Moves Leaders Make - Season 1, Episode 5: Conferring as a Leadership Move

In this episode of Moves Leaders Make, Penny Kittle and Elaine Millen welcome Sam Bennett for a conversation focused on conferring as a leadership move. Together, they explore how listening, trust, and one-to-one human connection support both teachers and students.

GUEST
Sam Bennett works with teachers and leaders to support learning through conferring and conversation.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Conferring centers listening and trust.
• Asking questions leaders do not already know the answer to supports growth.
• One-to-one conversations strengthen relationships.

BOOKS & REFERENCES
• That Workshop Book by Samantha Bennett
• The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
• Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen
• Mary Oliver: “Sometimes” (poem line quoted)

Moves Leaders Make — A Book Love Foundation Podcast; Hosted by Penny Kittle and Elaine Millen; Produced by Testwood Creative Studio; Music by ryanancona (Pond5); booklovefoundation.org

★ Support this podcast ★

Creators and Guests

Host

Penny Kittle

Penny is Chairman of the Book Love Foundation and is dedicated to helping students and teachers develop a passion for reading and writing. She has taught English and coached literacy in public schools for 34 years.

Guest

Sam Bennett

Sam Bennett works with teachers and leaders to support learning through conferring and conversation.

What is The Book Love Foundation Podcast?

Celebrate the joy of reading with the Book Love Foundation podcast. This is a show filled with information and inspiration from teachers and leaders across grade levels, states, and school systems. We interviewed authors and educators for the first five years and now turn our attention to leaders in public, private, and charter schools. Find out more at booklovefoundation.org or join our book-love-community.mn.co of 2500 educators from 28 countries. We sustain joy together, one kid and one book at a time.

00:00:05:23 - 00:00:24:18 Penny You are going to love this episode
of Moves Leaders Make a Book Love podcast series for educators shaping
change. We’re grateful to donors like you who have generously
contributed to the Book Love Foundation and made this series possible.
Visit BookLoveFoundation.org to learn more.

00:00:27:03 - 00:00:53:02 Penny Okay, so here we are again. Wow. This
episode today I’m so excited about because we are digging into
conferring. And I think that of all the instructional moves that you and
I have spent the most time thinking about. So yeah, that’s one of them.
And the thing that I think about when we talk about moves leaders make
is that the move of conferring with individual teachers is almost never
there.

00:00:53:04 - 00:01:25:03 Penny That’s a move most leaders don’t make.
And I think that the interesting piece is that it, it does so many
things beyond the small conversation. Right. Because we always talk
about there are big moves, leaders make and small moves and small moves
that have a big impact. And conferring is one of those. And you know me,
I was on LinkedIn and I saw this, that according to research acts of
kindness release the same chemicals as falling in love dopamine,
oxytocin and serotonin.

00:01:25:08 - 00:01:48:11 Penny When you’re feeling low, instead of
turning away from the world, find one small way to be of service.
Kindness heals us all. And that’s from a master teacher, advocate and
dyslexia specialist, Kathleen Seaman. And she posted that. And I
immediately thought of conferring, because conferring, this is the way I
think of that, especially with the students I taught.

00:01:48:11 - 00:01:50:07 Penny When you sit beside a kid and you say,

00:01:50:07 - 00:02:06:23 Penny are you okay? How’s it going today?
Right? Even before you’re into the meat of. What are you reading? What
are you thinking about? That it is an act of kindness to simply give
someone your full attention. And you do that so well. Well, I think our
guest does it very well.

00:02:06:23 - 00:02:31:17 Penny Yeah, we know that. But I’ve tried to do
that. As an administrator in a school is really value the human being of
teachers, and the only way to do that is really be present with them and
respect their presence and respect them as human beings. And I think
that’s what conferring does, and it really connects. It doesn’t focus on
the role of the individual.

00:02:31:17 - 00:02:56:03 Penny I’m the principal, I’m the assistant
superintendent and the other teacher. It’s on the human being and our
contribution to service. And the service happens to be kids. Well, and
you were instrumental in my school of bringing instructional rounds to
us, which is, an opportunity for teachers to spend ten, 15 minutes in
these different classrooms and you bring them in, you take them out at
the end of it because I led them as well.

00:02:56:06 - 00:03:15:06 Penny You have a conversation about what did
we notice and what did we see. And you always asked us to leave a note
to acknowledge the teacher who’d led us in the classroom, because we
don’t as teachers, enough of the time hear, “Man, I loved your room.
Talk to me about this. What’s on your wall or how you organize that.

00:03:15:06 - 00:03:46:06 Penny Right. And that’s an act of respect, an
act of kindness for this hard work. So I’m thrilled to bring Samantha
Bennett to the conversation. Sam is one of the huge mentors in my life.
As someone who taught me how to confer through a book called That
Workshop Book and what I’ve always loved about that book is a back and
forth conversation that occurs most of the time via email, but it’s a
series of letters that either introduce or follow up on an interaction
with the teacher.

00:03:46:06 - 00:03:54:12 Penny And it’s been a great joy and a thrill
to work beside Sam in more than one place and just to hear her thinking,
so welcome, Sam Bennett.

00:03:54:17 - 00:03:58:07 Sam Thank you so much. Thank you for having
me. Great to see you guys.

00:03:58:10 - 00:04:02:14 Penny It’s good to see you. Could you tell
people what it is you do just in a few sentences?

00:04:02:17 - 00:04:22:10 Sam Sure. Yeah. So I think my identity, is
best described just kind of as a spark. My passion is motivation and
engagement, and it’s motivation and engagement for grownups so that it
can also affect the kids. So that idea of if everybody’s jumping out of
bed in the morning, so excited to be at school, we can’t lose.

00:04:22:16 - 00:04:31:15 Sam We can’t lose, so am I. Formal title is
learning and leadership coach. And I but spark kind of encapsulates it
for me.

00:04:31:15 - 00:04:44:22 Penny So when we were talking about moves
leaders make, and we both have experienced the importance of conferring
with teachers, I immediately thought of you. And could you just talk a
little bit about your thinking around conferring with teachers?

00:04:44:22 - 00:05:09:12 Sam Yeah. So I think that idea of of why
school, particularly in this day and age, like why do we gather in
schools, you know, we had the grand experiment of the everybody on the
computer and learning over Covid and it just for me just tripled down on
why we gather and what is the humanity that we need to access when we
are together.

00:05:09:14 - 00:05:36:12 Sam And I just think that there is nothing
like that 1 to 1 human connection. So, you know, Mary Oliver’s got that
great poem that says, pay attention, be astonished, tell about it. So
that as a foundational piece in school is what I want from, you know,
district leaders to school leaders, leaders to teachers and teachers to
kids. If we could just do those three things.

00:05:36:13 - 00:05:41:15 Sam we got this, we got this. So that, to me,
is at the heart of conferring.

00:05:41:15 - 00:05:53:01 Penny It is. And one of the ways that I
watched you like move your work was with that we’ll that you and Chris
Devaney started where you break it into. Can you talk about what that is

00:05:53:01 - 00:06:21:06 Sam Yeah. We’ve got yeah. So we’ve we’ve got a
couple of circle metaphors I have to draw to think. And so we’ve kind of
put our a lot of our work into different images. So one of the main
images and this I learned from being in classrooms, you know, pre-K to,
you know, to, to college when I would walk into a classroom and it was
just like there was electricity in the air, I would linger and I would
say, all right, what is happening in here?

00:06:21:11 - 00:06:42:16 Sam That is allowing this position of set
forward, eyes wide, this canvas and crackling. In most of those places,
I couldn’t even find the teacher because she has taken a knee and she’s
eye to eye, nose to nose with a kid engaged in a conversation about,
okay, what’s going on? What are you thinking? What are you figuring out?

00:06:42:20 - 00:07:09:11 Sam Tell me more. Have you read this? Try
this, try this. So in those classrooms, I noticed, and I’m a I was a
meticulous note taker. And I noticed there was this use of time where it
was two thirds of the time, kids, students were doing the reading,
writing, talking, even in a kindergarten class. Yeah, one third of the
time the teacher was talking at or with the entire class at the same
time.

00:07:09:11 - 00:07:33:13 Sam So it really cracked open for me. This
idea of teaching as listening versus teaching as talking. And it
happened in every single classroom, whether I was an 11th grade
chemistry classroom or a kindergarten classroom. This one third, two
third balance happened over and over. So we drew it as a pie chart and
thinking about what are those different chunks?

00:07:33:13 - 00:07:54:11 Sam Because it’s not that two thirds of the
time has to be back to back, right. But that idea of how do we launch
kids into read, write, talk, right? How much time do they need to get
some depth? And then if we need to pull back and and address the whole
class, great to either shift the task or shift the text, right.

00:07:54:11 - 00:08:04:02 Sam What is it? But what it also does is it
frees up that two thirds of the time for the teacher to do the kid by
kid by kid.

00:08:04:02 - 00:08:23:10 Sam We we found a structure to name it. And so
there’s two thirds, one third is kind of that golden ratio of time that
allows the teacher to get in kid by kid, to ensure that if you have a 60
minute class period, you can ensure that every single kid has 60 minutes
of growth.

00:08:23:10 - 00:08:29:15 Penny So tell us a little bit more of that 60
minutes of growth. I’m interested in what it looks like.

00:08:29:17 - 00:08:53:08 Sam I am too. That’s what’s so fun, right?
There’s no right answer to that question. But it’s that conversation.
And this is where leaders conferring with teachers like, okay, we’ve
we’ve got our learning target for the day. We know where it sits in the
longer term because we know we know there’s no way to get every single
kid to a target in 60 minutes if it’s a worthy target.

00:08:53:11 - 00:09:18:19 Sam Right? There are tiny little small things
we can do, but the idea of the interaction between the daily lesson and
the long term unit, because we know what we need, like a series. So in
my work with teachers, we don’t plan anything shorter than three weeks.
Sometimes math goals we can squeeze into one week, but every other
content, if it’s not worthy of three weeks, it’s not really a worthy
topic.

00:09:18:19 - 00:09:53:15 Sam We need to expand the topic so that daily
growth towards this, towards the long term learning target and the long
term learning targets have two criteria one. Ten years from now, we’ll
still need to know it, and two, you can say how it will make somebody a
better human if they know it or can do it. So the long term targets have
those two really worthy goals, and then how the daily targets build
towards those long term targets, whether they’re knowledge based, skill
based or really going towards those big understandings.

00:09:53:15 - 00:10:18:13 Sam That’s that’s the other piece. So what’s
fun is when you’re talking to teachers like, okay, so where does today
fit in the big, big picture? And what might 60 minutes of growth for
each kid look like? How will we know? Can we tell from annotations? Can
what will we be able to tell from exit tickets? What will we tell from
letting kids talk in small groups and walking around scripting what
they’re saying?

00:10:18:13 - 00:10:36:05 Sam Right. Because the only way we know if
kids are cognitively engaged is what they say and what they make. So
that’s the other key to that. Two thirds of the time being, for kids to
read, write and talk and hold their thinking in a variety of ways, both
orally and in writing, because that’s the only way we know what that

00:10:36:05 - 00:10:37:10 Sam might look like.

00:10:37:11 - 00:11:00:20 Penny My head just spins when I talk to you.
One of the pieces that I love is the idea how does this make you a
better human? Coupled with is this going to be important in ten years?
Because right now we are in kind of in mass panic, I would call it, over
A.I., I if you listen to teachers and leaders talking about they you’ve
read all these articles.

00:11:00:20 - 00:11:20:23 Penny I’m sure, where a student at NYU said,
you know, I’ve got it voice to text in my phone. So while they’re
talking about the assignment, it’s going straight into AI. They’re
producing the paper. The. Okay, so when my last semester as I was
talking to my students about AI and they were like, why would we read if
I can just tell us what it is right?

00:11:20:23 - 00:11:30:15 Penny And so it is good that we have to
explain that reading is more than knowing what the book is about. That
is like the least thing I’m concerned about when I’m in the.

00:11:30:15 - 00:11:32:20 Sam Lowest bar, right? Right. Yeah. Lowest
bar.

00:11:32:21 - 00:11:52:17 Penny And yet, have we set up classrooms where
that was an acceptable bar? Could you tell me what the book was about?
And so I say to students, that is the last thing I’m interested in. This
is the kind of work we’re going to do so that you can tell me how this
book is changing, what you think or what you believe, or who you.

00:11:52:17 - 00:11:55:07 Sam Are, right? What you might do. Yeah.

00:11:55:09 - 00:12:13:15 Penny Because you’re going to hear from other
people who are being changed in different ways. And the idea that the
work can be centered on those two things. And it doesn’t matter if I’m a
chemistry teacher or I’m the algebra teacher, the work can be centered
there. That is a big move that’s made up of lots of small groups.

00:12:13:15 - 00:12:23:20 Penny And it’s the timelessness that you talk
about as well, which is critically important. And I think our viewers
listening to you, I think their heads are spinning now too,

00:12:23:20 - 00:12:36:03 Penny because a lot of the curriculum that
they, they’re faced with is short term learning and isolated learning
rather than opportunities to apply in a in

00:12:36:03 - 00:12:36:23 Penny multiple

00:12:36:23 - 00:12:46:08 Penny capacities so that they can see the
purpose of some of that stuff and why it’s important to some kids, and
it’s important in a different way to other kids.

00:12:46:08 - 00:12:52:23 Penny And so when you talk about that
conversation, the richness of conversations of kids, God, I’m just
sitting here just

00:12:52:23 - 00:12:55:17 Penny saying, if, if only everybody can listen
to you

00:12:55:17 - 00:12:58:18 Penny so that they can hear the excitement
that you would

00:12:58:18 - 00:13:04:22 Penny experience when you work with kids and
teachers who value the same type of basic principles that you talk
about.

00:13:05:02 - 00:13:06:18 Penny I got goosebumps because I just

00:13:06:18 - 00:13:18:07 Penny try to get excited about some of these
things because I’ve seen it with kids. If they’re given that
opportunity, they just they thrive. And that’s what we want. We want
kids to thrive.

00:13:18:09 - 00:13:20:07 Sam

00:13:20:08 - 00:13:42:19 Penny Is Elaine’s work as well. Elaine applies
learning, student choice, student to student interaction. And then this
evidence of success, this feedback that leads to I think so much about
when she first came to my district and talk to all of us about relevance
and choice and student engagement and, and I’m there eating it up,
saying, yes, yes, thank you.

00:13:42:19 - 00:14:02:00 Penny And this is the way I want to push your
thinking, because what happened in our school is very common across
schools, and that is that you can move a big portion of the staff and
then have people who won’t move. And how do you have that hard
conversation? You’ve got someone who is actively resisting saying.

00:14:02:02 - 00:14:26:22 Sam Good people are actively resisting. It’s
because they haven’t felt heard. And so the crusty teachers are my very
favorite ones because we just start picking at that scab. I’m like,
yeah, tell me, what has made you angry in the past? Tell me, what do you
believe? So this is another one of those the triangulations that, Cris
Tovani and I work on with teachers is that idea of what do you believe
is the purpose of education?

00:14:26:22 - 00:14:50:16 Sam What are the practices behind that? And
then the third piece is what is the research? What researchers have your
back. So it can’t just live in that believes practice. It also has to
have the triangulation of the research behind it. And usually the people
that are crusty are like been there, done that, seen that, and so when
we bring the research, they’re like, I had thought about that maybe.

00:14:50:22 - 00:15:07:06 Sam And I get them excited about let’s just
try it. Let’s try it for three days and see what happens. And if nothing
happens with this awesome. Go back and do what you did before. But let’s
just see if a few more eyes of kids sparkle.

00:15:07:06 - 00:15:10:10 Sam And I when I’m in a classroom and kids are
like, who are you?

00:15:10:12 - 00:15:17:17 Sam I just say, I’m your teachers coach. And
they’re like, my teacher has a coach. And they start to get excited
about that

00:15:17:17 - 00:15:21:02 Sam the resistance just starts to fall away.

00:15:21:02 - 00:15:44:07 Penny you minimize that. It really important
move that you start a conference with, with somebody who you know is not
really on board. And that is you listen, you start by saying just giving
them a prompt of so what’s happened to you in the past with these
initiatives or what has that move is so critical because I think about
all of the students I confer with who hate reading.

00:15:44:09 - 00:16:08:05 Penny And I will say, talk to me about, read
and remember with this one, I said, is it is it hard for you and you?
It’s always been hard. Most people don’t want to do something that’s
hard all of the time, and that listening piece is the piece we forget. I
was conferring with a group of eighth graders in a teacher’s classroom,
and he had had them read two books so slowly that two books took the
entire year.

00:16:08:05 - 00:16:27:17 Penny And these kids were not even right. And
one of them, I listen to an audible on my way to the school, and it was
written by a 45 year old woman. It was her perspective on something, and
I was like, imagine you’re 13, 14 years old and you’re supposed to stay
at her place, right? Right. But I can’t go there with any of it.

00:16:27:17 - 00:16:42:04 Penny But I said, can I just confer with them
about reading for the first ten minutes while they’re reading? And at
the end of the lesson he said, I want to know what questions you ask
them, because you got every one of them talking. And I said, oh, it has
nothing to do with the questions, because I don’t know the questions
that I’m going to ask.

00:16:42:10 - 00:16:58:03 Penny It is honestly just saying, so talk to
me about what you’re thinking about reading right now. And every single
kid I talked to said what they were reading on their own. If they were
like, yeah, so you don’t lead with the perfect question. You lead with
listening.

00:16:58:03 - 00:17:26:07 Sam No. Yeah. Well, and I think I think what
you just named is, is the key to help both leaders and teachers confer.
Better do not ask a question. You know the answer to. So when you say
tell me what you think about reading, you don’t know the answer to that.
You don’t know the answer to that. So like the first part of any
question is what do you believe about instead of what did the character
what it well, how did the character respond.

00:17:26:10 - 00:17:35:18 Sam No, you say, what do you believe about how
that character responded? Right? You think about that because that
question we don’t know the answer to, right?

00:17:35:20 - 00:17:36:03 Penny Right.

00:17:36:06 - 00:17:55:01 Sam Especially if people are conferring about
books they’ve already read or essays they’ve already written. You know
what I mean? So I think that, to me is the key to a better conference.
You can only ask questions you don’t know the answer to. And that’s the
same with a coach and teachers. I never ask questions I know the answer
to right.

00:17:55:01 - 00:18:09:15 Sam If I haven’t done my homework and looked
around the room and looked at the way they’re holding student thinking
and looked at their management systems and looked at their unit plan and
looked at their lesson plan, I do not need to ask any of those
questions. None, because I’ve done my homework.

00:18:09:17 - 00:18:39:23 Penny But this is so valuable for our
listeners to hear. You guide us through that thinking, because I think
that that’s a skill that not all principal, not all leaders have, just
naturally. And I think that’s one with practice and with some very
specific guidelines to just listen and, and have open ended questions
like you’re guiding us to do, I think would do wonders with establishing
a personal relationship with teachers in my work.

00:18:40:04 - 00:19:07:01 Penny A lot of teachers just feel like one of
the mass. Yeah. And so how they feel and that’s what you have addressed
is like you ask them how they feel about some of this other stuff. I
think that’s overlooked by many of us. And I, I’ve been a leader. And so
I’m thinking a lot about, I remember a colleague of mine saying, I don’t
have time to confer with 150 teachers that I have.

00:19:07:01 - 00:19:28:11 Penny And of course, my response is, you don’t
have time not to, because this is such an important skill. And for your
teachers, you’re modeling for your teachers, an important skill that
they can do with their, as you guys just talked about. So I really
appreciate what you’re adding to the to the depth of learning to our
listeners because it takes practice to do that.

00:19:28:11 - 00:19:46:18 Penny one of our things that we’ve tried to
work with teachers on, our leaders on is, having a conferring notebook
somewhere to take notes that has a teacher’s name on every other page.
And because it’s only through my conferring notebook by class that I can
skip ahead and go, oh my gosh, this kid’s been absent the last three
times I did this.

00:19:46:18 - 00:20:01:02 Penny And I’m I haven’t talked to this kid in
a while, even though there’s these little like they come in the room and
I’ll be like, hey, how are you? So good to see you again. No, it’s the
conferring about. Talk to me about what you’re thinking about what this.
This first draft that you’ve done. Talk to me about where I can help
you.

00:20:01:02 - 00:20:20:15 Penny What is it? If I don’t sit down and have
that 3 or 4 minutes, that is a different conversation, right? That means
that that kid feels outside of the conversation that we could be having,
and that what we try to say with principals is you keep those so you can
flip through your notebook and be like, wow, I’ve tried to see this
teacher four times and I haven’t.

00:20:20:15 - 00:20:29:10 Penny I’m going to make that a priority today
to spend 4 or 5 minutes with that teacher, because everyone can slip
through and you have to have a system.

00:20:29:10 - 00:20:50:20 Sam I think was I there’s so many systems. I
mean, colleagues are showing me these unbelievable ways to use just
voice memo, right. And just set your phone in front of them and then it
transcribes it and then it synthesizes it. So I mean, we can we can stay
present and have other ways to take notes. But that for me, I believe
civilization rests on a good thank you note.

00:20:50:22 - 00:20:54:18 Sam Right. So that’s why I really write, you
know, back and forth.

00:20:54:23 - 00:20:56:03 Penny Yeah. Yeah.

00:20:56:04 - 00:21:22:11 Sam Back and forth and email used to work well
but everybody’s over email. So even just even just text back and forth,
you know any way to document what was the conversation we were having
the last time we met and what was the depth around that. And but that’s
also why I think, you know, like coaching cycles and principal cycles
and focus, because we can’t hold everything up here, especially
principals with everything else they have to do.

00:21:22:11 - 00:21:50:08 Sam Oh my God, there’s just no way. So you
know, there’s so many ways that technology can enhance our work so that
we can stay present human to human, eye to eye, nose to nose, like, you
know, when someone is struggling and wrestling and stuck versus, like,
completely engaged and energized. And that’s what we need. We need to be
little plug ins of energy for each other when people are feeling low.

00:21:50:08 - 00:21:59:18 Sam So to ramp them up and get the energy we
need and the energy that kids need to thrive like they need us, they
need us so much.

00:21:59:18 - 00:22:16:02 Penny I just have. One question for those that
are listening that are saying, I’m going to try this, if you could give
them three things to think about if they really want to begin. It’s at
the beginning of the school year. They want to start conferring with
their teachers. What advice would you give them?

00:22:16:02 - 00:22:23:01 Sam Well, it’s the three things Mary Oliver
tells us, you know, pay attention, be astonished. Tell about it. That’s
it,

00:22:23:03 - 00:22:31:08 Penny I love that. And we are going to put her
on in the show notes, because I have written that I don’t know how many
times in my notebook it’s just so critical.

00:22:31:08 - 00:22:36:02 Penny So we end all of our little interactions
with leaders with this question. What are you.

00:22:36:02 - 00:23:02:02 Sam Reading? Let’s see I’m reading one book
that has been blowing my brain called The Soul of Money, and it is by
Lynne Twist. And the coolest thing about it is it’s really about
abundance and abundant mindset, a scarcity mindset. And then this idea
of sufficiency, what is enough? And I think that it just gets to all
parts of our lives.

00:23:02:02 - 00:23:04:19 Sam And it has been really inspiring me
lately.

00:23:04:19 - 00:23:10:16 Penny Okay. So since you say that really big
idea, thinking that I think you would like is, your brain on art.

00:23:10:19 - 00:23:14:08 Sam And I love that book. Oh, my God, I love
that book.

00:23:14:08 - 00:23:33:05 Sam and I mean, since you say that I’m going
to put in a little plug. So because I’ve done so much curriculum
development work with teachers know in a project ends, they just say,
thank you so much. You have reignited my passion as a creator. And that
side of me that I got into teaching that I thought I would be able to
use so much more than I am.

00:23:33:05 - 00:24:00:04 Sam So I started a gathering that is outside
of school to also reignite that spark. And it’s called the rutabaga a
Winter retreat, and it’s over Presidents Day weekend. And this year we
have four mentor artists that are coming. And so you get three hours
with each mentor artist, and then there’s nine hours of open studios to
make, and there’s meditative hikes and there’s sound baths and massages.

00:24:00:06 - 00:24:25:17 Sam And we have a five minute film festival
one night. And it is just the joy. I really feel like I’ve created
heaven on earth with this, weekend conference. And so I would just love
to put that out there. And Penny, taking a note from your book, Love
Foundation, we also have a little rutabaga foundation to make sure that
every single person that wants to come can join us, regardless of money
and costs.

00:24:25:17 - 00:24:32:07 Sam Yeah, that’s great. And people can just
reach out to me. And from my email, in your notes, if in the show notes,
if they’re interested, is.

00:24:32:07 - 00:24:34:19 Penny This every President’s Day weekend it
happens.

00:24:34:19 - 00:24:41:04 Sam Yeah. So this was the first year we had it
for the first time this year. And now it’s going to be a yearly every
President’s Day weekend.

00:24:41:05 - 00:24:45:15 Penny Know we’re going to come again on this.
We’re gonna let it come. Yeah.

00:24:45:20 - 00:24:46:16 Sam Okay.

00:24:46:16 - 00:24:58:05 Penny Sam Bennett, what a thrill to have you
with us. Just to think with you for a few minutes. I just recommend
everything you write. And anyone who hasn’t seen you in action get to a
lab site.

00:24:58:05 - 00:25:01:12 Penny Right. You guys keep those on your
website, right? You and Chris?

00:25:01:14 - 00:25:10:05 Sam Yeah. Chris has got. Yeah, yeah, it’s
Chris is our other website guru. So yeah you can go to I think it’s just
cristovani.com. Yeah. And then you can and.

00:25:10:06 - 00:25:10:12 Penny Maybe.

00:25:10:16 - 00:25:11:06 Sam Find us.

00:25:11:06 - 00:25:18:09 Penny Somewhere find Sam Bennett. Yeah
definitely listen in person. What a joy. Thank you so much.

00:25:18:09 - 00:25:36:14 Penny Sam disappears from the screen. This is
what I feel like. The glow, the energy that it’s contagious when someone
loves this work. And if a leader is going to make any kind of move.
Smile. Move. Big move. They’ve got to have that joy and that curiosity
for sure.

00:25:36:14 - 00:25:48:00 Elaine And that was that resonated through the
excitement when she talked about her work. Yeah. And that’s what was
that’s what was so enjoyable. I felt the same way with Taylor.

00:25:48:01 - 00:25:49:16 Penny Yeah, I was the capper.

00:25:49:16 - 00:26:04:01 Elaine Know those of you who perhaps have
missed Taylor Kanzler is one of our guests, really encourage you to go
back and some of the podcasts because that she will share with you the
perspective of a teacher who got really excited, don’t you think?

00:26:04:02 - 00:26:30:02 Penny Oh, and I think that the other piece
that that connects the two of them is that Taylor was looking for
leadership to help her do something hard, and that leaders stepped in
and provided guardrails as well as the joy and the I believe in this and
then if you look back even further to Sully, Sullivan as a student
needed the guidance of a teacher who said, why don’t you try this right?

00:26:30:02 - 00:26:53:00 Penny Why don’t you just as he in his words,
why don’t you just go make a thing that turned into an entire career?
That’s right. Right. And that what we’re trying to do is say, the big
move to truly change the experience of learning for so many kids who
right now in this country are not finding joy in school, it’s right,
right to change that big thing.

00:26:53:01 - 00:27:03:08 Penny It’s a series of small moves. Let’s
examine those moves make you as a leader, but they also make a
difference in the big moves you’re after.

00:27:03:10 - 00:27:19:21 Elaine And it also what it does to that I feel
is really positive is it gives everybody a leader. Everybody has the
potential to be. And when you’re inspired and given the confidence and
given, the opportunity and.

00:27:20:01 - 00:27:20:04 Penny The.

00:27:20:04 - 00:27:41:10 Elaine Go ahead to be creative, it’s just it’s
endless what people can do. And I hope that our listeners will see that
in every single podcast that we do. It’s a different lens. It’s a
different context. But if our message is anything, it’s to really to
inspire leaders in everybody.