that made you say, OK, I've done this one book. Now I want to go do another one that really targets schools and school leaders?

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 16:58

Yeah,

so the first book, IOU Life Leadership, and it really gets into these 12 essential life anchors. Again, a lot of nautical themes with PH2E and assessments and your life ship. it really is a general about yourself, but it could be for self, family, team, or organization. But it wasn't specifically written for school districts. This next book, I specifically wrote it for leaders in schools where it takes these life leadership, life anchors,

into school anchors. They're the same anchors, but it's how you look at them. And when you put together what your district or school or classroom, six anchors, which is self-culture one, that's your overall culture of your brand and your vision, and then life vision, what's the vision statement? The purpose, passion, potential. What's the daily mission? The daily mission is what you do every day that has to drive instruction matched to your vision. What are the values, the school values?

the school principles, and then the school goals. That's your inward, what I call your inward school map. And that's a great exercise for any leader, any team, to go through those six inward principles, those six school principles, and have discussions, and develop them, and then promote them, teach them to the kids, and make it a solid unit. And that's how you build that inward map for culture. Then there are six outward school cultures.

anchors and that's about trust, communication and those are great exercises as well. So you put the inward map and the outward map together and then you have now your school strategic map. This is what's going to drive the school. It's going to be a map that we can, know, everyone, every stakeholder can use and, know, keep that culture raising higher and higher, you know, to the highest level. So you're have that upward success.

So that's what this new book is. has questions that you can answer for each of these anchors. It's step by step. It has samples and examples of school strategic maps. I'm very excited, hoping to get that out soon this year.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 19:10

Yeah, outstanding. Well, I think that's really a big piece right now, especially, you know, I mean, obviously I work with schools all over the country right now and everybody wants to talk about culture. Everybody really wants to lean into their culture. It's either, hey, we've got to do some stuff to fix our culture or, hey, we feel really good about our culture, but we don't want to see our culture backslide or those who are really good at it are really intentional.

about it and I would say you guys fall into that category. They're able to do that because they're very clear about what it is that that's important to them and then they're very intentional about the work that they do. You said something to me earlier. Go ahead. No, go ahead.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 19:53

Right, and if it's, no,

I was gonna say it just on that intention, if it's not intentional, it creates itself, right? The culture will create itself and it may not be the way exactly, right? So, and it's a shared, it's a shared development. You have to work on it, you have to have those discussions to create this intentional culture. And what's important is these are principles, it's not saying what the culture should be.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 20:01

Yeah, but probably not in the direction you want it to be. Yeah.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 20:21

never get into that in this book at all. Everyone's unique, every district, every environment. It's the principal and then you define it. The team defines it, the leadership divides it, the teachers, the parents, et cetera.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 20:34

Yeah. Well, and you, like I was, I was getting ready to say, you you shared something with me earlier that, know, here you are when we're recording this, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's still in January and you guys are just, just coming back and, know, just talking with some of your students that your students know all of those principles. They know the mission and the vision and so forth of your school. And when, when you are intentional, when you are teaching that,

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 20:54

yeah.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 21:02

to your students, think that's when there's so much more ownership of the culture. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the work you and your leadership team have done to make that happen.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 21:08

Yeah.

Yeah, so again, it's happening and it has to be simplified. A lot of times we have vision statements and they're a paragraph. have these mission, and that's good to do, but you need to break it down to something that kids, everyone can remember. So our vision statement, the short is community of learners. And it's real simple. We have the paragraph, but there's a lot in those few words. One of the outward principles is common language. So it's common language, few words say a lot. So community.

We define who the community is. That's the parents, teachers, leadership, board members. Community of learners, we're continuous improvement. The mission statement, if you ask any kid, it's lead and learn. Every decision we do has to be around leadership or learning, whatever we're doing. So we don't have roles in classroom, right? We don't have jobs. We have leadership roles. We don't do the announcements. The kids do the announcements. We pass over all the things that adults do to kids.

They shine in many ways. the child that might not be the highest in academics can be a leader and can be very successful because we're giving them leadership roles. We're teaching them and showing them what does it mean to be a leader. Everyone's a leader in the school of themselves first, then lead with others, and then lead others. those are the things. And if you ask them what the core values are, everyone will know. Dedication, respect, integrity, teamwork, and trust. Those are shared values that we develop. start in pre-K.

every grade up. And then the leadership principles are the seven habits principles. So, you know, be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, synergize, listen first to understand and then continuous improvement. So it's understandable and, you know, everyone understands. So those are posted everywhere.

You have to have symbols that represent it. So we have them embedded in the floors. They're in the tiles in the bathroom. There's stars. We use the star symbol and each point on the star has meaning. And yeah, and it's a lot of fun. The kids have it. The teachers create it. We have mission statements all over the school. Every classroom does their own mission statement. The office, the custodians, and they enjoy it. They sit around and say, you know, what are we about? What do we want people to feel when they come into our classroom?

and they hang that up and they all sign it. And then when someone's out of line with the mission, all you have to do point to it because they developed it. Very powerful stuff and it's easy, it's fun, but it's creating this whole atmosphere of leadership.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 23:42

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think I think a big word that that you didn't say there, but that is so key is just the amount of ownership there. The ownership from the kids, the ownership from the other adults in the organization. Sure, you are the one who has cast this vision. This here's where I see us being. This is who I believe we can be. But because everybody else has taken ownership of that along.

that's why you see that success continue to happen.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 24:12

Yeah,

yeah, it's it's it's we call our kids stars so we have star the teachers and star polishes, right? So we have star polish a teen teacher teams and student teams, but they it just systemic now it just you know teachers take these principles and core values and just take them and I'm just so Excited and just proud of them and how they just keep taking it to the next level our administrators

Because they're principles, you can't disagree with them. There's no discussion about being proactive, something we shouldn't be doing, or integrity, et cetera.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 24:43

Right.

Yeah, that's outstanding stuff. I love that so much. man, our time has absolutely flown by. What an amazing conversation this one has been. Joe, we're at the point in the show where I'm gonna ask you the same question I ask everybody. It's the only one scripted question that I ever ask here on Leaning Into Leadership. And you've shared so much already, but I just wanna ask you, it's the Leaning Into Leadership podcast.

what might be something else you're doing right now to lean into leadership?

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 25:22

So, to lean into, so again, I think it's just the mindset of continuous improvement, right? If you're looking to improve yourself, you're going to take yourself to the next level and that should have a positive impact on others around the world. this idea of just continuous improvement, again, it doesn't mean we're bad or we're not doing a good job. It's how do we get to that next level? And if we have that mindset,

There's always discussion about how can we get better. So it's really not complaints. It's like, OK, here's an issue. How do we improve it? It's just that mindset. Here I'm having difficulty. How do I get better? So that mindset, and that's really our vision statement, a community of learners, how do we get better? How do we just become better learners? That just translates to leadership. mean, we really are in a leadership age now where we have to be leaders of ourselves and leaders with others and leaders

to others and that's something I think we need to keep teaching our kids and just keep focusing that getting better, how do we become a better leader?

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 26:32

outstanding stuff. really appreciate that. Joe, people are going to want to get in touch with you. What's the easiest way for them to find you and to reach out?

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 26:41

Yeah, the website is iouliving.com and there's a lot of free stuff on that. You can get the PH2A assessment. There's just a lot of information on there. Feel free to go there. You can subscribe to it and be on a list. So any podcasts or blogs that I do, we'll get them out to you. But all the materials will be on that website.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 27:08

Outstanding stuff. right. Dr. Joe Fabularo, thank you so much for joining me here on Leading Into Leadership.

Dr. Joe Famularo (: 27:13

Thanks Darrin.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 02:59

All right, folks, that was a fantastic conversation. Again, really appreciate Joe for coming on the show. So much exciting stuff that he's got going on. So make sure you get down to the show notes and check out his information. I've got some links in there for you as well. So you can get connected to Dr. Now, it's time for a pep talk. So on the pep talk today, I want to talk a little bit about my last eight or nine days. I've had an incredibly busy eight or nine days. Now,

I'm busy a lot. I travel a lot. But I will tell you this particular stretch was was really kind of special. It began, honestly, on Thursday of the previous week. So so let's go back maybe about 10 days from the day that this podcast episode is being released. And spent the spent the morning with a couple of my principles that I support here in the Omaha area, just having some really deep conversations around they had just had their external reviews.

And you know, kind of talking about that process talking about some personnel things and a few other things always fills me fills me up fills that bucket. When I get an opportunity to spend time with those two gentlemen. Then I spoke virtually that afternoon to to an audience through the thrive conference, got in the car drove to Columbus, Nebraska, and keynoted for the entire district there in Columbus, man.

Dr. Chip K and his crew are doing some amazing things up there in Columbus, they really truly are got to work with the classified staff for about an hour and a half, which was really wonderful, something I truly enjoy doing working with our classified staff. mean, I love pouring into our certified staff by all means. But not everybody pours into their classified staff. And I love that that Dr. K is doing that. From there.

into an airplane off to Helena Montana spoke at the Montana principals conference of secondary and elementary principal entities, you know, came together, it was really wonderful to see that many school leaders in one place, I got to be the opening keynote, had some fantastic conversations, got to catch up with some old friends that I'd never met in person and finally got to some time with from there, back into a plane, by the way, it was negative eight.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 05:22

in Helena when I woke up that that Sunday morning, negative eight burr. That's cold. So cold. I jumped in a plane came home 24 hours later, I'm back on a plane to Las Vegas. It was not negative eight in Las Vegas. Thank goodness. Got to spend a few days with my friends in Lincoln County School District in Nevada. I've been working with them for a couple years. Pam Teals got some really great things happening in that district. Always love it when I get to go out and just

really pour into and support and learn from the leaders in Lincoln County. Then it was back in a plane and come home and here I am back in Omaha and I tell you all this not not to just tell you my worldly travels but rather to share this in just that stretch alone. I've so many conversations with educators, so many conversations with people who are doing what matters and doing right.

by kids. You know, right now we are in a very politically charged climate. And we have been for a while. It's not just all of a sudden, it didn't just take place two weeks ago, right? This has been true for a long time. And whether we're talking about at the federal level, or we're talking about the state level, it is so easy for us to take our eye off the prize and to get pulled off to all these other things that are happening.

you know, maybe bills that were in front of the legislative body. had several people reach out to me and share a couple of bills, the state of Wyoming, my home state had brought forward. I mean, just things that just make you shake your head. But ultimately those are things we can't control. What we can control is how we choose to show up in front of our kids every day. What we can do is choose the energy we're going to bring and the focus that we're going to bring.

And I wrapped up my week yesterday with a conversation with a portion of the board for the North Carolina mid level educator association. We're working on a project they're not ready yet to quite share what that project is. But I finished that conversation by thanking them for being such incredible champions for kids. They're being a champion for this project that we're working on as well. But ultimately, folks,

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 07:45

this is the thing as educators, we can allow ourselves to get distracted by the great by by all these other things that are happening, whether whether we're talking about political environment or parents or whatever. But what's happening in our classrooms is incredible. What's happening on behalf of kids is incredible. And we cannot lose sight of that. I allow yourself to hear the noise, but don't allow yourself to get consumed by the noise.

right, let's stay focused on what truly matters making a difference in the life of kids. Remember, we only get nine months, right, we get nine months to take a little person and make them a better little person in the course of that time, whether that's through third grade or science or physical education or band or whatever it is your medium happens to be. Our job is to take a little person and make them a better little person in that nine month window of time. So

Don't allow those distractions to pull us away. Continue the great work you're doing. And so my challenge for you this week is really call it out when you see it. When you see great things happening in a classroom, call it out. When you see one of your peers doing amazing things, call it out, right? Make the effort to let people know you see them, you hear them, you value them, and you trust them, and you believe in the work that they are doing. Because ladies and gentlemen, the work that is happening in our schools is truly awesome. And we need to celebrate it. We need to be the one shouting it from the top of the roof, so that we're not allowing all this other noise to tell our story. That's what I got for you this week. That was one heck of a rant one heck of a ramble. And I'm all right with it. Everybody get out there and have a road to awesome week.