David Montes de Oca:
No transformational change that is enduring or of value has ever occurred outside of the collective. Anybody who’s trying to come and tell you some story about some individual, who all by themself created some lasting, meaningful, sustainable change, better come with receipts because I have not seen evidence of that ever.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Thank you.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was the voice of David Montes de Oca. Right at the end there, you also heard the voices of Dr. Michelle Sadrena Pledger and Dr. Stacey Caillier.
Stacey is the director of the National Coalition for Improvement in Education. And right at the start of the episode, she introduces the other two better than I could. So we’re just going to get right into this interview. It’s awesome. Enjoy.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Michelle and Montes, I’m so excited to have you both here together. This is a really rare and beautiful moment for me where we get to lift up the work of one person I’ve known and loved for almost two decades, and another person I’ve wanted to meet for years, and I’ve always heard spoken about in the most reverence of tones. So before we dig in, I want to offer just a brief introduction to you both.
Dr. Michelle Sadrena Pledger is the director of Liberation at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education where she has taught, led, counseled and cajoled in the most loving way for more than a decade. She is also the founder of Living for Liberation, an organization that supports the liberation of self, systems, and society, and the author of the fantastic book, Liberate: Pocket-Sized Paradigms for Liberatory Learning. And it really fits in your pocket. It’s a must read for any educator who aspires to design educational experiences that are responsive to culturally and linguistically diverse young people.
This book is actually what brought us together today since it turns out I’m not the only Michelle Super fan, I have some stiff competition in the form of David Montes de Oca, who’s the chief of chief of improvement and district partnerships for the CORE districts, a consortium of nine districts across California working together to unleash bold system improvements so all students thrive.
David, or Montes, as his friends call him, and we get to call him Montes today, which I’m so excited about, leads CORE’s holistic coherence approach to organizational excellence and continuous improvement in large urban school districts. He’s a former teacher, principal, and district leader and provides leadership coaching to district superintendents and senior leaders and co-designs and facilitates learning sessions for teams.
Together, these two have over 50 years in public education, leading change efforts from the classroom to the boardroom. Thank you so much both of you for being here for this conversation about both of your work and Michelle’s book. So before we dig in, I want to invite you just to describe yourself and the work you do in the world. And Michelle, I’d love to invite you to go first.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Sure, Stacey. It’s so great to be here. Thank you for that beautiful introduction of both of us. So everybody, I’m Michelle. I move through the world as a Black cisgender female who loves God, people, animals, the planet. I’m a connoisseur of learning and laughing, and I pursue every opportunity to do those two things on a daily basis. Sometimes at inappropriate times, like during meetings that Stacey can attest to. All of the work that I do in the world, whether it’s keynote speaking, workshop facilitation, life coaching, writing, it’s all connected to liberation. And when people ask liberation from what, my response is oppression in all of its forms.
So with life coaching, I’m often supporting people who are dealing with internalized oppression or limiting beliefs. If it’s workshops or keynotes, then it’s supporting people through interpersonal, institutional or ideological oppression. But my hope is just to get everyone free. I was not free for so many years of my life. And now that I am on my liberation journey, I just want more people to be involved in it. So that’s a little bit about me.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Thanks, Michelle. All right, Montes, you’re up.

David Montes de Oca:
Awesome. Well, first off, Stacey, Michelle, I cannot begin to describe or measure the level of honor and privilege it is to be in the space with the two of you. I am feeling very excited. And I had many well wishes from family members this morning as we split into our day to think about coming into this space. So folks are excited on our collective behalf for being together this morning.
I usually want to just acknowledge something I actually don’t say often, but really I see myself as a vessel for the universe. I’m moved meaningfully by forces that feel simultaneously both outside of myself and deep, deep within myself. And so that movement of vibration that I feel on a regular basis tends to be the navigator of whatever it is that I’m up to. I am a husband, I’m a father, I am also an educator. I’m a teacher, a leader. I’m a feminist. I’m a Chicano and I’m a twin. And all of those things I bring into every space that I enter into. I’ve grown to become increasingly aware of the value of my acknowledgement of these identities and the invitation to try to explore others to do the same.
I currently partner with superintendents who are looking to transform their districts, school districts, to become learning organizations. And most of us can appreciate the fact that there are schools that can be thriving places of learning for young people. But our school districts are really created in the image and likeness of our global economy that’s really about competition, power hoarding and fear. And even when I find as many… As both of you do, I’m sure that it is chock-full of folks full of good intentions, still we perpetuate ways of being that really harm ourselves and each other. And so a lot of that work is around designing experiences for individuals and teams to be able to discover who they truly are, both individually and collectively. And in many ways, it’s about helping folks to stop this common pretending and confront the brutal facts of our current reality while remaining unwaveringly hopeful. So it happens through one-on-one coaching, through team and group facilitation, and then through orchestrating district-wide change processes within school districts and within individual departments.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Amazing. Thank you, both. I just love that idea of unwaveringly hopeful because we need so much of that right now. So I love that you threw that.

David Montes de Oca:
We really do. And I just want to say that is the power twin. Confronting the brutal facts of your current reality without that is an absolute recipe for aspiration, but the ability to remain unwaveringly hopeful is essential. Absolutely.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Oh, my gosh, I love that. Okay, I think we’re going to return to that theme later on as well. But I would love to hear how did you each discover each other? Because you didn’t know each other and then all of a sudden I was hearing you talk about each other. And so how did you discover each other in each other’s work? And maybe Montes, would you mind kicking us off?

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah, so we have some mutual colleague friends at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. I think it was in the pandemic that I discovered or learned about this new position there with the director of Liberation. And immediately when both I saw that position and discovered a little bit about the individual that was leading that role, I just had this sense of tremendous feeling that this graduate school of education was blessed to have a role that I believe should be present throughout organizations.
A lot of organizations have a general counsel that helps them deal with their legal issues, and we really need in-house counsel to help us deal with our liberation issues. The legal system really envelops everything, and the systems of oppression envelope everything. So I was excited to hear about this role and kept my ear to the grindstone, learning about the leadership that was manifesting in that role and hearing extraordinary things about Michelle in her work. And then I received notification of this book launch and the release of this book. And really the fact that this book had come out suddenly, I purchased a copy and my mind was blown.
And then typically, as is the case, I wait that calling. And so through some deep reflection and some retreating and some meditation, it became abundantly clear that this book was medicine and right on time. And so with that, I’ve started working with the book throughout my facilitation work over the last several years, which has led to an opportunity to then connect with the author, which I have to say I have very few instances in my life where I’ve been so… Well, when I say few, I mean less than a hand’s worth of fingers I can count on where I’ve been impassioned by a book and had the luxury of being in contact with and then forming a relationship with its author. And so that too is one of those, if I get a chance to ask this in a board game, Michelle Pledger and Liberate is going to come up in that board game.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Amazing. Michelle, anything you want to add in there? What have you discovered about Montes since learning about him?

Dr Michelle Pledger:
So first of all, I don’t know how I lived all the years of my life without being in community with Montes. He-

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
I feel like that now too.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Oh my gosh. He is just a soul feeling and healing presence. But I’ll answer your question of how the connection happened. So I would be on intake calls or connection calls where people were booking me for speaking engagements or to purchase copies of the book. And Montes’ name just kept coming up.
And so the third time I think I heard it, I was on a call with Sacramento City Unified School District. Their superintendent and leadership had done a book study with Montes and they wanted to buy 4,800 copies of the book. And then they invited me to do five consecutive keynotes. And it was at that point, I was like, “I need to know this person because whatever he’s doing, it’s way better than what I was doing for my own book.” And more importantly, I really want to hear the impact, the stories of impact, because a lot of times you write something you don’t know what’s happening because people aren’t writing back to you and saying… Not often anyway, but this is what I did with the book. So I just really wanted to learn more from him.
And when we sat down and had our first call, and just you… I mean, you all hear how he speaks, it’s like that all the time. There’s just philosophy flowing through his being. And after we got off the call, he did share a couple of stories of impact, and we got off the call and I just remember crying. I just cried. There was just some sort of release that happened for so many reasons that we probably don’t have enough time for in this podcast, but I just had so much gratitude because he is one of the most sincere human beings that I’ve ever encountered in my life. I left the call just thinking I need to be in relationship with this person more beyond just the book connection, which I know we’re here to talk about today, but I just want him in my life to continue on this healing journey together because it was magical. And then from there, we’ve formed a relationship and hopefully my hope is to continue to work together.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Great. All right, well, let’s get into this book, which apparently is all the medicine that we need.
So Michelle, when you sat down to write this book, what or who inspired you to write it? And why pocket-size? Because that was a very conscious choice for you. Can you just walk us through how you got there?

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Sure. Yes. So my dissertation research focused on cultivating culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy in novice and veteran teachers. And I learned so much during that research, but I realized the chances of any classroom teacher actually reading my dissertation were very… Actually the chances of anyone reading my dissertation was very, very low. And when I was teaching, I remember not having a ton of time to read lengthy books that were 90% theory and 10% application. So I wanted to write a book for educators who already agreed with the theory. They are already bought in, they understand the importance of culturally responsive pedagogy and liberatory education, but they just needed more support on the application. So I thought, “Okay, I’ll create a what, why, how guide, and I think that’ll just be helpful for educators.”
And at the time, I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book How to Love. And for those of you who haven’t read it, it’s a very small pocket-sized book. So I knew I wanted Liberate to be similar to that. I wanted it to be pocket-sized and powerful in the same ways that How to Love was for me when I read it. I’m not comparing myself to Thich Nhat Hanh, by the way, because he is who he is.
And so yeah, I wanted it to be something that teachers could just pull out of their pocket or their bag and go to for resources. It was imperfect in many ways because I suggest a lot of resources that you can’t really click on in a paper book, but now the ebook is available so people can actually click on the links and it’s a much more easeful process.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Amazing. And Montes created this beautiful study guide that links to all those things too, which I was stunned by when I-

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Yes, I’m so glad you brought that up because that came up in the intake calls with people. They were like, “Oh yeah, and he created a study guide.” I was like, “He created a study…” I didn’t even create a study guide for my own book, and he created one better than I could have made. It has all of these text protocols and discussion prompts, and it just walks folks through it in such beautiful ways. And I’m so glad that it’s available and out there for people to download for free.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
I mean, Michelle, I love that each chapter from Liberating Your Consciousness to Liberating Your Classroom, to Liberating Your Communication, as you said, it provides folks with a really clear what, why, how with concrete strategies. And there were a few things that I wanted to just call out throughout this podcast, but one of them was, for example, in the chapter on Liberating Your Classroom, you talk about ways we can support young people to navigate the inevitable conflicts that come from collaborative classrooms, but also how we can invite caregivers into the space. And in the chapter on Deficit Thinking, you talk about the need to liberate the bias we have about students’ cognitive capacities or what we think they can do and resist that temptation to over scaffold and lower rigor.
One of my favorite quotes from the book, I actually dogeared it, I think I’ve written it on Post-Its, of which there are many like that. But the one thing you wrote was, “Competence, not compliments, builds confidence.” Can you say more about that idea and how it applies to adults as well?

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Sure. And I think I first heard a variation of that phrase from our friend and colleague, Ron Berger, from EL Education. I don’t think I attributed him in the book, so I’m going to attribute him on this podcast. But he’s a dear friend, so I know he’s fine. But I heard a variation of that phrase from him.
And in Bell Hooks book, All About Love, she shares that one of the most loving things we can do is participate in another human being’s personal and spiritual growth. And I think that extends itself to professional growth as well. And so if we just go around flattering people, whether it’s young people or adults, just to make them feel better without actually building their capacity to actually do better and be better, we aren’t serving anyone. And so once a person has successful iterations of doing something that was challenging at first, they become more confident in doing that thing. So the question is, how do we support one another through that productive struggle, even in adult learning?
And I have a concrete example of this, improvement reviews, because I know many of our listeners are continuous improvement folks. In the beginning when I first became an improvement reviewer, I did not feel confident in that role at all. But people like you, Stacey and Ryan Gallagher and Ben Daly, you’re all telling me you’re so great at giving me all kinds of compliments. But that didn’t matter. Those compliments, I mean, they mattered, they felt good, but I didn’t feel confident. So those compliments didn’t shift my confidence in being an improvement reviewer, right?
What helped with that was multiple iterations. The more I did improvement reviews and learned my own process and approach, the more confident I became at doing improvement reviews.
Now don’t go crazy, Stacey, because I know now you’ll be signing me up to do more, but I’m getting there. And so that’s just a great example of compliments were happening, but that didn’t change my confidence. I had to actually grow through it by having the experience and getting better at it.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Yeah, that makes total sense. And at any point, either of you, feel free to just jump in, build on. Feel free to cut me off too.

David Montes de Oca:
So yeah, I’m going to thank you.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Do it. Do it.

David Montes de Oca:
Right now. I’m doing it.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Yeah.

David Montes de Oca:
Okay. So first, and this, I’ll just say it dovetails out of the introduction, is that it’s already been evident that there’s a level of deep synergy that has presented itself through Michelle in so many ways. So I’ll just say one of the books that I recommend and have recently recommended to a superintendent who is in the leader’s own attempt to try to embody love in their organization, How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh.
This idea of the power of a pocket-sized space for learning is transformational. I’ll just say absolutely on par in terms of changing hearts and minds. So Michelle right up there with brother Thich Nhat Hanh. But also on that level is recognizing this idea that part of confronting the brutal facts of our current reality is that we do need to improve, that there are areas for our own growth, that there are ways for us to become our higher self. And so this idea really of remaining unwaveringly hopeful is that we can become our better self. And exactly through this idea, there’s a Buddhist nun, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, who talks all about this idea of you say it’s an obstacle, it’s an obstacle. You say it’s an opportunity, it’s an opportunity. And that everyone, absolutely everyone can be your teacher. And most particularly, it’s those folks who are willing to give you critique and to tell you that you’re doing it wrong, that those are your most beloved teachers.
So I just want to totally affirm and validate what Michelle’s sharing in light of that. And I’ll acknowledge too that the heart of that is also the type of individual work and then group work that’s happening in some of this district transformation work that I’ve been super blessed to be able to be a part of, is the same idea of how do we get comfortable with creating opportunity and space for us to grow and transform, which absolutely requires these feedback loops. So the opportunity to leverage these feedback loops is huge. So thank you for letting me just jump in on that, especially when you named that text that I just thought about, like, “Wait a minute. I have literally invited the same set of leadership hands to have in, one, How to love, and in the other, Liberate.”

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Oh, my goodness. Chills. Chills, friends. Chills. Thank you for sharing that.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
I mean, one thing that’s becoming very clear to me, we talk a lot about love at High Tech High. And I think it’s already clear you both kind of embody this deep love as something that holds but also pushes. Like, if it’s not pushing, it’s not deep love. And so I just love that.
I also just want to name that one of the other things I really appreciate about your book, Michelle, is that you’re offering lots of practical strategies. Somebody can pick up the book, whether they’re a human, a parent, an educator, read it for five minutes, have something meaningful to apply tomorrow. But you’re also really pushing on ways of being, which has come up already. And you’re not just helping us find ways of working faster or smarter, like, “Be better in the capitalist economy.” But Montes, as you said last time we spoke, you’re supporting us in getting more present and going deeper. And I think to be able to do both of those things in such a short approachable text is one of the things that makes this book so unique and impactful.
And Montes, you referred to Michelle’s book as embryonic last time we spoke. Can you say more about what you meant by that?

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah. So I’ll also couple that with what I recall saying together with that assertion, which is this enjoyable interaction I have with folks who are reading the text, especially for the first time, and all of the extraordinary insights that emerge immediately that give us the permission to say, not a single word is spared in this text.
So just as you laid out right now, the power to put together the kinds of ideas in ways that are applicable and tangible and immediately relevant for individuals’ work in schools and in school systems is a gift. And it’s accomplished because no word is spared.
I think about the idea of embryonic as really know the embryo fundamentally begins at the point of fertilization. So this idea of connection, it’s really this idea of like you connect with this book and then the possibilities are infinite.
There’s a principal in Oakland who has taken up this text with their instructional leadership team as part of the… It is the driving force currently of their professional learning on a monthly basis with their staff. And I get reports back about how they’re engaging with the text and they initiated the text because the principal’s looking for ways to decenter whiteness. This is a school of predominantly white educators with an African-American female principal who is trying to think about how to engage in this extraordinarily challenging topic and where to start. And so we had an opportunity to meet with that ILT and to unpack ways in which they could use this text. And I get these report backs and this principal’s like, “I’m going downtown and letting them know we definitely need more windows and mirrors in this curriculum.”
And all the ways that she has talked about the way this book has transformed her thinking, and you begin to realize the many layers of liberation that we require that we aren’t even aware of. In fact, it’s oftentimes not to the moment it’s liberated we even discover something in there was trying to get out. So in the spirit of the way Michelle talks about in liberating your curriculum, this idea of increasing windows and mirrors has absolutely resonated with this site. She wants windows and mirrors all over town, I’ll just say. So in the spirit of that, I’ve been excited to think about the embryonic nature of this text because of the way that it emerges out of the contact that we make with it.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. And Michelle, are there ideas from the book that you’ve seen be most impactful or particular moments that stand out for you?

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Montes has way more stories of impact because he’s actually on the ground with the people who are using it and learning from it. But I do get to have some touch points with readers.
So in the communities I’ve worked with, people who are doing the Liberate, the series, it’s a series that’s based on the book, and in the courses I teach, I would say the most impactful, it varies. The most impactful chapter varies, but it often corresponds with whatever practice that person has either not tried out yet, not embodied, or they just aren’t experiencing competence in that particular area yet. So you might have a person who reads the Liberate Your Curriculum chapter and they say, “Oh, okay, I’m already doing most of this. I feel really validated.” But when they get to the Liberate Your Cognitive Capacity bias chapter, they feel all types of conviction because they realize the deficit thinking that they’re holding about young people the sort of blaming mentality that they might have.
And so it just really varies depending on what the person is dealing with. But if I had to choose one chapter that is very impactful, it is the Liberate Your Consciousness chapter because you actually can’t… Until you’re ready, willing and able to do that one, it makes it really challenging to follow through with the rest of the chapters, the rest of the liberation practices, because we’ve got to be made aware, to Montes’ point, in order to be able to interrupt any inequitable practices or oppressive practices or ways of being and thinking that we’re holding onto.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
I was also curious, and I want to ask you both this question, just which of the lessons in your book do you find most personally challenging and why?

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah, I’ll jump in. So one of the things that… And in fact this is, I will say, does go back to this first chapter on Liberating Your Consciousness. And the reason I feel that way is because it is very hard to go through a full waking day and not experience the unbelievable onslaught of messaging and conditioning and reinforcement and demand of us to show up in ways that just fundamentally reinforce a sheep-old mentality and the profound reductivism of our critical thinking and our ability to sort of appreciate the complexity of our life and our relationships and what’s unfolding.
And so when I think about the Liberate your Consciousness, we’re really asking folks to open wide up to the breadth of that complexity and to see the breadth of interconnectedness and interdependence that we have that of course our current reality doesn’t want us to be aware of. Because embedded in all of that is leverage, places where we can get ourselves involved in some kind of way that will interrupt that complex functioning system that is, of course, producing the current realities that we’re experiencing perfectly.
And so the invitation, I’d say, is just this appreciation that this first chapter is profound on many levels. It is inviting us to recognize that’s what’s happening to us. And the awareness of that gives us an opportunity to essentially assume a posture of openness and a posture of a sense of willingness to see the possibilities. So then, as you… I start to say peruse, and I’m like, “You’re going to do more than peruse.” But as you move through these additional chapters and engage in that content, you’re being invited in every step to be open to the complexity of our reality. And that’s, again, getting back to confront the brutal facts of our current reality, it’s not simple, it’s complex. That’s a brutal fact. We have to respect that because we get so desirous of this really tidy and clean causal relationship, and everything’s linear, and this must lead to this, must lead to that. And of course, life just doesn’t work that way.
But when we get invited in to recognize that and this idea of liberate your consciousness, I feel like it is that. It’s a liberation from this hallucination of control and this idea that things will absolutely play out a certain kind of way if I can just plan it well. And so I’d say as an individual who’s constantly working on that, that is an area of continuous challenge, is how to maintain a liberated consciousness in a world that wants to keep it super closed and narrow.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
I double click on that. I just underline it, highlight, circle it. Yes, it’s so similar for me. And it’s not just because I want to be best friends with Montes, but I would say before I wrote Liberate, I struggled with all of the constructs I write about when I was a classroom teacher. I just didn’t know any better, right, because that consciousness wasn’t there. My consciousness wasn’t liberated enough for me to even be aware of the lack of liberatory approaches that were taking place in my classroom.
For example, my curriculum was really inclusive of people of color, but there wasn’t a lot of representation of neurodiverse communities or LGBTQ+ communities until that awareness happened and then the interruption that Montes is describing takes place, and then you do something different. You change your behavior.
And I would say when I was a classroom teacher, cognitive capacity bias, that impacted my expectations of young people. And Stacey’s heard the story of my student, Eddie, who really he was an emergent bilingual and he really wanted to take my course for honors. And because I was dealing with the deficit thinking that Zaretta Hammond calls Pobrecito syndrome, in my mind I was like, “Okay, he has an A right now in the non-honors track, and I want to protect that for him.” Because the honors course had a lot more writing, a lot more reading. And so in my mind, I was trying to protect him from that and saying, “Are you sure? Because it’s going to be this much work.” And that was my own cognitive capacity bias and limited belief about what Eddie could accomplish.
And I so appreciate that he pushed back and was like, “No, I can do this.” Because it put me in check like, “Wait, what are you doing? This kid actually wants challenge and he’s asking for it and you’re trying to ‘protect’ him.” And it was just such a wake-up call for me. And I never ever did that again after that experience. And so Eddie and I, he did sign up for honors. We set out a plan where he would submit everything ahead of the due date. We would meet together to work on things so that when it was due, he could feel successful. We did all the things.
I’m just so grateful that he forgave me for that lapse in my own judgment. And I think I’m not the only teacher who does that, right? We sometimes will lower rigor because we’re thinking about people’s home lives. So that is not doing our young people service. It is not helping them grow. It’s not helping them learn. And so everybody knows Eddie and I are really good friends now. We’ve done karaoke together, we’ve repaired that relationship. We actually started a group, his senior year called Latinos Unidos where we supported 9th grade Latino boys in their own academic development and things like that. So it’s not like when we make these mistakes. Because as you read, you might realize, “Oh my gosh, I did this.” If you read the Liberate Your Communication chapter, you realize like, “Oh, I misgendered this person, or I use this language that wasn’t inclusive.” And it can kind of spin you into a place of potential shame and blame spiral. Don’t stay there, right? Visit there for a moment and then move forward because you staying in that shame is not serving anyone.
So as soon as I had the opportunity to repair, you repair and then you move forward, right? And then you hopefully do right by the next young person. So you’re going to read this book and you might find those spaces where you feel like you’re falling short, but that’s just an opportunity, just like Montes was saying earlier, right? This isn’t an obstacle. It’s an opportunity for you to do something different, right? So give yourself grace and then be able to move forward.
I’m not even sure if I answered your question, Stacey.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
You did. You did.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Oh, great.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
No. And I think one of the things, I mean, that I already knew I appreciated about you, Michelle, but that I’m also learning, I really appreciate about you, Montes, is just I feel like you both have a superpower in terms of your willingness to be vulnerable, share moments from your own life where you struggled or fell short, and then what you learned and did as a result. So I just really appreciate that. It’s one of the reasons why I love Michelle’s podcast so much because there’s a lot of that. But I just want to appreciate both of you for that.
Montes, this one is for you because in our last conversation, you reflected on the idea that all improvement is change, but not all change is improvement, and the need for improvement to be in service of transformation. Can you say a little bit more about that and what leadership for that type of transformation looks like for you?

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll say I’m already holding several additional stories related to what Michelle just shared, so I’m going to find a way after this to also circle back to that.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Thanks. Great.

David Montes de Oca:
But this feels valuable and important to name. So stepping around and within the book, but to say a bit about the way that we’re approaching leader transformation. So part of the work for individuals, what we’re up to in our spaces with the school districts is this idea of self team and organization. So we’re working on all three of those simultaneously.
So I’ll just say regarding the individual or the self, there are specific traits that have been demonstrated through definitely the lived experiences I’ve had in the work and engaging with others around the work. And then there’s some good research that helps to back it all up too. But it’s this idea that one trait in the first and most important trait is the willingness to change.
I want to just tie that back to this idea of liberate your consciousness. In fact, even in the preface of the book you’re invited to ask yourself, have you done the work? And in many ways, my view is the most critical work is getting to the starting line of saying, “I am in the race of change. I am willing to change.” Because for so long, we can spend time just believing that we figured it out. And if the rest of the world would just get its act together, then we could have a party. And we don’t want to accept the fact that there are things about ourselves that need to change. So this willingness to change is essential. And that can be fostered in a number of ways. One of the key practices around that is reflection and spending time in meaningful reflection where you have a chance to see the relationship between your actions and the results of your actions. And then that can invite you to discover that there are some things you could do that might change the results of your actions. So willingness to change.
The second is humility, and humility and leadership. And this really is the opportunity to reinforce in your mind that everything that I think, everything that I believe is possibly wrong. And so this invitation to respect the intellectual humility that’s required to say every single idea, thought or belief I have is possibly wrong. So the practice of doing that is the embodiment in so many ways of humility.
The wonder twin to that is curiosity, curiosity to see the system as an ecosystem that is complex enough such that our view is definitely incomplete. So maintaining this humility, curiosity, persona of possibly wrong, definitely incomplete all the time. The amplification of that is, while this mantra possibly wrong, definitely incomplete is deeply embedded in the improvement world and continuous improvement, this idea of transformation really requires a level of commitment that that is an embodiment that’s going on all the time. In fact, it’s like when you least suspect it, you need to be the most humble and curious.
Okay, so then once you oriented towards that, now begins the hard part, which is learning by doing. Because we know that in complex systems, the only way to really understand them is to get inside and probe through learning by doing. So, the two additional traits that have demonstrated real power in that is perseverance, and perseverance in the face of adversity. This idea that we absolutely… And we hear it all the time, so many leaders and leadership stories tell us about this idea of getting back up on the horse, right? It’s not about how you fell down, it’s about how did you get up and the fact that you got up.
So this is of course in cycles of continuous improvement and fail forward fast. It’s all about that idea, perseverance and recognizing the commitment required. The last is this idea of self-discipline, which is really rooted in the idea of the willingness to do the right thing, even when it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable. And of course, the discipline part is particularly when it’s inconvenient and uncomfortable, not when it’s easy and natural, and who wouldn’t do it that way? It’s when it’s so hard to do that you’re nonetheless doing it because it’s the right thing to do. And this, in many ways, is asking good questions, apologizing, making your own shortcomings known and visible, the ability to spend the 55 minutes understanding the problem before you spend the five minutes solving it instead of the reverse, that is all about self-discipline.
So this idea of willingness to change, humility and leadership, curiosity to see the system, perseverance in the face of adversity and self-discipline to do the right thing when it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable, has been some key aspects of how to develop the individual to be able to lead towards transformation. I’ll leave it at that.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
This is so ridiculous. I have to tell everybody that when we were doing this at the beginning, we started by setting an intention. And Michelle’s intention was ease and flow. And Montes was like, “Oh my God. I was literally thinking those two same words.” And then I just had a similar moment, Montes, when you were speaking, when you were talking about it’s humility, curiosity, I am always talking about like, those are the two most important things if you’re a leader or an improver in any kind of way, having that humility and curiosity. And we often have this mantra on our team of like, good enough to get learning. Good enough to get learning, bias to action, bias to just get going because you’re going to learn if you get going. So I just love all of that.
And I am curious, when you think of those things you just named, how are you finding Michelle’s book to be supportive of people in the journey towards those things?

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah. Okay. So here, then we’ll take it to the next level, which is just talked about self, I’ll talk about team.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Great.

David Montes de Oca:
So this idea of recognizing that no transformational change that is enduring or of value has ever occurred outside of the collective. Anybody who’s trying to come and tell you some story about some individual, who all by themselves created some lasting, meaningful, sustainable change, better come with receipts because I have not seen evidence of that ever.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Thank you.

David Montes de Oca:
So all that to be said, that being said, together, what can’t we do? And that, the stories are voluminous around what is capable within the collective. So with that idea in mind, then it’s essential for us to figure out how do we show up in space together in ways that we can get the best out of each other so that the value of the collective is realized. And in that, and this should come as no surprise, and again, rooted in tons of firsthand experience and evidence also, backed by all kinds of good research, which is that essential to the effectiveness of teams is psychological safety.
And I lean a lot into Timothy Clark’s work on this idea of fostering a culture of rewarded vulnerability, is how you develop all of the levels needed of psychological safety, is a culture of rewarded vulnerability. And not unlike this idea that you’re either anti-racist or you’re racist. There really is no neutral.
The same is true about our vulnerability in our organizations. It’s either being rewarded or punished. There really is no neutral because even indifference itself is absolutely experienced as punishment. So doing nothing isn’t neutral. And again, we can say that about many aspects of our human condition, including racism. So too is this idea fighting racism. So too is this idea of creating a space for folks to be able to be wholly and completely themselves, is that we need to have spaces that are rewarding our vulnerability.
And so part of the practice of that is like, how do you foster a culture? Because acts of vulnerability are happening all of the time. And they’re not happening nearly as much as they need to be happening if we’re going to be operating in a transformational way. So we need to do more to create the conditions for folks to engage in acts of vulnerability.
I mentioned at the very beginning this idea that we’re supporting superintendents in the transformation of their districts to become learning organizations. All aspects of learning are acts of vulnerability because they’re tapping into what we don’t know, what we can’t do, where we’re not yet, right? And so all of that is full of vulnerability. So the idea of creating conditions for rewarding that is how do you create experiences where folks can take the risk and engage in acts of vulnerability and experience some form of reward?
So one of the ways that this… And I said one of the ways. Take out the one. Ways that this text is a source for that is we mentioned earlier this idea of the study guide. So having a tool that is a way to make accessible for folks to be able to engage with the text, use some text protocols or reflective prompts as Michelle was calling out and help to guide folks through that experience.
I’m going to double back actually to just acknowledge that we often hear at school-based engagements ideas like, “Oh, I wish the central office was reading this book. I wish the superintendent would read this book. I wish those district leaders would be having these kinds of conversations.” I will just tell you absolute firsthand, they’re totally right. It changes the game. It totally changes the game.
So in these spaces where this book gets an opportunity to be introduced in settings where you’re primarily dealing with superintendents and their senior leaders, this accessibility is a powerful tool. So the combination of course, the pocket-size nature of the book, and then the usefulness of this guide or any method that you create to allow a scaffolded access is super powerful because folks are moving really fast. Again, this idea of vulnerability already creates a context where there’s nerves around “getting it right.” So these are some things that scaffold.
Okay, so I can think about a team then where we initiated the book. We began to use the guide to help my facilitation of the first several chapters with this team. Then we hit the summer retreat, we’re halfway into the book. And now we flip the script and we have team members who are going to facilitate. And they’re invited to use the guide and use the protocol and the text. Okay, mind blow. They get involved in facilitating. And you’ve got a scenario I’ll describe where you’ve got an assistant superintendent who’s overseeing elementary schools, who’s facilitating a text to text discussion through a poem paired with the chapter that they’re reading single lines of that is about… This is in the Liberate your Cognitive… Remind me of the chapter, Liberate Your…

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
It’s probably my favorite.

David Montes de Oca:
… Cognitive Capacity Bias. Thank you. Okay. And the invitation for them to recognize the statements being read in this poem, paired with that chapter, and then gave them timers, got on a ranch and had them move about the ranch in pairs, telling their own stories of the ways in which this idea of this cognitive capacity bias has shown up for them in their own leadership work in the system. So they’re coming back rich with all this felt experience of this shared opportunity with their teammates to then unpack that in a group discussion.
You have the chief of business, even reading this book is becoming a mind blow. I’ll just say that leader has since partnered with the National Equity Project, has a national equity project and the entire business and services division engaged in deep meaningful work related to centering these ideas of equity within their business divisions. So Postscript, huge ongoing work around transformation there. She facilitates the discussion on the chapter of Liberate Your Communication. Tells the story of her Japanese last name, and its constant mispronunciation to the point of not even being pronounced and folks in rooms who are saying, “This is Mr. or Mrs. or Dr. Such and such,” and then only using her first name. And you can imagine the general humiliation that can come with that experience. And then facilitates a circle discussion, as we’re in circle, around this topic with this executive leadership team and beginning to hear others tell their stories.
Latino leadership in this group, for example, talking about the frustration on the mispronunciation of their names. And in fact, one Latino leader in the group assistant superintendent who, as you know, many Latinos have two last names. Oftentimes their entire name is turned into an acronym to make it easier and acknowledging the challenge of that and the offense of that. So the superintendent, after starting to hear some of these stories, now invites the entire circle, “I want everybody to pronounce your name the way you want us to say it, right?” So as this gets shared, the next morning in circle, another assistant superintendent, himself, an African-American male, apologizes to the Latino leader, acknowledging that he has been using the acronym as his own form of nickname endearment, but had no idea, of course, the offense that it was creating for her.
Apologies are good. Apologies in public with your colleagues and your boss is medicine. So this moment of just pausing and an apology, he had many opportunities to do that as a one-on-one outside that space, he chose to bring his apology into that space. That is rewarded vulnerability, especially for this Latina leader who was in with acknowledgement of all nerves in sharing this critique of the experience was hard. Okay, didn’t keep going.
So then during the same narration, another assistant superintendent who also happens to himself be an African-American male who has an Ethiopian last name acknowledges that he is, at the start of this school year now, going to tell the origin story of his name and the correct pronunciation. He has been in the system for decades. He’s going to communicate the correct pronunciation of his name, which ends up happening in a whole districtwide event as well as in a principal meeting where he supervises school site principals.
In that fall, we have a panel where we’re telling stories of transformation to a room of about a hundred folks involved in the strategic plan implementation within the district, all leaders within the central office, and we have this panel of leaders who are telling their stories. One of those leaders is the equivalent of their chief of police. He’s telling a story about how he has liberated his officers to go on a regular basis and read to preschoolers. And the transformative effect that has had on this police division in the district around their appreciation of the vision of the district and their commitment to it. Then he acknowledges that as part of this process of his own reflection and learning, he’s realizing how unique it is for this white male self-described conservative representing law enforcement telling stories of liberation about reading to preschoolers.
So then he looks across the room and he says to the assistant superintendent, African-American leader that I had mentioned in the circle who had decided he was going to tell the origin story and the correct pronunciation of his name, he said across to that leader, “I apologize. I apologize for pronouncing your name incorrectly. And more importantly, I apologize for the systems of oppression and supremacy that have allowed that to happen for 10 years without getting checked.”
Again, apologies are good. Apologies done in public are medicine. I’m just going to tell you, this all originates in facilitated discussions about these chapters put into the hands of these leaders themselves to create the ways in which they’re going to hold these stories and how that reinforces this idea of a culture of rewarded vulnerability. So stop there, but I’ll just offer, that’s been one of the key elements about how this book has helped to integrate these ideas into these spaces.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
I so appreciate all of those stories for so many reasons. One being that I think it’s really easy. We are so, as a culture, told to look for the solo hero story, that’s what gets lifted up,. And it really does a disservice to all of us who are trying to do the work of system change because the system takes more than one person. And I just really appreciate the emphasis on, if we do this work in community and we set the conditions where people can bring their whole humanity and that vulnerability is rewarded, people get to share their stories, they get to share grapples, they get to ask for help, they get to apologize, they get to accept apologies, how transformative that can be for adults and the young people that we’re all here to serve.
I want to, Michelle, I mean, one of the ideas you stress throughout your book, and obviously that we’ve all experienced too, is that the work of improvement and liberation is not a solo effort. We need community. And so I just want to invite you to share any additional thoughts on that or riff off of anything that Montes just shared.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Yes. Right now I’m trying to just navigate my emotions. Just hearing Montes share those stories is it’s making me feel a lot of great things, but mostly just gratitude. So in the same way that apologies publicly are important, I know I thanked you privately, Montes. And I just want to thank you publicly for the ways in which you’ve utilized this book to inspire transformation, be embryonic, whatever the right term is, but these ripples of transformation that are happening as a result of the work that you’re doing. And I’m just so grateful for it.
Okay, back to your question, Stacey. What I do appreciate about the group part, and I know we’ve been talking about humility a lot, and I’ve actually stopped using the term cultural proficiency because there’s no… I’m proficient and now I’ve checked the box and I’m done. And so I really love thinking about all of this work as cultural humility and just going into it with that curiosity. So I’m so glad that you both touched on that. And so when I’m thinking about liberation work being done in community, it’s because oppression is so massive. I mean, we know we are all currently living in a time where on a not even daily basis, it’s like on an hourly basis on some of these days where rights are being taken away or trying to be taken away more and more. So oppression is constantly moving and working, and we can’t carry all of that alone. So liberation in collectivity is important because we can spread it more, we can go further.
I’m always thinking about that geese formation and why they fly in that formation and why they go together. They actually cover 71% more. They can get 71% farther flying in that formation together than they can if one goose was just chilling on their own. And so that’s what I think about. And when I do freedom dreaming workshops, I often encourage folks to form Freedom Dream teams so that they can do the work together because for all the reasons that you both just talked about, it’s needed. We need each other not just to commiserate the horrible things that are happening, and not just for the idea sharing, but for the joy sharing, for the celebration. All of those things are so much better in community.
And what I love about what Sacramento City Unified School District is doing is they have… So after they bought the books, they now have a cohort or a couple cohorts of teachers who are going through the Liberate series. So for them, it’s not just the leadership reading it’s not just educators leading it. Now, how can we equip them even with these workshops? So there is this idea around cycles of inquiry that is a part of my Liberate workshop series where each month we’re holding each other lovingly accountable for trying out a particular practice. So in the month in between each sessions, we come back like, “What did you try out? How did it go?” And to use improvement language, what do you want to adapt, adapt, or abandon?
And so teachers are benefiting from one another’s support. And it goes back to the Joe McCannon quote that we say around here at High Tech High a lot, “Don’t just give the tools. Give people each other.” And so the more we can give people each other to lean on each other, do the work together, I think the more it will come to fruition.
And I’m just so grateful, again, that Montes is doing all this work to make it happen in ways because his reach and his access are beyond what I have from just sitting at home, emailing people, “Hey, read this book.” But the fact that he’s actually on the ground working with all of these beautiful humans to liberate education spaces is beautiful. And I just would love to see that happening everywhere all the time, all at once, all the things, especially now. We need it now.

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah. I’ll just acknowledge too, when a fire starts to burn, it starts to spread. And this experience that… Coming back to this idea of the collective and being in community, there’s so many books that we read all by ourselves, it’s so uncommon for us to read texts together. In fact, I had a quote. And I may have surfaced even in space that was connected to this book, but it is really been resonating for me, Adrienne Maree Brown. It talks about the more people imagined together and then stop from imagining into thinking about the structures and protocols of our society together, then more needs are attended to, and responding to a common text is a great way to do that. It’s a perfect quote because it totally frames that absolute experience.
So what happens is these teams, they’re first introduced to the text through the team, it’s through that that an individual on that team says, “I’m getting copies for everybody in my department. I’m getting copies for all the principals that I supervise. We’re getting copies for all of the teachers in our entire district.” These ideas of how that fire spreads really originates from, I’ll call it the hearth of the circle, right? It’s like when you’re able to be in space together and make meaning around the world that you’re living in through a common text is a powerful tool of transformation.
So I’ll just say, I didn’t myself make any suggestion or recommendation that any of these leaders carry this outside that circle the way that they have. And they absolutely and consistently have. I have yet to be in a space where we have had a district senior leadership team who has engaged in this text, and it has not overflowed in some kind of way, just as Michelle’s giving some examples of.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
All right. Well, one of the things… I have one more kind of meaty question, and then I just have some questions about what’s next for y’all, what are your final thoughts that you want to leave us with. But I do have one last meaty question for both of you, which is like, we’ve been talking about how important it is to do this work in community, and that community is not always synonymous with comfort. So we know these moments of cognitive dissonance or comfort can lead to the most impactful learning.
The circles that you’re describing, Montes, were not comfortable necessarily. And so in past conversations, you’ve spoken about the challenge of holding people through this journey of awakening, knowing that people are coming to community from different places and in different spaces. And so can you say more about that? How do you navigate holding people through that journey of awakening when people are in really different spots?

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. And I’ll just say, this is bringing me back to the statements earlier about this idea of willingness to change, humility, curiosity, perseverance and self-discipline. That is essential for me to embody and hold on to.
So regularly as I’m facilitating, preparing to facilitate, doing planning and collaborative planning is thinking about, I am possibly wrong, definitely incomplete. And the willingness to change is there, so reflection is a key part of that practice. But this idea then of perseverance and self-discipline, it is the right thing to do, that we get encircled together. It is the right thing to do that we slow down so that we can fully and completely listen to one another.
And quite frankly, when we’re slowed down enough, be able to more effectively listen to ourselves. We talk a lot about this idea of permission to speak in first draft. And the ability to embody that really is to respect what’s coming out of your mouth is first draft, right? Now, how do you feel about it? What do you think? You just heard yourself say it. Where is that taking you, right? Slowing down to listen just enough so you can notice. “What the heck did I just say right now? What just came out of my mouth?” And the ability to be in space for that.
So I say that to say that perseverance and self-discipline contrasted with the early stages of feedback forms that are submitted in the group facilitation that happens, invariably you would look back. On any of these groups, you’d look back at that feedback and be like, “Whew, why aren’t you running?” Folks are having a hard time with this. This is scary for them. So it’s like there is good reason. And it’s not just the form. You get the grapevine also that sort of circles around. It can leave you feeling like, “Oh, I need to change it up here. I need to slow it down. I need to maybe go back to the more action-oriented, planning-oriented, getting stuff done oriented, doing the real work oriented feedback that you often receive. Why isn’t that happening?”
The perseverance and the self-discipline nonetheless, and a strong leader who’s willing to continue to hold open a space for that, when I say that, I’m referring to folks like superintendents or deputy superintendents or chief academic officers who oftentimes are the leaders of these teams. Their courage is critical. That then creates a space to persevere because we see comfort. And so the discomfort of course is disorienting and painful, but the new can get normalized. And when you normalize the new, you get back to comfort. So now it’s comfortable to have conversations about race. It’s comfortable to have conversations about vulnerability. You start to feel a sense of familiarity. That can never happen overnight. Things don’t become familiar overnight. That’s called a surprise. That’s the opposite of familiar.
Over time, surprises become familiar. So the idea of perseverance is self-discipline is allow for that time, require that time, take the time, keep coming back to it. So that has been a helpful attitude in many ways to come at that and also a chance for me to have my own stories of the practicing of those different traits so that when I’m helping others to develop those traits, also I can have my narrative too.
And then I’ll just name really quickly that what you might see is, if I were to pick one thing, is this idea of generative listening. This idea of listening with an open mind, an open heart, and an open will. An open mind is one that recognizes the voice of judgment is what we need to suspend. And so we’re practicing unconditional witnessing, unconditional witnessing. No filters whatsoever. Nothing is good, bad, right, wrong. You are taking it all in, open mind.
Open heart is about being able to stand in someone else’s shoes and experience true empathy. In order to do that, you need to suspend the voice of cynicism and this idea that there’s something about this person that you can’t trust or that isn’t right or that they don’t want to do. And that requires the embodiment of unconditional love. You are more like me than not like me. This idea of unconditional love is a chance for you to fully respect that human on the other side of the conversation.
And then this idea of open will is a willingness to recognize that there is something in this room that is seeking to be born and that we need to create the conditions to suspend the voice of fear about what is this going to say about me, about my job, my responsibilities, this person, what we can accomplish, what might happen, all the unintended consequences. And we do that by having unconditional confidence that the universe is participating right now and that the universe is always seeking balance. And the imbalance is all of this inequity and all of this injustice and all of this oppression. And the universe is at play and something is seeking to be born here, and I have unconditional confidence in that. Everything I’ve ever wanted is on the other side of this fear.
So this idea of generative listening is like, how do I show up with a total open mind, open heart, open will so that we’re prepared to do what is seeking to be done for this emerging future. So I would say generative listening is probably one of the, if I was to offer any invitation, to step into when trying to lead and hold folks in the challenging parts of this journey.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Oh my gosh, Stacey, I don’t know about you, but I want to be facilitated by Montes right now. Where are you going to be in San Diego? I don’t even care what the session is about or on, I just know whatever it is I’m going to level up in my life. So we need to make that happen. I don’t know how, but Stacey, we need to get Montes to San Diego.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
I just now have a Montes quote on a Post-It next to me, “Everything I’ve ever wanted is on the other side of this fear.” I’m going to put that all over the place.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Put that on a t-shirt. Oh my goodness. I mean…

David Montes de Oca:
And like, everything big borrowed and stolen. So just know that’s probably not an original thought. That’s emerged in the last a hundred years.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Exactly.

David Montes de Oca:
It’s all I could think of.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
I’m citing you.

David Montes de Oca:
I’m the vessel for that [inaudible 01:06:19].

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Well, Michelle, I have a last question for you as well that is very in line with this because in your book you write a lot about compassionate curiosity. And one of my favorite chapters in the book is the one about liberating your conduct constructs or how we interpret other people’s behavior, especially when we don’t like it.
You write that we need to utilize compassionate curiosity to get at the root cause of disruptive and/or destructive behavior by knowing our young people. Every behavior expresses a need. And it falls to the adults in the learning environment to discern and respond to that need. And when I read this, I was like, “This applies to all of us. This is not just young people. This applies to all of us.” And this kind of embodies the curiosity and the generative listening that, Montes, you just spoke to.
And so I’d love to just hear you riff on how do you see this applying to adults as well and how we can show up for each other as colleagues, especially when it’s hard?

Dr Michelle Pledger:
I love this question because when it comes to adults, I’ve realized that I don’t have the same level of patience, understanding, grace that I gave to young people when I taught K12, because part of me is always like, “At your big age, you should know how to act.” But I know I have to remind myself constantly that I need to bring that same compassionate curiosity to my adult relationships as well.
And Kwame Christian, he has a compassionate curiosity framework that I love because in many ways, adults act like children, myself included. And Mel Robbins talks about this in her latest book, the Let Them Theory. She talks about most adults just act like eight-year olds. They have tantrums, they give you the silent treatment, all types of things. But when I’m my best self and I am experiencing an adult that is presenting unexpected or undesirable behavior, I try to practice these three As. First, I try to check my assumptions because I’ll come into something just assuming that they feel this way, they’re acting this way because of X. So I have to ask myself questions like, “Okay. What else might be true? What are other interpretations of this behavior? What else could be going on?”
And then my second A is ask questions. I have to get curious with compassion, but get curious of what’s going on. And then the third A is actions. Then we can figure out how to move forward. There was a colleague one time that I felt very micromanaged by. And my assumptions were, “Okay, this person doesn’t trust that I can do my job, doesn’t believe that I’m capable of this work. So I had all these assumptions and it was just making me angry.” And then so in order to interrupt that, I had to go ask questions like, “Hey, I noticed you’re constantly checking up on me. This is how it’s making me feel. What’s going on here?” And then I learned this person’s way of feeling her own control of certain things is to do that.
So it was really less about me and my work and what I was producing. It had a lot more to do with her and her ways of being. But then because we were able to have that conversation, then we could co-create a new way of operating because that was not working for me. But if I had just gotten angry and not gotten to the ask questions and action part and I just stayed in my assumptions, then it would have continued to damage our relationship. But now our relationship is super strong.
And Esther Perel was talking about this in a podcast that a lot of times people are not fighting over something. They’re fighting for something. And so if you can get clear on that.
And Stacey, I actually remember one time, hopefully you don’t mind me sharing this, we were having a minor disagreement about phrasing in a workshop where I wanted to explain control charts and P charts one way, and you wanted to explain them another. And I just couldn’t understand why. And I was just like, “Ugh.” So I had to get curious. I was like, “I just need to understand why you think this is the way to explain it.” And so we both shared our whys. And in that conversation, not only was I able to get clear on your why and share my why, but it also surfaced the biases that were at play for both of us. In that situation, I had a bias towards accuracy. I was like, “They need to know the exact definition and differences of control charts and P charts because they just need to know that.” And you had a bias towards simplicity because the workshop wasn’t about them being experts at control charts and P charts. It was about understanding variation.
And so you were like, “No, let’s just simplify it so that we won’t confuse them in the workshop,” which totally made sense. And it wasn’t about who was right or wrong, it was just about understanding where are we coming from, what’s that intentionality?
So I do believe that compassionate curiosity gets you to clarity. And then that clarity gets you to a generative solution. And yes, I alliterated that.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Of course you did. Of course you did.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
I made it alliterative.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. [inaudible 01:11:18].

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Yeah. So compassionate curiosity gets you to clarity. And then that clarity can get you to a generative solution. So that’s how I’ve been using it with adults.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
I just have to say, fans of alliteration, if you have not yet read Michelle’s book, you have met your match because so much good alliteration.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Alliteration addiction, right?

David Montes de Oca:
Mm-hmm. [inaudible 01:11:43].

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Okay, so I know you both are always looking forward. What is incubating for each of you right now?

David Montes de Oca:
I’ll offer that a number of things are centered on two areas in particular. One is actually documentation and writing related to the work that we’ve been up to in a number of the settings and a pretty strong desire to figure out some of the mediums that we could use for that in terms of while a book is perhaps one version of that, certainly briefs and/or other mechanisms for storytelling that we can create. So there’s a lot of energy around trying to think about how to capture aspects of these stories. So that’s an area. And of course with experts like yourselves out in the world, I would love to find ways to collaborate on that. So that’s one in general around that storytelling.
The other is this work that we’ve been kicking off in different ways. And so, in the spirit of getting more present and going deeper, one is around this move, and a lot of this comes out of the study of some real great practitioners who’ve used these in many different fields, but for which education oftentimes escapes it. Moving from ecosystem to ecosystem leadership is a whole different way of taking the structures that we have that it really reinforce these mentalities of individualism and competition and really transforming them into places where we really are co-sensing and co-creating together.
And so thinking about some of the systematic ways that we can go about doing that, we’re starting to get some good examples, but trying to take that to the next level. And for places that are at the emerging stage of that, how to move to the intermediate around this idea of ecosystem to ecosystem leadership.
And then there are organizational learning disabilities that are powerful to notice and appreciate and understand and respond to. And so that’s an area of ongoing development for our facilitation and coaching, is this idea of how to educate and make visible these organizational learning disabilities. So an example of that would be when we walk around with a mentality that I am my position. I’m not all these other things going on around here, I am my position, and that is the only thing I should assume responsibility for. The consequences of what I’m up to for the system, it’s not my responsibility. Ain’t my position. And instead shifting the mentality to, what is mine to do and expanding completely the notion that it isn’t about this particular job description or the set of tasks or requirements. It’s about being so completely present that you’re open and willing to ask yourself, “Okay, given all this, what is mine to do?” And allowing for yourself to accept responsibility for the consequences of your role in the system and the actions that follow.
And that’s just one, this one organizational learning disability, that mindset. There are several others. So trying to expand the role of those in our learning spaces is sort of the next frontier. So if I’m being candid, those are some areas that will be headlines hopefully for the future.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Love it. You’ll have to invite Michelle and I to whatever PDs or sessions you’re leading on those.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Yes, I want to go too.

David Montes de Oca:
Or invite you to co-design them with me. That would be even better.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
Even better. I love that, from ecosystem to ecosystem. There’s so much in there. Going after Montes in any capacity is just really challenging. But here’s what I’m up to, folks. Here’s what’s incubating for me. The audiobook of Liberate is coming out next month. And then unapologetic and uninterrupted season one of the podcast, I’ll be making that into a book because I have a lot of friends and people who actually don’t listen to podcasts, which I don’t understand because I love a podcast, but I get it. But I don’t want people who don’t listen to a podcast to miss out on the subject matter of that book. So that is all about living a life of authenticity, freedom, and joy on purpose. And so each chapter is around like, liberate your emotions, liberate your vulnerability, liberate your risk taking. So it’s basically the podcast episodes, but in book format. So I’m excited about that.
And then a new pocket-size guide that I’m working on, I won’t say the title yet because I haven’t copyrighted it yet, but it is really going to focus on cultivating spaces of trust, belonging, and loving accountability. A lot of what we’re talking about here, but how to guide to be able to do that for not just classroom educators. But now that I know that even though I intended Liberate to be for classroom educators, but it is working out for school leadership superintendents and things like that. Montes is instrumental in helping me see and think bigger and wider around how some of the things I write about and talk about can be applicable to a wide variety of people and not even just in education. So that’ll be the next pocket guide coming up.
But most importantly, I want to collaborate and do something with Montes. I don’t know what it’s going to be. It could be around this story capture, but I just know we are meant to be in each other’s lives and I’m meant to learn more from and with him, you. I don’t know why I’m saying him. You’re right here. So I also just want to thank you again for your willingness to be a part of this podcast.
And thank you, Stacey, so much for these excellent questions. I can’t wait to go back and listen and take even more notes on all of the wisdom that both of you are sharing. So thank you so much. I’m so grateful.

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Any final words or additional thoughts that either of you want to leave us with, Michelle? Just like, did it preempted-

David Montes de Oca:
Yeah. I know, and that’s perfect because I’m going to follow with both a final thought and then appreciation. I am part of an indigenous dance and ceremonial community. And one of the things that these times have really helped to reinforce is this idea that we’ve heard this beautiful quote, acknowledging that they tried to bury us and they didn’t know we were seeds.
And as we’re moving forward, this idea of how do we behave more like a seed than a stone and how do we show up in these times? And what has emerged in an effort to try to make sense and really even study the role of seeds is I’m going to offer these five things, embrace the darkness, trust the process, turn obstacles into opportunities, stay resilient and start small, dream big. Now, all of that, as I’ve had a chance to witness, is the nature of seeds, and that’s absolutely what we are. So we just have to show up to that nature in this moment because these are those moments that invite us to question whether or not everything we’ve dreamed for is possible. And it totally is because we stand on the shoulders of so many others who’ve already taught us that it’s absolutely possible.
And then I just want to say, how does it happen? It happens with phone calls like these, Zoom call, podcast conversations that are bringing folks together in ways that I just have to say, having gone back and had a chance to listen to the numerous types of podcasts that, Stacey, you’ve been leading on for very long time and brought really wonderful voices out into the open for us to benefit from.
But then the invitation to be in this space, I’ll just say the level of honor and privilege that I feel is immeasurable. I said at the beginning. Now, again, at the end, I’ll just say I want to deeply thank you both even for this individual moment of getting a chance to spend time with the two of you this way. And then our paths have so much to offer. So I’m absolutely looking forward to the next, next. Thank you both so very much. And to all of you listeners, absolutely build your practice. You may be uncomfortable now listening to podcasts, but it’s going to become familiar, and then you won’t know what you could ever do without it.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
The new will become normalized.

Dr Michelle Pledger:
The new will become normalized. Then Montes will write a book because that’s what I’m waiting for.

David Montes de Oca:
Fabulous.

Dr. Stacey Caillier:
Thank you both.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. Huge thanks to Stacey, Michelle, and Montes for this conversation. You can find links to Michelle’s book and her podcast in the show notes. Thanks for listening.