From Skill to Sustainability: What CTE, Mindfulness, and the Brain Taught Us

In this special follow-up episode of The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment, Dr. Lashawnte McCray-Sarvis reflects on the powerful themes woven throughout the last three conversations of the February series.

From leadership and innovation with Robert C. Washington, to educator sustainability with Todd Scholl, to brain-based wellness with Dr. Lisa Riegel, one message has become clear:
Career readiness must include emotional readiness. Leadership must include sustainability. And education must be designed with the brain in mind.

This episode pulls together the key insights, highlights the common leadership thread, and challenges educators to rethink what preparation truly means, for students and for themselves.

As February closes, Dr. Lashawnte also offers a preview of what’s ahead in March, including:

✨ Women’s History Month
🌍 International Women’s Day – March 8
🎶 Music In Our Schools Month (MIOSM)

The conversation continues — and next month, we celebrate legacy, influence, and the power of voice.

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Welcome back to The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment. I am your host, Dr. Lashanta, known as the Classy Sassy Consultant. Over the last few weeks, we have had powerful conversations, conversations about leadership, sustainability, and the science of wellness. Today I want to pause and reflect because when strong ideas repeat across different voices, that's not coincidence, that is confirmation. And so our first guest that we had this month was Mr. Robert C. Washington, principal of Hayward Career and Technology Center.

Some of the key points from our conversation, we discussed how CT CTE is innovation, not an alternative. So we talked about how no longer are those terms of vocational and trade school are a part of that conversation. And it's not to say that there's anything wrong with the terminology. We have trade schools still, we have vocational settings still. But now CTE, as far as our career center centers, CTE, career and technology education, that elevates what is going on in the career centers now. You have students that walk through those doors who are AP, honors, IB students, dual enrollment.

You have students who are looking for a way to provide for themselves after high school, and they are intentional about being at the career center. So it's not just an alternative for students who may not make it at the high school setting. CTE career centers, these are places of growth, and it's places where we're preparing our students for college and career readiness and workplace effectiveness. Another key point from that conversation was about how leadership shapes school culture. We know that at every level, when it comes to CTE, you have directors, assistant directors, you have principals, assistant principals, you have assistant superintendents, superintendents, executive directors, all of these different leaders that are in place.

And these folks help to cultivate school culture. Your school culture is driven by leadership. And whether you're going to have a positive school culture infused with thoughts of positivity and growth because you have a growth mindset, or whether you're going to have a fixed mindset and you have a school culture that is dismantled from the inside out, all of this goes on to leadership. Now, of course, we know that there are other pieces that are involved in that puzzle, but culture begins with the leadership.

And then another key point from that conversation was workforce preparation is future building. We are helping our students to build their ideas and their goals for what they want to do after high school. We're helping to support that by being in these types of settings in a career center. These students are preparing how to be workers. And that's whether they're going straight into military or they're going straight into business for themselves or they're going to work in industry, or if they're going to college and they're going to hold off going into the workforce until they're finished with that college degree.

We have to understand and know that we are preparing these students for the workforce. They're getting ready. And something that's taught at the career center that you may not always see happening at the traditional setting, it has to be purposeful and it has to be infused within the culture of that building. And that's the teaching of soft skills. So our career centers are preparing our students for the workplace so that those who hire them on know that they are ready to take on. And what they're not ready to take on, they can train them.

But if our students are going in with all of this training that we give them, they are going to be unbeatable. They're going to be the best of the best walking through that door of that industry setting. So very powerful conversation. We're so happy to have had uh Mr. Washington as our first guest. And we just want to keep in mind that CTE, when we're talking about career and technology education, CTE is not just about getting a certification, but it's about confidence. We are confidence builders in these settings, and we are helping to set our students up for success.

But leadership alone is not enough if the system is exhausted. And so that leads us into our second interview that we have with Mr. Todd Scholl. And Mr. Scholl he talked about mindfulness. He is the founder and the lead thought uh leader of Cool, which is the Center for Educator Wellness and Leadership. And so what we heard from this conversation, one of the key points is that wellness is not a luxury, wellness is a necessity. If we are not well mentally, if we are not in a space where we can do the work as educators when we come in, if we bring our stressors and we bring our emotions into the classroom setting or into the building itself, we may not be able to function.

Our performance levels are not up to par if we have stressors that we are not able to control. So wellness is a necessity. Having a mind that is ready to work and is ready to lead and is ready to receive from leadership. This is a necessity when it comes to being an effective educator. We also learned that another key point is that mindfulness is a performance support. When you use mindfulness, it supports your performance. Just as you have lap athletes who are that go through physical conditioning, they go through physical training for their body.

That physical training prepares them for the physicality of what they're doing so that they can endure, whether they're playing football or basketball or hockey, whatever the case may be, but they have physical conditioning to get their bodies ready. We as educators, we have to do the same thing. We have to have our minds ready to go into the classroom, to go into the schools, to go into the central offices. So we have to do something to help make sure our minds are ready. We are ready to do the job.

And that's where mindfulness comes in. And one thing that we we learned and we kept in mind is that you cannot just implement one or two things when it comes to mindfulness. If you're wanting to incorporate techniques and strategies, please make sure that you reach out to someone who is trained. It is not just about taking deep breaths, it's not just about closing your eyes and making sure that you see peaceful settings. And those are good, those are good strategies, but mindfulness goes a lot deeper.

So please make sure you reach out to Mr. Shoal or anyone who is trained in mindfulness if you're seeking to incorporate those techniques and strategies in your classrooms or in your buildings. And then another key point that we got from that conversation is that culture starts at the top. Sounds familiar, right? Culture begins at the top. And once we have the backing of our leadership, when leadership backs mindfulness and also recognizes that our educators that they need a way to regulate stressors and triggers in their lives, and that they need a plan.

They need a plan and how to do that, and they need a plan that's well thought out, and that involves people who are trained to take them through that plan. Then when leadership recognizes that they're already changing the culture in their schools and in their buildings, and so we we got from this conversation that you cannot sustain excellence if you do not sustain the educator. I'm gonna say that one more time. You cannot sustain excellence if you do not sustain the educator. We talked about testing, and you just have to listen to that entire episode.

All three episodes, all three interviews from this month were awesome. You just have to go back and hear everything that was discussed. But testing is one big stressor that our educators feel that they have to do so much in order to make sure the students do well and they stress over that they have, you know, students with IEPs in their class that not enough support and so forth and so on. But this was a great discussion. And so when we decide, when we understand the brain, we understand why. When we can understand the brain, we can understand why.

Why did I make that statement? Because that leads us into the third interview that uh we had, and this one is so fresh and so recent. Um, sat down and talked with Dr. Lisa Regal, who is the author of NeuroWell, and we spent our time talking about the brain and talking about this concept of neural well. And so some of the key points from that conversation that we had was that chronic stress shifts the brain. So when we're looking at stress overall, short-term stress, and all of us we have some type of stressors and triggers in our lives.

And what one person's stress that's short term, it may be someone else's chronic. For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic, short-term stressor for someone, after about 10 or 15 minutes, they're fine, or after about five minutes, they're fine. They've they've gone on and and they're done, done with that instance. Someone who is dealing with chronic stress, if chronic, if someone cutting you off in traffic is your chronic stressor because it takes you so long to bring your body back to normal, your blood pressure, your breathing, that's chronic stress.

So, short term, our brains go into a survival mode in which we can we can adjust ourselves and get back into our regular routines. It's it's not a big deal. But when we have chronic stressors that we don't deal with, then our brain begins to adapt to that and then it begins to reduce our performance level. We be our performance level goes down because we have allowed the stressor to go on to go on for so long. Another key point that we received in this conversation with Dr. Regal was that emotional regulation impacts learning.

When we are able to control our environment, which is controlling us, controlling this, our body, and controlling our emotions and controlling our thoughts. When we're able to control those things, then we are able to have a positive impact on learning. And not just us as educators, but we're also, we also touched on the students as well, because our students they come in with their own bags of emotions. We're human, everyone has something that they bring to the table that may be something that needs to be left off the table when they're coming into the classroom.

But guess what? When you are able to learn and understand that our brain, it's not just this big glob sitting on our necks, our brain has several different departments, and each department does different things. And it helps us to when we help ourselves to understand that each department does different things and we have a better understanding of the brain, then that helps us to regulate our emotions. So the brain, I love this discussion about the brain because I was a psychology major in um in my undergrad years, and so the brain is something that I'm really into.

So this discussion was very good as well. Of course, as I said, all three interviews, great. And then the last key key idea that we received out of this conversation is that sustainability is neurological, not just motivational. So it's not about sustainability, it is not about trying harder, it is about understanding how the brain functions under pressure. We when we understand what our brain does, the ins and outs of it, and Dr. Regal did such a wonderful job explaining it. Because many times when people that you when you hear the brain, you might say, Oh, that's just boring.

That's boring. But when you begin to break it down and make it come alive, just like with anything, as educators, we learn how to make our assignments and lessons come alive. And that conversation was definitely stirring in just how she talked about the functions of our brain and how us understanding how our brain works under pressure, that will help us to be better in the classroom as educators, as well as our students in understanding. We know our students they're still developed, their brains are still developing, and in that developmental stages, we we need to understand what's happening to their brains in each of those stages.

So, truly, another great conversation. We understand that we cannot build a future workforce while operating in survival mode. As educators, we cannot continue, or if we've started, we don't want to continue. If we have never started it, we don't want to begin it. But we don't want to get into this mode of being, oh, I'm just surviving, I'm just trying to make it to May, or I'm trying to make it through June. We have got to get ourselves out of that mentality if that's where we are. And sometimes we can only we may be there for just a split second, or we may be there for a few weeks, but think about the amount of time that when you are in that mindset of I'm just in survival mode and I just want to make it through.

What impact is that having on our students? Think about that. What impact are you having on our students when we raise our hands in the mode of I give up? That's you know, I give up. You all got it. When we do that, what happens? Our students are losing out on valuable time in interacting with you and understanding the content and being these lifelong learners. So we want to make sure that we can understand our brains and how they operate so that we can also be better when it comes to that classroom setting.

So, again, three awesome interviews. And in tying those three interviews together, there were some themes that were consistent in them. There was the theme of leadership and how leadership matters, the theme of culture, and that positive culture is important, the brain, the brain is mentioned. That was a con also a connecting theme, and also sustainability. Effective classrooms are not built by curriculum alone, they are built by regulated leaders and they are supported by educators and intentional systems.

Education is about intentionality. You have to be intentional, you have to be intentional to be effective. And so that was the month of February. We're in our last week and we have a few days left. So if you did not have a chance to go and listen to those three powerful episodes, please go back and hear those. That was for the month of February. So, what's in store for March? Well, I'm so glad that you asked that question. So next month is what?

Women's History Month. So we will have a segment, especially a segment for International Women's Day, which is March 8th. So there will be a segment and talking about the impact that uh women educators have had on uh classroom and systems, and so that'll be a presentation, and then also we're gonna focus a little bit on music in our schools month. That is going to be a panel discussion with some individuals who have taught music education, and we're gonna talk about how music education impacts not just music itself, we're not just talking about the impact it has on orchestra, band, strings, dance.

We're not talking about how music affects just those areas, but the impact that music has on all aspects of education. So I'm looking forward to that panel discussion and uh the names of who's gonna sit on the panel. You you just gotta keep following, keep following uh this podcast, and you will find out who will sit on that panel. And I'm looking forward to that discussion. So we're gonna celebrate the women, some women in education who have helped to shape education. We're gonna look at voices that have shifted culture.

We're gonna talk about uh rhythm and how that reminds us why creativity still belongs in our school. And so as we close out, I just want to say that again, I thank all of my interviees who were with me, all of my guests that were here on the show. Thank you for being a part of my podcast family. And I truly hope that we'll have an opportunity to do this again. And so I leave you with these lasting thoughts. Skilled hands prepare students for work, strong minds prepare them for pressure, intentional leadership prepares them for legacy.

Thank you for joining me on the road to an effective classroom environment. Next month, we will celebrate history, harmony, and the power of women who lead. Until next time, lead boldly, serve intentionally, and build environments where everyone can thrive.