Hannah Beach is an award-winning educator, author, and keynote speaker. She was recognized by the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2017 as one of five featured changemakers in Canada. She is the co-author of Reclaiming Our Students: Why Children Are More Anxious, Aggressive, and Shut Down Than Ever—And What We Can Do About It (released April 2020). Her best-selling I Can Dance book series—which supports the emotional health of children through movement, play, and expression—won the 2017 GOLD International Moonbeam Children’s Book Award (Books with Music/Theatrical) and has been adopted by multiple English- and French-language school boards across Canada. Hannah received the City of Ottawa’s annual Celebration of People Education Award, which recognized her contributions in developing innovative inclusive programs and resources.
As the founder of celebrated experiential discovery programs at Dandelion Dance™ and Tournesol, Hannah has spent over 25 years developing and delivering programs for children and youth. She is a Neufeld course facilitator, delivers professional development services across the country, provides emotional health consulting to schools, and speaks at national and international conferences about the power of bringing more feeling and human connection into the classroom.
Daniel: Have you ever seen a student or a staff member who is clearly stuck in sort of a negative cycle? They make the same mistake over and over and have to live with the consequences, or they have an experience of fixed mindset? Where they define themselves and have this identity that's just completely described and seen through a negative lens. Worse yet, what if you realize that maybe it's you. Maybe it's you, the leader, the educator, the parent, maybe it's you that caused this individual to be stuck. And that's where we start today. We have a wonderful conversation that I'm inviting you to listen to with Hannah Beach. She shares an emotional and gripping story. First in this podcast, where as a parent, as a mom, she realized that she was the reason her son was stuck. The good thing is that through the process of journaling and that realization, she was able to do something about it. The good news is that you can do something about it too. Hey, it's Daniel. Welcome to the Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast, a show for Ruckus Makers, those out of the box leaders making change happen in education. We'll be right back after a quick message from our shows answers.
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Daniel: Better leaders, better Schools is brought to you by school leaders like Principal Katerra is using Teach FX special populations benefit the most from verbally engaging in class, but get far fewer opportunities to do so then their peers, especially in virtual classes, teach a facts, measures verbal engagement automatically in virtual or in-person classes to help schools and teachers address these issues of equity during COVID. Learn more and get a special offer from betterleadersbetterschools, listeners@teachfx.com/BLBS. That's teachfx.com/BLBS. All students have an opportunity to succeed with Organized Binder who equips educators with a resource to provide stable and consistent learning. Whether that's in a distance hybrid or traditional educational setting, learn more@organizedbinder.com. Hey there Ruckus Maker today, I am joined by Hannah Beach, an award winning educator, author, and keynote speaker. She was recognized by the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2017, as one of five featured change-makers in Canada. She is the co-author of Reclaiming our Students. Why children are more anxious, aggressive, and shut down than ever and what we can do about it, which released in April, 2020. She delivers professional development services across the country and provides emotional health consulting to schools. Hannah, welcome to the show.
Hannah: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.
Daniel: I'm really excited to share this story. First, you have a personal and I think gripping and emotional story about how we influence kids at times to be stuck in roles and influence them believing something about a negative identity. So can we start there?
Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting for me because this lens I have as an educator, sort of started for me, um, very personally in a very personal story for me as a parent. It was quite a few years ago, my eldest son's now 28, Thomas. Of course I'm biased because I'm his mom, but he's just absolutely lovely young men and pretty gentle and beautiful spirit. I go back 24 years and my son was going through an incredibly aggressive patch. Really, really aggressive. I had this memory of going for a walk with him and his sister. He was almost four and his sister was two and we were walking along. It was a really snowy day and some family had just built a snowman on their front lawn. Thomas went up to the snowman and took both hands and push the head of the snowmen off so hard.
Hannah: The woman who owned the house, the mom of the house, opened the door and started yelling at us. "What's wrong with your kid? Get your kids some help. My daughters and I spent all morning making this snowman." My eyes sort of filled with tears in that moment because A, I don't like being yelled at and B because my son was going through an incredibly aggressive patch and it sort of struck a nerve. It really struck a nerve. I had just separated from my children's father and my son's world had been completely turned upside down. Hs life, as he had known it was different. We were in a different home. The family configuration felt different and he hadn't yet adopted. He was clearly filled with frustration and this was clearly showing and I started to parent from this place of fear.
Hannah: I started to remind him every day. Thomas, use your words, not your hands, Thomas. Don't forget when you go to drop in today, make sure you don't do this. Thomas, this Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, and let me tell you it started to increase. It was definitely not getting better. At this time in my life, I spent a lot of time journaling because for me that was my way of processing. It was a really challenging period of my life cracked wide open. I would journal at night my hopes, my dreams for my future, for my kids. One night as I was journaling, I realized, "Oh my goodness, it's actually me." As the caring leader of this boy, um, teaching him to see himself this way. I'm speaking to him to be aggressive every day.
Hannah: Thomas, don't forget to use your hands. Thomas, don't be aggressive Thomas, this Thomas. I realized holy smokes and this was honestly such a big, so, so, so hard to swallow moment. It was so hard to look at that. If I am being honest, I had a lot of tears. It was a really hard moment to see what I was doing as the leader of the child, teaching him to see himself this way. I just stepped back and I thought, I need to imagine the most incredible young man I can imagine and this is who I'm going to see when this boy in front of me is being aggressive. I am going to imagine him amazing. I embarked on a new path of not parenting from fear.
Hannah: It's actually almost shocking even speaking about it now. It's almost shocking to me how he relaxed in seeing how I welcomed the wholeness of who he was and made room for his feelings. He just adapted this person opened up. I had this profound realization because at the core of my heart, I'm an educator. All of a sudden, here's all these kids that come to me at school. I'm only seeing them in their stuck phase. As a parent, I have the gift of seeing Thomas before he was stuck. I knew this beautiful sweet toddler or he got stuck in a periods that was a challenging, he hadn't adapted yet. He had a lot of change going on and I was keeping him there. I was keeping him stuck in that role.
Hannah: I thought here I am as an educator, I don't have this gift. I'm having kids showing up who are often stuck in this place. I need to be their eyes for them. I need to help them see themselves throught my eyes because I have this capacity to lead them to see themselves differently. It was absolute, profoundly changed my path as an educator. What I realized was no baby's born bad. Some of us are stuck in, I have a reason for whatever lives we've had for whatever reflection we've seen at ourselves in the eyes of others. Many children are stuck and we have an incredible capacity as leaders to help to invite expression, to normalize feelings and help children to be a child's eyes for them until they can see their own beauty. If that makes sense.
Daniel: Makes sense. I think even, uh, about my start into school leadership. I was content being an amazing classroom teacher, my work was fulfilling. I was excited to go to school every day and there was no reason to change but at some point my friend D'Andre, he was episode one for Ruckus Makers listening, lthat was the first episode. We were working out and he just called out my leadership gifts and strengths. I wouldn't say that I was stuck. I was happy right where I'm at, but being somebody else's eyes to call forth what the gifts and the potential that you see in somebody is an incredible gift back to that person. It makes a ton of sense. I have to just pause real quick because I know, uh, Thomas is an educator, I'd love to thank him for his service.
Daniel: I also know he listens to the podcast, Thomas. Yeah. You're a Ruckus Maker and thank you so much for being a part of our community and making change in education around the world. Buddy, so proud of you and I just wanted to do that real quick. I want to dig deeper into how to call out these gifts in our students. Prior to that you mentioned really you had this mirror moment you had to sit with this uncomfortable truth where you realize the impact you had on Thomas' life. You did that through journaling, which is such an incrediblw tool to have in your leadership tool belt. If there's one thing that I could encourage all the Ruckus Makers listening to do, if you don't have a journal habit, that's something fairly easy to pick up that will have incredible return of investment. Do you mind Hannah? Maybe it's a free flowing structure. I have questions that I ask myself every day, but what is it for you when you journal?
Hannah: It's interesting when I journal because journaling is big for me.It's actually something it's funny that you say this about inviting, this is actually something I also give, um, every student on their first day with a personal message on the front cover because of my own experience. Every student, when they arrive gets a unique journal. They're not like mass and in the front page slap, I write a message for them. It's a really inside out process in which I've had to sort of learn across the years to not make it my place of perfect. I used to imagine that someone might read it one day and that sounds kind of funny. I had this sort of external consciousness I had to really find a place where I could just be messy. I could just really be authentic in that I could let out the bad, as well as the good I could be gray. I could have something I'm grateful for, which is something I like to do is express something I'm grateful for, but also be really real in that room for sadness. I think sometimes we don't make a lot of room to let that out. Room for the ugly as well as the gratitude.
Daniel: Appreciate that. I love that you give specific not just this, this average or whatever journal to your students. It's not mass produced, but it's unique and personalized the message you put on the front flap. Do you already know the kids a bit or are you just pulling from inspiration?
Hannah: Once I've met the kids they usually get it a few weeks in. I'll try and match a journal to what I think they'll want. I'll put a message. We have many types of journaling because the written word isn't always every student's natural medium for expression. We have collage journals where we have people can cut and paste and put pictures in. We have days where we crayon journal because it kind of creates what you put in there. It makes more room for messy too, for kids to be more free and that place of percolation of self sort.
Daniel: This idea of being somebody else's eyes and in calling kids to who they are in the future. We heard a bit of that in your story about Thomas, but for the Ruckus Maker, listening, who wants to do that, maybe it's a principal who wants to do it with his staff and students. Maybe it's a classroom teacher who wants to do it with her students. What advice would you have to the Ruckus Maker listening?
Hannah: I think that we can have a profound, absolutely profound impact. Our leadership that children can look to us and, and be led by us. One of the tools I use a lot is something called reframing. What reframing does is it looks at the strength of a child in the midst of a perceived failure. So not at their strengths where they're actually doing well. That's great too and those are easier to articulate, but what I found can make a profound difference in a child's life is a look at their strength when they're not doing well. I'm going to give you a little example of what that might look like. I'll use an example of my daughter. My daughter, when she was about grade two would forget her lunch good all the time.
Hannah: It didn't matter how many times I reminded her she would forget. In the morning and say, "Okay, Don't forget your lunch." She's say, "Yeah, I'm on it. I'm on it" and come home. "Oh, I forgot my lunch kit." I tried little notes that didn't work. She went for about a month remembering her lunch kit. About a month later, she came home and said, "Oh mom, I forgot my lunch kit." I almost went into nag mode, "Ah, seriously, Mag, are you kidding me." Instead I remembered to reframe because I'm trying so hard to help my kids, help my students and children experience themselves differently to know what that feels like viscerally. In that moment, instead, I said, "You must be so proud of yourself. You went for a whole month, remember your lunch kit."
Hannah: She was like, "I know." It was the exact same moment where she could have felt her irresponsibility or felt how responsible she was becoming. Nothing was different about that moment. It was what I chose to focus on. I see it as in classrooms, like, I'll see a child, for example, who are working on impulse control, who try not to hit someone and I say, "Okay what are you going to do when that comes up inside you?" And I see the child says, "okay, what I think I'm going to do is I want to make fist that I'm going to hold my shirt and I'm going to clench it. I'm going to do this instead of hitting. And then I see the child do this for a few seconds. Let's say it doesn't last that long and eventually they still hit.
Hannah: I will focus on "You are getting there. You held off. I saw you holding on your fist. I saw you trying not to hit. You held up for four seconds. Okay, your frustration got the better of you and that's not great and I'm not saying we won't deal with that, but holy smokes, you're getting there. I noticed I saw it." What I'm doing is when the child's experiencing themselves as irresponsible or lacking impulse control or not being caring or all those things, instead of saying, "You did it again. You hit." I'll focus on the seconds where they were trying to stop. I think that what we lean into as people, what our caring leaders reflect back to us in our growth for the children that are the most challenged and having so much trouble to developmentally get to the place where we want them to, instead of waiting until they're there and then congratulating them, these tiny little moments in which they could experience their goodness, help them grow that goodness, if that makes sense.
Daniel: It's the image I like to use a lot is a coin. You can choose what side you look at, but you're describing the same situation and choosing a better perspective to have one that's more helpful and people want to be recognized. If we're just recognizing the bad or when a student makes a mistake then it almost becomes so frustrating. This is my identity. Like you said, "I'm stuck or we can say, "WhatI noticed", all the good stuff you do to not just this thing. Super, super helpful. Before the break. I wanna talk to have you share a story too. This is another emotional and gripping story about a young female refugee that you worked with in Canada. Can you share that for us?
Hannah: Absolutely. I'm going to call this young woman Rose, but this is a young woman who came to me in class. She was a girl who had been living in Iran and she was just a toddler when this happened. She was like three years old. Her parents were having an argument on their balcony and her father was being very aggressive towards her mother. Her mom says she went in to protect her mom from her father and her father actually threw her off of the balcony from three stories high. This young woman was left with physical disabilities and intellectual disabilities. Her mother fled with her to a refugee camp in Turkey, where they lived for eight years before they came to Canada as refugees. I started working with this young woman.
Hannah: She was part of the class. We were at that time exploring a lot of, uh, drama. She was in my class and we were doing a lot of social justice work through drama. Our class was doing things on environment and all these different topics and kids were exploring these things. This young woman decided after being with me for almost three years. We knew each other very well, built a very close relationship. She felt very safe with the class and she decided to recreate her story through drama, without words though, just by acting it out. It was so, so powerful. It's probably one of my most powerful experiences was watching this group of kids recreate the scene by scene, through inquiry based learning, where they would say, "How could we show her falling?
Hannah: How could we show her in pain? How can we show a refugee camp?" They just did it scene by scene. At the end, it was just as powerful experience. We decided to share it. We were touring a social justice show from schools and she decided to share it at her school. She was bullied so badly at, um, the school. She had quite a limp, her facial features were uneven and kids were horrible to her. I said, "Are you sure you're going to be safe to share this?" How does this feel? She had really wanted to, and at the end of the sharing, which was most powerful piece, she shared this piece called "each of us has a story." Her story and kids flocked to her. They were so kind, they were hugging her.
Hannah: They were saying, "We just didn't know. We just didn't know that this had happened to you." I went home that night. I remember talking to my husband. I was so angry. I was trying to figure out why I was so angry. The class was so angry the next day, as we were sitting and talked about this, instead of us being happy, we were like, what is this? Why is this tweaking us the wrong way? I realized they shouldn't have had to know, they shouldn't have had to know her story in order to be kind to her. I thought, what is this about this? I don't know you well, but I should. I don't know when I go to the grocery store, the person at the checkout, I don't know if the gas station attended, but I'm an adult.
Hannah: I have the breadth of life, I'm suppose to know that everybody's had joy, everybody's had pain. Everybody has a story and that I can hold that when I meet people that I shouldn't have to know those things to be kind to them. I realized in that moment is that kids don't seem to know that anymore. Perhaps I was wrong in expecting that. We need to be creating school environments in which kids come to know their humanity in a different way, perhaps because we're a culture that's lost a sense of human connection. We're a culture, a disconnected culture, perhaps because we only have play dates right now. We're not playing with just the people who happened to be around us in the same ways that we used to, where our culture has changed so much.
Hannah: Perhaps there's so much that we're not attuning to each other naturally in the ways that we used to that. We need to be conscious of this as education as educators, how can we be bringing our students to each other's humanity? It was such a learning lesson for me in how emotion, how expressive arts, whatever it is that we can do in our classrooms, how we need to be coming to one another's humanity, because kids weren't picking up on it. Kids once they were brought to it, they got it, but they weren't there before that. I started to see it over and over again with my students, with down syndrome, with my students all these stories. I started to realize that kids were not sensing one another's humanity. Instead we have these cultures of not teaching bullying and this is not about teaching. You can't teach someone to have feelings. You can't teach someone to feel, you can model it. You can scripted, but feelings are awakened. You can't teach someone to love. You can create the conditions in which love can grow. You can create the conditions in which caring can arise in a person. We need to be conscious of that. I think in our school systems, we need to be creating ways for kids to connect. I think that's what the work I was doing in social justice was that this naturally happened when these kids work together and listen to each other's stories, collectively collective storytelling. I didn't have to teach them to be kind. They sensed each other's humanity. There's a big difference there, big,
Daniel: Big difference. I think this is a good, uh, point to pause quickly for a message from our sponsors. When we return, I'd love to hear more about what school leaders can do to create those in conditions where emotions are awakened, where kids naturally sense that it's great, to be kind, and to feel. We'll be back.
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Daniel: Today's show is brought To you by Organized Binder, Organized Binder develops the skills and habits. All students need for success. During these uncertain times of distance learning and hybrid education settings, Organized Binder, equips educators with the resource to provide stable and consistent learning routines so that all students have an opportunity to succeed. Whether at home or in the classroom, learn more@organizedbinder.com. We're back with Hannah Beach and award-winning educator, author, and keynote speaker. Most recently she co-authored, Reclaiming our students, why children are more anxious, aggressive, and shut down than ever and what we can do about it. Hannah, you just shared a gripping story about a woman you worked with a refugee and, uh, how drama in acting out, uh, helped her classmates really connect with her on a new level. You also introduced this idea that maybe feeling. You use the example of love. We can't teach a person how to love, but you can more invite them in awake in that emotion. School leaders, I'm sure want their students to connect on a deeper level and see the humanity in each other. What can they do to create the conditions, to allow that to grow and thrive?
Hannah: It was interesting. We we're writing our book. We actually looked into the states to a penitentiary called Syncing in New York. They have this incredible program and thought if it could work with a maximum security prison for men, and they have this program where people sing together, dance together and do drama together. Their recidivism rate typically without doing that program was 67% of people returning. After doing the program was 10%, 10%. I thought we all want to deal with bullying. We all wanted to have exclude school, climate and kindness, but I think truthfully, we're going about it the wrong way. We're going about it as if you can teach it through your head, that you can teach through a campaign, not to bully or to care about people. But I think we need to go back to the oldest wisdom.
Hannah: This is why since the Dawn of time, people have sung together, dance together, played together through the arts. We've gathered to watch plays in ancient Greek times where you'd watch the story of loss or play or tragedy the human experience played in front of you. I think that it's more about going back to our old roots and looking at when we were doing this research with this, um, prison work. When we can send our humanity together. It's not about being taught. It's that all of a sudden you're like, I'm it. You just notice the humanity because you're seeing together or creating one another stories together no longer do you have to be taught it. It's not something that you remember. It's therefore it's an inside out process.I think that's not that complicated because you don't have to be an expert.
Hannah: You shouldn't have to be an expert to do this. It should be intuitive. If we could stories also help kids often to wake in their hearts because they're one step removed. You might have feelings for a character in a book, for example, it doesn't feel like you're defensive. You're a really tough person. You're a little guard around your heart. You might feel for the character much worse than what said to you, how are you feeling? If a person's very defended and they're emotionally, they're like, I'm fine. Whatever. I don't care. Don't care at all, but you can awaken it more gently when it's not about you. What they're noticing in the prisons. When you're acting out of other stories, you get the inside out experience of what that feels like without it feeling threatening. You're not talking about you.
Hannah: These are simple things that we can embed and weave into our classrooms is that we have a lot of kids who are shut down. We have an epidemic of anxiety, aggression and shut down, like whatever, don't care. Doesn't matter to me. We need to be like, "how can we gently awaken hearts? How can we do this in a way that's just natural. And I think we can look to the oldest wisdom of time. Since the Dawn of time, people have told stories around campfires. They have sung. They have dance, not, not the cool to have a dancing. We have to be perfect. I'm talking like process oriented, just fun. Maybe they'll still do that when you're we still have this alive and flourishing and raves today, and this is what we do. Or when our body's paired with a flow experience of music.
Hannah: Music is even to this day, this is what you're in the car. You turn on music and it can make you cry. It can make you feel, it can make you sing. I think we can't divorce education from the heart. Like we are emotional beings. And if we're going to pretend, we're not beings, there's just not going to work. Like no method, no specific method will ever change a child or a school. What changes people are transformative experiences with other people and feeling because you don't change when you know something. I might know people are starving, in another part of the world, but I'm not going to do anything about it unless I feel something We don't change when we know we change when we feel. When I'm moved, I can know all sorts of things and it might be intellectually interesting, but I don't change unless I'm moved to change. I need to feel something about it. I think we're going at changing the hearts of our students. Many school systems are going up through the head, not through the heart and change comes from a place of feeling. It doesn't come from knowing something
Daniel: I'm constantly telling Ruckus Makers. I work with your slide deck or whatever this presentation it's about story and it's about connecting with people's hearts. From there uh, you'll get their heads and you'll get them. Whether it's theater, whether it's music, there's just so much power there. Like you said, it's been since the Dawn of time, we've communicated in this way. I remember sitting in this theater in Cyprus, like thousand years old. This outside amphitheater of stone seats and all this kind of stuff. We were actually watching a drama at that time, but you could feel the history and everything that had happened there. It was amazing. The other thing I want to share is I recently finished this coaching intensive.
Daniel: One thing that they did every day was they played some music. They had us dance, they had us connect with our bodies because it really, it really grounded us and helped us be more present and connected to each other, which is, um, sometimes challenging in a virtual environment. I appreciate all that you're saying. I think it's important to know and I'm pretty sure Ruckus Makers listening knows this, but still will say it, do what you can to protect the arts. It's crazy to me when they get cut from, from curriculum, especially when we're talking about the gravity and the value that they offer, all human beings, our students and our staff. Before I get to the last two questions, I ask every guest on the show. I just wanted to see if there's anything else you wanted to mention about reclaiming our students. I know that the book is out, but I think you've also created some video content. If you don't mind sharing what that's all about.
Hannah: Absolutely. Tamara and I just talking to teachers, uh, educators, during this pandemic, they were just saying what we're looking for us to have some videos to be welcomed into the process in a way that could hold them a bit more right now, because a lot of people were just exhausted. We created a series of was created 12 videos, how to become the leader. Kids need to looking at the emotion behind all the behaviors we see whether it's a video on what the behavior, distracted kids, resistant kids, anxious, kids, aggressive kids, and people could take it's a series you could follow along with us for the whole journey, which is 12 weeks. Or you could just say, "I'm only interested in shifting the negative identity of my classroom at this child out."
Hannah: When he was one, so they work as a one of, or a series of 12, we wanted it to feel like the content was important, but also that the delivery felt warm. Not like, not like, um, a training video, if that makes sense. We wanted it to be meaningfully welcoming educators into a kind of like a village, like join our village, be part of this sort of process alongside us bringing back that sort of feeling. So we ran it for 12 weeks with educators all around the world. We filmed it. We have it on our website. We're basically bringing the book to life through 12 videos.
Daniel: We'll have that linked up for Rutgers Makers in the show notes. I believe the website's reclaiming our students.com. You can get the, uh, the books and access to the videos. If that's something you're interested in. Well, Hannah, I reserve these questions for all the guests on the Better Leaders, Better Schools Podcasts. Curious if you could put a message on all school marquees around the world for just a day, what would your message say,
Hannah: Okay, I have a message, please leave your perfect at the door. We welcome you where you're at. Let's explore together. I needed to have both because half the kids I work with are striving for perfection, which means they're never going to get to the beauty of the curdle of who they are because they're stuck. The other half the kids don't even try. They're not striving for perfection. They don't even see themselves as successful at all. I want to welcome with them where they're at and let's explore it together because I think that's what it is. It's about entering exploration mode, but doing it together.
Daniel: You're building a school from the ground up. You're not limited by any resources. You're only limitation is your imagination. How would you build your dream school, Hannah, and what would be your top three priorities?
Hannah: My dream school, this is a big question. My dream school would interweave all spaces for outdoors and nature and arts into every classroom. Every classroom would have a large space, even if it was a math room for drama and movement, in case people wanted to dance their math equations, as well as a door to the outside. Instead of it being like, this is the drama room, this is the nature room. Every space is infused with room for expression and the outdoors. It would be attached to a community center. My building would be attached to a community center in which there would be babies and toddlers coming in as well as senior citizens so that there was mentors as well as children mentoring so that it more modeled and echoed a real life community. If that makes sense. Elders could come into the classrooms and read and share their stories and that we would be awakening hearts through the actual experientials living of living together.
Hannah: I'd also change how people eat together. I think one of the most human ways when we were establishing relationship is how we eat and I think schools have got it wrong. When we look at dinner parties and the ways that we celebrate family and we send to ourselves by anchoring ourselves every day together at the meal as the table, and we go to school and children eat very quickly separately. I think we're missing a key way of building relationship and community. I think we have to establish beautiful rituals of music playing and sitting at big round tables and eating with people in a beautiful way. Now you wanted my top three priorities. Number one opportunities to develop relationships. Every child, every child seen and known intentional, welcoming and matchmaking rituals as a school team. We'd be getting to know because this is all changes grounded in relationship, all change is grounded and their arts need to be grounded first, a relationship for children to feel safe, to explore.
Hannah: My next priority would be making room for emotional expression. We talked about earlier with Thomas letting out some room as well as a rose making room for that, so that where people could experience their humanity together, where people are singing, dancing, creating together. My third is making room for play and exploration so that art schools aren't about outcome. It's about helping children to find their own questions in themselves instead of helping children give answers so that they, this will be infused into all experiential education and plays that there's room for the play mode. I think that as a culture, we replaced play with entertainment. I want our classrooms to be places where play becomes infused into all learning.
Daniel: Thank you so much for being a part of the Better Leaders, Better Schools Podcast. We covered a lot of ground today. Everything we talked about. What's the one thing you want to Ruckus Maker to remember?
Hannah: When you light up their hearts, anything is possible. I think that that's the step one, is relationship light up their hearts and watch it unfold?
Daniel: Thanks for listening to the Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast for Ruckus Makers. If you have a question or would like to connect my email, Daniel@better leadersbetterschools.com or hit me up on Twitter @alienearbud. If the Better Leaders Better Schools, Podcast is helping you grow as a school leader, then please help us serve more Ruckus Makers like you. You can subscribe, leave an honest rating and review or share on social media with your biggest takeaway from the episode, extra credit for tagging me on Twitter @alienearbud and using the #BLBS level up your leadership at Better Leaders Better Schools.com and talk to you next time until then class.
Show Highlights
- See the emotion behind every challenging behavior.
- RECLAIMING our STUDENTS – book and interactive videos.
- How to avoid influencing stuck roles or developing a negative identity.
- Journaling tips that leave room for the ugly and gratitude to emerge.
- Be in their eyes, call kids to who they are in the future.
- Powerfully grow goodness by feeling the knowledge.
- Teach the “oldest wisdom” to sense humanity.
- Lead students to build capacity to see their own gifts, beauty and human connection.

“You don’t change when you know something. I might know people are starving, in another part of the world, but I’m not going to do anything about it unless I feel something. We don’t change when we know we change when we feel.”
– Hannah Beach
Hannah Beach’s Resources & Contact Info:
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