Happy & Resilient - The Complete Guide to Teaching, Learning and Living

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program, Rani Habib. Rani is an expert in helping leaders, educators, and parents become happier, more resilient, more connected to their purpose, and more playful. The founder of EQ Schools, he leads workshops and speaks in organizations nationally and abroad. Ronnie holds a master's of education from Harvard University and is the author of the new book, Happy and Resilient, The Complete Guide to Joyful Teaching, Learning, and Living.

[00:41] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:43] SPEAKER_01:

Ronnie, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:45] SPEAKER_00:

Justin, it's such an honor to be here with you. Thank you so much for having me on.

[00:48] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm excited to speak with you because I feel like this is such a pressing topic. We've heard so much, especially over the past year or so about just how difficult the job of teaching has become. And we've always tried as leaders to do things to make the job easier, to take off some of the stress. And at the same time, sometimes we're the source of that stress because things need to get done and plans need to get rolled out. But we've also, I think, maybe faced some criticism for our efforts to make everybody's job easier, to help people deal with the stress of the job. Let's start, if we could, by just talking about the idea in the title of the book that happier teachers teach better.

[01:28]

What does that mean to you? And where did that idea come from?

[01:31] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, for sure. I love that question. So, you know, when people right now talk a lot about teacher well-being and how to deal with burnout and also, by the way, not just teacher administrators as well, they focus on just the fact that, you know, our health matters. And that's really, really true. There's no question, right? Like we absolutely need to prioritize our well-being, our health, our students' well-being as well.

[01:53]

But I think that what's missed a lot in that message is what positive psychology research has shown us very, very clearly is that, yeah, we do need to focus on feeling well, of course, and giving our students and ourselves, our staff and us as leaders as well, these skills. But there's two reasons for it. Number one, yes, we're going to feel better. But number two, we are way, way more successful and productive and creative and collaborative when we are well. And it's not by a little bit, Justin. It's by a fair amount.

[02:26]

That's what the research shows. And so what I've done is to say, hey, let's take a lot of groundbreaking ideas from positive psychology, emotional intelligence, and mindfulness fields, And really take those and make them very practical, create practices and activities and exercise that are super practical for teachers in the book that I just wrote. And obviously, I'm going to write another one also for leaders, for administrators, because I work with a lot of principals and superintendents. But really make it practical for the day-to-day experience in the classroom and also outside. So we can not only thrive, but thrive and be more successful at work.

[03:04] SPEAKER_01:

Well, tell us, if you would, a little bit about just kind of how you got into this, because as you mentioned, you've been speaking and training and working with groups for quite some time now. How did you go from making some discoveries for yourself as an educator to doing this work with other people?

[03:17] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So, you know, I'm the founder of this company, right? And what we do, again, is bring this training of mindfulness, emotional intelligence, positive psych to leaders and teachers all over the world. I speak all over the world and I live in Santa Cruz with my two amazing kids. I freaking love what I do. Okay.

[03:33]

Before that, I taught for about 14 years. I started in Boston and then moved to California and I taught primarily high school. And by the way, I love that too. Okay. But I will be honest and maybe a little vulnerable with you, Justin, now is that by my fourth year of teaching, I almost quit. And I almost quit because I was beginning to burn out.

[03:53]

I was working so much. And I started losing touch with why I became a teacher in the first place. And that year I had a very intense wake up call. So I get to school, I parked my car, get out of my car, walk towards my classroom. So before I get to my classroom, the intercom goes off and Justin tells us we have an emergency staff meeting. So I'm like, all right, I'm going to go sit down.

[04:16]

I've been to those before. You sit down in the choir and you wait to hear what's going on. In comes the principal. She looks at us. completely distraught by I've never seen her like that. And she looks at us and tells us that one of our students committed suicide.

[04:32]

And when she said the name, it was, I mean, it's a big school, right? Like 2000 students, you know, she said the name though, and he was my student. And Justin, like that moment broke me, you know, like I felt honestly like shattered like physically it was hard to move okay but he did it in a very public way he did it with the train and we it was in the morning we needed to get ahead of the news and we decided we're just going to break the news to kids and support them so all day that's all we did right there's a staff like we just supported the kids and i remember at the end of the day his mother sent me an email and she said um mr abib um You had a real connection with my son. He loved your class and he loved this camp that I, you know, took students on. Anyways, it's kind of a side story, but...

[05:22]

she asked me basically, will you speak in his funeral? So I said, of course I said, yes, like hardest thing I've ever had to do professionally, you know, but yeah. And that Saturday I go to the church and I get to the church and I sit in the first row and I see the mother speak about her child. And then I see the dad speak about him and I'm, you know, I'm a man, I'm crying. I'm a mess, you know? But then it was my turn to go up and speak.

[05:46]

So I put myself together real quick. I get on stage and I deliver my speech. And at the end of my speech, Justin, I don't know if this ever happened to you. And OK, fair warning, this might sound a little bit like Northern California, Santa Cruz, tree huggy hippie. OK, but I'm telling you, I literally had a voice channel through me that told me if I'm going to continue to be an educator, there was nothing that was going to stop me from putting my students well-being first. Nothing.

[06:14]

And I told myself I'm going to teach them how to be well, no matter what I taught. And I taught AP economics and history and all that. But Justin, I wasn't well. And you know how kids can smell bullshit from a mile away? Right. So like I needed to really like work on myself.

[06:30]

I started seeing a therapist, started mindfulness practices in order to start using positive psychology exercises that I learned in grad school. And I'm telling you, in about four months, my life transformed. I had more energy. I was more connected to my purpose. I was excited to go to work. I just felt so good.

[06:48]

And I realized at that point, like, hey, if I have these skills as an adult, why are we not teaching these skills to kids? And so I created this course, Positive Psychology for Students, first one that I saw basically in the United States. And I was praying 25 students would sign up because it's an elective. So you have to have the numbers. 107 signed up. And it blew me away.

[07:09]

I taught four sections of this class for four years. And so hundreds of kids behaviorally shift in front of my eyes. And so then what I said is, look, I started using this stuff in my other classes, right? Like...

[07:22]

Mindfulness practices, connection rituals, improv games, very, very simple kind of interventions, call it, that make teaching easier, that are grounded in positive psychology research, right? And mindfulness and EQ, emotional intelligence. And so... Then I started training educators on how to do it in their own classrooms.

[07:44]

And that's how EQSchools, my company, EQSchools was born. Really, it started with the idea of transforming classrooms, like one by one. But then two years into it, I realized what I really want to do is transform schools and transform organizations and districts and transform people's lives to help people and organizations thrive. And so that's where we're continuing, of course, to support educators. That's why I wrote the book. for teachers, but very much like supporting administrators and people at the district office too, to really create climates that are psychologically safe, joyful, fun, and emotionally intelligent.

[08:22]

And so I think that's a little bit about why I got into it and why I wrote the book.

[08:28] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I wonder if you could tell us about some of the tenets of positive psychology, because I think we've probably all heard that term But it has some potential overlap and potential confusion with maybe things that fall outside of positive psychology proper. And we've certainly heard a lot of admonitions towards self-care, you know, take care of yourself, drink lots of water. And I think everybody has heard so much of that stuff of varying quality that people have started to become a little skeptical of it or even cynical about hearing it. What does some of the key research on positive psychology tell us?

[09:03] SPEAKER_00:

I love that you brought that up because I think you're really right. Like, you know, another professional development for teachers on self-care and teachers are like just tired of self-care, which is like crazy. Right. What I love about positive psych is that it is very much research based and there's it's a lot more broad. and deeper in a bunch of different areas, not just self-care. So recovery and self-care is a part of it.

[09:25]

But basically what positive psychology showed us that there are five elements that really contributes to not only our well-being, but our success, especially in the classroom. So I created an acronym that basically the book's about. So it's called, it's RAMP, basically ramping into our well-being and success. And I spell it R-A-A-M-P because there's five elements. And those elements, so R stands for relationships, relationships are the number one predictor of well-being. And so as much as we talk about self-care and all of that, and all of that is beautiful and important, no question, the quality of relationships that you have in your life, and by the way, at work as well, And by the way, with your students as well.

[10:05]

And so like relationship skills and communication skills are by far the number one predictor of how well you're going to do long-term and also, you know, like in the moment, right? So relationships, A stands for two things. It stands for awareness. So being really present, really here, right? Like if I were to ask your audience a question, like if you were honest with yourself, like how often are you in your mind, are you in the future or in the past? as opposed to being really here.

[10:35]

And I think most people would say, yeah, I'm ruminating about the past or I'm worrying about the future as opposed to being here. And the truth is the present moment is where life is lived. I'll tell a funny, quick story. I came home one day from a trip, a long trip from speaking or whatever. And my son opens the door. He looks at me, he's really excited.

[10:53]

He calls me Abba because I'm Israeli. And I was like, Abba. And I was like, hey, it's so good to see you. And he's like, Abba, let's build Stegosaurus out of Legos. And I'm like, of course, you know, like, let's do it. You know, I get down on the carpet with him and we start building Stegosaurus out of Legos.

[11:06]

But of course, as soon as we start, my mind goes into like, oh, what's, you know, when did my assistant book my flight for my next workshop? You know, like all this stuff, right? Like work stuff, you know? And my son, Justin, he was seven at the time. Okay. He looks up at me.

[11:21]

He's like, Abba. I'm like, what? And he makes this gesture with his hand to focus where he's like stegosaurus. You know what I mean? Like he knew that I wasn't there. You know what I'm saying?

[11:34]

And it's amazing. And like, I don't have a lot of time. I mean, I have some time with my kids, but when I'm with them, I want to be with them. I want to experience life with them. You with me? Because the life lives in the present moment.

[11:45]

So it's about awareness about, and there's a lot of research to show that when people are really present, they're happier. So yeah, Relationships, number one predictor will be A, awareness. A also stands for advancement. So actually pursuing personal growth, you know, and personal goals that we care about, not just professional. Of course, professional is important as well, but not being afraid to pursue our passion in life to continue to grow. M stands for meaning.

[12:14]

So really being connected to our purpose. And by the way, most people think you have to find purpose all the time. That's actually not quite true. The research shows that really what we needed to do is recreate meaning. And as teachers and as educators, we know this over and over again. I mean, if you teach for long enough, you know that you have to recreate meaning.

[12:31]

You got to be proactive about that and really ask yourself, like, why am I here? What does life want for me at this point? And also just reconnect to why you became a teacher in the first place. Reconnect to that story because that fire is going to keep you going. I think Nietzsche said, like, if a person's connected to their why, they can deal with almost any how, you know, so like you can deal with all the meetings that you have to have, the emails and all of the stuff around teaching that, you know, teachers that we don't want to do as much as teach. And then lastly, P stands for positive emotions.

[13:04]

So experiencing a three to one ratio of positive emotions to difficult emotions in life. Just so you know, most Americans are at a two to one, okay? Or maybe even some one to one, but it's kind of like in between a one to one to a two to one, far away from three to one. Now, a lot of times people tell me, well, Ronnie, of course, if I experience more positive emotions, I'll feel better. That's just common sense, you know? But Justin, have you noticed that common sense isn't very common Do you know what I mean?

[13:33]

Like how many of us actually put in like very practical practices into our life to ensure that that ratio is at least three to one, if not higher. And the other thing I tell people is that the ratio, notice that the ratio is not three to zero. In other words, it's absolutely okay to feel difficult emotions. In fact, we should like fear, shame, you know, guilt, like envy. This is stuff that we all feel all the time, you know? And so instead of trying to repress it, we actually need to have strategies to learn how to welcome them.

[14:05]

And when I say experience positive emotions, I'm not meaning like the toxic positive guy who comes in and is like, hey, everybody, like, go lucky, you know, like, let's be happy. No, it's more like authentic, you know, authentic positive emotions, you know. And so when we take the time to really focus on those five elements and to actually say, hey, you know what, I'm going to build in very simple practices, you know, a system into my life where I'm going to more deeply connect with, you know, someone who I deeply care about. And it's, by the way, the research shows in terms of relationship that it's not just, it's not just like amount of relationships or amount of time you spend with, it's being able to be vulnerable with people. It's being able to be real with people. It's being able to hold people in their vulnerability and, you know, laugh and all of that.

[14:52]

But it's that quality of saying, I'm going to allow people to see me and I'm going to allow others to feel seen because what people want the most in life after they have shelter and they have food is to feel seen and to feel like they belong. And so once we have that, then we're good. So in other words, imagine, okay, so you have ramp, right? And it consists of the five elements, but every ramp has, you know, like a foundation to it. Right. And like, and so the foundation of it, is energy management, right?

[15:25]

So because without energy, like our life just doesn't sustain itself. Without energy, you can't really give to your relationships. You can't even notice that whether you're present or not, you know, certainly can't experience as many positive emotions. And when I say energy management, I'm not just, you know, a lot of times people say like self-care, you know, like get a massage or like, you know, like go on a walk. Like all those things are beautiful and important and I actually recommend them. And I actually go into the research to show like what type of recovery periods give us the most kind of bang for our buck, if you will.

[16:02]

If you read the book, you'll get all the details. But one of the most important things to understand about this is that in order to effectively manage our energy, we need to, number one, change our mindset around energy management. Teachers should begin to understand that when and why absolutely principals and superintendents as well, and directors, administrators. When we rest, we work. Like, it is a part of our work. Rest is a part of our work.

[16:30]

In other words, we need to begin to think of ourselves as athletes. And athletes know that their performance is tied, of course, to their practice, but it's very much also tied to their rest and recovery periods, right? And when we begin to understand that, we can begin to shift the way we think about that. It's not just about bringing in energy givers. It's about also learning how to plug the energy drainers. And one of the biggest energy drainers is worry.

[16:58]

And so understanding how to, with awareness, how to experience less of that.

[17:03] SPEAKER_01:

So thinking about energy and the need to be kind of proactive about the elements of the ramp model and to protect our energy, what do you see as some of the forces that make that challenging? And what's some of the advice that you have in the book for doing that? Because I feel like as leaders, we have been appropriately called out on this for saying, you know, take care of yourself. Also, here's some more work to do. Lower your stress level. Also, here are some new initiatives that will increase your stress level.

[17:31]

So for the individual who kind of gets those tensions and faces those tensions, what are some ways that educators can just really protect that energy?

[17:41] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love that. I believe in the power of not doing stuff alone, right? So like in actually connecting with colleagues and even befriending, if you can have a best friend at work, amazing, right? But like being able to say, hey, we'll read the book together, you know, kind of like PLC style, right? If you will, but doesn't have to be like the formal PLC. It could be just like the people that you care about, right?

[18:05]

And the people that you naturally do things with and to say, okay, We are going to be our accountability bodies to each other to actually follow through with these things. So we're not alone in our journey to say, hey, yes, we're going to prioritize spending our lunch period. It's going to be protected. Okay. And we're going to take some time to really eat lunch. Okay.

[18:26]

We are going to together make sure that in our lesson plans, even if, you know, in our lesson plans, we build recovery periods for ourselves and for our students, you know, hey, like you sit down and PLC, you're like, wait, where's your recovery period in the 90 minute block? You know what I mean? And you just like literally ask each other that stuff, right? And we are going to, depending on the relationships we have with our administrators, and I think that every school, it has the principal, but every school has leaders that are teachers. And you know who they are. You can just tell.

[18:57]

Having the leaders being able to connect to the administrators and say, hey, you know what? Love the message that you gave us about taking care of ourselves. And in the same time, you're giving us way more work. Let's find some balance here. And let's make sure that when we have staff meetings, that they start with energy and that they start with positive energy, like with music, let's say, and that we do take time to connect. We play an improv game together.

[19:22]

We actually take a moment to do a practice that helps us downregulate, that we... Begin to truly model and support one another to do these practices so we can give that to the kids. One of the ways that I really love to do it with schools that I work with is even creating gamified challenges. So I have this platform that the schools go on and people get points for doing these practices.

[19:49]

And actually I even had like one person in one of our challenges say, Hey, you know, I had a great conversation with my PLC in which we noticed that we were mindlessly assigning more and more work for our students and for ourselves that was, that ended up being unnecessary to make sure that our students met the standard. But we just did it because that's how we've been doing it, you know, for years. And so like, what we decided to do is to say, hey, let's take a moment, let's be more mindful about it and decide what we actually need to do and what we don't. And so that actually decreased the amount of homework for our students. It decreased the amount of grading for us. It actually decreased the amount of parent engagements that we had as well because of other issues that had to do with the assessments.

[20:35]

And we took this time, they saved about two hours of time for that week and actually decided like one of that hour they collaborated and another hour they each did their own thing to kind of, you know, recoup their batteries. So like one went to the gym, another one did a walk outside. So it's one of those things, again, it's about deciding, okay, this is a priority and we're actually going to do this and we're not going to do it alone. We're going to do it together.

[21:03] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And I think we're kind of finally realizing the cumulative cost of just always piling on more and more and operating under this perpetual kind of sense of urgency that students need us. So we need to push ourselves harder. And as you said, you know, rest is part of the work of an athlete and recovery needs to be part of the work. of educators and my colleague peter dewitt talks about the idea of de-implementation that if we're going to be constantly coming up with new ideas that the the flip side of that is we have to wind down some of the things that we've been building up over the years you know we can't just perpetually add on more and more we have to purposefully say okay, we were doing that. We're now doing some other things.

[21:47]

So we're going to stop doing those other things that no longer fit because we can't just keep doing more and more. If we try to acquire more and more possessions and we see them filling up our house or our classroom, we know we have to get rid of stuff or clutter takes over. And just the workload clutter in our profession, I think is just off the charts. So for leaders, I know the book is written largely from a teacher and a self-care perspective, how can we approach this work with integrity and not be the problem as well? I would imagine you don't want people showing up at the classroom door with your book in hand saying, hey, I got you something. Also, here's some more work.

[22:28]

So how do we approach integrity as leaders and do the right thing?

[22:33] SPEAKER_00:

I love your question. And I'll address that in just a moment. But I want to say that doing... If we continue to pile on more and more things and we have like this focus and this focus and this focus, at the end, we're not focusing on anything.

[22:47]

You with me? So like, yes, we do need to decouple. And another sentence that one of my best friends, Owen Ward, gave me, who leads the HeartMath Institute, he heard it from someone there, but he said, doing your best is not doing more. Doing your best is being more in balance. And I think that's really true. Especially once you kind of master some of like just teaching strategies and the pedagogical ability to teach, once you're more in balance and once like it's the inner work that allows you to really grow more.

[23:19]

But again, to be more in balance without burning out. You know, what's interesting about the leader, leaders, what do they care about? They care about bottom line results at the end of the day, right? Like you're the principal of a school, you want to make sure you get you know, you show like the numbers and of course you care about the students and you care about your staff and all that, their wellbeing, but you know, you're measured by a certain thing. And so like, A lot of times they look at it and they're like, listen, all this like wellness and well-being, it's all nice and stuff, but I'm measured by bottom line results. And so what leaders need to understand is this, no matter what bottom line results you care about, and this could be, let's say, literacy rate, math scores, equity, whatever it is that you care the most about.

[24:00]

If you want to improve your bottom line results, improve your climate. Climate drives results. That's just the organizationally, that's the bottom line. It's true for not just in schools and districts, but it's true across the board in other organizations. Now, the question, of course, if climate drives result, what drives climate? And it turns out, and if you read Daniel Goleman's book, Primal Leadership, He wrote also the book, Emotional Intelligence, but anyways, the prime relationship is a great book for leaders.

[24:27]

He writes that, you know, scanning through the research, he found that about 50 to 70% of how employees perceive the organizational climate can be traced to the action of one person, the leader, the people take their emotional cues from the top. Okay. And so he, When I coach leaders and when I work with their teams and with themselves, the first thing I tell them is like, hey, if you want to not fall into the trap of being like, hey, here's a great book about well-being and here's a lot more work, it starts with yourself. It really starts with making the decision internally that you are going to focus on your ramp first, okay? And you're going to model that to people. And so...

[25:14]

How does that look like? Well, it looks like the principle saying, all right, I'm going to make the decision, for example, to honor my rest and honor my well-being. So I go to sleep a little bit earlier. I wake up a little bit earlier. And when I get to work, I don't just get on my email right away. I actually take a moment.

[25:31]

I do a quick mindfulness practice to center myself so that I can become more intelligent. I can have access to my, not just my brain, but I can have access to my heart intelligence and my gut intelligence. And yes, These are intelligence centers in your body. They have neurons, neuron transmitters, and a ganglia. They're actually intelligence centers. And so when we slow down enough as a leader, we're able to be more intelligent, emotionally intelligent and cognitively intelligent.

[25:59]

And for example, to say, okay, with this renewed sense of calm and peace, I'm actually going to take a moment and write a few notes of gratitude for my people before I get on email, because that's gonna up-level my base level of happiness because gratitude is shown to do that. And it's gonna be amazing for the people who get it. And then they're gonna probably reciprocate that to others, et cetera, right? And there's like a bazillion different strategies that I give administrators on how to do that. So in other words, people don't want to just, they don't wanna just hear words, right? They wanna see actions, right?

[26:34]

And so when you're able to, model with your behavior and with your action, they begin to see the shift in you and are able to then be like, all right, this feels more authentic, you know? And then I think constantly asking yourself as a leader, do we need to do this initiative right now? Like, do we have to tackle literacy at this rate right now? You know, and of course, including your teams in it, right? Like having a mutual conversation with you, with your leadership council on it, instructional leadership council, because the more you're able to, I think I truly believe at this point in schools, the more you're able to say, Hey, Yes, we're going to make sure that we are pedagogically sound, like we make sure that our new teachers get the trainings they need and all that stuff. But the more you're able to say, hey, I deeply value you as professionals, and the vast majority, I think, of teachers you could, deeply value you as professionals.

[27:33]

Yes, here's a few tweaks we need to work on. But number one, let's really, because I value you so much, let's take a moment to truly work on our personal development as individuals and then, of course, as a team. And that is going to lead us to deep, powerful results moving forward. Because we all care about kids. All of us want kids to succeed. You're not in education for the money.

[27:55]

You're in education for the kids. And so you just need to ground in that and know that we're There's enough motivation there to want to help the kids succeed, but we do need to make sure that we feed ourselves.

[28:09] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Happy and Resilient, The Complete Guide to Joyful Teaching, Learning, and Living. And Ronnie, I know you do quite a bit in the way of training and speaking. If people wanna learn more about the book or learn more about working with EQ schools, where's the best place for them to go online?

[28:24] SPEAKER_00:

So if people want to see more about the book or more about my work and, you know, interested in maybe working with us, just go to eqschools.com and you can click on Let's Talk and you would get on my calendar right away. And we would honestly, we just have, you know, a 30 minute conversation and see how we may support your school or your district, if it may work for you or not. I promise you'd give you a lot of value anyways. And for sure, the book is going to be on my website as well.

[28:52] SPEAKER_01:

Ronnie, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[28:54] SPEAKER_00:

It's been a pleasure. Justin, thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor. Take good care.

[29:00] Announcer:

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