S1E10 - Becky Carlzon: Leading Learning Communities
How can we shift from traditional top-down leadership in education to a more distributed leadership model that fosters agency and collaboration among educators?
If play is essential for learning and creativity, why do we largely remove it from the education system after early childhood? How can we reintroduce and sustain play throughout all levels of schooling?
In this episode, host Amie Fabry is joined by the inspiring Becky Carlzon—educator, author, and founder of Learning Pioneers and Press Play. Becky shares her journey from classroom teaching to building international learning communities that foster curiosity, inquiry, and collaboration. She dives into the importance of distributed leadership, intentional time management, and creating educational environments that prioritize well-being, play, and lifelong learning. Whether you're an educator, leader, or change-maker, this conversation will leave you with fresh insights on how to drive meaningful transformation in education.
Becky Carlzon is an educator, author, and community builder. She co-authored Powering Up Children and founded two international learning communities: Press Play and Learning Pioneers. These communities focus on fostering inquiry-based learning, play-based education, and collaborative professional development for educators worldwide. Becky is passionate about lifelong learning, prioritizing well-being, and promoting a distributed leadership model within education. Her work revolves around creating sustainable, engaging, and high-impact learning environments that empower educators and students alike.
Connect with Becky Carlzon:
LinkedIn: Becky Carlzon
Learning Pioneers Community: learningpioneers.com
Press Play Community: letspressplay.com
Stay Connected:
Follow Amie Fabry on LinkedIn
Subscribe to Leading the Early Years for the Future for more insightful conversations!
🎧 Tune in now and discover how to lead with purpose, creativity, and collaboration!
Hire this host via hello@thelearningfuture.com
Amie Fabry (00:01)
Hello everyone and welcome back to Leading the Early Years for the Future. I am your host, Amie Fabry, and I am so excited to be speaking with the very amazing Becky Carlzon today. Becky is an educator and she's co-author of the wonderful book Powering Up Children. She's also a founder of not one, but two international learning communities, Press Play and Learning Pioneers. Becky, we crossed paths a couple of years ago via social media.
and you constantly fill up my feed with really thought provoking posts. So I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with you today. Thank you for joining me.
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (00:41)
Thank you for such a lovely warm introduction. I really appreciate that and I'm excited to be here and really excited about your podcast and to be tuning in with all the other guests that you're going to be having. So thank you.
Amie Fabry (00:51)
pleasure. Before we dive into your professional story, and I really do want to dive into that and what your journey has been like as a leader, I'd love to know what lights you up. You know, one of the things I do really appreciate about you is your humanness. You know, and we all have these professional roles, but we are multi-dimensional human beings. I'd love to know a bit more about the Becky that sits outside your professional work. Do you have a hidden talent?
Do you have something, you know, like a hobby or interest that really lights you up and brings you joy outside of the amazing work you do?
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (01:26)
that's a really great question. So, well, first of all, I see professional and personal growth totally intertwined. So I don't see them as separate. And I think the more that we lean into that, the more we can show up fully authentically as human beings in the workplace and beyond. Yeah, like, and I think that comes a lot from, I learned so much from both as a learning communities, press play and learning pioneers, because I get to interview all the speakers and interact with them. So.
Mark Finnis is a brilliant thinker around relationships and he always says, we had a really early on in learning pioneers, share a little bit of yourself. But actually you can share a lot of yourself. It's not like a separate thing. It's like we're humans showing up and there to support one another. So what lights me up? Learning lights me up. But that goes beyond like play, learning power, inquiry. They're all my kind of favorite learning approaches.
being a lifelong learner and being curious in life, that's what lights me up. So, so continually learning and also kind of putting wellbeing first. So I'm just straight out of a yoga class, hence the outfit. So, so yeah, prioritising wellbeing and within that balance. So having this kind of balance of what you were saying about my posts on social media and one of the recent blog posts I wrote was about balance in education.
and how inquiry brings balance in education, but it brings a balance of yin and yang energies. So we've kind of been taught to push, push, push, do, do, and that results in burnout. Well, what about allowing being reflecting? And the more I lean into that, the more I realized daydreaming is like one of my favorite things to do. So a massive daydreamer. So currently in Koh Samui like lying in the sea, just letting ideas like bubble up and flow and how nourishing that is. And then
transferring that back into school, how much are we valuing daydreaming? Hardly at all. And it's super, super powerful and important. So that's just a bit about what lights me up.
Amie Fabry (03:28)
that's amazing. And I can't say I'm surprised by your response, given what I know about you and what you post. And I wholeheartedly agree. And I think it's so important that we lean into that being fully human, showing up as we are, whether we're educators, leaders or children and actually encouraging them to be their full selves in learning environments as well. I wholeheartedly agree. I think we could spend a whole hour just unpacking all of those things. But I really want to dive into your work as well.
Can you tell us a bit about what you do? And I know you've done lots of exciting and amazing things that have really great impact over time, but tell us about the wonderful work you're doing now and have been doing.
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (04:12)
So in relation to Learning Pioneers and Press Play, which you mentioned earlier on, they're what fills me up professionally. I just love diving into those communities and supporting the educators in there. And it's one of my favourite things to log in either after a break or after the weekend or just even the next day and going in and seeing the kinds of comments and posts community members are putting in.
because I just get so excited about their new ideas. You can see people changing in the comments. You can see them reflecting, feeding back, digesting the provocation. And then by the end of the comment, they're a different person. And I just find that so invigorating. And then I get to feed back on that. So I love the work I do. That is just joy to me. Learning Pioneers is nearly reaching its five-year anniversary in January. So that's nuts to me. I know.
Amie Fabry (05:05)
Congratulations!
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (05:08)
So, you we started as a community of just 12 of us, and it's grown way beyond that. just, you know, linking to posts on LinkedIn as well was basically built on a series of wouldn't it be cool ifs. So that's a journaling prompt I learned from a coach called Jesse Elder. And it's a really beautiful way of visioning and imagining. And then you just make that stuff happen. And it's really fun. So we just kept with learning pioneers just
asking wouldn't it be cool if and wondering wouldn't it be cool if wouldn't it be cool if we did this wouldn't it be cool if we did that and it was just built gradually on responding to those things that lit up our spirits and when I say we it's me and the whole community and the beautiful advocacy team that we have as a kind of central heart to our community who are always kind of ideating and thinking how they can make the community better and so
That's kind of learning pioneers. It's really like quite an advanced learning ecosystem. We've worked hard at thinking about what community looks like and what a living systems model of leadership would look like. So it's intentionally not top down. I'm not the person at the top at all. It's intentionally built around a more circular kind of spherical distributed leadership model where each of the advocates are leading in different ways.
and I'm the facilitator and the navigator. So, you know, just recently I did a talk with Progressive Education's conference and somebody in that conference asked me, you know, what's stopping us from bringing these kind of visions to success in our schools? And one of the key blockers is this top-down leadership model that's so suffocating. And as soon as you get like either someone who isn't examined and isn't reflective,
or somebody who's a blocker or somebody who doesn't really care in a leadership position, it messes up the entire thing. So if we have that distributed leadership, we have that agency and the co-creation process with my advocacy team is what's lighting you up? What can you bring from your talent set that will make a difference to the community? What are you seeing that's missing? What are we learning from our feedback? What can we create together? And so they feel lit up because they're bringing forward something that they love.
and they're playing to their strengths and it's therefore a win-win-win. It's impacting on everybody in the community. So yeah, that's a little bit about the model of learning pioneers and press play we've created because kind of, as I said before, my interests are learning power, inquiry and play, but play is such, as you know, a nuanced, complex thing to bring forward. Play should, could and should be central to learning all throughout primary, into secondary and beyond.
We just interviewed Sugata Mitra and he was reflecting on how he played early on in school and then he didn't play the whole of school and then he got to do his research and now he plays again. And he's like, why the gap? But embedding play throughout primary, throughout secondary is hugely challenging. There are so many blocks to get past, you know teacher mindset.
looking at how to embed the curriculum, looking how to be playful as adults, adult interactions in play, that's one of the really trickiest things. So I felt like that needed a separate approach and brilliantly Kim Scott and I, who is the co-runner of Press Play, connected in lockdown and we just were like, should we launch this community together? We met like two years later in person. We were like, let's do it, let's do it. So that's where Press Play and there's...
kind of was born and there's a massive crossover between the two. So we're always kind of sharing content from one community to the other, because there's always overlap. So currently in Learning Pioneers, we're looking at kind of inquiry led practice. So we're looking at, we've been looking at loose parts and how to take play through primary and those press play lives that we brought across. So there's a lot of reciprocity between the two.
Amie Fabry (09:16)
my goodness, there's so much to unpack. I'd love to know what brought you into this space. You know, like I know you were an educator working in schools before. What kind of led you to then move into this space and develop, create these professional learning communities and work alongside educators?
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (09:37)
Hmm, it was a total accident, total chance, but brilliant chance. So the way that started, it's one of those things, and this is a really good little bit of personal growth for people, is that reflection on the things in your life that lead to the other things in your life. Ron Ritchart talks about learning moves. So I've transferred that to think about life moves. So what life moves have you made that have led to where you are now?
Amie Fabry (09:40)
you
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (10:06)
and what life moves could you have made to have a different outcome? So we're the co-creators of our lives. So the life moves that led to learning pioneers, part of that is saying yes to life and saying yes to opportunities and being a little bit cheeky. So the very beginning of that was having a relationship with Guy Claxton, was working with Guy Claxton, who if anybody's listening and hasn't heard of his work, that's the first thing you need to do. You look at Guy Claxton because he's brilliant at provoking thinking and...
really well thought through pedagogy. But so the cheeky part was I was living in Argentina and I was brilliantly landed on my feet in a school that taught English through storytelling. And I told them a bit about Guy Claxton's work and they were like, let's invite him over. I was like, yeah, let's with absolutely no idea how challenging that was going to be. It was super challenging to even just with the
currency conversion to get a big consultant over to Argentina and when nobody had heard of Guy, was like, have you not heard of Guy? But of course they haven't. So that just that being a bit brave and doing something a bit challenging was the starting point for me then eventually, there's loads more steps in between, but eventually writing a book with Guy, which led to me going to teach in international school in Bangkok, and one of my friends
Amie Fabry (11:09)
Thank
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (11:31)
had read our book and kind of pinpointed all of the kind of tabs and she was like, I want to put this all into practice. I'm like, well, we're friends, I'm here, let's do it together. And why not invite some other people? So we created a study group. And that was the beginning of that was the seed of Learning Pioneers because we did that in school, planned like reflective pieces, looked at each of the design principles. And then the next, wouldn't it be cool if...
the next wouldn't it be cool if it's wouldn't it be cool to do on an international platform? There are people developing this across the world. And that came in parallel with the frustration of writing a book. like ideas don't fit into a book in a frozen space in time. So as much as I loved writing that book with Guy, it was like, this isn't it. There's more like this can look so this is like you said, multi dimensional, it's multi dimensional, this can look
different in an infinity of ways. It's not just one book with these ideas. So that's what a creative learning community creates, the opportunity for infinite learning experiences and infinite connections. So yeah, it was that then first step to get online and then just another piece of serendipity. As I kind of thought that, my brilliant husband found a community course with Mighty Networks, which is where Learning Pioneers sits.
So I took that to understand how to build a network, built the network, and then it was just from there. And it wasn't intentional. I didn't sit there saying, I'm going to create a learning community. It was just like, it was about taking our best next step. It was like, this is a good idea. let's do this next. OK, let's do this next. So it just kept growing.
Amie Fabry (13:15)
What a fascinating story. It's so brilliant Becky and what I love about it so much is that, to me and as an outsider, I'm not you and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you definitely are someone who just embodies lifelong learning, but also is open to seeing what's possible and where the opportunities are. And you did mention being brave.
It sounds like you are very courageous and it also kind of sounds like an easy journey, you know, like, that's the next step and that's the next step. What has your experience been like sort of leading this work that you're doing, building these communities? I mean, you mentioned the challenge writing a book, but have you experienced any other challenges along the way or what has your experience been like as a leader in this space?
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (14:09)
Ooh, such a good question. What were the challenges? mean, that's the juicy thing about life. When there's a challenge and a grapple, you know, it's like that becomes an inquiry and an opportunity. So it's stepping from fear to love, basically, instead of being scared of those challenges, leaning into them and thinking, how can we solve this together? So probably a couple of the biggest challenges around building a learning community have been supporting members to...
lean into their growth. So that's really nuanced. I'm still grappling with that. But some of the things involved in that are executive functioning skills. So how well do you organize your time? So this kind of grapple of what's the difference between a member who logs in once gets really excited and then disappears, and a member who consistently shows up for their own growth and comes back in and those are the people who fly.
They're changed people very, very quickly, very, very quickly have a huge amount of confidence, a huge amount of ideas, and they're just buzzing and beaming and you see it and you feel it. So how can I support people to go from this to this? So that's been a really interesting inquiry and grapple and challenge. What's blocking people and what can I help unearth for those people so that they can have their own agency and take responsibility for that?
And how can we make learning pioneers as inviting, as clear, as organized as possible so that it's easy to engage with the content? And that's been a really big challenge for me because James Aidoo our coach, talks about knowing yourself to lead yourself and we're coaching with him right now. And he does this approach called the five voices leadership coaching. So you learn what your voice order is and then you learn
how that, what your love language is for your team, what other people's love languages are, how to interact and support one another, and also what the shadow side of your voice is and what your nemesis voice is, is really powerful. So my nemesis voice is the guardian voice and the guardian voice shows up as asking a lot of challenging questions, sounding like they're blocking an idea, like they want to know the plan, they want to know all the details.
So I'm here visioning and thinking of really lovely, creative, big things. And then they're going to say, but what about this? And what about that? Which I don't mind, but it can like dampen your idea. But it also means because it's my final voice, the organisational side of things can be more challenging for me. So it's really challenging for me to think what's a really smooth onboarding process, because it's not my strength skillset. So that's been a challenge. I have to kind of grapple with that.
inspiring content and visioning and connecting people, I can do all of that, but creating a really structured system doesn't come naturally to me. So that's been a challenge, teaching myself to do that.
Amie Fabry (17:13)
Wow, amazing. That's so real and honest. You know, and I think as you were talking, I couldn't help but reflect on, you know, as educators, like, whether you're working with children or working alongside adults, you know, that role of the educator and how powerful it is to, as you say, not just have inspiring content, but actually recognise and notice that everyone's at a different place in their own journey, right? Like you're talking about educators who come along and
have chosen to be part of your learning community, but they are still getting different things out of that community depending on where they're at and perhaps their time or executive function like you're talking about. And really understanding those individual differences, you know, I guess are just a common thread across human beings, right? Because we're all so different. And even though we have, you know, these great ideas and we really want to support people and we're really enthusiastic. And as leaders, I think we can do that so easily, but forget that other people...
are in a different place or thinking differently to us or have those different questions like you say when you've got this great idea and someone's asking all of those questions. How do you get to know the people in your community better so that you can be responsive and try and guess meet them where they're at and create that environment like you're saying that is going to enable everyone to feel that they belong and that they can get the most out of that community.
even though they might be at different places.
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (18:45)
That's another great question. That's a continual discussion with our advocacy team. And one discussion we had with our team not so long ago was looking at our values and what really we've got a lot of values, but lifting up those really key ones. And because we discussed that as a team, there were ones that came up that if I'd have just thought to myself, I wouldn't have picked up. And one we lifted up was intentionality. And I loved that because we are super intentional. Every single...
move we make in learning pioneers is curated to bring the growth and the connection of the community on. So we're really purposeful with that. So different ways we create that connection means so many ways. And actually, it's great for me to reflect on this, because we do loads for that. So Diksha Kharbanda is one of our advocates. runs
a wins post every month comes out the 15th of every month so that everyone can celebrate something they're winning at. That's really intentional because I don't know if you know about peak end theory and what you know, basically, when we hear something negative, it's like Velcro and it'll stick. And when we hear something positive, it's like Teflon and it slips off. And so as educators, we're going through our days and all those negative bits, comments, things are sticking to us and we're forgetting to raise up the positive.
So it's an intentional move to keep us buoyant and keep us focusing on our wins. So that's one example. Dicture also runs campfires and they are co-creative with the community. So we'll gather online on a Zoom and we will discuss a topic of the moment. So we've talked about how to embed creativity. We reflected on what executive functioning skills look like in play and inquiry and how we can develop those intentionally with that lens.
So that creates that kind of online connection. Maree Whiteley is our Australian hub leader and elder. And she has intentionally created that space to be able to connect in place and time for members in Australasia, because obviously usually I'm in the UK, not that I'm in Thailand, but I'm based in the UK. So she's really focused on creating in person meetups so that people can really connect in person.
We look very carefully at time zones because we're international. So we try to be inclusive of people who are in the States and Canada and Argentina. We've got some people from Argentina and then people who are in Europe and Africa and then people who are in Southeast Asia, Australasia. So to make sure we're being inclusive of all those kind of time zones. Those are just a few ways and then we run masterminds as well. And they're really the kind of highest level.
growth ticket in learning pioneers because you're showing up regularly to really pack a punch to your growth and be reflective. So every two weeks, you're working away your growth and you're carving out that time. They're really, really powerful. And many people on our masterminds have been there since the very beginning and just haven't left because they find it so powerful. So those are a few different ways we create connection.
Amie Fabry (21:57)
Wow, they're so well considered. I think I'm reflecting on, you know, earlier you talked about not having a top-down approach and actually, you know, that this is a community that is also driven by the people within the community. It's not about you.
just deciding everything and how it all works. And I can hear that in all of those examples, you know, that you've got these other leaders who are able to put forward their ideas, you know, to lead celebrations, to lead a group in different time zones, you know, and to offer multiple opportunities for people to come together. So it's not just a one size fits all, you know, and you've got masterminds to offer additional challenge for those who want it. It's so...
refreshing, I think, to actually unpack what, you know, this kind of community can look like in practice, because I think, you know, from my experience, and particularly, you know, if I think back to even that, that conversation you were having around schools, and why this is such a challenge for schools in particular, you know, that top down model of leadership, I think is still quite pervasive in our schooling system. And, you know, you can see and hear when you talk to educators that are feeling
not valued, not heard, like things are being done to them rather than being able to actually step into their own agency. Have these learning communities always followed this kind of model or is there you particular practices that you've brought in as you've learned more and connected more with the people in those communities along the way?
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (23:34)
Another great question. Learning Pioneers has been like that from the very beginning. And it's another piece of serendipity, like books seem to fall into my lap at just the right moment, like exactly the book I need for what I'm looking at. So really early on in Learning Pioneers, I found a book called Regenerative Leadership. I can't remember the names of the authors, Giles, somebody who's just up the road from me in the Cotswolds when I'm back in the UK.
and I forgot the name of his co-author, but that showed the living systems model. And it was all about, the entire book is about being more human, more humane, more sustainable. So it was just absolute divine timing. was like, yeah, that's what Learning Pioneers is going to be built on. And then there's a follow-up to that. I read another book called Impact Networks. So if anybody's thinking about setting up learning communities or are focusing on their schools and how they could shift that model.
Those are both really great books. And the key thing with them, impact networks, it's just like great teaching, right? And this is what I love. You can go to go, what would I do in the classroom? How does that look in leadership? What's that going to look like for our learning community? And in great teaching, in all year groups, I taught early years a lot. I measured how good a teacher I was and was becoming by how long I could leave the room for and how long the learning would continue. Ideally, all day without me. You know, I'm just like,
the added bonus. So it's the same for learning pioneers in the learning community. So that's what impact networks looks at is if there's one person who's the key person to that community, it's fragile. You know, it you know, what happens if that person goes? Same with same with the classroom, you know, if that if they're relying on me, that's a fragile learning community. So what impact networks looks at is how to create more of a model where
There's that distributed leadership, other people are in charge, things are running in different ways. So another key thing we have built into Learning Pioneers, which I don't know, this was just my idea, I think, that basically what I'm doing for me should be the same for all of my team, how I show up and what's for me is for them to. So I built in the model when I actually, when I stepped out of the classroom and committed fully to Learning Pioneers and press play,
I immediately got a coach to make sure that I didn't repeat the model that schooling had taught me. Because school had taught me, there's not enough time. You need to work really hard. You should be working like 60 hours a week. So all of this is in my subconscious programming. I don't want to take that forward. I want the opposite. So I intentionally found a coach, Rebecca Hartnell. She's amazing. And we worked on
how to put my wellbeing first before everything else and how to create a sustainable business model. So when I time block my week, my yoga, meditation, Qigong, time in nature all goes in first. It's absolutely non-negotiable. That is the priority. Nothing's gonna like carve into that. That's done. So it all gets blocked first. then after that, those really important...
pieces of deep work. So what's going to make a really big difference to my business that I'm moving forwards on. Masterminds, because that's where I really need to show up. Perhaps like a meeting with an inspiring educator like you, that's going to be like, okay, this is going to lift me up and this is going to create shared opportunity. And then all of the kind of other bits around it. And I never work more than 25 hours a week. And the intentionality behind that is it's then 50-50. It's like,
as much yin as yang, again, it's like I'm living that as my own model. And you know, things like that daydreaming space meditation, that's where my best ideas come from. So super important. I've got to say I plan in learning too, before my deep work. So reading gets time blocked before, before everything else. And within the model of learning pioneers, all of our team
has eight months in the community and four months out. And that is really intentional. So they have that backspace, so they have that reflection space, so they can prioritize holidays or times when they're report writing if they're in schools. And for me, that's really, really important for me to be able to step away, let it be, trust, and do whatever it is I'm to be doing in my own work. So I'm about to do that next week.
I've got six weeks out of my community and that's going to focus on writing my next book. I'm on a book writing retreat, self-imposed, and I'm going to attend a silent retreat, which I'm so excited about. I say I'm excited, it's probably going to be challenging, but at the moment I'm excited.
Amie Fabry (28:24)
We are out.
That is exciting. And as you said before, know, challenges are where growth happens, right? that sounds remarkable, Becky. You know, gosh, I'm thinking about so many of our educators who would be going, well, that's all well and good. you've got you only work 25 hours a week. How do I have time to do that? But I think as I listen to you, I'm just reminded so much that
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (28:36)
Yeah.
Amie Fabry (28:56)
And again, this comes back to what you said earlier, that we actually, these are our own lives that we do have agency to control and make decisions about. And I think sometimes we forget that. We forget that we can actually plan our time. And so many people, particularly in schools and early learning, because there's so much to do and there's so much pressure put on us. Everybody's saying, we don't have enough time, we don't have enough time, we don't have enough time.
when I think sometimes it is actually helpful to stop and think about the fact that we have time. It's just how we prioritize our time. And yes, there'll be demands where we don't get to make decisions, but we all have time in our lives that we do get to make decisions about what we do. And I love that you are a living, breathing example of actually prioritizing yourself and your own wellbeing. And I love that you talk about having that downtime for your...
for your own daydreaming. I know myself from experience when I have been really frenetic working, I feel like I can't do great thinking. I'm just in survival mode. And when I notice that and can pull back and actually prioritize walking or yoga or meditation or things that give me that chance to switch off, that's when all the good ideas come out.
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (30:16)
it 100 % so like yeah a couple more things on that one is you're touching on my favorite personal reading book i think it's the only book that anyone needs to read if they want to invest in their in their personal growth and it's called the i'm gonna forget it it talks about the empowerment dynamic of the power of ted that's the title of it the power of ted so i don't know whether you've heard of like the victim triangle so you so
When we are kind of unconscious and in a kind of default setting, we can play between these three roles. We're either a victim in our lives, we're a rescuer, so we're trying to save people, or we're a perpetrator, so basically a bully. And we can flip between those three roles within like a sentence, within an interaction. But it's like an unconscious old story that we're playing out within those three roles. And the flip side of that is the empowerment triangle.
and each of those roles then flip into a more empowering agency led role. So the most important one is moving from victim to creator. So where are you being a victim in your life and how can you shift that to be a creator of your life? The rescuer, which would have been my childhood default role, so I need to really watch out for it, moves into coach. So if you can learn to be a coach and ask coaching questions, you're no longer rescuing people.
you're asking them questions so they can save themselves. And then the perpetrator turns into the challenger. So instead of being a bully, you're finding a way to articulate and challenge ideas like being a positive disruptor. So super powerful. So just coming into what you were sharing about being in the classroom and teaching, because sometimes I don't share this stuff because I think teachers don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear that I'm working 25 hours a week. You know, that's really triggering and annoying. Like, shut up, Becky.
But actually, if you flip that to the classroom, okay, so here's the measure. High return on energy. What in your life is giving you a high return on energy? Are you going into a meeting and coming out more energized than when you started? So this for me is high ROE. I love this. I'm going to come out buzzing, you know, and I'm going to be going to my husband, my God, just had the best meeting. So you can apply that to teaching. And when I was teaching in early years, my entire job was high ROE. I was with kids.
They're amazing. I miss that. That feeds me. If there's a four year old in my vicinity, they are getting my attention. kid. I'm just like, that's where my intention is. because they're going to say something really engaging and fun, or they're to be cute, or they're going to like, yeah, their imagination and the way they think. I miss that. So although I love what I'm doing, and I'm fully committed to supporting educators to become the best versions of themselves and empower themselves.
Amie Fabry (32:49)
Yes!
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (33:10)
is that glass half full thing, right? I could be sat here going, I wish I was back in the classroom. I really miss the kids, which I do. But making the most out of the life I've chosen. So if I were in the classroom, the kinds of things I've thought about in the classroom is that high ROE. So I've been in jobs where it has been the most draining, terrible, toxic, horrible situation ever. I'm sure there are many teachers listening who were like, yeah, I've been there or I'm there. So
When that's happened with me, it took me a long time to notice. So this is where all of that personal growth stuff is so important. So knowing where to put boundaries in place, knowing how to stand up to yourself, knowing when to say no, learning to articulate your vision. None of this we are taught in teacher training. All of this is really important to our jobs, which is what my next book's about, which is the writing retreat thing. But I've been there and it's horrible and horrifying and damaging.
And when I when I was in a job like that, I ended up signed off long term sick and I strongly considered never ever going back to teaching again. And the thing that kept me buoyant, I'm going to do a shout out here to Ray Snape, because weirdly, the thing that kept me buoyant was Twitter, because I was engaging with educators in England who were making a difference, who cared, who were modeling to me that education could still be okay. There was all the toxicity.
But I wasn't looking at that. I was looking at the people I admired. And Ray Snape, who's an incredible head teacher in the UK, was just constantly positive, buoyant, in touch with me. And I was like, OK, if Ray's there shining bright, I can get back there too. So if you're in the pits of a job where, and again, it's like being in a frog in boiling water, it comes up gradually.
And then the reflection pieces afterwards, well, what was I missing? Where were the red flags? Why didn't I see them? What could I have done to stop that from happening? But I didn't see that. It grew over a period of about 18 months until it was so toxic I had to get out. But then I became conscious of it. So then the next jobs that I had, I paid great attention. Is this a high return on energy experience for me? And here are some of the green flags. I'm going to think in the moment. So and this is the thing.
Schools often say these are our non-negotiables. God, that triggers me so much because I'm just like, how dare you? These are my non-negotiables for working in a school. So do they truly live and breathe and value well-being? I'll give you good example of that. When I worked at Bangkok Patterner School, the first school I worked at after that experience, the leaders of the school, school finished at 2.30, would come round
At 2.20 when you were telling a story to the class on a Friday with their wheelie bags saying, we're off on holiday for the weekend, go and enjoy your downtime, have a really good weekend. It was lived and breathed. When it was locked down, I was at Bangkok Paterna when we had lockdown, their first priority was to create really clear boundaries so that teacher wellbeing was looked after and so that it was clear for parents.
You know, there was none of this like having to be online the whole time. They were like, no, come online for your lesson or whatever you're doing. Check your emails at this half an hour. Get out because your well-being super important now. So is the school living and breathing well-being and how are they doing that? Are there amazing learning opportunities? So again, Bangkok Patina. I had every single learning idea I came to with leadership with.
And you know, it's like, how are you supporting your most challenging staff who want to push things forward? It's like in five voices, the pioneer voice, which is my third voice, but I do like to pioneer forwards. So every time I came up with a hairbrains scheme, and I was like, I want to do this, I want to do this book study, I want to create this, they were like, right, how can we create a team around you, Becky, to make that happen? Amazing. So well being, learning, is it really valued? Am I going to be seen, heard and valued?
And then does it match your values? So again, music to my ears. When I walked in, on my first day at Patterner, I was in year one. And one of the team leaders, Sarah Gorgon, who was a man. my God, you would love Sarah Gorgon, like her play based practice. Amazing. The first thing she said to me was, OK, Becky, so our focus on year one this year is we're bringing play up to year one and embedding that more. And we're to be developing the characteristics of effective learning. And I was like,
If have known that I'd have definitely applied. So, you know, does it align with your pedagogy? And then I guess as well, in terms of the learning culture, is that a supportive and non judgmental learning culture? So again, I see some international schools as like rehab for UK teachers, because we've been utterly traumatized by the system, which we talked about in our mastermind yesterday and got quite angry about because it really isn't okay that this system has
decimated adults and children. It's just been absolutely like just a I can't think about how to say it without swearing a mess, a royal mess. So yeah, is it so when I was a patterner that the system of reflection and feedback was so supportive. And it took me a long time to unlearn the judgment that I've been taught.
It took me a long time to be okay with people coming into my classroom. me a of terms. But then to realize, actually, leadership want me to invite them in so we can discuss this new idea that I'm developing. So those are a few green flags. Is well-being lived and breathed? Does it align with your values? Will you be allowed, and sounds nuts, will you be allowed to develop learning? Will you be connected with people?
and given a chance to expand as an educator. like yours might be different, but that's what I'd be looking for. So yeah, lucky people in classrooms working with amazing kids and amazing schools. It's the best job in the world. yeah, that's my thoughts on that.
Amie Fabry (39:25)
Absolutely, that's really powerful. think as you were talking, I kept coming up like to values, you know, like we were talking about leadership values, but then you're also talking about the values of educators and the values of the school. And I think, you know, if we circle back,
to where you started talking about sort of that self awareness and self growth that is so powerful for us all to tap into that connection that we have to ourselves. What are our own values? And I think sometimes when we, I think Brene Brown talks about this, when you're not living within your values is often when you feel that stress and burnout and feel, I guess really unhappy because...
you're not able to, whether it's live in work in an environment that has values that align with yours, you know, perhaps you're not able to set some boundaries or you're not setting those boundaries because, you know, you're then acting out of your values. think that values piece is so important, you know, for educators, for leaders to be connected to their own values, but then also to think about how do those values fit into whatever context.
I'm working in, I'm wondering, do you have any advice for leaders and you know, they might be educators, they might be leaders in schools or services, they might work outside of educational institutions or organizations. What advice would you have for anyone who is actually seeking to lead some kind of change or you know, to be brave, to do something differently, perhaps change some of the practices around the way we work and show up and
embrace others and communicate and actually support the people alongside us. Particularly I think if we've perhaps experienced some of those more toxic cultures and ways of working which can be so damaging. Do you have any advice for people who might be seeking to lead some kind of change?
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (41:27)
Leaders need a support network of like minds. That's the simple thing. So in our masterminds, we have a leadership mastermind. And to me, that's my biggest honor to support those leaders because they hold space for so many people. Who's holding space for them? I am. What an honor and a privilege. And they can then connect with one another and support one another and be in it together, you know, so they can discover their blind spots.
We have hot seats where you can kind of unpick your grapples and it's always like grapples that everybody else can learn from too. So whatever it looks like for you, find your people and find a network where you can continually grow and have that support and that inspiration, know, so that kind of, you know, what's going to feed and fuel your approach to leadership so that you're learning to become an ever better leader and you've got that support network.
to walk with you and then you basically amplify your growth. You become unstoppable then because you're connected to like minds so you've got those people around you that are going to support you and you're learning and leading forward so you know you're very consciously competent in your leadership practice and that's the key I think as well from working in lots of different schools and teaching in lots of different schools. When I reflect on different leadership styles
And some weren't leaders, some were just managing, you know, but when I reflect on what it felt like, what did it feel like to be led by that person? And what were they doing that made that so engaging or frustrating or disengaging or whichever version of that it is? That's really powerful as well to look at your role models around you and who's been brilliant at that.
And again, for me, Bangkok, Patina seems to be the place that's coming up. you know, just like the leader I had in early years, Raj, who's on LinkedIn, was just such an incredible leader. He was so clear in his pedagogy, like he knew exactly what was needed to be done. He was really clear in what priorities were. So that was really good for my nervous system when we had a massive workload and he'd be like, that's your one priority, Becky. Really, really helpful.
really engaged and supportive and he had a really good boundary. If the level of provision dropped, he'd pick us back up and be like, no, we're better than this. So, yeah, looking at those leaders, who have you been led by that really made a difference and what was it about them that made them a fantastic leader? That's helpful.
Amie Fabry (44:09)
So powerful. And I think, you know, if people are working in an environment where they're not inspired by the leaders in their close circle or in their context, I think, you know, being able to look beyond where you work and find inspiring people who will support you and get to know you and champion you and encourage you, you know, and sometimes I think we forget what we're capable of, but actually being around like-minded people is not only inspiring and provides opportunities for us to learn if we're, you know, open to actually
looking deeper at what they're doing and how it's impacting yourself and the other people around you. But sometimes we need someone who just sees something in us or can remind us that we're capable too, right? No different to children. I think as human beings, want to feel valued and we want to be celebrated too, which I love that you're talking about that as part of learning pioneers as well.
Becky, thank you so much for sharing all of your wonderful wisdom. It's been such a delight to talk to you and feature you on the podcast and share your story. I've learned so much by listening to you and I've got a whole list of books to go and read now, which is amazing. Where is the best place that listeners can find you, connect with you, learn more about your learning communities if that's of interest to them?
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (45:17)
You
yes. So social media, that's actually really perfect timing because I've just decided to take a pivot on my social media because I can't share everything that's on my mind on all the different social media. So I've decided to focus different approaches on different social media. So on LinkedIn, you can find me, Becky Carlzon. That's where I share a lot of personal growth pieces and stuff linked with learning pioneers. There's always play stuff that threads in too, but that's the focus. Blue sky, which is just taking off.
I'm going to be sharing play-based practice on there and stuff linked to press play. And we'll see what happens with Twitter and X. But my current inquiry is links between spirituality and education. And weirdly, because that is like super low vibrational social media, I'm thinking, let's go super high vibrational and see if we can connect on that. So that is fresh off the press what I'll be doing on Twitter on X. And we'll see how that goes. It's either going to be a massive success or a huge failure. And I'm open to both. May as well give it a go.
Amie Fabry (46:25)
I love that for so many reasons. That is brilliant. Thank you again. It's always such a joy to talk to you.
Becky Carlzon - PressPlay (46:32)
Yeah, you too, Amie Thank you so much for inviting me. What an honour.
Amie Fabry (46:36)
So, there you go.
