SEL in EDU
Real stories. Practical insights. Everyday Social Emotional Learning (SEL).
SEL in EDU
083: Belonging and Bringing Homemade Macaroni to the Potluck with Dr. Sheldon Eakins
What if belonging wasn’t a poster or a pep talk, but a practice you could measure, build, and sustain? We sit down with Dr. Sheldon Eakins to unpack how leadership choices shape whether students feel accepted, supported, and included. From turning speaking engagements into chapters to designing a student belonging survey, Dr. Eakins shows how to move from intent to impact with tools any school can use.
We dig into inclusion and assimilation, and why asking students to “fit in” by quietly shedding their identity undermines achievement. Sheldon shares how to audit rituals and traditions, align mission and vision with lived culture, and break down silos between special education, multilingual learning, and general education. His potluck metaphor reframes the work: bring homemade, not boxed. Craft environments where every learner sees themselves on the table and feels safe enough to try something new.
Teachers will find concrete ideas to swap “classroom management” for community-building: co-create agreements, build respectful relationships, and design projects that connect standards to students’ lives. We also explore attachment theory across K–12, showing how even 50 minutes can become a secure base for growth. And for the time-starved, Sheldon offers a pragmatic take on AI: use it to draft plans and personalize entry points, then spend your energy on feedback, facilitation, and care.
If you’re ready to lead with clarity and purpose, and to build a culture where identity fuels learning, this conversation is your roadmap.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
- Connect with Dr. Sheldon Eakins via his website, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
- Check out Dr. Eakin's books:
Welcome to SEL and EDU, the podcast where we explore how educators bring social emotional learning to life by sharing stories, strategies, and sparks of inspiration. I'm your host, Dr. Krista Lay, owner of Resonance Education. Thank you for joining us on this SEL journey.
SPEAKER_00:This is Jeremy Jorgensen, host of the Wi Edify Podcast. Proud member of the Education Podcast Network. Each show on the network is independently owned, and the views expressed may not represent those of other podcasts. For the best education podcasts, visit edupodcastnetwork.com.
SPEAKER_01:Dr. Sheldon L. Akins is an experienced school administrator, education consultant, author, speaker, and founder of Purposeful Teaching Academy. His mission is to help educators create student-centered learning environments where all students thrive. Dr. Akins specializes in leadership development, school culture, and practical strategies that support teaching with clarity and purpose. Through Purposeful Teaching Academy, Dr. Akins partners with schools to deliver personalized keynotes, workshops, and coaching that foster strong relationships, boost engagement, and support lasting change in teaching and leadership practices. Welcome, SEL and EDU family, Dr. Sheldon Akins back to the show.
SPEAKER_03:Well, Krista, it's always a pleasure. I'm so glad to talk to you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for being back here. As soon as I saw you had a new book coming out, I was on my computer and I stopped what I was doing. I'm like, hi, can you come back on and talk about your new book? I love the work that you do. And the I'm just excited. I've read your first book and I'm excited for this one. It's not out yet, but it's dropping. And by the time people listen to this, they will be able to go in and pre-order it.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. And it's funny that you mentioned my first book, Leading Equity, Becoming an Advocate for All Students. I was just reading that not too long ago, and I was listening to it a little bit because I did the whole audio book, which that's a whole nother conversation about recording.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, we need to come back and talk about that in a minute.
SPEAKER_03:That's a whole story. But I was listening to it and I was like, you know, I have so much growth from that first book and then into the second book. What do you bring into the potluck? It's just a lot of with the writing and just kind of honing that craft of how to write, what's comfortable for me. You and I kind of talked about how my process was in the past, and it's just sitting there typing, it's just not really my thing. I have to speak it out. I'm just more comfortable on a microphone. So I'm glad that you're anticipating it. I'm excited for the book. Uh, it's a lot there in within that book.
SPEAKER_01:So let's go back because you said there's been a lot of growth. And honestly, I think that there should be growth. I don't want to read from people who are like, I don't have anything to learn. There wasn't growth in this process. I think that if we're evolving, we want to grow. I love that you said that, and that makes me want to read the book even more. And I hear you about the dissertation process too, but it's hard, it's hard work in that focus and that time and to refine. But I really admire the fact that you said that you've seen the growth.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I ain't gonna lie to you, Krista. I said to myself, I'll never write again after I got through the dissertation. I did not see it coming. And honestly, had publishers reach out to me multiple every now and then. Someone reach out, hey, we want you to write a book for us. We appreciate the work that you're doing. I just kept turning it down. And then when I got with my first book, Josie Bass was like, Well, we'll help you with the support and walk me through the process, which was helpful for me. But the challenge that I kept running up against was there were deadlines. They're like, Okay, this needs to be in by such and such time. So I started to get anxiety, started to get frantic because you know, life was happening. I'm on stage here and I'm on stage there, and family and all the stuff. And I was missing deadlines, and it got to the point where they were like, Where is this stuff at? So I was like, okay, let me redo my strategy of how I'm doing this. I need to get this book out, I need to hit these deadlines. I'm a man of my word, so it just sucks that I'm missing deadlines, and I don't want to be that guy holding things up, holding up the process. So I just took my next chapter, I outlined it, I did my research, and I started doing webinars and started promoting stuff in that capacity where I had a transcript now because I did an hour-long, two-hour-long workshop webinar, and it was on it. The content within the chapter, I was able to speak it out, transcribe it all, and now I had something to work with because just sitting there typing, I get so distracted. Someone calls me or an email comes in, and I'm watching the email, and then I forget where I was at. I don't say I have ADHD. I don't think I do. However, I will get distracted, or I'll see red on the words on the Word document and see a misspelled something or a punctuation is missing. And again, I'll miss my thought. I type slower than I speak. If it's on my mind, I can say it right then and there, and then I can tweak it if I need to tweak it, but at least it's on quote unquote paper, as opposed to me just trying to type it live.
SPEAKER_01:One of the things I also admire is that when you put something out there, you're getting real-time feedback that allows you to not reframe, but maybe think over your ideas and thoughts before you're like, yeah, this is really what I want to say, and I'm going with it. What I heard you say is that there are webinars on YouTube of parts of the book.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you can pull from my first book too. In there's podcast episodes, a lot of the solo ones that you hear me speaking out my research or the work that I've done. So this is I'm usually working on something. It could be a topic, it could be a chapter that I've done the research, I've just kind of put it together and I'm speaking it out. It's just how I had to write that, it's just so much easier for me to do it that way. It's more natural, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:So you might be seeing my YouTube channel start having an upload of this idea. I love it. Do I have your permission to steal it?
SPEAKER_03:You can steal whatever. I can't be the only one. I didn't trademark that. So you can definitely take that again. If that's what works best for you, it's just kind of putting it together and then talking it out. I'm just comfortable on a mic. That's just my thing, especially if there's an audience and then there's chat going on, and you feed off of that energy, and you're just really bringing it in as opposed to just sitting there in a quiet space. And you know, maybe I got my coffee next to me, and I'm just my dog is there, and he's just relaxing, and there's maybe some quiet. It's just not me. I can't write like that. That's just not my thing.
SPEAKER_01:It's hard, yeah, to sit there and try to when you feel like there's no audience, but at least when you're seeing some faces, and like you said, you're seeing people in the chat does fill you with energy. And and both of us being introverts, I do feed off of that, and that helps me want to be engaged.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So the last time we talked, you've had a lot of life changes happen since then. So you've moved states, you have a new role, and you have two new books. Fill me in on this.
SPEAKER_03:I would start off by saying I feel like I've been very blessed with a lot of things that have come my way. I've definitely had some challenges in my personal life with a lot of things going on, and was given an opportunity to lead a school. First of all, I love Idaho. So I joke around. I used to live in Idaho, that was a whole thing. It's a beautiful place, just not for me. I'm not really for that rural life. I prefer a big city. An opportunity came up for me to come and relocate to Phoenix. I took that opportunity to lead a school and work towards that goal of growing the campuses, one campus when I got there, and then the opportunity to open up two more school locations, just really being able to get closer to my children. There's just a lot of things that took place. So I'm enjoying life on that end. But again, the work continues as a consultant, right? You know the life about being a consultant, and it's fun. You get a chance to meet a lot of people. Again, I love being on stage, so I get an opportunity to speak and have a great time, feed off of the energy that's in front of me. And so, yeah, the opportunities to write books. I have been brewing this idea of what are you bringing to the pot. Look, again, was some of if you go on my YouTube, there's a sense of belonging series. It's all the book, it's basically the book right there. And so it just gave me an opportunity to do that. And then I had another opportunity to write another book, and again, it's just a blessing of how all this worked out.
SPEAKER_01:And this one, your second one was on meaningful classroom management.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy because they're coming out within a few weeks apart. Two different publishers. So the first one will be through Solution Tree, it's called What Are You Bringing to the Pollock. The second one is coming through ASCD. That one is actually geared more towards teachers. So the first one's more towards leadership, and the second one is called Meaningful Classroom Management, and that one's leading more towards the teacher side.
SPEAKER_01:I hope the people who are in your school division know how lucky they are because you've had this experience as a leader and as the teacher, and to be able to support them at both of these ends. And so I'd be sitting there thinking, oh, good, we're getting copies of his book. If something happens, I know he's somebody I can go to and be like, I need some help. A couple of things didn't go the way I thought they would, and I need some support.
SPEAKER_03:I'm almost like two people. So there's leading equity, Sheldon, and then there's school leaders, principal, teacher, Sheldon. So on a local level, if you will, I'm a little bit different. So sometimes people was like, I Googled you the other day, and I had no idea. Like I that comes up sometimes because I try to be humble because I don't want to come across as if I'm all knowing because I don't know everything. I'm still learning, and I'm a lifelong learner. You know, we use that term all the time. That's me. There's just so much out there, especially when it comes to education and just trying to stay abreast. That's what I do to show that I'm bringing on new topics so I can try to stay as relevant as possible. So I stay on the humble side. So people have Googled me, or I've actually had staff members walk up to me with my book and it's like, oh, can you sign this? I was in a bookstore and I saw this and I saw your name. I didn't know. Like that does happen. But those are the things that are less as important to me as opposed to providing whatever support I can to make sure that whatever teachers I'm supporting or whatever staff members I'm supporting has the tools they need to be successful.
SPEAKER_01:That's the key right there. Full disclosure, I have known leaders who've written books, and I read the book and I'm like, they didn't walk this talk. But I know you do. You don't just write a book, you live what you're writing about, and you're modeling that. And that's why I think that they're very lucky because those two pieces have, and I don't know, I might be making a big jump here, but you have the same foundation, the same core values, the same integrity happening here. I admire that because it's like you're walking into the talk and not just like, oh yeah, look, I got a book out here, which is why I wanted you to come on to talk about this book because I want people to get it and to read it. What was it that inspired you? What motivated you to put in this time for what are you bringing to the potluck?
SPEAKER_03:We live in an age where books are being banned. Sometimes I feel like I get pigeonholed into the DEI guy, and sometimes can be a matter of semantics. We live in an age where there's so much pushback, but at the end of the day, we should be all able to agree, no matter what your political stances are, your beliefs are, that we want our kids to be successful. I wanted to write a book because the more and more I do this work, it boils down to school leadership. It's going to always be your chief diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, whatever terms you want to utilize. It's the school leader. Because of whatever emphasis they place, as far as like what they feel like are important. So the idea of creating a book that was centered around a sense of belonging, to me, summed up everything that I believe in when it comes to education. Because yeah, I can tell my students to do their best and get high scores and take this class and take that class. That's the academic side of things. But if they don't feel like they can really truly be themselves and if they don't feel as if they're seen, valued, and heard, how do we expect them to get all A's, or how do we expect them to show up to school, let alone anything else? So that's where the idea of the book came from was creating a sense of belonging. And yes, we can talk about different strategies on how that looks. And I could sit there on a stage for 45 minutes to an hour and give you a keynote about do better as a school leader. But the question always comes up well, how? What does that look like? That's where the book is coming from. In that book, there is a sense of belonging assessment tool that you start the year off, you ask your students because how many times have we thought, oh, Mike, our students they love our school and boom, boom, boom. And then you ask the kids and they tell you something totally different. It happens a lot. So let's start here. Let's ask the students where they are, and so they do the sense of belonging. And I have one for elementary level and then also for the older kids, right? So there's two different ones, but it's getting to the same group challenges. Then you have the information there based off of the scores, and you and then it can tell you, okay, if you've scored here, here's some suggestions for you. Here's some things you might want to do. If you scored here, here's some things you might want to do. And it gives a lot of tools, there's a lot of leadership reflection, there's a lot of opportunities for leadership to understand a lot of things that we don't necessarily think about or assess, such as tokenizing students and excluding students, the opposite of tokenization. It talks about the attachment theory and how that relates to kids. There's a lot of research built into that book, and I'm really excited to share it.
SPEAKER_01:How did you decide to organize this? Here's a survey that you can do. I love because so many times it's like, oh yeah, we have an accepting culture. I'm like, you say you do, but that doesn't, that's the way that people feel. That student component is so essential, no matter how old they are. And we both know that it does need to look a little bit different for our youngest kids. But then when you had those pieces, how did you lay out the rest of the book?
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. So I always start with self. Any content created, it's always about self-identity. So the beginning of the book starts with us, all right. So, do you value sense of belonging? What does that mean to you? And it talks about what were some of the things that you as a student coming up. Then it talks about okay, you don't have to do this all by yourself. You might want to create some opportunities where you can have small groups playing different roles. And yes, it's okay to celebrate your rituals and traditions, but let's look at that. Are there some things that we might want to revisit? Let's look at our mission statement. Let's look at our vision statement. Are there some things that we want to revisit? Are we operating in silos? Was this a special ed department and just take care of only SPED? And so don't talk to me about the general population kids, or vice versa. These are some things where we're connecting everything together. The other piece that I like to talk about within the book is getting specific with certain groups of people. In the last chapter, it talks about if you have students that have experience in foster care. Here's some things that you might want to consider. If you have some students of color, if you have black students, if you have Hispanic students, if you have students that are new to the United States, here are some specific things that you might want to be mindful of that would support individuals that have these types of backgrounds. In addition to that, I talk about intersectionality, right? So yes, you might have a student of color who's new to the United States and English is not the first language. How do we support all of those different things? Because they may have various challenges that they're that, or barriers, if you will, that they're facing. I would say probably one of the biggest pieces within the book, outside of the sense of belonging tool, is the idea of assimilation. I did a lot of research on assimilation. I started with the group, went into Webster and saw what it said. What does it mean to assimilate? One of the things that really just stuck out to me was it talks about when an individual is trying to get within the accepting, the embracing culture. As I was looking at this definition, it bothered me. It really just stuck out to me, if you will. Because assimilating is essentially like I have to remove who I am, my identity, because I want to be accepted within the culture of the school. So when we're thinking about a school, this is what's acceptable. So if that's not something I would normally do at home, or that's not something I would normally do around my friends outside of this classroom, outside of the hallways, outside of the school building, then I am having to assimilate into this quote-unquote embracing culture. So I really dug into that as well. And again, a lot of the stuff to me is just unintentional. I just assume people have the best intentions and they're not trying to harm a student in those kind of ways. But unfortunately, a lot of things are happening, a lot of practices that we do, again, that are traditional. We've always done it this way, but it's not necessarily as welcoming or creating a sense of belonging that we really want.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I'm really stuck on that assimilating piece as well. Because what I've realized over time, reflecting back, is as a high school social studies teacher, I loved learning about people and causatives. And the more that I learned each year I facilitated, the more uncomfortable I became in a good way, because I learned more about imperialism and decolonization and assimilation and acculturation, learned more about my own family. And I'm like, oh, we're not learning the whole story. And then I think back personally with my family, my grandmother who stopped school in fifth grade because she got made fun of for not speaking English. She was a Spanish speaker and being made fun of because she had hand-me-down clothes, and to the point that she doesn't speak Spanish. And so we lost that piece. My mom does speak when she has to. She's a healthcare provider and works with vulnerable populations, but that was not something that we did. I am starting to learn, but I think why did I have to wait so long to figure that out? If I track back, it's because somebody wanting to feel a sense of belonging that they let go of who they were. And have you found that in your own work or what that looked like in the book as you were trying to help people see that it's not always a good thing?
SPEAKER_03:To speak to your point from your personal story, I've had conversations with individuals where like, yeah, my parents or my grandmother always said, just speak English, speak the Queen's language, is some of the verbiage I've heard. Where it's like, I spoke patois, or I spoke this dialect, and it's a broken down version of French, or it's a broken down version of such and such. And so we were told not to speak it anymore, and so it gets lost. I remember working on a reservation, that was one of the biggest challenges is the elders were the only ones that could speak the tribal languages because again, it gets lost over time. You got to think about the boarding schools and remember how they were told you need to speak English, you need to cut your hair. I talk about how the Native Americans were treated with their language culture, and you have to be this way kill the Indians, save the man. And if we don't do those types of things, then you won't be accepted. I'm just gonna assume in certain situations that it wasn't intentional. Definitely the boarding school situation that was intentional, but that so that was egregious, that's blatant in your face, but then there's a lot of subtleties that take place that we don't necessarily notice. I'm just again assuming best intentions, we don't necessarily pay attention to. As a result, a student goes throughout life, and it's not until they're full-on adult that they really feel comfortable with being truly who they are, or look back and think, man, I wish I could have done so many things, but it just didn't feel right, or I just didn't feel welcomed enough to be able to do these things to who I really am.
SPEAKER_01:There's a lot of new to the profession educators throughout the United States. What is some advice or recommendations you would give to them as they're starting out on this journey working with our young people and wanting them to have a sense of belonging?
SPEAKER_03:There's folks that went through teacher school, but I'm seeing a lot more alternative certification routes. I actually think there's a lot of opportunities for those teachers because they're coming in without all the theory. They're just learning on the job, if you will. I see that there's some pros and cons. The advice that I would give is I feel like it sounds cliche, but start with getting to know your kids. And you shouldn't be teaching for real over the first couple weeks because you're spending time with creating that rapport, really getting a chance to learn your students and learning what they want to learn and what they can relate to, because if they can relate to the content, it's gonna be so much better for you, as opposed to just providing this is what I'm gonna teach you, because I teach this every single year. If you're really being intentional with your practices and you're really trying to create that community within your classroom, those are some things that you need to be doing early on. And they don't necessarily always teach you that in a teacher school. Some of those things you just had to learn on the job.
SPEAKER_01:We were talking before we got on about chat and different AI. See a great value here too. I'm not necessarily saying that use everything it tells you, but if you know what your students are interested in and you know what the concepts or the skills are, I bet if you were able to type that in, it could give you some ideas. For me, I'd say to the students, here's what I tried, here's what it said, what are your thoughts on this? Especially at the high school level. Like, is this resonating? Is it off base? What would be a better fit?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, because people tell me all the time, well, I can't I can't relate to the kids because you know I don't have the background, I don't share this, I don't share that. With the way AI is going these days, I feel like you can. It's still new and you still gotta check it here and there, but it gets you a starting place. So even if you say, I can't relate to the kids, they don't look like me. I come from a different background, I have a different upbringing, blah, blah, blah. I get it. But now you have opportunities to at least get somewhere to start after you've talked to your students, after you've had an opportunity to learn from their families and things like that. You can put it in chat, put the right prompts in there, and it'll give you somewhere to start, and you can kind of go from there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it reminds me of a friend of mine who was on the podcast a while ago. His name is Nico Samatolitas, and he is Greek, learned English when he was in school, but he does a lot of research around hope. And as hope is achieved through willpower and way power. And when you're talking, I'm thinking chat and just asking the students, like that's the pathway. Now you need to have the willpower, the willingness to set aside the idea that you know everything in the classroom, that you're the leader of the class, and ask questions and say, here's what I can contribute. How does it make sense for you? And where can we make this fit better?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of research that talks about if you're creating a student-centered space, you should be more of a facilitator if at anything like that. I think traditionally, the way we were probably brought up in when it comes to schooling, teacher stands in front of the classroom and lectures or gives out the information and they're not really having that opportunity to learn from the students or allowing the students to do their own research and learn on their own. If we kind of shift that perspective from that stage on the stage ideology and just become more of facilitators within a classroom, that will make such a difference.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. When you think about the book, was there a particular point it was just really meaningful to you that you wanted to make sure you got it right?
SPEAKER_03:When I really dug into the attachment theory, because that was kind of personal for me. I'm divorced, and at the time I was writing this book, I got into the attachment theory book just on the relationship side of things. And I was like, man, I wonder if this relates to because you're reading, you know, anxious attachment and you think about secure and all these different things, avoidant. I was like, man, this research really came from assessing students, kids, young kids, and how they attach to adults. This really originated from a lot of the psychology around how a child connects or attaches to their caregiver, i.e., teachers. And when I really dug into that piece, oh man, this is some deep stuff that I really want to, when we're talking about sense of belonging and where does the children see throughout the day for the majority of the day, especially during school year, is the the caregivers, i.e., teachers. So that's probably one of my favorite parts of the book. I found it very fascinating because again, on the personal side of things, I just couldn't wait to share this information.
SPEAKER_01:They talk about attachment when kids are very young and how you have a secure attachment, yet they need to grow up and be independent. My kids are two of them are in college, one is graduated and is living his best life right now. I still talk to them once or twice a week. We text, but like they do their own thing now. And it's a just an interesting space to be in where you're letting them go and seeing them flourish and thrive. I wonder what's there now for attachment theories as kids are older. Like, I want it to be healthy, I want them to go off and do their thing, yet I want them to know that they have a supportive background, and I want them to have healthy relationships with other people.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:There's a lot of longitudinal studies where they can predict based off of the attachment that they had early on. There's 50, 60 year studies that can predict with a certain percentage of accuracy if this person will end up on the street or not. It's crazy the amount of research that has gone into the importance of having a secure attachment early on.
SPEAKER_01:As a high school person, you know, I've had teachers say to me, Oh, I only see them for 50 minutes a day. And you're starting to mix quality and quantity, because maybe that 50 minutes is incredibly meaningful to them, as opposed to four hours in the evening with somebody that they don't have so much interaction with or is not inquiring about who they are and how they're showing up and what they know and what they want to know. And so I think when you said who are our kids with, even at the secondary level in a collective, it's the educators, and we have such tremendous opportunity to help provide support for students and be there with them as they're navigating life and becoming more independent.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, if someone just says that they're only with them for 50 minutes, then I would have additional questions and just being honest. Tell me more. Sometimes we feel we get overwhelmed. I know with teaching, especially nowadays, it could feel overwhelming. I I didn't teach when there was Chat GPT uh or AI opportunity. So, like I was old school in it, and you had to just kind of figure out how to get it done. But nowadays there's just so much extra support. There's a lot of heavy lifting can be done. You can literally put the standards into chat or into AI and ask it for a unit plan or ask it for your yearly plan with dates and everything, and you can at least again have something to go off of.
SPEAKER_01:So this is the perfect opportunity for us to know good intention, what is good teaching in terms of the curriculum, and that frees us up to build the solid relationships piece and to support them and to make those connections. The technology is allowing us to shift our focus on what matters most. And yes, their growth is important, but they're not going to grow if they're not feeling that sense of belonging, if they're not feeling the love and having their. I mean, we know this, the basic needs being met.
SPEAKER_03:You know this better than I do. This is your area.
SPEAKER_01:But it just gave like I like I tend to skew very pro-technology because I think that there's a lot of good things that are happening for our kids if we support them and help them along the way, but it's helping us as educators as well be able to focus on what's most important because we don't need to spend all the time designing these amazing projects or ideas and things that we can work on with the students and ask Chad to help us out a little bit. But we have to refine that piece on what we're Asking.
SPEAKER_03:I think a lot of people are just afraid of AI. And I've heard all kinds of conspiracy theories. And I get it because I was skeptical. I'm not gonna lie. Like when I first started, I was skeptical, and I still hear a lot of educators totally against it. But then I also see a lot of districts that are like, yo, y'all need to use AI. Here are the tools that you can use. Use these tools because we want you to teach, we want you to connect, we want you to do these things, and we understand that you can't always pull stuff out of thin air. I see a lot of districts leadership really and supporting. Look, we want you, we are encouraging, making it imperative that you use this. I think over time people will start to utilizing it more and more comfortable. Some of it's just fear of unknown. They haven't really had any training or support. And so they're like, you're telling me to use, but no one showed me how to use it and how to put prompts in it. I don't know how to do this stuff. So I just think over time it's gonna get better.
SPEAKER_01:You have a really good point there, and that the fear of the unknown. I want to bring it back to your book again. The title is What Are You Bringing to the Potluck? So, Dr. Akins, what are you bringing to the potluck?
SPEAKER_03:It's a metaphor. It's a metaphor. It's when you think about a potluck, you think about what's being brought to the table. And at the end of a potluck, there may be food left over, it may be gone. Depending on what you brought to the potluck, is gonna probably determine how much is eaten, right? So we could rush through, do a quick box macaroni type of situation, or if we have the time, we have the resources, we can put together a nice homemade macaroni dish, right? We can probably assume or guess which one is gonna be eaten more, which one's gonna be probably appreciated more. If we aren't intentional with our efforts, with creating a sense of belonging, it's almost as if we're bringing box macaroni to that potluck. That's the metaphor. We need to be intentional with our efforts to make sure that each student, based off of good work back in the early 90s, has to feel accepted, supported, and included. Those are the three ingredients, if you will, to that potluck. They have to feel accepted, supported, and included. If they don't have that, they aren't gonna have a sense of belonging. You could feel accepted, you could feel maybe just included. But again, if you don't have all three of those ingredients, that dish is not gonna perform the way it should.
SPEAKER_01:I really love that metaphor. That was very powerful. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. I've been working on it, I've been practicing in my little elevator speech.
SPEAKER_01:So it's working because I have these visuals and I think about how you are truly when you go, you're giving a piece of who you are. And people trust enough to put that piece on the table along with everybody else's, transparent for people to knowing that you could have somebody who is not acting with good intent, but you hope. Yeah, so it's a vulnerable place to be in, and it feels so good when somebody digs in is like, this is fabulous.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. When you come home and your pan is cleaned out versus you come home and there's still a full pan or just one corner was taken out of your casserole. This is two different feelings you can have by the end of that pile-up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. What kind of classroom do you want? Homemade.
SPEAKER_03:So I would say the classroom where so I've never been one of those individuals that likes the quiet room, desk in a row type of thing. And that's what I talk about in the other book that I have coming out a few weeks later. So as far as classroom goes, I've always had an issue with the term classroom management, managing a classroom. I know it's theory-based and frameworks, and I don't know. Sometimes, again, semantics, sometimes word just make a difference to me. So, just community builder, community facilitator. We want to create a school, a classroom community. I start with a community agreement. So, as students and as teachers, we'll say, look, what are some things that make you feel like you would feel respect within this class? What does that look like to you? Okay, what are some norms that we want to create as a team, as a group, collectively, that we agree upon that we're willing to sign at the end of the day. And so anytime there is a challenge with respect, we can always refer to what we discuss as a community. Let's start there because you want to create that buy-in. The second part of a classroom that I think would be ideal would be a classroom in which I can have an opportunity to learn from my students in addition to them learning from me. I teach history, and that's just always been my bread and butter. So I can tell you the names, dates, time frames. But in a lot of my students, I notice like they, oh, those are just old dead people. Why does that matter? And if I can connect what happened back in the 1600s to what's happening in 2025, in which they're having a project and they're learning and they're actually solving a problem and again relating it and tying it into modern times, if you will. To me, that's what I like to see a lot of critical thinking, a lot of collaboration. The reality of it is by the time they finish high school, they're gonna enter into a space, whether that's the military, college, some sort of job force, they're gonna work in a team, more than likely. And there's a solo, I mean, they do have some remote jobs, but even so, you're still gonna have to jump on Zoom calls and collaborate with your team. So if we can create the space where we are teaching students how to work with others, how to collaborate, how to problem solve, that's to me part of being in that ideal classroom.
SPEAKER_01:When you were talking about the bidirectional learning between the student and the educator, a conversation that we had as a classroom, talking about Gandhi's assassination. And I always put quotes up on the board, and I had a quote up there by Tupac, and one of my students, JT Robb, said, Well, Tupac wasn't murdered, he was assassinated. Let's talk about this. What does that mean to you? And it led to this great conversation about what the difference is between the two words, semantics, but then also what it means to have an impact on a broad community of people to the point that they felt what you did and what you said impacted them so even if you didn't know them personally. And it was probably hands down in my 10 years of teaching, one of the most powerful conversations I've had with students because it had me saying things differently, or things not differently, but things that I hadn't considered. I wasn't arguing with him, I just hadn't thought of things framed that way. He's like, Tupac's done more for me in my life than I can say Gandhi has done. And I'm like, I can see how you would say that.
SPEAKER_03:Imagine if you shut it down. No, Tupac, he was he was thug life, you know, whatever, right? And then miss an opportunity for a student that is wanting to engage in a discussion that is relevant, that it's on topic, and they're wanting to engage, and you shut it down because it wasn't Gandhi or it wasn't what you were looking for, the answer that you were looking for. And that's such a missed opportunity if it had gone a different direction.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I didn't actually think about that other part. What if I had been like, nope, you're wrong? No, it's not. As we work on wrapping this up, how can people get a hold of you if they're wanting to talk more about the book, knowing that you're still doing this work? And even more importantly, you have boots on the ground.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. The best way to reach me, I'm on Instagram the most uh at Sheldon Akins is probably the best way to find me. But if you want to go to the website, at the time of this recording, I'm actually transitioning to uh a different website, it's called purposeful247.com. So that's going to be the best way to reach me with via the website side of things. But of course, I'm I'm around. You can find me in Phoenix if you're ever in town, hit me up. So outside of that, that's it. LinkedIn, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:Sounds good. Cool. One last question. Do you have time for one more question? Who or what are you listening to regularly right now? Who's on your playlist or what song?
SPEAKER_03:Honestly, who's been on my playlist regularly has been the clips. They have a new album. I've been jamming their stuff pretty straight through. Uh, every every song to me slaps, as my kids would say. So I do like that album. Outside of that, I do like some RB as well. Leon Thomas is another artist that I've been listening to. Swat Summer Walker is another one of my favorites. So it just kind of depends on the mood. If I'm in the gym, I'm probably gonna have clips on. But if I'm doing something else, just regular drive, I'll put some RB on.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you again for coming on. I appreciate you and all the work that you're doing. Can't wait to read the books. My pleasure. Both of them. So I'll put links to both of them so people who are listening can go get meaningful classroom management as well as what are you bringing to the potluck? And I'll put leading equity on there as well.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, great. Thank you so much. And it's just an honor to be on your show. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Thank you again for tuning in to this episode of SEL in EDU. At Residence Education, we equip educators with knowledge, skills, and resources to design learning experiences that foster students' academic, social, and emotional growth. We believe that every small action to foster connections and growth creates ripples shaping the future.
