Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Insightful Questions, the podcast where we dive deep into the big ideas shaping Eastside Prep's community and beyond. I'm your host, Sam Uswick. Each episode, I'll be sitting down with different members of our EPS community.
Join us as we ask the insightful questions that help us lead with compassion and listen with intention. Let's get started.
Joining us today is Jacob Chaney, a senior and proud EPS lifer, having been part of the community since fifth grade in 2017.
Over the years, he has balanced academics with his passion for competitive rowing, embracing both the discipline of sport and the intellectual challenges of an EPS education. It's no surprise that one of Jacob's top strengths is competition, a trait that fuels his drive both on the water and in the classroom, making him a thoughtful and engaged leader among his peers. We're also joined by Karen Mills, who, like Jacob, could be considered a lifer. She was here when EPS welcomed its very first students in 2003. Karen has worn many hats over the years, serving as librarian, English teacher, discipline lead, and most recently, as faculty development coordinator. With input as her top strength, Karen has been instrumental in shaping the intellectual foundation of our school, constantly exploring new ways to enhance learning while staying true to Eastside Prep's core values. We're excited to hear from both Jacob and Karen as they share their perspectives on leading with empathy and fostering meaningful dialogue and English classes. And a quick side note, Karen taught Jacob when he was in middle school.
How are you all today? How you doing?
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Great, Sam.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: How are you doing, Jacob?
[00:01:58] Speaker C: I'm doing well. I'm really happy to be here. Very excited.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Well, very happy to have you here, too. And I was so excited when you reached out and said, hey, I might want to be involved in this podcast thing, because what it did is it pushed us to start getting more student voices. So you're our second student on the pod. Good job, you. Here we go. So, as you all know, we have been thinking about empathetic dialogue, civil discourse, and compassionate leadership as a theme this year. And so, to start us off to both of you, what does compassionate leadership even mean to you? And how does empathy play a role in that?
[00:02:36] Speaker C: I guess to me, compassionate leadership is a lot of working with your team or the group you're leading. So I lead on the rowing team, and for me, a lot of that is fostering competition without pushing people past where they want to be. And then in affinity groups, a lot of that is don't force people out of their comfort zones, but invite them out of them and I think empathy is not just playing a role in compassionate leadership, but it's integral to it. I don't think you can have compassionate leadership without empathy. I think it's the foundation of compassion in a lot of ways.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: I'm gonna add onto that because as I was thinking about that question, I've always thought of empathy as this sitting with somebody, you know, having that connection, and the feeling, the compassion is empathy in action, like taking some action that involves care. Right. So if you're leading with this idea of care, you know, as sort of your baseline, you're really thinking about reaching the people. Right. And like you said, inspiring them, pushing them, influencing them, and supporting them enough so that they can kind of achieve those goals.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Karen, how do you model compassionate leadership in your English classroom and when you're working with the fellow members of your English discipline group?
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Like many things that we talk about at Eastside Prep, everything starts with relationship. You have to know who's in the room with you. You have to know their background, you have to know their personalities. You got to know what their current life is like to the degree that they're willing to share it. But it all has to start there. And then once you know who's in the room with you, you got to listen.
You know a little bit about them, but you're listening to gain more information, making sure that all the voices are heard, making sure that people get equal airtime. I guess I model it and I also expect students to practice listening actively, like not listening, in order to answer the next question with the idea behind it that I'm going to ask Jacob a question. He's having a conversation, he's thinking about some things, and I want to ask him more about that so that we can kind of create more dialogue. So modeling that compassionate leadership, bringing everybody into the room together.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: So, Jacob, how about you? Whether it's on the crude team or. And you reference affinity groups, in the moments where you step forward as a leader, in the day to day, how do you model compassionate leadership?
[00:05:03] Speaker C: I think student leadership is a little different. I think for me, a big thing I've encountered with student leadership is a willingness to be. Be leading. I think with student leadership, there's a huge incentive to lead. A lot of us are very college oriented, very status oriented, and want those leadership positions for that reason. I think you get your best compassionate leadership. I know I've seen my best when I'm doing something for the sake of doing it. I am in charge of the lit mag. I co run it with Royal Pro. And I do that because my sophomore spring, somebody told me that they liked my writing and thought I should join. And I fell in love with the group and the club, and I want to keep that alive. So I think having a passion for what you're doing in leadership, to me, is the first step to compassionate leadership. After that, that empathy is just super important. The listening, like you were talking about. University of Washington's, like, Forefront model, they have this learn acronym that E is empathy. And when you're teaching that, the huge thing they tell you is they use like someone's in a hole. Sympathy would be tossing them the ladder and saying, oh, at least you're not in a deeper hole. But empathy is taking that ladder and going down there with them and being there with them, even if they're not ready to get out of that hole quite yet. And I think that is just really important.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: I just want to add one thing, and it ties in with what you just talked about and a little bit with what I talked about before is this idea of validation. In order to lead compassionately, you gotta listen, you gotta understand what's going on. And then you need to acknowledge, like, oh, yeah, you're not ready to get out of that hole yet. And that's okay when you are. Let's move forward. But this whole idea of acknowledging where somebody is and sitting with them for a little while and saying it's okay is a huge part of compassion.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: So let's get specific with some examples from your experience. So, Jacob, can you please share a time when a meaningful discussion, whether it was in class with a teacher, just anything, helped you grow as a leader?
[00:07:03] Speaker C: I started running affinity groups my sophomore year. When they came into play a certain part, we didn't have a biracial affinity group. I worked with a group of other students to start it, and then I gave over to leadership to, at the time, senior, and then slowly became that group's leader. Through my junior year, we were very unorganized. We didn't have activities, we didn't have snacks. We didn't really have a guiding question. So a lot of our meetings just ended up being sitting in a circle, looking at each other, waiting for someone to talk. And I think you see that in a lot of class discussions too, or some clubs might be like that. I'm not sure. I finally had someone come up to me and just tell me, why are we here? Like, what are we doing? Why do we come together for this? And I met with my other affinity group leader. We had a conversation about how are we going to be planning these out? So this year, attendance at our affinity group has, like, tripled. We are doing a wheel. We have biracial, so we're very multicultural in that group. So we have a wheel of different cultures. We bring in a snack every week. One of us does a snack while the other one plans an activity. Whether that's a guiding question, a video, a game we can play that allows us to communicate with each other better. It's just increased the flow of our affinity group so much.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: So, Karen, how have you encouraged students to use dialogue to resolve conflicts or navigate differences of opinion?
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Well, probably in lots of different ways. Listening to students and having them listen to one another is a really important part of my English classroom. We work a lot on, like, sentence stems. I think this. This comes into play. I think about when we're doing feedback. Like, in our writing group, you read somebody's writing and you're like, needs a little bit of work and helping students, like, giving them the language for how to talk with one another. Oh, I really like what you're doing here. I'd like to know more about.
I heard you say this, and I'd like to hear a little bit more about xyz. So it starts in little ways when they're maybe younger, and then hopefully the intent is that they learn that language and they kind of ingest that language, and it becomes sort of natural for them so that when they're asked more important questions and there are real differences that might feel a little bit bigger and have emotion involved in it, that they at least have some language to fall back on to be able to have those conversations. I. Statements, you know, of course, reframing of what I heard you say was giving them some language in order to start having those conversations, you know, and the act of listening. I was just listening to another podcast, Shankar Vedantan. Fantastic. Love me some Hidden brain.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Aw, Hidden Brain.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. He was having a conversation about having conversations. And to be a great conversationalist, his guest was saying, you have to ask questions.
And question after question, like, leads to deeper understanding, leads to deeper conversation, leads to deeper connections. And once you can have those, you open up the dialogue. I think create community where it's okay to have your own ideas and be able to talk about it.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: The last time I listened to Hidden Brain in the middle of the Utah wilderness, but it was about mindset, by the way. I think that compassionate leadership, empathetic dialogue. I think those are mindsets. I think it's about the way you enter or the way you enter a situation or the way you carry yourself through the world, that openness is really important. I'm really excited about this next question. Cause I'm hoping to get some suggestions from y'all. And I've been thinking about this one a lot. So is there a book or a story or a discussion that has really helped shape your understanding of leadership through. Through empathy?
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just gonna jump in right now.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Oh, here we go.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: I've thought about this a lot. A book by Elena Aguilar called the Art of Coaching. Her baseline is approach every conversation with curiosity and compassion. And it's true every time I go into a situation where I think, ooh, I've told myself a story about what's gonna happen in this meeting. And I've got all this, like, bias and all this background noise. But if I come into the conversation, try to leave that behind and try to ask questions, really understand, sit with the person and aim to move forward, it changes every conversation.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: How about you, Jacob?
[00:11:26] Speaker C: There's a book I read when I was in fifth grade in, like, free reading times, during a lit class, not for a lit class. And then a discussion I had going into my junior year after a summer reading book. So that book was Dale Carnegie's how to Win Friends and Influence Others. I had a hard time getting to know people, socializing, getting out of my comfort zone and making friends. In elementary school especially, I was worried for fifth grade at a new school with, you know, a couple people. I had three students come from my elementary school to eps, but I never knew them that well.
Reading that book. A big section of it was avoiding criticism for the sake of criticism. So they had this story from about Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. There was a general who made, like, a terrible tactical decision. Something about crossing a river or trying to cross a river. Abraham Lincoln wrote this incredibly scornful critical letter, and they found it in his desk when he retired. And he had never sent it. And I think just his avoidance of sending that letter, the takeaway is just collaborating with someone.
Constructive criticism is obviously important, but collaborating with someone, avoiding criticism for the sake of putting another person down is a key part of compassionate leadership and encouraging open dialogue.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: That's a really tricky thing to navigate when you feel like if I'm in a conversation and I find out I'm putting up a wall, right? Like, I'm not listening, like I'm dug in. It's also challenging when you can kind of sense from who you're talking to. Like, there's no exchange here. You know, I don't feel like we can get anywhere.
And what I spend a lot of time thinking about is how do you push through that? You know, how do you get at that? Do you. Do you simply name it? And it takes practice with topics or ideas that are maybe less polarizing than others, you know, so you kind of feel like, okay, I'm in this space and we're. We're pushing and we're disagreeing, but in a good way. And then it gets more and more complex as you go.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: So as you were talking of thinking about, is it okay to also end a conversation if you can't reach a point of agreement? If you get to a point where I'm not going to budge, you're not going to budge. I'm trying, I'm asking my questions, I'm listening, I'm trying to figure it out. Is part of being compassionate also just say, okay, we're going to leave it here.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: All right. So as you think about the EPS community kind of broadly, how do you see compassionate leadership showing up?
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Optimistically, I'd like to think it's kind of everywhere in the EPS community working with slc, I see that most, if not all, of SLC has the best interest of the community in mind. Working with affinity group leader meetings. Everybody wants to collaborate with each other. There's groups that want to join up for meetings because I share a shared subject or a shared experience. I wanted to add on the teacher's note, and I know I'm in a room with a couple of my teachers.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: Now, but careful what you say.
[00:14:31] Speaker C: I think the teachers at EPS are a excellent example of compassionate leadership. I've never encountered a teacher who wasn't willing to hear me out if I. I don't ask for extensions often, but if I really need an extension, I don't have a teacher who wouldn't hear me out and listen to what I'm going through. At a lot of schools, that is policy. If you're not there for classwork, you do not get to do the classwork. Another time, we won't move your schedule around to help you do the classwork. And I think that is just one example of how the structure of EPS and the teaching at EPS very much focuses on compassionate leadership and allows for listening and flexibility to hope students.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: That is really wonderful to hear. One of the things I love most about working here is there is such mutual respect between the adults and the students.
And one of the things that I work really hard on is. I don't understand in other spaces, this artificial divide between the students and the teachers. It's like so much wasted energy. It's not perfect here. And ultimately the adults are the authority in the room. But to me, it's about closing the authority gap. And I think we do a really good job of that because it starts with the relationship. Because learning occurs on the foundation of a strong relationship, which involves trust, care for one another. Just by way of example, when I moved into the role of head of school, some of the kids came up and said, hey, how's it going? And it wasn't that, how you doing? Perfunctory. I'm just saying hi. They literally want to know, how's it going for you? And I just remember being so moved by that. And I think that speaks to the relationships we're trying to build so that we create the best experience possible.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: I'm thinking too about the idea of restorative practices rather than harsh punishments or suspensions or failing a student or whatever the consequence might be of an action. I really like the direction of restoring. You know, there's been harm done. How do we fix it? How do we repair the relationships and then move forward? I think that's a huge component of compassionate leadership too.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: So, Karen, Jacob, any last thoughts before we wrap up today?
[00:16:51] Speaker B: I've always thought about leaders as extroverts out there. As I've been a teacher for 23 years now. What I keep learning over and over again from students is that there's all kinds of leaders. And I think that that's really important to put out into the world. Right? We all have different strengths, we all have important things to say. And I think one of my jobs as a compassionate leader in a classroom, in a discipline meeting anywhere, is to make sure that all the voices are heard. It's not always the loudest voice in the room that's the strongest, right? Sometimes it's the quietest. Sometimes you're leading when you're facilitating something, but not necessarily at the front of it. So I just like to keep that in mind as we think about leadership with many modalities and many, many strengths.
[00:17:42] Speaker C: I find myself thinking the same thing too, sometimes, especially. Cause I think I kind of lead with extroversion as my first foot forward. But in rowing, my co captain on Vika, I wouldn't. I'm not sure if I call her an introvert, but she's definitely more introverted and doesn't always get the same volume I get when we're leading a warm up or a cool down stretch on land. But she does so much work organizationally wise and just knowing people. She has this spreadsheet of everyone's birthdays and food allergies and makes sure we're getting them stuff on their birthdays so we can celebrate as a team. And it's just stuff like that, that even if it's not done through talking to everybody, it's done through like a survey where we get the birthdays and we get the food allergies and we find out what people like. And if people want to celebrate, that is insanely valuable to building connection whether you're an introvert or an extrovert.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm remembering now, Jacob, as a 10 year old fifth grader, I think one of your strengths back then and I haven't taught you in a long time, so I don't know if it's true anymore, but I think one of your strengths was modeling. Right. You said, you know, sometimes weren't quite sure how to interact with people, but you always modeled your desires and your passions. Right. You were a poet. Yeah.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: Still Amy, before.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I know, I love that. But you were a poet before anybody else and you had this kind of quiet confidence that just sort of showed up. I could see that and I'm sure a lot of other people could see that. So just like modeling and being yourself and being confident with who you are is another way to put that out in the world too.
[00:19:24] Speaker C: Thank you. I appreciate that.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Well, Jacob, Karen, thank you so much for taking the time today.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Thank you, Sam.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: And to chat. It was really fun. I'm very glad. I sent you an email asking to be on the podcast.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Look at that self advocacy. Look where it'll get you.
For more insights, be sure to check out the EPS weekly news every.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Sa.
