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When I became an administrator, I expected of myself in terms of integrity, if something needed to be addressed, you address it and you follow up and you do what you say you're gonna do. But at the same time, when our educators, our students, need our support, it's important to make sure to be there to address those things.

Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing in Education Podcast. The space for Education Meets Resilience. I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students, leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.

Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration, we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools. Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.

Welcome back to today's episode of the Classroom Narrative Podcast, where this has been a conversation that I have been [00:01:00] genuinely looking forward to.

In this two parts conversation that will span over the course of two episodes, each released within the week of each other, Jeremy Brooks and I will have a robust conversation about what leadership is and what it looks like in challenging times. In part two, we'll talk about safety and what it means for systems to be accountable and proactive for both the emotional and physical wellbeing of our faculty, students, and families.

So stick around. You're in the right place to be tuning in.



Today I'm joined by Jeremy Brooks, educator, former principal, doctoral researcher, and host of the Education Talk Show, as well as Weekly Recess. Jeremy's work is rooted in the belief that I deeply share as well, that leadership isn't a title, but rather it is defined by our presence, our service, and the quiet decisions that we make when [00:02:00] no one else seems to be watching.

And from the classroom to administration, from policy spaces to public storytelling, Jeremy has consistently modeled what it looks like to lead with integrity, compassion, as well as purpose.

That is only the tip of the iceberg on who Jeremy is and who he represents. And I encourage our listeners to check out our show notes for his full bio.

And this conversation today is really going to be focused on what leadership really looks like when things get hard.

And when systems start to strain people and when educators are asked to show up for others while also carrying their own weight.​

So Jeremy, thank you so much for being with us today and welcome to the conversation. 

Hi Dr. Weisler. It is such a pleasure to be here and what an introduction. Thank you so much.

I'm so excited. I've been looking forward to being on this podcast. You do amazing work. Every single episode carries depth and I'm so excited to be here with you today. Thank you so much for the invitation. 

I sincerely appreciate it. And before this podcast has began, Jeremy and I have had an [00:03:00] opportunity to meet each other now for almost 90 minutes.

And what I have learned during that time is that what Jeremy's work emphasizes is that presence as a leader is really what keeps people within the system. And I wish Jeremy, was my principal of my first year because when I was struggling with the tragedy as well as losing my friend to suicide, those two events alone impacted my first year of teaching.

And the lack of support I got from leadership during those moments, I think perpetuated my process of recovery, which has happened, but it did take six years. I think it could have happened sooner if I had a powerful leader like Jeremy in my presence as well. And I said this to Jeremy before that strong leadership is what keeps educators in the profession. And based upon Jeremy's contribution as well as in "Just Principals" by Robert Hinchcliffe,

that shows us the charisma that our principles are working to put forward in the face of what can be a really turbulent time with burnout and losing so many people to the profession as well. So Jeremy, you have written and spoken about leadership, not [00:04:00] just being about titles, but also about service and presence.

And when you've looked back on your journey from teacher to administrator to media voice, what do you think that belief was truly forged and what did that look like? How did you get into the belief that leadership was about presence? 

Yeah. Wow. Thank you for that question. Um, leadership, to me, it really is about presence as you mentioned.

And that was also something that I'd mentioned too in the book, "More Than Just Principals" by Robert Hinchcliffe. For me it's interesting because I never really sought to gain additional titles or to really go up the ranks as an administrator. Um, I really was looking to serve students in any capacity.

And when I was a new teacher, when I was a younger teacher, if there was a call out for somebody to be on the Library Commons Committee for the district or to be on the school site council, or maybe there was a need for support with this committee or in this [00:05:00] area or that I would jump on and I would try to help out in as many ways as I could, because again, I saw that as an opportunity to serve students in different ways.

But inevitably what happens is once you get going and you volunteer to help out where needed with much of these things, sometimes you become one of the go-to people. And so if an opportunity arises, that could be unique, like, who are we gonna have to do training for the staff? Well, let's maybe give it to this person who is willing to help out and volunteer.

And so sometimes with that, you get other opportunities that come about. And so that's sort of what happened for me as a younger teacher. But again, it was all about service to students and making a difference. And I really did have this genuine altruistic desire to try to find a way to improve my community and to improve the lives of students.

And that's part of the reason why [00:06:00] I was so willing and eager to get involved and to help in as many ways as possible. But of course, that led to, hey, there's a school administrator position available at this school. You should apply. Or, there is this other leadership position, the chair of legislative policy position,

and one thing after another. It led to me getting involved in different ways and my career grew. But again that was never the goal. It was never to gain this positional power. It was 100% to see how I might be available to be more present as Dr. Weisler, as you mentioned. And again, my career just sort of grew from there and here we are today.

Now, one of the things that I think you'd mentioned too, Dr. Weisler, is the connection between how did I go from administrator to now CEO Brooks Broadcasting? And that's an interesting story too. Because what had happened is [00:07:00] while wearing many different hats, I decided to start this podcast.

And of course, today we have 1.5 million viewers and 295,000 subscribers. And, it became its own media sort of thing. And what had happened is people had advised, you should start a media company, because you've grown so much. And there was no intention on ever doing that. It was, again, 100% about, let's try to take incredible voices, people doing meaningful work in education, and let's try to amplify their message and get it out there so that anybody, anywhere in the world, it doesn't matter where you are, you can hear amazing messages and learn from people all over.

And so it was really about accessibility to improve the lives of students. We're just lucky enough we were able to do it, and then it turned into this. But again, it really hasn't been like, uh, Hey, I'm gonna start as a teacher, then eventually we'll be the CEO of [00:08:00] this broadcast company. I wish I had that kind of foresight, but I definitely didn't. And so again, it's always been about serving students, leading, being present, as you mentioned, Dr. Weisler. And, it led us to where we are today. 

Thank you so much for that.

So Jeremy, you talk about those types of moments where you are visible in schools and communities, and what does that really look like when you think about the behind the scenes moments, those quiet check-ins, those small access, self care, those check-ins with even educators that say to them, Hey, I've seen that you're having some issues with your classroom discipline and it's not, "what's wrong with you?", But "how can we support you as a leadership body and helping you get back on track?"

What did those moments look like back from your time when you were in the classroom, either when you were a teacher getting the support or when you were a leader giving the support? What did that look like and what did that feel like from you? 

I really was so fortunate when I was starting out that I had an excellent administrative team as a [00:09:00] teacher.

And one of the individuals who was part of our team, he became one of my mentors as well. And so I did have the opportunity to see modeled for me firsthand that front and center presence as administrators, as an administrative team that was my second or third year as a teacher. My second year though, as a teacher, I did work at, in an environment, in a school, in a climate that there was a lot of difficulty. There was a lot of bullying at our school site. There was a lot of challenges and this is a community that has experienced a tremendous amount of trauma. In fact, this community just recently experienced a mass shooting, a tragedy that took the lives of four students in Stockton, California, and several older people, were injured in this mass shooting and it was a child's birthday party. And so I worked in this community, and it was very challenging getting the support from [00:10:00] administration to be able to address concerns that were raised as staff, as teachers, and then for our students. But going back to my third year as a teacher, I got to see what it looked like to have that incredible leadership, that we also call service leadership.

And so when I became an administrator, having that modeled for me, I expected of myself in terms of integrity, if something needed to be addressed, you address it and you follow up and you do what you say you're gonna do. But at the same time, when our educators, our students, need our support, it's important to make sure to be there to address those things.

And so the check-ins, yes, definitely. It could be emails, it could be a phone call. I like to be outside as much as possible. When you're an administrator, there's so many things that can keep you in the office and it is critical that you get outside as much as you can. [00:11:00] So I was certainly working as much as I could to be

in front of the school or near somewhere outside, to greet parents, to greet students, I would go around and I would check with our support staff, our school side assistants to see how they were doing, our support staff in the office. And then of course, trying to get outside for recesses.

Because when students see that you're present and they know you care, they tend to be more willing to reach out to you for help and support. But again, anytime there's a concern that needs to be addressed, it's just following through and making sure to address those concerns.

And there's so many ways that we can do that too, which maybe we'll get to discuss some of those two on the show today. 

I'm thinking of Principal Mike Earnshaw, who was the author of, "The EduCulture Cookbook", and I'm starting to not edit out when I talk about making introductions on the show. And Jeremy, you're also gonna be introduced to Principal Mike Earnshaw as [00:12:00] well.

And I like audiences hearing that. So they know that when they get on the show, they become a part of my widespread directory here. But Principal Mike Earnshaw, what he did is that a couple years before he even wrote his book, I got ahold of it in 2022, and it was relatively new to the publication. And around that time, he was starting to relinquish himself

from the office space and instead of being confined to his office, what he did is that he had a rolling desk where all day long he was rolling around the school, up and down the hallways. And there's another Instagram principal as well, I think Principal Lamb, who does something very much similar to that, where their presence comes from literally being present all the time everywhere.

And I know from student to teacher relationships, that was a principle to faculty relationship from student to teacher. I know like when I've have had incidents in my own classrooms, I will pull a student to the side and I'll say two words to them. Those two words are, I'm listening. And then from there [00:13:00] they will tell you everything you wanna know.

And just those simple actions of how can I help you? Those signals that say, "how can I help you?" Versus, "what's wrong with you?", I think you really get the response that we're looking for to help improve the culture of our schools, our classrooms, and each other. 

Yeah. Such great stuff right there. And, um, I love Principal Lamb.

He's incredible. And then again, I appreciate you connecting me too with your network. That's gonna be amazing. And, I also wanna give a shout out to someone else, another principal that's amazing from Modesto, California. His name is Sean Hurtado, and he's written books about school culture.

And believe it or not, he's one of the people who I think is one of those pioneers with the idea of going out with the rolling cart and being front and center. And there's certainly certain areas of campuses where, maybe there's a little bit more, occurrence of different things that could [00:14:00] happen, whether it be vaping in the restroom or whether it be a certain area of the playground where we might need to be more present.

And Sean Hertado is one of those incredible principals who did the Rolling Cart and did it very effectively. And again, a pioneer there as well. The other thing was your approach to students as a teacher, saying I'm listening. And I think that is a really important message to students and it's such a powerful way to

elicit from students' concerns that they might share. And by the way, some of these approaches, they don't just have to be used with students. We can use these approaches when we're working with support staff, when we're working with faculty. It doesn't matter what organization.

It doesn't even have to be a education organization. This could be, you might work in another field and these are tools that you can borrow as well. But I think that is certainly a part of trauma-informed practices, best [00:15:00] practices, especially because what we're seeing today, our students need support more than ever.

Our students are experiencing different levels of trauma and those are the kinds of approaches, mentioning, I'm listening, I'm here to support you, versus, the approach of what's wrong or, maybe there is a behavior concern that manifests itself that could be related to trauma.

And if we can't recognize that, and if we're approaching, students from that mindset of something's wrong with this student and there needs to be a punishment, that sort of maybe old model of thinking, we are not gonna be in a position to really serve our students as best as we can.

So again, thank you for mentioning that. 

Absolutely. I was just reading a quote from Bored, teachers on their Facebook page just before our conversation took place. And the quote was something along the lines of that, [00:16:00] teachers nowadays are in a profession that both fulfills them and depletes them at the same time, and they're constantly struggling with that.

And in my own research, I think about that as well, where I actually quote myself saying, as a fifth year teacher already three years ago, I'm already in year eight where I say that I feel like the field of teaching, I'll, I won't even say the art, I'll say the field of teaching is one where teachers and leaders are trying to reshape their identities all the time in a way that wrestles with this love -hate of never really knowing who they're going to be.

But it's this pendulum that we'll always swing back and forth as to how we see ourselves as educators. And I think a lot of our teachers on here can agree that we could walk out, like we're flying on air after first period, but then by third period is like, wow, why don't I choose this job?

And every hour is the same day is so fundamentally unmatched and it's exhausting. Like even now, I could walk in and have the best class at 9 0 [00:17:00] 5. I could do the same thing again at 10 30. And it would be like, what just happened here? What did I choose to do this for? And I think when we also talk about the presence of trauma in those situations.

I'm not looking to trivialize the word by any means, but what I will do is quote Bessel VanDerKolk, who is a theorist who says that trauma itself is any circumstance that arouses the nervous system. That's what trauma is it is a response by the nervous system. So like you said, Jeremy, any and all the above that can affect a person and dysregulate their nervous system can be classified as a trauma.

And as the teachers who are the first responders to those students wrestling with trauma, that's what gives us post-secondary stress in terms of how we then become those frontline workers for students. And I bring all that up because currently now we are really starting to see this growing teacher shortage.

And I wanted to see [00:18:00] from your experience in both the field and even now, you've mentioned that you've been doing some work in media, but around content with education and you've spoken with many, many, many different educators as well. What are some honest thoughts and observations that you can share about the climate as we see it for pre-service teachers to enter and for those pre-service teachers that are really trying to acknowledge the way that education works or maybe even rekindle a connection back into the profession to make it matter for them, what can you say to those pre-service and first year educators in terms of just forming that bond with their field?

Yeah, such a great question. Such an important topic too. And there's so many things that I want to just kind of unpack and address here that you mentioned because it is such a powerful topic. First of all, I wanna mention too, you talked about the post-secondary stress that can occur for our educators, for our teachers, and administrators experience this too as well.

Because our students are coming to [00:19:00] us and we are wearing many, many hats as educators. And one of the people that I do wanna mention is Dr. Jacqueline Alson, who was on one of my shows. And she did a lot of research on compassion fatigue. And she's a director at UC, Berkeley, she's amazing. But sometimes that's one of the things that we see is that when we become so overwhelmed and burdened with stress and some of the trauma, the post-secondary trauma, as was mentioned, you can sometimes develop compassion fatigue where, there might be people who need additional support.

They might need counseling themselves. They may need some help. And they may not recognize it. This is something compassion fatigue that we see sometimes can happen in the police force. Firefighters, paramedics might sometimes experience compassion fatigue. Our nurses, who are working in high stress environments,

[00:20:00] and again, what are we saying our educators are experiencing this too. So what does that tell us that is, it's like in our schools now, our educators are the most amazing people. I have not met an educator who got into it for the money. I'll tell you that. They go into teaching because they wanna support kids. And based on the research I've done too, there is such a love and a passion for being there, working with students day in and day out. And as you mentioned too earlier on, that's that sort of love that, for our pre-service teachers, for our teachers, that fulfills that bucket.

Right. Now you talked about what depletes it. There are certainly things that our educators are experiencing. We're seeing huge numbers of teachers leaving. Half of all teachers leave within the first five years.

So we have a tremendous teacher shortage, and we also have a crisis where we have teachers that not only are leaving, but they're [00:21:00] retiring, and people aren't coming into the profession. But what's happening in the classroom that is really that depleting factor that we talked about, that Dr.

Weisler, as you mentioned, and one of the things that I think from my research, is that there's a ton of teachers that are working not your normal eight hour day. They're working 15 hour days, they're working longer. And we think of teaching is, this is this great profession,

you get summers off, you get all this time. But the reality is teachers put in a tremendous amount of extra time. Teachers are lesson planning. Some teachers are elementary teachers, bless them, they're doing how many preps do you have, right?

And then they're also doing grading, which is not always an easy process. And they're addressing behavior concerns, and a lot of our educators are chaperones of a club, or maybe they're doing tutoring before or after school, they're oftentimes [00:22:00] a ton of our teachers work as coaches,

and then add to it induction requirements, pre-induction, passing those state licensure requirements, which in California you have to pass the teacher performance assessment. There's a lot of different work and sometimes, especially if you're a new teacher and you're an intern, you're doing classes on top of that as you're earning your credential.

And so look at these days, look at, you only have so much time in a day. And then there's an addition to that, the state assessments, there's all these expectations. And so it's no wonder that we're seeing teachers getting burned out they're getting into this profession that they love to be able to work with students.

But again, we're seeing a high rate of burnout and we're seeing people leave and it takes a lot to leave. It takes a lot to throw in the towel to say, I've reached my max. I can't do this anymore, and then to finally leave it. And so this is a serious crisis that we need to try to find ways to address.[00:23:00] 

That's what I'm hoping to try to do with my research. But again, looking at, as you mentioned too, it fulfills teachers, but it's a depleting occupation. And, one of the things that I have to just say real quick is, I think as a early solution, is just the work-life balance.

Finding ways to support our educators. And earlier I mentioned on the show, get involved where you can. That's what I did as an early teacher. But, we all have certain constraints. Everybody has different experiences. There's a whole variety of circumstances.

And so we have to try to keep those in mind as well as you say yes to something, right? Because sometimes we say yes to too much. And hope that addressed your question. 

It did and more. 'cause I think about it as this, and I was that first year teacher, I would stay in my room until 8:30 at night, last car outta the parking lot.

And rightfully so, admin found it to be very strange. Like, why is this 24-year-old male sitting in a classroom an empty classroom till 8:30, Monday through Thursday, [00:24:00] Fridays I tried to get home during rush hour, but Monday through Thursday I just sit there and sit there and I'm like, a teacher's job is never done, is what I said to them.

And their answer was, well you need to figure out what can get done. We're not gonna tell you what you can and cannot do. But you had to figure out for yourself what you're not gonna end up doing. What you're not gonna grade. What you are gonna throw out when the students are not looking, when their backs are turned.

And that became very challenging. And at the same time, my students themselves were very competitive, wonderful humans, but very competitive. At the time I was teaching three classes of Cambridge, gifted, accelerating, very competitive, if not even a little bit entitled of a climate as well. And with those students, I was having a conversation with an organization that focuses on mental health and I was asking them about some of the pain points that they're trying to serve for our communities and what they told me is that the pain points that they see within our youth is that they uphold amongst themselves and their families this culture of exhaustion [00:25:00] where they're always having to do something and they always have to be competing and working, doing jobs, getting good grades, doing everything all at once. And it reminds me as a first year teacher, I did not know when to pull back to stop doing everything all at once.

But , what this organization said that our youth need is the space and the permission to pause and do nothing. They need the space to do nothing and know that's okay. We can accept them to take that breath. And that's a lot of what we talked about as well, where when you have this hustle culture, even between students, how do you get them to pause?

And with my own classes as well, we talk quite a bit about when we say that we're getting involved with our students and their emotional senses and how do we manage that? How do we keep that from depleting us? I ask my first year students in college, and this is probably a conversation that pre-service teachers are having that I'm having with 19 year [00:26:00] olds, and it really gets 'em to open their eyes quite a bit.

I ask my students what types of language should come from composition work in a writing class. Do you want us to grade you based upon your emotion? Do you want us to grade you based upon your academic responses? And I'd give them articles about these English teachers where some say, we're not therapists.

We're there to correct their grammar. Or how do you get a paper about a dead baby and mark with a B minus? Can you do something like that? And I had that conversation with my students, what's going to help you allow us to hold our boundaries? And a lot of the students will say, they want us to use a rubric.

That's pretty much what they emphasize, that as educators, when we talk about having our boundaries, that also comes in how we assess and having very clear rubrics can help us be on track. And I've mentioned across several of my platforms as well when it comes to standards, I absolutely believe in meeting course standards.

I believe [00:27:00] in standardization of objectives. But I think when you try and make a teacher standard in terms of how they teach, that's where resistance comes into play. But in having common ways to assess with that rubric that keeps people safe, that's my emphasis with the rubric.

The rubric keeps our students and teachers safe. That's also another way to keep teachers from feeling depleted because of the post-secondary stress that they hear from our youth.

We're gonna pause here for today, but here's a look at what's coming up in part two with my conversation with Jeremy Brooks.

as school leaders, we can't do everything. We have blind spots. And so it is so important to be mindful that we don't want to use the hero leader approach.

We want to be servant leaders and we gotta find ways to connect our stakeholders, our students, our staff, our parents. And with all of those voices, we were able to create a much better program for students and for [00:28:00] staff. And of course it made our campus much more respectful, much more safer, and it helped to improve the climate and the culture of our school.

Remember to tune in. You won't wanna miss it.

Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast. If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently, I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts and stay connected with us on the at Classroom Narratives podcast over Instagram and Facebook.

Remember, together we can transform our scars into stars and education, one conversation at a time.