The Grit & Grace Leadership Podcast

Grief to Growth & Empowering Resilience in Kids with Lindsay Tucker

• Jen Kelly • Season 2 • Episode 7

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In this compelling episode, hosts Jen and Lindsay delve deep into the heart of resilience, exploring how the challenges we face in early life can sculpt a spirit of endurance and growth. Lindsay Tucker, a seasoned special education teacher with over a decade of experience, shares her personal journey of overcoming adversity, including the profound impact of losing her father at a young age. Together, Jen and Lindsay discuss the power of resilience in personal and professional development, offering insights into fostering this critical trait in children and adults alike.

Through a mix of heartfelt personal stories and professional expertise, this episode sheds light on the importance of navigating discomfort, the transformative potential of education, and the innovative teaching practices that can support all learners. Whether you're a parent, educator, or anyone looking to cultivate resilience in yourself and others, this conversation provides valuable principles and practical advice for empowering resilience in the face of life's challenges.

Key Points

  • Personal and professional perspective on loss and resilience
  • Practical strategies for developing resilience in children
  • Study featured on the Dr. Andrew Huberman Podcast (link here) on the impact of intelligence versus effort feedback on children's motivation and performance.


Join us for a deeply personal and insightful conversation on growth, overcoming adversity, and the enduring power of resilience. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn  for more practical tips, tools, and takeaways for your leadership journey.

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Jen:

Ever wonder how early life challenges sculpt the resilient spirit. Our guest, Lindsay Tucker, brings over a decade of experience as a special education teacher, with a background in leading kindergarten grade four and supporting multi-language learners.

Lindsay:

It's helping them navigate that discomfort and it's helping them recognize that it's okay to be uncomfortable and that it's okay to find things tricky and hard and it's okay to kind of not know what you're doing In this episode.

Jen:

We both share the deeply personal journey of losing our fathers and how it forged resilience. Additionally, lindsay brings her expertise as an educator to the forefront and we discuss fostering resilience in kids. This is a personal, heartfelt conversation on resilience, growth and the power of overcoming adversity. Let's dive in. Welcome to the podcast everyone. I am actually very excited for today's topic. We are going to speak about the power of resilience in personal and professional growth, and I'm sitting here with Lindsay, who really has an incredible backstory and we have a lot in common, both you and I. We're going to dig into how we form resilience, both for ourselves. How does that shape our personal growth over time? You bring such a magnificent perspective to the table because you are a teacher. My hope is that really people listening can take a lot away for themselves, but also, as we parent and mentor children, some fundamental principles as it relates to really empowering resilience in the kids. First and foremost, lindsay, let's just set the stage on your backstory.

Lindsay:

When I was five, my father passed away from a massive heart attack. He passed away July 2nd and he passed away during the night. I actually woke up to my mom at the hospital with my dad and I didn't know what was going on. I remember the day vividly. It was a beautiful sunny day and my mom had come home and she had to deliver the news that my dad had passed away. I remember not fully comprehending what it really meant, and my little brother was also there beside me and him being like is he just on a really long fishing trip? Trying to process all of that information at such a young age was so difficult.

Jen:

You were five, he was 42. My father also passed away at 42 from a heart attack.

Lindsay:

I was 16.

Jen:

I can't even begin to imagine how a five-year-old starts to process this. We wanted to pan back and think about how do these early experiences shape resilience in us? Where did resilience start to form as a trial?

Lindsay:

from what you can remember, this is a great question and I thought about it a lot, because at five did I really know what resilience was? I'm not sure I did, but as I age, my definition of resilience has really changed. When I was younger, I think what I did to protect myself and make my way through life was to just try and be good and to not cause too much trouble and to be kind and to be helpful. That really helped me get through what I needed to get through. As I got older, more into high school and university, my definition of resilience was kind of just plow through, work hard, get it done, reach your goals, don't give up, don't stop, and I had the energy to do it. Now, at 42, my definition of resilience has changed as well, where I recognize the need for rest and I recognize the need for reflection to help give me the confidence and the courage to make it through difficult moments.

Jen:

Just into discomfort early on as a kid. For me, I got comfortable in the uncomfortable, but it forged this. Push forward, work hard. The only person that's going to help you out is you, like you're a teacher, so did this any of this early day stuff influence you to become a teacher?

Lindsay:

Absolutely. So I really like your point around sitting in discomfort and I think that we have to sit in discomfort and whether that's a forced sit because of the traumatic events that happened, like the passing of my father, or because we choose to sit there in something that's difficult and we just don't want to walk away because you want to gain the lessons. So resilience is built when we sit and we spend time in discomfort and reflecting on discomfort. To build resiliency doesn't happen quickly. It takes a long time to really reflect on that discomfort and how it built resiliency in us. And I think about my students and building resilience. It's helping them navigate that discomfort and it's helping them recognize that it's okay to be uncomfortable and that it's okay to find things tricky and hard and it's okay to kind of not know what you're doing.

Lindsay:

And so when I think of special ed students and I think of some of the discomfort that they must face in the school system, really building up their resilience, to know that I have confidence in them, that they can accomplish certain things in the school system, is so important and that really hinges on the relationships that I create with them and it really is for me being so present and also really remembering to give a fresh start.

Lindsay:

And I think a fresh start is key for a number of reasons, because when we face difficult moments or difficult times, as a teacher I don't want to hang on to those. I can't really take things personally. It's recognizing that they're sitting in something that's uncomfortable, something behavior is a reflection of some uncomfortable situation that's happening, and my job as a teacher is to give them that fresh start, is to look at them with fresh eyes every single time I see them and to really try and support them through those difficult moments and to come back with a new perspective and a fresh start for them as they re-enter my room or my space. That really builds their confidence and it really helps them become resilient in the classroom.

Jen:

And what sort of innovative teaching practices are you applying in the classroom these days?

Lindsay:

One of the things that's interesting in education that's happening right now is something called the de-streaming model. Prior to this model, students were pulled out for extra support and that system has a lot of benefits. And this might be a controversial opinion or a hot topic for a lot of teachers, but I like the idea of the de-streaming and I love the idea of de-streaming when it's done well, because I really see the benefits. But it has to be done well and all teachers have to believe in the model and they all have to work together to make the de-streaming model work. And as we navigate through the new de-streaming, we're still figuring it out, so it's a bit messy and that's okay. We should function in a bit of messiness while we figure it out because that's where the learning happens. But ideally for me, de-streaming would be all of the students are in the same classroom and there's teachers that are supporting each other and supporting the students. So the benefit of de-streaming for me that I see is a confidence in the confidence in the children, because they're exposed to new learning, their social circles often grow, they are able to experience learning that maybe they wouldn't otherwise, because they're being pulled out, just teach specific things.

Lindsay:

So for me, de-streaming is, when done well and with support, is a model that is really beneficial to students. Why is this so controversial? It's difficult, and I recognize how difficult it is to do, and I recognize that it's not clean, in the sense that we're still trying to figure out what support would look like in the classroom. And do we even have enough support, like our teachers supported well enough to run this model and our students supported well enough to function in this model? So this isn't my own teaching strategy necessarily, but it's something that some of the boards are moving to that I believe will be a good model.

Jen:

It's fascinating and I don't understand really the old model or the new model.

Lindsay:

So I'll give you a personal example. So I was a student with a learning disability, and when you have a learning disability, it means that you have average intelligence, or this is how I would explain it you have average intelligence, but maybe you just don't learn like everybody else in the system. So sometimes the curriculum is more specific and tailored to exactly what I need it as a student. And then the other, the class, the whole class might be moving at a different pace. So with de-streaming, it means that all of the students are in the classroom all of the time, sort of being taught by the homeroom teacher or special education teacher like myself, and that there's a flow in the classroom where there's multiple entry points for all of the students. So instead of pulling me out for math and language, I would be in the classroom and there would be an entry point that I would be able to access the curriculum. And because the classroom is being taught to all of the students, if I met my expectations but I wanted to go further and try other things in the classroom, that would be available to me because there would be multiple entry points for all of the students, and so once I tried something, I could try something a little bit more difficult or try something new.

Lindsay:

So the de-streaming model is, for me, exciting because students are exposed to so much and they have the ability to learn from their peers. They have the ability to try things that maybe otherwise they wouldn't be trying. They're exposed to different types of thinking. I think a lot of learning comes from listening to your peers and how they think and sharing your thinking and working through your thinking. And oh, did that make sense, or was there a more efficient way to get there? And the de-streaming model for me, if I look down hopefully five, ten years it's this beautiful relationship between the teacher supporting the classroom, the students supporting each other, lots of learning going on that meets the needs of all of the students in the classroom and students really sharing and collaborating together. Are we there yet? No, is it messy at the beginning? Absolutely, but I think in that mess will come some growth and the growth will be really beneficial to a lot of students.

Jen:

Is this not how the world operates? You have to understand diversity of thinking, and so being exposed to that early on as a child is such a preparation for the future. I want to talk a little bit about kids and resilience and the role that feedback plays in their growth and development. There's a podcast that Andrew Huberman shared recently, and he talked about a study that was done, and the study's title is called Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Motivation and Performance, and it was performed by Dr Carol Dweck, and they measured what do kids do when faced with a problem set, and so the kids who received intelligence-based feedback when presented with a problem that they knew they could perform well on, or maybe an unknown or challenging problem, they tended to select problems that they knew they could do well on. The kids who received effort-based feedback when presented with problems that were difficult or hard, those kids tend to choose hard problems because they knew that they could learn something through that, and so I thought that was fascinating. It's so cool. So do you see this play out?

Lindsay:

in real life and let's talk about this. Yeah, for me this is so exciting. We want to see kids working hard, we want to see kids giving their best effort and we're so stuck sometimes on grades and we're so stuck on like did I get a percentage on my test? But really what I want to see is growth. I want to know that my students started somewhere and they made progress. And sometimes progress for kids looks different and it's hard to sometimes give a mark because their effort was so amazing. And where do I show them that? In a mark? But if I can give it to them through praise, through feedback, that's the most exciting thing for me as a teacher.

Lindsay:

Marks are important in some ways. I want to know that you are growing. Yeah, I want to know that the effort that you're putting into your work is because your the feedback has been around you making a change or you growing, or you seeing the results of your hard work. Yeah, and those are the life skills that go far beyond the 80 that you got in grade six that you're never going to remember.

Jen:

Yeah, not only is it important for children, but the study also suggested how you praise yourself as an adult. This way will significantly yield improved performance. So congratulating yourself on your hard efforts versus your results was another key takeaway for adults in resilience.

Lindsay:

I agree with Carol Dhuak in the sense that I like being praised for my effort versus the outcome. It's not always easy because the fallback is, you know, for my own children like, oh wow, you got a goal in hockey, but I didn't praise all the time that they spent shooting pucks in the garage, I didn't praise the the application of feedback that they got from my husband around how to make a shot, and that's just a personal example, but I just praise the end result and I want to remember to praise the actual journey to getting that goal, or the actual journey to getting their desired outcome.

Jen:

The theme that I still want to continue to kind of weave through here is the early day. What people some people would call trauma. You know, I lost my father young. You lost your father young. I think when you live through some of those experiences, don't necessarily fully see it as trauma, but gifts. What is your perspective on that?

Lindsay:

In those experiences of trauma, as hard as they are and as difficult as they are, there are these beautiful lessons or these beautiful gifts that somebody has given you through that trauma and I I want to recognize, like for me it's my mom. She, she, would carry this key chain and it said, just wing it. And it was a source of inspiration for me and also sometimes a source of stress. But from the gift that my mom gave to me through the trauma and watching her navigate, the trauma was that, as a woman and a person who's navigating the world and trying to be resilient, was that you know, have a plan. It doesn't always go accordingly. So shift your thinking, you know, persevere, try something new, but stay the course.

Lindsay:

And for me that's a gift that my mom gave me through watching her experience some trauma as a child. That is difficult and trauma is impacts your whole life. But I want to say, from the trauma can also come some beautiful gifts. But you have to be willing to open the gifts too Absolutely, and it's hard, and you have to be able to say how am I going to flip my brain to see the gifts that I got from it? And it doesn't happen immediately, it takes years, but I think it's so necessary to be able to say not only was I hurt, but I learned something and I gained some strength to be able to recognize from the trauma that your resilience came from gifts from somebody, something, somewhere, and for me it was my mother watching that. And for you, it was both.

Jen:

It was my father passed away when we were 16 and then 10 years later, my mother passed away, and so there was a journey through the 10 years once my father passed away.

Jen:

I would say I had a lot of resistance towards my mother in the beginning of that, but once she became ill I was on a fast track to heal with her because I knew I didn't have the time, and so there was a lot of gifts in that too. And I will say the gift for me is I was one of these people who I didn't want to feel my grief completely. I wanted to kind of muscle through with my intelligence and with my ambition, and the gift was you have to feel it all. And what I didn't know at the time and I've since learned is that the depths of my grief were equal of how much I can love. So I had so much grief, but I thought there was something wrong with me, like will this be the thing that never ends? And then someone, a great sort of therapist and healer, helped me see that the depths of your grief is actually the degree to which you love and care in this world.

Jen:

And so do not judge your grief as something that is hindering you. And once I got that, there was a couple of key lessons. I mean it's still unfolding. So this is the thing the gifts never stop right.

Lindsay:

They don't stop and the healing never stops and sometimes we think healing doesn't mean we don't feel sadness. Healing doesn't mean we don't have sorrow. Healing doesn't mean we're now okay with it. Healing means I'm making some progress, I'm holding space for this and I'm okay to hold space for it. I still getting ready for this podcast, chatting with my mom. I still cried about the death of my father 37 years ago. I still cry for maybe the experiences I didn't have.

Lindsay:

I don't think healing means we just move on. I think healing means we've learned to hold space and we think sometimes healing is so we just go up. But healing is also messy and healing for me is just holding space for the event. That's me too, and that's one of the things I've learned through teaching and trying to build resilience and through my childhood is that operating in messy is okay, operating and not being perfect is normal and okay. And sitting again, we go back to sort of sitting in that discomfort, sitting in the messiness, sitting in the imperfection of whatever it is in my surroundings and saying this is okay, I'm going to be here right now and this is okay. And in this messiness and in this imperfection and in this time of discomfort will come an enormous amount of growth, but in time I will know why. It was messy, imperfect and uncomfortable.

Jen:

And it's hard and I think you have just completed the podcast on a perfect note, and may we all sit in our own discomfort and messiness and apply that wisdom beautifully. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, and beyond words, for being so honest and open and vulnerable and sharing your story and the future, for teaching and how we can think about building a growth mindset that fosters resilience in our children, and so thank you for being here. That was great. Thank you, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn, where we transform the wisdom from our podcast into practical tips, tools and takeaways for your leadership journey. Find us at grit. grace. podcast. See you next week.