118. Upholding Your School’s Mission Through Inclusive Communication with Jan Abernathy

The following content has been automatically generated by an AI system from the audio recording of this podcast. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, or completeness of the information provided, and we apologize for any errors.

Introduction: [00:00:00] Welcome to Mindful School Marketing, your go-to podcast for personal and professional growth. We’re school marketers, business owners, and moms passionate about connecting other school professionals with tools and strategies for success. We love solving problems, exploring new ideas, and thinking outside the box.

Let’s transform your school and life starting right now. Transform your school’s admissions and marketing with Inquiry Tracker. The ultimate solution for managing inquiries seamlessly. Discover how you can make your admissions process more efficient and effective with this leading solution.

Tara: Welcome to Mindful School Marketing. I’m Tara Clays.

Aubrey: And I’m Aubrey Burch. Today we’re joined by Jan Abernathy. Jan is a Chief Communications Officer at the Browning School, an all boys school in New York City. She’s also a principal at Jan Abernathy Strategic Communications. She has extensive experience in board governance, strategic communications, and marketing and branding.

It is a [00:01:00] member of the Board of Trustees of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, otherwise known as Case. In addition to two independent schools in the New York Tri-State area. Welcome Jan. We’re so excited to have you here and excited about this conversation.

Jan: I’m really excited to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Tara: Thank you Jan. And welcome. Um, I’m gonna kick off our conversation today. Um, it’s a big topic. A lot is happening in this country right now around the subject of diversity, equity, and inclusion. How has the political climate, in your opinion, shifted the way schools approach DEI messaging?

Jan: Yeah, I think that this is, I mean, obviously this is a conversation that’s on a lot of people’s minds. Not only folks who do the kinds of work that I do in schools like communications, but also obviously our faculty that teach children, our administrators that you know that, that, you know, work with our schools and our trustees.

That governance. Right. So a lot of this is on people’s minds in terms [00:02:00] of what to say, what not to say. And I think that really you know, what people need to do in schools is sort of take a, um, you know, a step back, right? And look at where you are. It’s not just about talking the talk, but it’s also about walking the walk, right?

And it’s about walking the walk in alignment with your mission. Because that’s always going to be the thing that you can go back on and rely upon, and a basis, hopefully for consensus within your own school community, both adults and children, about how you should approach belonging, right? And how you should approach.

Fairness and how you should approach psychological safety. Many of the things that I think that we can all agree upon are the right things for us to promote for children and to make sure that children have in their school and to make sure that frankly, adults have in their workplace as well. So I think that the conversation around DEI has taken us into a place where those three letters [00:03:00] and, and that sort of word and that sort of.

Phrasing is so it means so many different things to different people that what we are really charged with as communicators is teasing that apart and really thinking about the places where we agree, because I will continue to believe that we agree on more than we disagree. I don’t think that people say, I want my child to go to a place where children are being bullied.

I want my child to go to a place where, uh, the deck is stacked against them because of their identity. People do not want that, right? People do not want an atmosphere that is biased. And so how do, how we get there and how we talk about it, um, I think is really important. So people are understanding that it’s not.

Connected, if you will, to what folks might be saying in the media, in social media, what you might be hearing on the News Talk, radio, podcasts, wherever you are.

Aubrey: That’s [00:04:00] so interesting. Thank you very much for, you know, kind of bringing that up and bringing up mission as part of the discussion. I’m curious, you know, as I’ve talked to schools and I’m sure as you have as well you know, there’s often different stakeholder groups within a community and sometimes they have different views on inclusion.

So what advice would you give. To schools who are kind of in this spot of, of different stakeholder groups. Having these differing views on inclusion? 

Jan: Yeah, I think, you know, that’s a really interesting question, right? And I think one of the reasons, sometimes, one of the reasons that folks can have differing views is because you really have not developed a consensus around.

The school’s mission, right? The school’s purpose or people are coming into the school and then you’re not reminding them of what the school’s purpose or mission is. So I keep going back to that as like, and those, you have to have intentional conversations, right? When you don’t ground things in [00:05:00] mission, when people really don’t know what your mission is, what your values are, then again, they’re outta satellite sort of saying, well, I think this teacher said this thing this way, or I think they’re teaching history this way, and it’s.

Not correct. And you’re not having you’re not really having conversations that matter. You’re talking across one another. Right. And sometimes I think the other thing that we do is that our, the ways in which we communicate today, the swiftness, uh, you know, the, the, the medium, right? Which is, which is very often a, a.

Uh, social media context where you can say things not in real time, not with your own face, not with your own name, right? Creates this sort of way, this, this hot take sort of society for better or for worse, where people really are, they don’t even know what the other person believes. They don’t even sometimes really know what they are arguing themselves, right?

Because they really, again, they really haven’t. Stop to think about it, you know, instead of [00:06:00] thinking about school as a zero sub game, which is what, which, which is what you would think. You say, oh, well, gosh, you know, these kids are getting an affinity group. Well, where’s this affinity group for me? You know, instead of thinking about that, thinking more along the lines of how do these groups make things better for everyone?

You know, one of the examples that I would always use if I’m doing a workshop or something like that is think about the Americans with Disabilities Act. Right? Think about the a DA. The a DA that says, Hey, a curb cut has got to be in every sidewalk. It’s gotta be here, it’s gotta be this broad. It’s gotta be covered in this kind of material.

Makes it better for people with wheelchairs. It makes it better for people with mobility issues. It also makes it better for parents with strollers. It makes it better if I’m carrying, um, a, a luggage, right? Lots of people, the kinds of doorknobs that you use make it better, whether you’ve got a, you know, an issue with arthritis or your, your hands are full and then you can use it with your elbow.

I don’t know. Why we cannot think about DEI, inclusion, equity, whatever you wanna [00:07:00] call it, in the same vein, right? I prefer not to think of us as just kind of small and just, I have to make sure somebody doesn’t get something else that I might want in the future. But why can’t we think of this as an and more of a expansion?

I think you have to explain also to, to family sometimes. We will get into a situation where they say, well, why can’t you just, you know, teach my kid the three arts, you know, all they should do is just teach them academics, reading, writing, arithmetic, whatever. And they don’t also understand that school has always been inculcating values, schools has, has always been inculcating opinion and thought and behavior, right?

This is not new. So to suggest that if you didn’t have DEI or whatever you wanna. Call it suddenly, schools wouldn’t be doing any of that is, is false. Schools were doing some of that a long time ago in ways that were definitely very detrimental if you were a woman or if you were a, you know, religious minority for [00:08:00] instance, you know, and you were, you were, you know, in the Christmas pageant or you had to say, stand up and say a prayer.

There are ways in which sometimes just by removing things right from a school environment, we actually make it more comfortable and it doesn’t. Harm anybody, right? It doesn’t harm anybody. So I think that, I think it’s just a way. Of thinking. I think also people are, are angry. I, you know, I think folks are just angry and upset and kind of unsettled generally and want to sort of believe that things would be easier if there were not things out there that they didn’t understand or they didn’t agree with or whatever.

So sometimes they just, were all busy people and folks don’t wanna do the mental. Sort of work around that. But I think any parent, if their child was struggling with somebody, it’s like if your child’s got a learning profile or a learning issue, you don’t want the school to say, we’re not gonna work with that because, because your child might take a little bit longer to get that concept than everybody else.

Like, no. And I don’t think children who, [00:09:00] who, whose families, whose children get it more quickly say that child is really, is, is disturbing my child’s educational responsibility. So I think sometimes, you know, unfortunately some of, some of this stuff is, is, is has become caught up with race and caught up, you know, maybe with, uh, gender and sexuality in a way that plays to.

Some folks more base instincts, but we really don’t think, again, like the a DA, how it broadly affects us, right? Whether or not we’re in the specific group being targeted, targeted universalism, which is in a, a concept that my colleague here. Who’s our equitable practices chief exposed me to, I hadn’t really, I had not heard it phrased that way, but that’s exactly what it is.

Something that’s targeted to one person. So, you know, different differentiating, being able to differentiate. Differentiate your teaching style. Right? Might have started because you had a kid with a specific learning profile in your class, but then it extends to you’re just a better teacher of the other 20 kids.

Tara: [00:10:00] It makes so much sense. I, I like how you summarize so many of these different concepts that, you know, that I think get, it’s very fraught and as you mentioned, we, you know, we hear about it every day in the news if, if we pay attention to it or not. Um, and it is. You know, I think people have really strong feelings one way or the other about it.

And you know, to try to think about it logically as you’ve done. I like the comparison to accessibility. I have the same as a website developer. Something that we’ve really focused on is building websites that are accessible. The same idea of making them equitable. And I’ve actually had clients ask me, do we have to do that?

Like, do we have to make our websites accessible? And it’s kind of like, well. Actually the law doesn’t require you to, but I mean good. 

Jan: You know, you know, it’s like, why wouldn’t that be good? You know? It’s so, yeah. It’s so funny. It’s like I, you, you know, was out at, at dinner with my family and I, you know, and I’m the only, the one that wears reading glasses and the other were glasses for being nearsighted or whatever, and they had noticed [00:11:00] something about.

The font of the menu that was, that was really hard for everybody else to read and wasn’t hard at all for me to read. And that’s a perfect example, right? Someone has done something, and I actually like the font quite a bit, right? Something has done, someone has done something for design purposes, and yet it was difficult, challenging enough for people to read that people mentioned it at the table.

Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s a perfect example, right? A lot of what we. You know, argue about in, in society is exactly that thing. Like, okay, I like this. Let’s go with this thing. And it’s like, did you ask other people, did you have people at the table? Did you, you know, did you show menu to 30 of the people who work at this restaurant and say, what, what?

Can you read that? You know? Yeah. That’s exact, that’s exactly I think where we are with, with a lot of this stuff and, and also having the recognition that, you know. Folks are trying to make us mad, right? In this, in the current political environment, right? Whether it’s ratings, whether it’s money, whether it’s your vote, whatever it [00:12:00] is, folks are trying to focus you in a specific way, right?

And sometimes trying to play to your most base instincts. And we all know that when you’re talking about your children, it ev everything is right there. All the emotionality is right there just. Think about the ways in which, whether it’s somebody selling you a product or selling you a book or whatever, is just trying to reel you in with something that if you sat down and thought about it, or if you had a conversation with someone who believed the opposite from you, you might not end up agreeing with them, but you would end up going like, this is not so fr Oh, okay.

I see your point. Right. It’s like when the kids say fair, you know, you say like, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Fair, fair. Yeah. Do that. You would do, yeah. A lot more if we could have real conversations. But the thing is, is there’s a lot of, um, systems aligned to make sure that we really aren’t having those real conversations.

And I think that that’s what is so unfortunate. 

Tara: Yeah, I totally agree. [00:13:00] How do you think schools can maintain credibility when updating or adjusting DEI language? 

Jan: Well, I think the biggest way to maintain credibility is you’ve gotta still be walking the walk, right? So it, it’s, you can use a lot of.

Different language and, and still be doing the same work that you were doing before or, or doing better work than you were doing before. But if, if what you’re really doing, I would be much more concerned about our independent schools given that, you know, that I know that our missions all include something about belonging, about diversity, about you know, uh, you know, inclusion, equity.

They all broadly are gonna be in that, you know, character building, all that kind of stuff. I would be more. Concerned about the schools, it would actually say, we will stop doing those things and take the language away, versus looking for how you can try to change language to make it not just more palatable.

But there’s a, there’s a, an organization that sort of, uh, and I can’t [00:14:00] remember, I’m not recalling the name right now, but. They work across, you know, sort of bridging, bridging differences and they talk about how language is triggering, right? And we all know that that certain words and phrases even saying something like equity, right, is be because people have said that as juxtaposed to merit, right?

So if I say equity, I’m a certain kind of person, but if I say merit based, I’m a different kind of person, right? And it, it shouldn’t be that way, but maybe we remove both of those things from the, you know, from the, the, the conversation. Maybe we talk about belonging, maybe we talk about safety, maybe we talk, sometimes we can talk about inclusion.

Really depends on your, um, on your school. But I think you have to certainly as you’re having activities, as you’re making decisions that involve, that still involve these concepts. I think you have to figure out a way to talk about them. So the worst, a worst case scenario to me would be the school is still doing this work, but they’re not letting anybody know.

Right. And they’re not. And, and then what happens there [00:15:00] is that the folks who, who maybe need the help, need those kinds of programs, aren’t accessing them, don’t know that they exist. And then when you’re. Rolling around to admissions time, you’re not, families who are looking at your school are not seeing anything that suggests that this kind of work is going on.

And I don’t think, I don’t think people want that out of independent schools. You know, often our independent schools, depending on what communities they are in, they are more diverse. Than our public schools because they reflect, they tend to not just reflect a certain zone, whereas many of our public schools do nothing but reflect the, you know, the, the residential segregation that has plagued this country since its beginnings.

So when, so when people are actively making the kind of choice that says, in this school, all these different people will coexist, but then you don’t. Give any tools or or basis to recognize every identity and to ensure that those folks can get together and, and be a community. [00:16:00] I mean, I think that that’s, I think you cannot be.

Uh, so, so afraid of everything that’s going on now, and so afraid of what people might think of you, that then you start to abandon that work. But I do think that you can talk about it in ways that are inclusive, in ways that you know, that you’re not getting hung up on buzzwords and saying, I’ve gotta say it exactly this way, or it’s not just as good.

And that sometimes is where I think people can get. Caught up. You know, there are definitely things that I will look at and rephrase. Often I’m using chat GPT, which is excellent for this, right? Because I will sort of persona it and say, you know, the person who has, you know, the most un charitable view of the Browning School and reads this, what might they think?

And then it will tell me, and then it will and I, and please suggest alternative language. And you know what, the alternative language is good, so I’ll use that. It’s a, it is a fantastic use case for chat GPT in my opinion. 

Aubrey: I love that you’re talking about AI and how you could use it for [00:17:00] something like that.

That is fantastic. 

Jan: Yeah, exactly. And you can put your own personas in it, you know, so we know what personas of the kinds of families that we would have that’d be interested in the school. And you say, well, tell me how the family and this persona would react to this passage that’s in our admissions stuff, or this part of what we’re saying about our curriculum.

It’ll, it’ll do it. I love 

Aubrey: that use. Um, I was also gonna mention, like, I, when, when you started talking about like, you know, different people kind of react differently, you know, to certain words, phrases and stuff like that. I mean, when we’re doing market research, I’m always eager to hear how parents talk about things, you know, so listening to our, our parent communities and understanding like.

Their words and phrases and how they might view things also helps us do a better job of explaining them, um, whether it be on a website or, you know, in our communications, which you’ve mentioned, like, how are we communicating about this? And it certainly can’t just be once, it can’t be comes as a surprise.

It’s like kind of be part of like a, [00:18:00] a broader, uh, a broader effort to reflect what we’ve said we’re gonna do and the mission we have and like, what, what does that look like? So I was just very, you know, I just. Think that listening is a really important key and like understanding how people say things.

Jan: Absolutely and very undervalued and, you know, all of this work is mission work, right? So it’s like you’re not doing something that is, that is apart from, is apart from what school is and, and specifically about independent schools where there’s a lot of, you know, when you think about the jobs to be done in NAIS, right?

One of those jobs is like, you know, one of those jobs. I want my kid to be a really good person. One of those jobs. Like character building that that’s what families are coming to our schools for is our values, right? And why should we not give the those to them, right? Help them inculcate the kinds of values that they want for their child to have the kinds of values that will not just make them successful, get into the bumper sticker colleges, [00:19:00] but we’ll actually.

Stay with them. Right. And make them a good person in society. And, and those things, being able to not only get along with every, you know, all different kinds of people, but to really believe that they are, they have as much worth as much value that they’re as equal to you as, because that is not the message that they are always getting from popular media, from social media.

You know, it’s just not right. And without that, in a. Community atmosphere. It’s, it, it’s not just enough for, for the parent to do it or maybe the house of worship to do it together. Kids spend a lot of time at school, just like adults spend a lot of time at work. So, you know, and, and if your school is just absent in there, it doesn’t mean that that child’s not gonna get values, right?

They’re just not getting the values from the adults who, in a lot of ways know them really well ’cause they’re just spending so much time with them. 

Aubrey: Love that. That’s really important. We talked about communication just a second [00:20:00] ago and how important it is. Um, I’d love for you to chat a little bit about like what does effective, like, what are some effective communication strategies around this?

Maybe that strike the right balance or maybe just certain, you know, things that you’ve seen schools be very, you know, effective with in communicating around this and what also what channels too. I’m very curious about like what you’ve seen work. 

Jan: Yeah, I think, look, I think it, you know, I, I kind of always go back to the, the KISS concept, right?

Keep it simple, stupid, right? The, one of the things my biggest beef, um, a lot of times with schools, and schools that I have worked with and worked for is that, you know, we have this layer of EDU speak. Education is very heavy on terms of. Art. Right? And we’re talking about pedagogy, and we’re talking about SEL, and we’re talking about a lot of other things that families are just not talking about in their day-to-day lives and which have a word that’s associated with them.

That’s like a word that civilians, that’s what I would always say civilians use, right? So let’s use [00:21:00] that, right? Maybe instead of, you know. Sel and we’re talking about belonging. We’re talking about kindness. We’re talking about just break it down, right? Break it down, and then say it over and over and over again, and show it, right?

Show it. So you say like, you know, whatever, we’re such a diverse community, or whatever, and, and look at this thing that we’ve done. Here’s why we take the holidays we take off, right? Also, remember that a lot of, a lot of times we’re saying something without saying a word, right? So in our school, you know, we don’t only have.

You know, Christian holidays off, or Jewish holidays off. We also have Hindu holidays off. We have, you know, lunar New Year off. We have, you know, both of the eids off. So we have a lot of these days, um, where children don’t have to come to school because it is a serious religious holiday for them. And just the exposure to that, right?

Just the fact that it’s on the calendar that a kid may say, why are we gonna be off tomorrow? And then a kid who’s. Celebrates that day can also [00:22:00] say, Hey, because I do this and this and this, think about the world of understanding that that’s, that’s opening up. Like I never remember having conversations with people about what holidays they were separated.

You know, what they were celebrating because that just, that just just wasn’t a thing. You took the Christian holidays, like that’s, you know, that’s what you did. Right. So just that broadening, right? Just you think about the United States of America and how many folks we have here that, you know, they’re not from here or their parents are not from here, and we have that opportunity to, to have that kind of discourse and have them also sharing within the community.

So one of the things that, that works well in a lot of communities, right? Or. We have, you know, whether international festivals, we have world celebration here, or we do, you know, in particularly in lower school, they might do shares of, you know, families come in and share, this is what my holiday’s about, this is what this heritage month is about.

Those kinds of things. I. Communicating, all of that very important communicating about, [00:23:00] you know, where, you know, even things like affinity groupings, right? For people to understand, um, why these exist, right? Because for a lot of people, affinity grouping, wait, what? Well, that must meet. They’re, they’re, they look at it as.

Exclusive. Right? So they say, well, you know, you’re having that over there, but you’re telling me my kid can’t go to that affinity group. People need to have that explained to them, right? We as educators, right? We as work, who work with young people can understand how those groups are supportive to people and even for adults, right?

You know? Now, you know this generation of young adults that are in the workplace, like my kids’ age. Will have actually come through the workplace, having those kinds of groups in the workplace. So they don’t, they’re not going to need people to tell them why they exist. But for people my age who wouldn’t have had anything like that, school or work otherwise, like that seems, you know, what are they doing?

Who’s talking to them about what that doesn’t? You know, shouldn’t we all just kind of be one and all assimilated into one big thing? Yes. And we’re [00:24:00] assimilated towards Submiss mission. And also, right, here’s another avenue for us to live the mission. Here’s another avenue for children to be comfortable in this school.

And we know that when children feel comfortable, safe, supported, they’re actually going to do better academically. Right? And there’s something, you know, the idea is that there’s, there’s something for everyone, right? The idea is that the, the folks that, that need support in the ways that they need it are.

Getting it in the ways that they need it. I mean, that is why you’re, you’re paying for these schools. I think looking at you know, certainly social media now is an area where people are gonna get a lot of their information about schools. We maintain a very active Instagram report, uh, uh, Instagram feed, and we do, you know, we do things like, you know.

Let’s celebrate Juneteenth, or we do, you know, we do the holiday, the sort of holiday celebration tiles, and we tell people what the holiday’s about or show if it’s during the school year, show how maybe a class or a grade or something celebrated that holiday. [00:25:00] To get that out there. Um, and you’ll always have, you know, whether it’s your parents’ association or some other group of parents, I think that are really willing to, willing to do that.

And then obviously through your, you know, through your curriculum, you are always sort of thinking about, you know, who’s history, who’s, you know, who’s being mentioned, who’s not being mentioned, what’s in your library. All of all of those things are. Or, or just kind of good, you know, good school practices, um, and highlighting some of that can actually really be very interesting.

We did a story about, you know, how in the, I think it was called something like in the fight against Polarization libraries Lead the Way, and we kind of talked about how the library. Both help the older students with sort of media literacy, so for middle school students and then the younger students understand how different kinds of people live based on story books and that type of stuff.

And that’s a very, um, sort of simple way to get a point across in a way that it does not seem radical or that different. [00:26:00] Than what you would expect to be seeing in school. ’cause I think that’s the other thing is like families have an idea that there’s these radical things going on in schools that they don’t know about, and there really isn’t.

Tara: I am going to move on to a question about related to mindfulness. And I’d love to get your thoughts on mindfully coping with the emotional and mental toll of this uncertainty. I know when you and I had our intro call Yeah. A few weeks ago, you talked about the term VUCA and how you see that playing out in school communications today.

What’s your advice to someone new to school communications, navigating this kind, navigating this kind of complex landscape? 

Jan: Yeah, I think so. You know, so vuca, VUCA is, um, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous for, for those listeners that don’t know. And those are, it’s kind of the hardest environment to work in, right?

Because you really don’t know what is coming around any corner. I think [00:27:00] that, uh, you know, ever since COVID, I came into this school, I’ve been here for six years now, and I started in the COVID year. I started 2019, and I think since then nothing has. Slowed down. And the pace of the pace of change for everyone has just been nuts.

It’s just, it’s insane. You’d never know what’s about to happen. You say to yourself, oh my goodness. You know, what’s a phone call that I’m gonna get? I think that, you know, you know, for, for me, I think that it’s important to you know, look, it helps if you really like your work. I mean, I, you know, I will say that, right?

I love my job. I always say, I had somebody ask me at field day this year, you know, if you could have any job that in the world that you might want, um, you know, what would it be? And I would say this one, uh, before this, I was on the radio a long time ago, a couple 20 years ago or so. That was really, really, really a good job.

Um, because it’s. Fabulous. But, but I think that, so it helps if you love your job and it helps if you, you know, I know that, [00:28:00] and I think this is particular maybe may particularly maybe true with some younger people today. I know a lot of people say, you know, don’t, you know, identifying too much of your work with your work, or you’re getting too close to workaholism and all that kind of thing.

And I, and I don’t think so. What I would say is that. Making it sort of, I always have made it a priority to really sort of find work that I love and to really, and then once I get into that job, think about how I could structure that, doing my work so that it’s something that brings me more joy than agita.

Um, and I’ve been successful in doing that. I think that a part. So, so, so part of it is that because I love what I do, I’m, I’m super engaged when I’m here, right? So it’s, it’s, it’s energizing rather than sort of bringing me down, I think, another way in which I really sort of, practice kind of, you know, being able to sort of tolerate this high base of uncertainty is having friends and associates within this business, right?

So for communications [00:29:00] professionals, a lot of times. We’re one of 1, 2, 3, 4 in a department. There’s not a lot of us, right. But across all schools there are a lot of us, right? And you have a lot in common. And some of my very, very, very good friends are people who do this job at other schools. Um, and to just be able to have that shorthand and really be able to not only call on somebody when you’re in need, but simply like.

Get together, go out for drinks, go out for, you know, go out for dinner. I think that, that that really makes a big difference. I think you know, being able to, to disconnect when you can and not, and, and, and, and also accepting that sometimes that disconnection is going to be. You’re not gonna be able to have it because something emergent is gonna happen.

Uh, I think is just, is a mindset that you have to come around to, but I think a lot of it really has to do with temperament. You’ve really gotta have the right kind of temperament to do this sort of work. It, it’s not [00:30:00] for everybody. And because these jobs are. So different from school to school. I would also really encourage people, some people will get into it because they’re a really good designer or they’re a really good marketer and they can kind of do the communication stuff and they come over to a school, you know, like this one let’s say, where there’s really a lot of strategic communications work that goes on, like you have to be.

Ready for that. Right. You really have to be ready for thinking at that level for, for, for engaging with the academic team and the leadership team around really thorny issues. And if you like that you’ll do well. I think it’s about knowing yourself in, in that regard. And I think, you know, just the final thing, I know that you know some people.

Will sort of say, oh, you know, they’re, they’re kind of tuning out the news or whatever. It’s, it’s really difficult to deal with. I, I don’t think that people in my role have that luxury, nor should you take that luxury. I mean, I think you have to actually be hyper aware of what’s going on. But I think, you know, uh, like in the words of of Martin [00:31:00] Luther King, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

And I think I, I, I’m, I’m fundamentally an optimistic person in that way. I am a person that has lived some amount of life, and I know that, that as bad as things may get. Things will get better. I mean, the pendulum will swing so far and then it has to start coming back. But I do understand for, for people that have not lived as long, it, it could seem very, very, this is, these are, these are frightening times.

These can be frightening times for different people along all different aspects of their identity, what they do for a living and everything. And I would just say being able to rely on that support and being able to name that, you know, with, whether it’s with, you know, treasured. Family, friends, colleagues, whatever it is, and asking for help and support are really what’s key.

Aubrey: That’s so important. I love that you left with like support and being able to like, name what, what’s going on for you in this, in the, you know, what we’re [00:32:00] living with today. So thank you for that. Yeah. I mean, 

Jan: that’s part of the joy of working in schools, right? I came from a corporate environment and that would not have been a place where vulnerability, you know, was particularly valued at all and.

So for those of us that work in schools, you, you can be vulnerable. You can say to someone, I’m having a really tough day, and let me tell you why. And that’s not going to affect your prospects for anything. And so I think, you know, take advantage of it. 

Aubrey: Yeah. Thank you so much. I’m really excited, um, to segue into one of my favorite parts of our podcast, which is the rapid fire questions.

So are you ready for some rapid fire questions? Ready for rapid fire? Awesome. This is one of our favorites. So if you could put one book as mandatory reading in the high school curriculum, what would it be? 

Jan: 1984. I don’t think I have to say anything. Anything more about that, given everything that we’ve talked about, but I think kids should read 1984.

Tara: Yes, I read that. I’m sure many of us have read that in our high school. What is one app you could not [00:33:00] live without? 

Jan: One app I could not live without. I’m gonna say TikTok. I love TikTok and I feel as though it has exposed me to it. It’s given me a whole new language and a whole new sort of vernacular. I, I can keep up, I can keep up with popular media and trends so much more.

And that’s, that, that’s important in a way that I think when people don’t don’t see that or don’t know that they can just dismiss it. Right. But I, it’s a, it, it’s a little bit like, you know, dismissing. Television. I grew up in an era where people would go, like, I, I never watched television. I would never do that.

Like this is, this is the way social media is going. And it’s really relatively, um, you know, compared to some of the, some of some other social media. It’s, it’s, it’s relatively benign, not totally benign, but it can, it can really act as an and entertainment media, depending on how you train your algorithm.

Awesome. Thank you. Um, what are you reading right now? I have just, I’m almost [00:34:00] finished with to have and have more, which is by Sanibel. And it is a book about actually, um, students at a boarding school as a matter of fact. And I found out one of my colleagues here had also read it. It was a good, it was, it was a good read.

Um, had some interesting things to say about social class transracial, um, adoption. I would definitely encourage people to read it. Can you say that title once more? Yes. To have an, to have or have more. 

Tara: Okay. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your being here. Our final rapid fire question is what is one great piece of advice that you’d like to leave us with today?

Jan: Um, I think the great piece of advice that I would like to leave folks with today is that you’re probably better at this than you think you are. Right. And I know there’s been a lot written recently about the. The dangers of perfectionism, and we’re really finding out now that it’s really quite a, actually a serious, you know, a serious sort of mental condition.

Um, and I find too often, too many people [00:35:00] really kind of think that they’re not, they’re not nearly as successful as they are, and they’re. Pretty successful at what it is they’re doing. So having that kind of esteem for yourself, you know, thinking about as you approach your work, I think is a really really positive.

It makes you, makes you like your work more. Thank 

Tara: you. Thank you Jan. It’s been great having you here with us today. Where can people find you online? 

Jan: Oh, I guess you could look for me at, on, uh, LinkedIn. That would be the easiest place. Jan Abernathy, you will definitely find me. 

Tara: Great. Thanks for joining us.

Jan: Thank you, Jan.

This episode is brought to you by Inquiry Tracker. We believe that every inquiry is an opportunity, and with Inquiry Tracker, you can unlock the full potential of your school’s enrollment journey. Say goodbye to missed opportunities and hello to a streamlined admissions process that prioritizes efficiency and effectiveness.

Discover the leading solution for school admissions and marketing. Visit inquiry tracker.net to book a [00:36:00] personalized demo today. That’s inquiry with an e tracker.net. Thanks for joining us on the Mindful School Marketing Podcast. We’d love it if you pop into iTunes and leave a review. Five Star Preferred.

Let us know how you like the show. It helps us improve what we’re doing and helps others find us too.