Episode 92: HYPE Squad with Carolyn Deas and Kelsey Leanza

Happy International week of Random Acts of KINDNESS! I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to interview these incredible women about what they're doing at their school to cultivate a culture of kindness which in turn is creating a huge shift in the sense of community at their school! Wait til you hear all of these ideas! I hope you enjoy as much as I did! I REALLY loved chatting with them and I feel like even after 45 minutes they still had more ideas to share! 

Enjoy!

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Transcript

Annabelle Williamson 

Welcome back to teaching la vida loca, the podcast you come to for short and sweet and sometimes spicy episodes full of enthusiasm, magic and tips and tricks for your classroom. I'm Annabelle, your maestra loca, and I'm here to bring you inspiration, unapologetic authenticity, and ideas to spark more joy in your teaching journey. I'm turning up the excitement and elated to have you right here with me. I'm not just your host, I'm your cheerleader, and I'm thrilled you're tuning in. So, let's do this. Let's tackle teaching la vida loca together.

Annabelle Williamson 

You're about to listen to one of my favorite episodes I've ever recorded on teaching la vida loca with Carolyn and Kelsey in Ohio, and they are sharing about how they are spreading positive community and culture throughout their school, and it's literally in data affecting behavior in their schools and all these things. And you'll hear all of it, and you'll totally understand why, but they forgot to share something that is incredible and probably the easiest to implement, thing that teachers could do if they wanted to start now. So please share what is the question of the month? What was the first one you shared? And then you can tell me about the others go.

Carolyn 

So, every month, the hype squad chooses a question to ask the teachers, and then we print out pieces of paper that say blank, and then the question, so, like, this month, question is, like, it's not really questioning a statement, but it's like blanks, first celebrity crush was and then the teacher fills it out. They put the paper by their door, and it's like, meant to spark conversations with the students. So, like, Kelsey and I both chose John Travolta because Greece and, you know, seven, seven-year-old Carolyn was obsessed with John Travolta. And then, like, but we're getting other teachers are like, who are a little older, and they're all like, oh, Sean Cassidy. And then we've got some younger ones, like, ooh, Zach Ephron, or Justin Bieber. And what those are baby teachers? Yeah, so, but, like, but it's, it's a different question every month, and the kids are choosing it. So, we're trying to, bit to, trying to start conversations with the kids. And it does work, right? I had was like a debate question, which was Kendrick or Drake, and then

Kelsey 

I would not recommend doing that. Yeah, it

Carolyn 

was like, before that's like, oh, Miss D's his favorite thing to do on winter break was and like, so simple

Kelsey 

questions too, and the kids pick them. Oh yeah. We just kind of offer some guide, guidance, and then

Carolyn 

clean out 70 copies. We put them in everybody's mailboxes, and then, like, the secretaries, the custodians, all the paraprofessionals, the teachers, the lunch monitors, everybody answers the question and hangs it up somewhere. Yeah.

Annabelle Williamson 

And I think that again, you're creating a culture of like, everybody's included everybody,

Kelsey 

and it does spark conversation because I did have one student during my bus duty. She looked up my celebrity crush, John Travolta, and was like, He's so ugly.

Annabelle Williamson 

That's so great. Mine was Fonzie from Happy days.

Carolyn 

I love a good Henry Winkler, okay? From first to third grade, and then it turned into Noah Wiley from er Oh, my God, still rings true, today to today, yeah, my one path.

Annabelle Williamson 

Okay, well, y'all enjoy this episode. These ladies were amazing. You're going to love the energy throughout. It is officially past 1030 their time, so we're going to let them go to bed. Thanks for listening. Enjoy. Hello. Welcome back to teaching la vida loca. It's me, and I'm so stinking excited because tonight I don't have one guest, but I have two guests, which is insane. And what's even crazier is they're both in Ohio. Well, I don't actually know if Kelsey is, but Kelsey is going to tell you in a second if she's Oh, she's nodding. She's in Ohio. They both are, and that's an hour ahead of me, which means it is 9:40pm and both of these teachers are willing to talk to me at 9:40pm and I'm just really, really grateful. So welcome. I'm not going to tell you what we're going to talk about yet, but I will let them both introduce themselves. Kelsey can go first because I need to learn about her. I literally haven't even met poor Kelsey yet, but Kelsey is going to go first, and she's going to tell us a little bit, what about what she does, where she teaches, etc, and then Carolyn can go, and then we'll dive in, yay.

Kelsey 

So, I teach sixth grade PE, I teach seventh grade health, and then eighth grade steam. I. Also do hype squad with Carolyn and a part of drama club, all kinds of fun stuff.

Carolyn 

I'm Carolyn. I teach in three different schools. Currently, I do mostly seventh grade health and PE, and I'm an Adapted PE teacher for an elementary school, K to five and a second middle school as well. I am the advisor for power the pen, which is a creative writing team, and I am the co-director of hype squad.

Annabelle Williamson 

Can y'all guess? Y'all probably have already guessed what I'm going to talk to them about, because what isn't that the most La Maestra loca sounding thing ever hype squad, I cannot. Okay, so Carolyn is my bestie. Carolyn and I used to teach together many, many moons ago, and I am so grateful to have her in my life, and so sad that she moved to Ohio, but also really glad that she is back by family, but she is Auntie ion to my kids. Ion is just a random name that Memphis called her because he couldn't say Carolyn, and she's kind of just been that way ever since she's the auntie that buys the books and the video games. So, she's a favorite, as you can imagine. And we were just talking the other night on a girls’ night FaceTime together, and she was telling me about the hype squad. And I was like, Wait, that sounds like that. Sounds like a leveled-up times 20 version of what I'm trying to do with my sunshine committee at my school. And I immediately just said, can we do a podcast together so I can learn more about it? And she's like, Yeah, but can Kelsey do it with me? Because it's both of us so, so cool to have you both here. I think my first question and poor girls, well, poor Carolyn. Carolyn's a planner. Kelsey said, no, no worries. I don't need a script, but I have not given them any questions in advance whatsoever, so they're just kind of doing it with me here. So, my first question is, really, when, and why did y'all start the hype squad? And I guess whoever wants to go first can go first. 

Carolyn 

Yay. So last year, my co teacher was retiring, and we spent from October to May trying to get Kelsey hired in her position, because Kelsey was a building sub in our building before that. So, we were like, hyping up Kelsey to get this job, and we were talking to our principals, or like, she needs to be here. And then at the end of the year, we were meeting to plan for this year, because we are overachievers. And I said, well, Stephanie used to do pep club, but I want to take pep club and kind of kick it up a notch and make it the hype squad, where we're not just celebrating the sports teams at our school, but we're celebrating, like all the cool stuff we do. And it really turned into a culture builder in our building, which was desperately needed at the like now. So, Kelsey and I this year, have we started hype squad, and we are so busy with it. It's insane the amount of time we spend doing this stuff. But I think, personally, it's really changed the culture of the school,

Kelsey 

definitely that. But I feel like I personally, too, have really and I know you have to, like, this is something I look forward to. I like, had another job at another school before, and I was feeling so burnt out. And then we came here. We started hype squad, and I can't imagine myself in another position, because I don't want to give up hype squad. It's so fun, and it's a great way to build relationships with the kids. We're teaching them some pretty incredible skills too, which I'm sure we'll get into, but it's just, it's awesome.

Annabelle Williamson 

I think that that's really, really important. I think that that we can't underestimate the power of if teachers are doing something that is making positive impacts on kids and bringing kids joy, and then therefore bringing us joy, it cannot be understated, because if morale is shot in general. If we have a solid thing that is like, oh, but I have this, and it's everything to me, it can make a difference, and it trickles out to other teachers too, just because of, like, the culture shift that you're talking about, which I think takes a lot of time. Um. Um, my next question is, I know one of the things that I told Carolyn when I started to hear about the hype squad was like, Oh, my God, that's a huge time commitment. So, I just want to tell everybody right now listening that whether you get ideas from what I'm doing with sunshine committee, what these ladies are doing with hype squad. I hope that you get ideas and inspiration, but you don't feel like you have to do all of it all at once. You can take bits and pieces. The reason I wanted to record this podcast now was kindness week is coming up in February. Is it next week?

Carolyn 

It's next week? Yeah, actually, our hype squad has, like, a huge week plan, next week for school. Oh, so we have stuff like that the school's doing in general, like, I think we're sponsored by, like, kindland or something, doing something with that, and but next week, wait, wait, you have to say

Annabelle Williamson 

what kind is what

Carolyn 

I don't I I'm not positive. Is it a land that's called kind? Well, it's like a company that is, like, promoting kindness. Oh, cool, yeah. And so, they sent us, like, all this swag that we're supposed to give the kids next week. And today they had to watch an introductory video during flex time, which is like advisory time kind of to introduce it. So next week starts is our Kindness week. So, hype squad has kind of taken the ball and run with it. So, we have planned a spirit week for next week, where every day we're doing something like Monday is put your hearts up where it's color war. So, each grade level has a different color. And then every homeroom is going to get paid for hearts, and the kids are going to write positive affirmations on them. And then during our meeting on Tuesday, we're going to stick them all over the school. Tuesday is crazy for Kindness Day. So, it's like crazy hair, crazy. SOCKS look crazy. Wednesday is what's

Kelsey 

Wednesday is where our spirit wear and bring a donation into our food pantry. So, then they also get PBIS points, like a reward point system, for every donation they bring in? And then Thursday's peace and love, and Friday is dreaming of kindness, and that's their PJ Day. They are so excited about so the kids play like we helped guide them, but they actually planned every day for the week. So, they chose the theme. They chose some of the things we are doing. They're actually really involved. They kind of take ownership over hype squad. We're just the guide. We're the guides,

Carolyn 

that is, and then at the end of the week is we do them. Every month we do an assembly. And it's not a PBIS thing, it's not a PTSO thing, it's a hype squad thing. So, everyone's invited you, you don't have to pay PBIS points to go. There's like, if you've had too many ADPs, which is in school suspensions, or if you've had detentions and stuff, like, none of that applies. Like, everybody goes. And so, we're having, the big thing is, we're introducing the sports teams because we haven't done that yet, because we didn't have one in January, because it was just too quick of a turnaround after break. But then we're having high schoolers come and they're going to speak about how finding your people is important, and like the people that you surround yourself with, can either make or break you. So, after the high schoolers speak, then we always do like a team competition, because our schools, we're doing, we're teaming. So, we have 2/7 grade teams to sixth grade teams to eighth grade teams. And we always do something where one team goes home with the trophy, and it's just this inflatable trophy that we pass around to whoever wins. So cool. This, this this month. It's a tick tock dance off. Oh my god, they're gonna freak out that the teachers are doing,

Kelsey 

yeah, we're doing it too. We're doing hit the quad with some of our kids. And then the other cool thing about that is, with the assemblies, the kids do, like, almost all the speaking parts. This one for sure, all the kids do the speaking part, so they're getting some public speaking experience as well. And when we first started this, we started with eighth grade, and I told them, like, you guys just must try. If you really get stuck, you can call me on and I'll, like, help you out or whatever. And there are a few of them in the beginning, they're like, I can't do this. Mrs. Liens, I can't do this. You must do this. And it's so funny because then after their first one's done; they are so excited. They're so like, proud of themselves. It's just a really huge. Accomplishment that they do, and it's so fun to see them like, grow as people as well. 

Annabelle Williamson 

So are the kids that are like, doing, doing these things with you? Is this like, as an opted into club time? Like, how are you finding your hype Club kids?

Carolyn 

So, for the first semester, because it was just like brand new to everybody, we wanted every anybody that wanted to be part of what we well, we invited kids that we thought would be good for it at the beginning, and we only invited eighth grade because our idea was, we're going to meet during lunch because kids have after school sports. Kids can't have don't have rides home. We're going to meet during the school day. So, we started meeting with eighth grade because that's when our lunch period was. And initially we invited kids, and then kids were asking to join. So that's kind of how it worked out this semester. Because of our lunch schedule, we have seventh graders, and we have over 40, or just about 47th graders of our 110/7 graders in our building are part of hype squad. They come to our meetings, and we're meeting twice a week. We're meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays during their lunch. Sometimes we do extras. We'll do like if we had a bunch of snow days, we're like, if you want, we're having a meeting on Friday. It's optional. Pretty much everybody comes. We eat lunch together, and then we, we plan the assemblies. And they are so proud to be in hype squad. And, like, it's just, it's fun to hear the kids like Kelsey has a good story about one of our ed students last semester.

Kelsey 

Yeah, so for some of our kids who have behavior issues, this is something that they really look forward to. It's something they actually get to be a part of. And there's no like, academic or behavior guidelines necessarily that prevent them. Like most clubs, like being a National Junior Honor Society, for example, you have to have perfect grades. So, one of our kids, who's an eighth grader, he gets very defensive, and he will get in people's space. Sometimes he'll get physical, but he actually completely changed his behavior around, and we think it's partially due to hype squad. I have a story. So, I was walking with him to my bus room at the end of the day, because his best room is next to mine, and one of these students comes up to him and goes, hey, I heard so and so called you a bitch, and he turned and looked at them and goes, oh, I don't care. I'm part of hype squad now and walks away. He would have immediately thrown hands, no doubt.

Annabelle Williamson 

Oh my gosh. So, I literally was going to say when I think my favorite moment of this was when y'all said, everybody’s included in the assembly, like, if you're a PBIS school. One of the hardest things I struggle with PBIS is, is this point idea of some of our kids who need the validation and need the positive stuff more than anything are the kids who don't have the points for it, which drives me up the wall. And so, the fact that you are creating an inclusive thing that you're just you just get to be celebrated. You get to be part of the excitement. You get to be part of the celebration. You get to be part of it. Just come as you are, is so crucial and critical to building community and building a positive culture, it's like, crucial, and that's what I always tell teachers, is like, you cannot build a community in your classroom if you are excluding children because of X, Y or Z. Like, in order to create a positive culture, a positive community. It needs to be positive, not exclusive, not negative, not in any way. Like that's why I got rid of my teacher points when I used to do students versus teacher. That's why, 10 years ago, I did away with the teacher, because I'm like, no, it's just positive recognition, recognition for, like, the behaviors that are awesome, and if some kids are not feeling it that day, that's okay, because the community can carry you right. And I think that that's the coolest part of this. And that's Kelsey, that story of that buddy. Like, that's okay. I'm Marta heights squad now. Like, what y'all must have been so proud? Like, how did you not I would have just cried. I mean, I would have been like, Okay, keep it cool. Don't react. Don't react.

Kelsey 

Don't react. Like, oh yeah. It's definitely a tearjerker. And the relationships we're building with some of them, it's amazing. I mean, that student, I feel like he still wants to be a part of it. He comes into my gym class every day. Can I help you? This, can I help you with that? I mean, it's just, it's amazing. That's really cool.

Annabelle Williamson 

Okay, so you've talked a little bit about Kindness week, which is, is next week, starting February, what? Eighth? No, ninth. Okay, the third. Okay. So, we, we are going to celebrate it after Mardi Gras, obvio, because we're going to be closed for that whole week. So, we're doing it the week we come back from Mardi Gras break. How do you think? Well, first, at first, I'd rather hear, what are some other things outside of Kindness week? Do y'all do on the regular. And this is where I want teachers to not think, oh, my God, I could never this sounds like a full-time job. These girls are undertaking something ridiculous and amazing, and I love it for them. I would never be able to do it for me, and that's okay. But I want you to, like, listen to what they're saying and see what you can take and implement and, like, start to create that culture of kindness and positivity and community in your school.

Carolyn 

Go for it. Yeah. So, something that our seventh graders have really taken to heart is they love doing the morning announcements. Um, they like fight each other on who's going to do it. We've started doing like a joke of the day. That is, they have to, we have to approve it first. Before they do it, they do the joke of the day. They'll give shout outs to teachers and other students that they notice doing things around the school. And they we also, we also, kind of, we do this thing called woo cart, which is we'd like next year. We want hype squad to be part of it more so. But right now, it's just me and me and Kelsey, and we bring, like, our MD units or multiple disabilities units with us to and we go from classroom to classroom. The teachers nominate a student in their seventh-grade class. And we go classroom to classroom. We have pom poms, we've got music, we've got this cart full of snacks and drinks. And we go all the way down the hallway. We go into every classroom. We're like this week, this month, the winner is Jacob, and then everybody cheers, and then they get a snack and a drink. And then we move on to the next classroom

Annabelle Williamson 

in middle school. They must freak love it.

Carolyn 

It's a big deal. We do it once a month, and the teachers nominate who they're, who they want their Woot, woot student to be,

Annabelle Williamson 

and it's based off like as quality of the month, or just like, kindness and like, I'm just

Carolyn 

if they've made improvements in class, if they're being a good friend, if, like, it's just the teachers are noticing them. Because that's something that we noticed with the PBIS points, is the kids that have the most PBS points are the ones that need the most redirection, and they will do things for PBIS points. So, this is our way of, like, noticing the kids that don't get noticed, but the teachers do notice, but we want to, you know, bring them into the foreground.

Annabelle Williamson 

Oh, so good. And okay, so another thing that I know you're doing is an announcement or something in the morning, right? Kelsey, what's that look like?

Kelsey 

So, some of the students give shout outs during the morning. Like Carolyn said to students and staff, they're doing all of the announcements for Kindness week. So, every single day, they've come down there and they've shared what we're doing every day prior to this, prior to hype squad, the kids really did not do announcements at all. There's one staff member that gets paid. It's their supplemental so we kind of have taken over a little bit, which I'm sure they don't mind, and the kids just get so excited about it. They do, I don't know, they do all kinds of fun stuff. They play music over the announcement. Sometimes it's just a great way to start the morning.

Annabelle Williamson 

Yeah, super positive way. Okay, my next question is, if a teacher so for Sunshine committee, mine is much smaller, and like, I had my first meeting with students this week, but it's been mostly me all year. I've sent out a survey to faculty, saying, you know, what grades do you interact with? What did kids call you? What's your favorite salty treat? What's your favorite sweet treat when's your birthday? What's something in your room that you never have enough of? And I have plans for how to make it better next year, but right now, it's been me, unfortunately, out of my own pocket, but I don't think anybody knows that yet, and I'm fine with that celebrating specifically on birthdays and getting kids to sign a card on birthday, and then I deliver their favorite drink or their favorite whatever. So that's one piece of sunshine committee. And then the other thing that I'm starting, that's why I pulled kids in. Is I'm starting a bulletin board where kids can recognize kindness in each other or give gratitude. But one thing that I was unsure of how I wanted to navigate, because as much as we tried to cultivate a culture of kindness, we still teach middle school, and kids can do things to look funny like they care so much about image right now, sometimes they'll do things to build that image, even if it means cost or causing harm to somebody else, right? I know that y'all know what I'm talking about, right? So, I've been trying to navigate like, how does this board implementation look like? What does it look like? And Carolyn mentioned when we were chatting about a Google form that y'all use for submissions, for the announcements. Can you talk about that? Because that, for me is like, oh, that's my work around I then get to filter out anything, and hopefully it's just filters itself like, because it's not something they can write and publicly post automatically, it kind of filters itself out. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Kelsey 

Yeah, absolutely. So we created a shout out response form at the beginning of the year and send it out to homeroom teachers to post on their Schoology, which is like their platform that we use, sort of like a Google Classroom, on their pages so that a student can go in and nominate somebody else at any time, which is great because it records email, so if anybody does Say anything inappropriate, then we know who's submitting it, and they can say their name in it. So, there's an option to remain anonymous if they just wanted to highlight who this person is. And then there's an option to say why as well. So, we've had a lot of students are that are like, I want to shout out this person for being my friend, for you know, since 2016 or whatever, some really cute ones in there, some that are just like, they're working really hard. We've had a lot of good shout out responses that's really

Carolyn 

lovely, and they really like to shout out the teachers. Most of our shout outs are for teachers. They've shouted out, Mr. Winters, who's our janitor. Oh, like, like, the kids are noticing, like, what we're doing, and they want the teachers to know that they notice.

Annabelle Williamson 

That's really powerful. When it circles back to educators, and again, this is what I mean. Is like you try you to doing something to empower and recognize kids and spread kindness and spread positivity and build community, then really does trickle into the morale of the faculty and the staff in the building, which, if a school is struggling, can be incredibly powerful.

Carolyn 

That's an honest honestly. One of the one of our setbacks with this hype squad is getting the buy in from some of our teachers. In November for our ranger hype squad assembly, we had, we wanted teachers. We wanted to do a student versus teachers Lip Sync Battle. And trying to get teachers to sign up for a Lip Sync Battle was a battle

Kelsey 

tick tock dance too.

Carolyn 

So, we're kind of, like, we have to, like, be flexible and like, well, guess what? Miss Dees and Miss leans are doing the Tick Tock dances, and our prince, our assistant principal, is super cool about it, and she'll do it, and our Crossroads director, but it’s also super funny, like, we’re our principal is very shy. I would say he does not like to like to make, you

Annabelle Williamson 

know, he doesn't. He doesn't like a show, right?

Carolyn 

But we got him to do the Lip Sync Battle, and him and the assistant principal saying, don't, don't stop believing they weren't. They wore fake mullets. They had, guitars and the kids went crazy.

Kelsey 

I went when we So unfortunately, Carolyn was not feeling well because of an incident that happened during that day. But we did baby by Justin Bieber, and we choreographed a whole routine with our fourth period health classes. It was hilarious, and I ended up like, running into the stands with them, and all of the kids stood up and started screaming. It's so amazing to sit here and watch the videos. I look back on it every time, and sometimes I want to cry because I'm like, this is so fun 

Annabelle Williamson 

and powerful. It's like, no wonder you're saying I. No, I know it's a lot of work, but this is worth it, because it's like I was telling I have this community called La Familia loca PLC, which is like a group of teachers that I coach from around the world, and they're world language teachers. And we were talking a couple months ago about how, no, it's impossible to love everything we do every single day. In fact, we're gonna have days that are impossible, where we cry at school and it's just like everything feels really hard. And if we can latch on to micro moments of joy, micro moments, tiny little moments, those can really carry us through. And what y'all have are macro like you're having these big, huge moments not just to look back on, but to look forward to, that you're not just feeling, but kids are feeling too. And I just think that that's really, incredible.

Carolyn 

I will say, yes, I did cry at school today, but I did tell my principal. I'm like, I can't deal with this right now. I don't want to go to hype squad and be sad, because we had we had a meeting right after like, this incident at school, and I was like, I'm sad, but I gotta go to hype squad and I can't be sad.

Annabelle Williamson 

It's gonna make it all better. And I think that's it's just really important to have those things. And also think about the, you know, these are the kids aren't going to remember individual classes that we teach them, but they're sure as hell gonna remember these hype squad moments and like the culture that y'all are taking the time to create. If you could give a teacher a recommendation, I'd love to hear from both of you on this one. If a teacher is like, oh my gosh, this all, this is all great ideas, maybe I want to try one of them next year, like one of the bigger core ideas next year, like regular announcements or regular whoop cart, or like a version of one of these. But for right now, what's something mid-year, if they miss, let's say they listen the week after Kindness week. What is something that a teacher could do to start spreading more joy, more intentionality around kindness, more positivity and a climate of positivity within their classrooms, what would or within their schools? What would you tell them to do?

Kelsey 

I would absolutely say, get the kids involved as much as possible. I mean, we Carolyn and I do a lot on the forefront of like, planning and stuff, but the kids also do a lot. They are super involved, and they love it, and they have some really incredible ideas, and it takes a lot of pressure off us as well. So, the more you can get them involved, the more you listen to their ideas and try to help them implement them, then the easier it will be for you as well.

Carolyn 

I think the big thing for me is like, I'm very proud of the Woot cart. We started that last year. Actually, it was something I did it, something our principals did at Kehoe that I was like, I love that. We need to do that. But they did it for teachers. And sometimes we do the Woot cart for teachers. We haven't done it this year because life is crazy. But, um, I think that the thing that you'll that you'll notice is like Kelsey and I started hype squad. We have teachers already from for that are asking to be part of it next year, like other teachers want to be involved. So, if you have an idea, tell other people, and make it happen. Like I told Kelsey, hey, I want to start this thing called hype squad, because I don't think kids understand what pep club is. And she's like, Absolutely, and she goes 100% into hype squad, because I'm in multiple buildings, it's harder for me to do everything that Kelsey does. So, like she's really the leader, and I'm their support, and I appreciate everything Kelsey does. And I just think, you know, it just only, it only takes one person to start this really cool thing, and then the kids will be like all in

Annabelle Williamson 

I think that it's, it can feel overwhelming for teachers to add something. But what you're both saying is it doesn't have to be all on you. One of the things that I was nervous about this week, I was like, oh my gosh, I just forgot that I have I'm giving up community time. They don't call it recess in my school. They call it community time. I'm giving up my one of my free days with no duty to have this meeting. Well, I'll tell you what I literally I told kids, okay, don't forget meeting in my issues room if you're interested in sunshine committee, I had 1/7 grader show up, 1/8 grader and. 7/6 graders come and I said, Okay, we got a lot of things to talk about, or very little time to make it happen. The number of ideas that they had that were so much better than anything chat GPT had thrown together for me 15 minutes before because they were student generated and student led was insane. They also came up with a mascot. I wasn't even planning on doing a mascot. Like, what are you talking about a mascot? They were like, no, we absolutely need a mascot. Planned a billion things, and at the end, I was like, okay, so I was gonna own our three teachers tomorrow for the faculty meeting, and I was just going to make them cards, and I was going to just go around asking random kids to sign them. And they were like, no, what are their names? And they all, like, scattered, got materials, and in the last five minutes of our meeting, created three phenomenal cards with artwork with personalized mention messages. And I was like, oh my god, I was gonna scramble and do this, and now I don't have to. And I think that that's exactly what you're saying. Is like, it may feel like I can't add one more thing, but the way kids come together when given the opportunity, all they need is a leader to just supervise and guide and then it creates really magical opportunities for them to emerge, one as leaders, but two as positive culture creators. You know, who we really need right now in this world.

Carolyn 

I think, I think it's really, it's been very impactful for me, because this is my third year at this school. I've been to five, I've taught at five different schools in the 10 years that I've been teaching, and this is like the first place that I've felt like I can stay here, you know? And it's because this year I found the people like, I found my people at my school. I have Kelsey. I have our friend Sam. I have, like, the people that are also excited to go to school and they're trying to make the changes. Granted we have. We have the curmudgeony teachers who were like, really, what are we doing here, you know, but like, we're, that's, I think that's the one thing that we're working on still, is, you know, buy in from everybody. But like, the people that are going to be here for a while are all in.

Annabelle Williamson 

That's really cool. Kelsey, you are about to say something too well.

Kelsey 

And the other thing I was going to say is, like, the more that we're doing this, the more teachers are getting excited about it. We do. We started recording videos every Tuesday, and we call it, tell us about it Tuesday. So, we give a little prompt, like, give a shout out to somebody who deserves it, or tell us something positive. This past week was something that excites me is finish the blank and our teachers, so many teachers have been like, this is amazing. I love this. Please keep doing this. And I think that next year, the buy in from teachers is going to increase because they're seeing the impact that we have. And Carolyn can talk a little bit more about numbers, because I don't quite remember what she said about this, but something about our behavior in the district, if you want to fill

Carolyn 

based on, based on, like, you know the charge that our principal showed us last year our school in our district. And keep in mind, our district is huge. We've got six elementary schools, three middle schools, two high schools and then a school of innovation, which is third to eighth grade, which is like a STEM school, or that you have to be like, invited to. And our school, our middle school, was, had the most behavior, like most behavior on record, like most times kids went to the principal, most times kids had in school suspension. Most kids hug suspensions. This year, we're down 50% 5030 30 to 50% were down in behaviors. Oh, that are being recorded

Annabelle Williamson 

in the first year.

Carolyn 

In the first year, that's all. It's not all because of hype squad, because I

Annabelle Williamson 

know and, and, and do you know what I mean? It's literally the fact that it is so inclusive and positive it is. And it's not about being toxically positive. It's about how can we intentionally share the good and teach kids how to look for it and spread it? I swear to you, it's the most powerful thing.

Kelsey 

Yeah, we're in a low impact low-income district too, so we, I mean, it's unfortunate, but we do have a lot of kids. Kids, and I'm sure this is everywhere, but we have a lot of kids that have really terrible home situations, so like for them to come to school and have something that they find, you know, joy in. And it's not like it's not academic based, because a lot of them, when they have a terrible home life, they don't care about academics. They come to school to socialize, to have a safe place, and for us

Carolyn 

to come to school, to be loved, yes,

Kelsey 

for us to be that those people, I mean, it's pretty incredible, and it's it makes me feel really good when I have kids who you know are maybe troublesome in other classes. They're not a problem for me, because of the mutual respect that we've built and because of the relationships that we're building with these kids,

Annabelle Williamson 

that's it. That's it. That's it. It's literally our do kids feel that we see them as humans that deserve respect, because if they do, they're far more likely to respect us, and if we give that time and effort to put in relationships, that's where they're like, Okay, for this person I will, or for this person I can. It's what I've seen for years. Sometimes I sit in faculty meetings, especially at my previous two schools, and I'm, like, almost embarrassed and kind of appalled at my face, because I don't know how to hide my face, but people will be talking about a student and how frustrated they are with engagement, participation, behavior, whatever, and I'm just sitting there, like, did I hear the name wrong? Because I'm like, surely not my such. And so, they couldn't be talking about my such. And so, and then I'm like, it's the same last name. God, it's got to be my such. And so, because I can't wrap my head around that child acting that way, but I've invested so much time into building a relationship with them and respecting them in my space, and therefore they're giving me the same back. But it takes time, and the fact that y'all have already cultivated that and so quickly, I think, is a testament to the power of including everyone and making sure that there is a space for whoever wants to be part of it, whenever they want to be part of it. That's something I said to for Sunshine committee. I was like, if there are days that you hear sunshine committee is meeting and you would rather go to recess, please go, and have, you know, run around for community time come when you want to be part of sunshine committee, because I don't want them to feel like it's this commitment that they have to do every single time either it, you know,

Carolyn 

we kind of do the same thing because we do now. We're meeting twice a week, and that's a lot of time to take kids away from their lunch and hanging out with all their friends. So, we do have the policy just let us know that you're not coming. So, when we take attendance, we know where you are, because you know, the lunch monitors need to know that you're going to be with them instead of us, and we, we tell them, like, if you have things to do, because half of their lunch is eating and half of their lunch is like a lunch study, because we don't have study halls anymore. Like, if you need to go to lunch study, you go to lunch study, you don't have to come talk about the assembly with us. You know, like, we'll be fine for a day, but you can still be part of it, but we want you to probably prioritize getting your work done,

Annabelle Williamson 

which, again, is just showing them that you see them as people first, you know, which is so good. Okay, is there anything else that y'all want to share about the hype squad, or anything else that y'all are doing before we wrap up this episode. I'm so grateful to I have so many ideas now. I'm gonna make my principal listen to this. I think too, because she her whole like thing is creating a culture of kindness and intentional culture of kindness. And I think if we are a little bit more intentional about a few things, we can incorporate a lot of what you're doing,

Carolyn 

something that we did so far. Like, especially with our eighth graders, we focused a lot on the assemblies, because the second one's over. We already have to plan the next one, because we're doing it every month. And, like, sometimes it's the seventh and eighth period. Like the one in February is only eighth period. And so, like, we have to plan accordingly. And like, next month is March, so we're doing a Mario one, and, you know, Kelsey and I are going to dress up like bananas and be silly, but we're kind of starting to go into two camps now, especially because we have so many kids in in the club that we're doing like an assembly crew, who's like, who's like, all about planning assemblies. They want to be speakers and in the assemblies. And then we have, like, the kids that aren't so into being in front of a crowd. But they want to still be part of like the culture building. So, then we have the culture crew, so they're doing like. We do magnets on like the athletes’ lockers. We write their names, we put the magnets on their locker. We do like. We have little like missions that we have them do that we're trying to build culture, you know, and I think that's just been the we have lots of ideas for next year, like, we want to celebrate birthdays more, and we want to, like, celebrate the little things that, you know, some kids don't get birthday presents, and so maybe, maybe if they go to school, they get a homework pass and they get a cookie, you know, like, silly things like that that, like, we don't even do because you're like, Oh, they're in middle school. They're too cool, but they're not. They're not too

Annabelle Williamson 

cool for it. They're not. They're just kids still, that's so powerful. And the thing I love about that is Kelsey seems like me, and a little bit more like, yeah, give me a crowd. Give me a yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it. And Carolyn, I know you so well, and you're totally the I might not. I mean, I'll do the stage thing. That's fine, especially if it's for the kids. But I really don't mind being behind the scenes and quietly building the culture, so it feels like your personalities is so beautifully matched.

Kelsey 

It's a perfect dynamic. And you know what Carolyn actually is getting out there. She is going to be in a tick tock dance off this next coming Friday, so

Carolyn 

I promise not to get a concussion this time.

Annabelle Williamson 

Oh, my God. Well, ladies, I'm just so grateful if y'all, is there anything that y'all are doing or presenting or conferencing that you want to talk about, I always allow people a second to share anything. Otherwise, I'm just really grateful for this time.

Carolyn 

We don't really have anything coming up. Last month, we spoke at the Board Office to tell them about what we're doing. Exciting.

Annabelle Williamson 

God, I hope it goes national. Like every school needs a hype squad. Y'all should really consider like presenting at conferences together.

Carolyn 

Like my goal is next year to go to offered with Kelsey, which is the Ohio PE and health conference. She's never been, I've been twice, and it's so much fun. And I think that hype squad is, like, we started that as a PE program, because, like, why not? But it's everything. It doesn't necessarily need to be do this, but, yeah

Kelsey 

oh, that's really scheduled. Just a line for it a little better than somebody else's schedule would, which is good, but, you know,

Annabelle Williamson 

grade levels, so yeah, yeah, that's nice too, because then kids know you and that's why, like, I feel lucky because I teach sixth, seventh and eighth, it's not, you know, it's, it's nice for teachers who see multiple grades to be able to do something like this, because kids know us, and they also see us longer. So, it's really cool. Okay, y'all, well, I'm so grateful for your time. I know it's almost 1030 there for you, it's a big deal for me that you took the time out today, and I know that everybody else is going to be so grateful to I can't wait to hear people's feedback on this episode, and y'all will see it on social too. I'll make sure and tag y'all. Kelsey, are you on social?

Kelsey 

I have, yeah, I have social a little bit.

Annabelle Williamson 

Okay,

Annabelle Williamson 

all the things, well, I'll tag you so you can see all of the love that people send you for your ideas. I'm really, really grateful, and I know that your impact. I know that you know you're impacting kids, but I think that you are both a much bigger part of that number change than you want to give yourselves credit for so thank you for doing the work. Thank you for being in the classroom. Thank you for your impact and for all of you listening until next time, we three will be teaching la vida loca, and we are sure you will be to take care of yourself and send this to a teacher who might be the perfect person to lead a hype squad in your school. Thanks for listening. Take care. Bye.