What It Takes to Repair Community Trust | Transformational Educators Ep. 17

What does it look like to lead a hurting school toward healing? 

In this episode of Transformational Educators, Dr. Matthew Flippen speaks with Julia Bielecki, award-winning education leader, former principal, and author of Leading with Grace, about rebuilding trust, navigating racial tension in schools, and leading with courage and compassion.

When Julia stepped into her first principalship in 2019, she quickly discovered the role was not about management or instructional plans. It was about repairing harm, restoring trust, and guiding a fractured community toward connection. In this powerful, story-driven conversation, she shares practical strategies for school culture transformation, servant leadership in education, and leading through crisis with integrity.

If you are an aspiring or current school leader who feels the weight of responsibility, isolation, or culture challenges, this episode will remind you that lasting change begins with relationships.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Why leadership in a hurting school begins with listening, not fixing
• How unresolved racial issues can fracture students, families, and staff
• The power of one on one relationship-building in rebuilding trust
• Three intentional questions that shaped Julia’s first year as principal
• How presence, communication, and connectedness became her leadership focus
• Why small daily actions create long-term cultural momentum
• How to move from crisis response to collaborative vision building
• What authentic apology and humility look like in school leadership
• A real story of a fractured parent relationship that became a thriving partnership

Chapters

00:00:00 - Coming up...
00:01:09 - Stepping into a first principalship
00:03:31 - “I had been selected to lead at this moment in time”
00:05:05 - Facing the weight of leadership responsibility
00:05:59 - How hurt fractured the staff and community
00:08:40 - Trusting instincts and leaning into connection
00:13:04 - Strategic leadership begins with relationships
00:16:41 - The three questions that shaped her first year
00:18:59 - Building connectedness in a large, divided campus
00:25:27 - Recognizing cultural momentum through small wins
00:28:43 - When the staff was ready to rebuild vision together
00:31:16 - A fractured parent relationship transformed
00:34:39 - Leading with authenticity, apology, and grace
00:36:01 - How to connect with Julia and her work

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Transcript

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I had been selected to lead at this moment in time. really for, their hopes in me to be able to repair harm That is Julia Bielecki Award-Winning Education Leader, former principal and author of leading with Grace. She stepped into her very first principalship and realized immediately the job was not about running a school, but about restoring trust. I asked them do you think I could do to make the biggest impact She did not rush to fix the community. She started by listening one on one, gathering honest perspectives and building trust through consistent presence. I needed to adapt and be able to face the situation that was in front of me. Today, she shares what it truly takes to lead with grace when trust is broken. Her presence and listening rebuild relationships and how school leaders can strengthen partnerships even in the most difficult moments. By the end of this conversation, you'll learn practical ways to rebuild trust, lead through complexity, and create a school culture grounded in care and clarity. I'm Doctor Matthew Flippin, and this is transformational educators. so set the stage for us. For our audience, we're going to talk about a time when you stepped into a new principalship. Was this your first, head principalship? This was my first prince, my very first principalship. Okay, fantastic. And it was an elementary school that was pretty large. Yes. Yeah. So I, in the summer of 2019, I was promoted to the position of principal in our, large suburban district here in the state of Maryland, where I live. And I was named the principal of an elementary school in a more rural part of our district, out in the western part of the county. And, the school was about 650 students in preschool through fifth grade. And so we had our traditional kindergarten through fifth grade program for elementary school. And in addition, we had a regional early childhood center serving preschool and pre-kindergarten age children. As well as a very new to the school academic life skills regional program for students with more intensive disabilities. And so there was there were really, two separate programs within that school, that made it really a unique and special place to be. Wow. So it sounds like. I mean, you must have had high hopes going in. It sounds like a really great opportunity to start. Right. It really was. And, you know, I think when you first get that opportunity, you reach this career milestone that you've been waiting for and working for, for a long time. You're excited and you're riding high, on that, promotion and that opportunity to go in and serve and hoping that you're going to, like, have a little bit of time to just enjoy those feelings. And perhaps that was, a bit of naive thinking on my part going into it, but that certainly where I was there at the beginning, and I quickly learned that, the real work starts immediately. Yes. Yeah. So tell us what what happened to derail those those plans and Yeah. So, you know, my, my story may not be unique, but it was it was unique to me at the time, and certainly not what I expected. I was named at the public board meeting, as is the process here in the district where I work. And, the next morning, I was called into my supervisor's office at the district office, and I thought, oh, wonderful, this is what every new principal must get. But I learned that was not the case. I was called in and congratulated, certainly. But also, faced immediately with a situation, in the community that I needed to be aware of. And I quickly learned that I had been selected to lead at this moment in time. The elementary school, really for, their hopes in me to be able to repair harm that had occurred in the community. And it wasn't necessarily, one specific incidents, but rather, you know, a series of incidents that built over years or even decades, in this, in this rural part of our county where the school had traditionally been a very high performing school academically, and it had served, many students very well. But there were there were some racial issues in the community that were bubbling up in the school and that were, resulting in harm for students and families as a result of that, were losing trust or had lost trust not only in the school, with one another within the community, but in many ways with the district because of, again, incidents that they were aware of that had taken place over years and years that, were not being were not being repaired, fully. And so I really entered into this role of principal, you know, thinking about things like instructional leadership and management and, you know, what is my 90 or 100 day plan going to be coming in? And I quickly learned that I needed to adapt and be able to face the situation that was in front of me. So while I was, I had those high hopes and I was riding high and I knew that I was ready, I quickly experienced the weight of the job and the weight of that responsibility of leadership to really be able to, to truly serve a community and all members of a community, in the moment and meeting them where they were and serving them in the way that they needed, that might have been different than what I was picturing at that time. Yes, yes. Yeah. Wow. Thanks for. Thanks for sharing that, Julia. I can, only imagine that, you know, when, unresolved racial issues, are in place. Those don't just, cause children harm and families hurt, but they can also fracture staff. The faculty as well. Did you experience that? I did you know there are anytime there's anything that's that involves children regardless of what the issue is and that involves families. There's always, you know, a high degree of privacy that's involved. And so what I experienced was that there were staff who, maybe had an awareness of what was taking place, and there were staff who didn't because in their day to day work, they had not, encountered it or they were not aware of specific incidents that had taken place due to confidentiality. And so I think there was just some, some unease among staff that maybe weren't, weren't sure what was going on. They knew that something was amiss. But they didn't have all of the details. And of course, that creates a lot of discomfort. And on the other side of things, there were staff who had had personal experiences themselves that, had left them feeling hurt and, that had caused conflict among staff members that may or may not have even still been at the school. But again, people were really walking around, were walking around hurt and, and there was a lot of damage that I uncovered in those first, you know, weeks and months and even you know, over a longer period of time, I don't want in any way to imply that it was over a very short period of time that all of this was was sort of unfolding. But, the challenges that I faced were, were pervasive throughout the student body and the parent community, the larger community, as well as within the staff, every single, every single person who had a relationship with the school in any way, was impacted in some way by this. Oh, wow. Yeah. Now, was this your first time to deal with This kind of hurt? think this was the first time where, I knew that at the end of the day, I was it I was I was the the factor that could really help to repair this harm. You know, certainly in, in when I served in the role of assistant principal for six years before I was a principal, when I served as a teacher, you know, in other, know, volunteer work and things that I've done in the community, you know, of course, I had encountered situations where people maybe were hurt or there some type of restorative action needed to be taken. But in all of those other roles, I had a leader, you know, who I was working under or someone to look to, to sort of help guide me and how I could best support the situation. So this was really the first time where I when I looked around myself, I realized I was, in fact, the person who needed to chart a course, to to address this situation and that meeting in my supervisor's office on that day after I was named as the principal of the school, really gave me, gave me the courage and the confidence to know that, I was there for a reason. It wasn't an accident that I was the person who was selected for this particular principalship at this particular moment in time. And that gave me, not only the courage and confidence, but, it really gave me the freedom to say I need to trust my instincts. I need to lean in on what I know, which is how to connect with people. And I need to, to to take my time to figure out the best way to address this situation. And I'm ready to get to work. Yeah. You know, this this issue that you had to deal with is very personal for me. You know, as you know, two of my four children are young, are black. Right. My youngest sons are black. And they. And in middle school, specifically, they started to, just recognize that there were, hurtful prejudice or racist kind of comments that were made that weren't so much meant to, be hateful towards them. It was just an accepted, behavior, except it wasn't accepted. And, and so, you know, as a white father, having your black sons share these things with you and, and realizing that there is still, these kinds of hurtful things going on. That my sons are having to, to deal with and trying to work through how to help them process that in a healthy way, how to how and then, you know, to think through, how can I have an influence on the parents of these, families? Is challenging. So I can't imagine being in the role that you were in Julia, in trying to do that. And, you know, I'm I'm just so thankful that you you were there and even though you hadn't had this particular training, you were prepared. And, just outstanding, you know, that you were able to persevere. Some people might have said, hey, that's not what I signed up for. Send me to a school where there's not, this. But you leaned into it, which is part of your courageous personality, I think. Well thank you. I mean, I think, you know, certainly in hindsight, I'm able to look back and think about that. And there were very real moments where I thought, am I really the right person for this at this moment in time? You know, I write in the book about imposter syndrome, and that is a very real example of where I felt like, how did I get here? Am I really am I really up for this task? Because it was enormous. It didn't just feel enormous. It was enormous because as you as you mentioned, there are, things that happened in a school or in a community are very real there, but they are not existing in a vacuum. They're happening in our country and in our culture, and they are tied to, you know, hundreds of years of, of systems and, beliefs that, are very complex and very difficult to unpack. And so that that was really that weight that I felt. And so the way that I was able to persevere was by saying, my job is to, lean in to the people, the children, the families, the staff in this community, and to look at my sphere of influence and to see how I can help to make things better for those who are in that sphere, and to have that belief that whatever little headway I could make in that arena would have a ripple effect that would hopefully go out into the larger community. Like I had to flip my mindset from thinking about I need to fix all of the issues throughout the our, our culture, our country, our world that contributed to this. That feels very enormous. And perhaps insurmountable for one person. But I can make an impact here, in this moment with these people who I will get an opportunity to connect with. let's talk about this from a tactical standpoint. I mean there obviously there were some steps that you went through. Walk us through some of the early, just actions that you took to start to bring stakeholders into this alignment of how we're going to value all people and, and what that looks like from a mission of a school. yeah, I think, you know, it doesn't differ terribly from what I'm sure any leader would do coming into a new role. But in the context of this situation, it was extremely helpful and extremely important to me to start this way. Having been appointed in July meant that I had the summer before the children and the staff really returned, for the school year at the end of August. And, so what I did was all about relationships. I mean, every single action I took, everything I did every single day for that entire summer was in the interest of building relationships. And, I invited, everyone I could think of to come in and meet with me one on one. I devoted a tremendous amount of time, and energy to that. In those first couple of months, I invited every staff member had the opportunity. at that time. There were about 100 staff. We grew over the subsequent years as our regional programs grew. But, I invited all 100 of the staff members and that was every single faculty and staff member who worked in the building teachers, front office staff, paraprofessionals and student assistants, custodial staff, even some of our regular substitute teachers who frequently picked up jobs at the school, it was optional, so people were not required to come, but I was really moved to find that the majority of people took me up on that offer, and they signed up for a time slot to come in and meet with me. So I tried to have a structure for the meeting because it was both in the interest of building relationships with people, but it was also my job was also to learn that school and to learn that community. So while I had worked in the district, I knew the curriculum. I knew, you know, the district policies. I had worked in elementary schools for my entire career. At that point, every school is nuanced and different. And so it was both sort of a research opportunity for me, so I could really learn because I can't lead a community that I don't understand. And I need to I needed to listen to people. Yes. immunity, that you That I don't understand you. I mean, I suppose you could, but you might not be very effective. So, it was really important for me to truly understand. And when you think about, you know, what what we talked about earlier, when you have stakeholders in the community, children, families, staff members who are not being served well by the culture, you really need to understand everyone's perspectives because it might be different than your lens. And so you, you, you might experience a certain part of the school culture in a different way than someone else would. And if you're not listening and you're not really trying to ask probing questions and find out, what is working for some people and might not be working for other people, then you won't know that. Because we're all humans and so we're all filtering information through our own brains, our own experiences and our values and beliefs, and we have to open up, to listen to others, to be able to effectively lead. So I did have three questions that I asked everyone who came in for those meetings. We we did a little bit of visiting time. I tried to have, you know, some snacks and keep it a little bit, casual, but I also had my computer open and I let people know, at the time, a Google form was the best technology that I had available. I'm sure there was wonderful AI tools that could be used nowadays, but I had a Google form open just for myself, and I told them at the beginning, I'm going to ask you three questions and I'm you'll see me typing because I'm taking some notes so I can process all of this information. Later, I asked them what they loved about the school. I asked them if there was anything that they were open to changing about the school, and the wording of that question was really intentional because it wasn't. What do you think should change? It was, what are you open to changing? Because that would give me information about where I might already have been in some places where we needed to to make some changes. And then the third question was a little bit of a selfish question, but it was invaluable to me. And it was, in your opinion, what do you think I could do to make the biggest impact on this school community in my first year? And so as people answer those questions, I took notes. And again, you know, with technology has evolved. There are so many wonderful tools I would use now if I was going through this process that could synthesize that information for me. But I manually looked through all of those notes at the end of the summer to pull out themes that came up consistently across all three of those questions, and that really drove my strategy or, really my own vision for myself. Not even yet. The vision for the school, but my vision for myself as the leader of the school, to be really focused on presence, communication and like connectedness among staff, and among families, because those were the themes that I heard. And I thought, well, gosh, if I can just focus on those three things that the staff, the community have shared with me are valuable to them across all of these interviews. If I can focus on those throughout my first several months here, that will be how I will measure my own success as a leader. And so that experience of listening to people, while it was certainly an investment of time and energy, I, I would do it exactly the same way if I went in again. It was invaluable for me to learn the individual staff, to learn the community, and then to sort of guide my path forward. Yeah. So connectedness is the opposite of fractured right. So so what what did you find was most effective in helping build connectedness. Well, I mean, I think at first there I knew that I had to be the conduit. I had to be sort of that that center piece to connect people who maybe were fractured at that time or maybe hadn't had the opportunity. And this this showed up in many different ways. Matthew, as I talked to people, it was a large building. Physically. It was a physically large, school, and it was a two story school. And the the younger children were on the first floor and the intermediate grades third through fifth were on the second floor. And I even heard from staff that they didn't get to really connect with staff members who were on the opposite floor of the building, just because as they went about their work throughout the day, they didn't really cross paths. It was different than any other school building where I had ever worked in that. There were many different places throughout the building, even where staff members ate lunch. There wasn't one faculty lounge or staff lounge where everybody gathered and you would sort of pass people throughout the day. There were multiple places. And you you wouldn't think at first about how that could, contribute or take away from people feeling connected. But I certainly am a believer that, you know, food connects people. And when people have those moments to just chat a little bit and get to know one another as humans, it can help to build connections. So it came up in that way. It came up in I mentioned we had a very, very new I think when I was there my first year as a principal. It's my second year that our academic life skills program was in the school. And so students from all over the county, for whom this was the most appropriate program, came, you know, on the bus. And we had a lot of staff who worked and supported them. But the staff in that program didn't necessarily feel like they were a part of the larger staff. I heard that theme from the staff who worked in the regional Early Childhood Center as well, because, you know, the things sometimes that apply to the elementary grades don't apply to pre-kindergarten and preschool. And so they sort of operated in these silos. The families of the students in our regional programs didn't live close to the school, necessarily, because the children came from all over the county. So when our when, when our school or when our PTA hosted community events, they didn't always attend or for certainly our students in the Academic Life Skills program, sometimes, there was too much sensory input for the students to feel even comfortable attending some of the evening events that might be very loud. And, and so we had to work on that. I knew that I had to be sort of that center factor at the beginning, and that I had to build relationships with every single individual person. And that was the first step. And through my relationships, I could then start to garner trust and connection with individual people. And then I could sort of work outwards for me. Because I think had I tried to force connection among people, I mean, there are there are certainly wonderful things that we can do that might be a little bit more episodic in nature. You know, we can have staff gatherings, you know, or things. But if if there's an undercurrent where, where people don't really want to be there or they don't trust one another, you're not going to get the value out of that. So I took a little bit of a different approach. It took more time. But over time, I do believe that that built authentic connections, certainly between myself and members of the community, the children and the staff. And then, sort of had that ripple effect over time. Absolutely. Yeah. So you didn't necessarily shut down all the individual lunch spots but you No, no. But you recognized that and you intentionally put in place things where people would have the opportunities to, to overlap in their schedules more because again, you know, you got to have time together to build relationships. And. Yeah, I totally get, you know, I picture you being the person throwing a big party and and you're going around introducing the different groups to each other saying, oh, hey, you're, you're doing this. You'd probably like to meet this person who also shares that same care. Yeah. I think, you know, there are things as leaders certainly in schools that we can think about that are that being the person at parties that introduces one another? I mean, thinking about things as simply as, do we run our staff meetings? Does everybody come in and sit wherever they would like? Which makes us feel comfortable sometimes. Or do sometimes we push people just a tiny bit outside of their comfort zone and mix them up at tables. Really thoughtfully. Maybe for part of the staff meeting for a particular activity to give them an opportunity. It's also, do we build in a couple of minutes, for some type of icebreaker or some type of connector at the beginning of a staff meeting, you know, so I, I had a large leadership team at the school for our grade level, team leaders and other leaders throughout the building, and we would meet on a bi weekly basis. And I put in place that we started every single one of those meetings with a few minutes for celebrations. So we didn't have what didn't require a lot of planning. It wasn't necessarily an activity where we had to, you know, have materials ready in advance, but people knew that that time would be held. And if there was no pressure, if no one had a celebration to share, we moved on like I, we I utilize some wait time and then we moved on. But over time, what I noticed is that people were sharing, you know, certainly professional celebrations, you know, celebrating things that students were achieving or things that went really well within their teams, but they also started sharing personal celebrations as well. You know, my child got into college or my brother is getting married or, you know, different, just different personal celebrations that people had and that builds community. And so I think, you know, there are just intentional, small things that we can do as leaders that communicate volumes to people that we value that time. Before we get down to business, time is so limited. So we have to always balance, you know, fitting that in. But, you know, there are there are a lot of different things that we can do as leaders to facilitate that connection. You know, as you were talking I was thinking about, you know, Jim Collins in his book about the flywheel and I was thinking about, you know sometimes we don't apply that to culture. But when you're trying to shift a culture, you know, that first rotation of the flywheel is really hard. sometimes an individual or a small group, an enormous amount of, of energy to get that flywheel to turn. And then as collaborators or coconspirators, start coming along of like, hey, this culture thing is starting to feel better. You start to get momentum, out of that. Is there a is there a an event where you kind of step back and was like, hey, this this is starting to spin the right direction? I think there were more, a series of small events. I don't know that there was one big, huge light bulb moment. As much as there were tiny, small moments that, again, I didn't necessarily recognize in that moment. But in hindsight, I look back and I think those are the indicators. So for me, it's things like, the little note that I would get from a teacher thanking me for, the way I handled something that maybe they, they witnessed, maybe we were having a contentious, you know, conversation in a meeting with a parent, and afterwards the teacher would send me a note and thank me for the way that I handled it. Or sometimes it was it would even be in just a comment from a parent about the way that they felt or their child felt when they walked in the building in the morning. And, I would have music playing, and I was greeting all the children and hugging them and, you know, trying to do fun things with them to start them off on a positive note in the day. So it was like the culmination of a bunch of little small moments that made me realize, I do think something is is shifting here. And, you know, there's so many adages in education, like, you know, changing culture. It's like steering the Titanic, right? And the amount of time that it takes. And so many of us, our high achieving personalities and we want things to happen immediately. But in hindsight, I really saw great value in being patient with myself and being patient with the change and just, you know, exercising one of my strengths is discipline. So exercising my discipline and just knowing and having that face, and belief that, over time, we would reach, we would reach our goals, together through all of those little small actions, day by day. And so yeah. So how did you assess at two three years in which you say yes. Hey we're, we're, we're beyond this as a crisis yeah. fractured. And now more of the culture is like you want it to be. Yeah, I think so. A couple things come to mind. The first thing I just want to chuckle when you say the crisis was over because I haven't mentioned, I think I mentioned it was 2019, July 2019 when I came into the role. So during that first year, we were also struck by the pandemic. And so things, things certainly changed. A lot during that time. And so, you know, we we didn't really get over one crisis before another crisis presented itself. And I've, I've learned in leadership that that is almost a constant, that you never really know when that next thing is coming around the corner. But a couple of years in is when our staff, I think when we were finally ready as a staff to revisit the mission and vision of our school as a group. So I mentioned sort of my own vision for myself as a leader. I didn't feel it was appropriate coming in, you know, my first couple of months to say, we're going to blow up the vision of the school and, you know, redo the here's the vision statement that I've written for the school. 2 to 3 years in, we were at a point where we were ready to really engage in a collaborative process to build our shared vision and mission for the school. And we did that over the period of almost an entire school year through, brainstorming together and then sort of sitting with, with, with our thoughts, you know, between one staff meeting and the next staff meeting, where then we would say, okay, now where is our energy? Where do the most people feel that we need to go? So we did values work. We did, and that sort of shared vision building, and we did it as an entire staff. We had everybody participate. And then we had little iterations in between where we would bring it to the PTA, we would get some input from parents. We tried to involve students as much as, you know, developmentally, they had, you know, input into different things. We couldn't have done that in our first year. And I think in other contexts in other scenarios, that would be perfectly appropriate. And in mine, it wasn't. And it really took that time to sort of build trust for people to believe that I wasn't engaging in this work performatively I wasn't engaging in it, to check a box or because I believed that, it was something I was supposed to do as the principal, and I wasn't foisting it on them, because we know we're not going to have buy in from staff, community students, if they aren't a part of the process and they don't really feel like they, they were there for the crafting of it. And so it was it was helpful to do it then. And that that's probably the biggest indicator that people were people were open, they had the trust and the belief that this was something that would be valuable for all of us. Absolutely. these podcasts that we're getting to record are part of this master's in education leadership and that and the sequencing of that really our belief is exactly what you did, which is you've gotta start with relationships from relationships. You get a realistic assessment of where things are, and then you establish a vision. And that's that's the process that you that you took. So just fantastic job on that. Julia, I'd love to hear is there a story of one particular relationship Yeah. shifted in this process that it just really is meaningful to you? Yeah. There there are many. But the one that comes to mind first is, a parent in the community who was, when I came in, probably the relationship that, with the school and with the district that was the most fractured, a parent whose child had really been hurt very, very badly and to very, justifiably, had lost trust and I built what I hope was an authentic and genuine relationship with that person. And it wasn't free of challenges along the way. It was not like we went from bumpy to smooth, and there were never any little bumps along the road. I certainly made some missteps. There were times where I had to call her and say, I'm very sorry. I wish I had handled that situation differently. Like, let me listen to you and let me, you know, take what you need to share with me right now and just sit with it and listen to it. So there were there were some bumps along the road, but I hope that what I brought to that relationship was I did bring my true self. I did not bring, you know, a face or a mask of someone who is, you know, was just trying to placate a situation. I really, got to know that person. And I listened to her, and I listened to the experience that her family had in the community. And so to come in and have this be the person who probably had the most fraught relationship with the school, and to work very, very closely with her personally to bring her in on improvement, work in the school and let her to be a part of that process, to sometimes say to her, please trust me, and let me be the one to facilitate the conversation with this staff member instead of you. Like you, download the information onto me and then let me. Let me handle it and and trust me to handle it. And I'm going to follow up with you and let you know afterwards what happened to get to two years later. I think it was where that parent, served as my partner, as our PTA president. And if you had told me that first week that I was there, that that was going to happen, I probably wouldn't have believed you because I would have thought, we're never going to get someone who is in this place again for very justifiable reasons. To a point where they want to. I mean, that you give so much of your time and yourself to serve in that role as as PTA president. It's a very thankless job, and you have to work very closely with the principal. if you had told me that we were going to get to that point, I don't know that I would have believed you. But, I think about that a lot still to this day, years later, about how we got there and really see that of even if I didn't achieve every single goal I had in that role, I think that that's that's an achievement, not that I don't own, but that's, that's an achievement that occurred for that community, for that school. That I'm very proud of Oh, you should be. there's so, many great things that are part of that story. I mean, I knew you kind of quickly went through them, but the, the first of all, the genuine love for people and valuing people, comes through. You can't be with you and not know. That's just part of who you are. And I think that the way you communicated that, I mean, I think of stewarding relationships, I mean, what you just told is just a beautiful example. And again, not that we do it perfect, but it's okay to say, I'm sorry, I could have done that better. And that creates, you know, capacity. And in relationships I've just been able to be honest with our with our shortcomings. Now, we can't use that excuses. And we have to sincerely say I want to do better and work on it, but, Wow, man, it's just I just love I love that example. And I know, you know, that that is just one relationship. But I know you did that same level of care with, with, you know, everyone that you were coming in contact with. And, to see that level of transformation happen, is just really beautiful. So thank you for thank you for sharing with that. With us. Julia, I mean, I'm so impressed with and and this is just a piece of your story. I mean, there's so much more that you've accomplished. Your book leading with Grace really is fun. And there's a couple of stories in there that you tell that, tell me, how can our, listeners connect with you just to continue to learn from this, the great example that you are. thank you so much. And thanks for mentioning the book and reading the book. That means so much to me. So the book is available wherever you get your books. Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And certainly would love it, if any listeners checked it out, but I'm on LinkedIn, so I encourage people to find me on LinkedIn. I have an Instagram account that I'm trying to get a little bit better about using as much as I use my LinkedIn. I have a website, Julia bielecki.com, where you can read, some of my other work and, and, learn a little bit more about me. And, I do send, weekly newsletter so you can subscribe to my newsletter, on my website as well, where I send out, just a weekly newsletter about leadership development, personal development, kind of whatever is on my mind as I'm drinking my coffee, on the weekend and drafting it for the week. And that's completely free. So check out the The Strategic Serenity newsletter. Also. great. I love it. That's fantastic. Well, if you found today's, episode valuable, which I know I did, please share it with a colleague who would benefit. And don't forget to follow transformational educators so you never miss an episode. And until next time, keep leading with purpose and transforming schools into places where everyone thrives. If today's conversation gave you fresh insight or inspired you to lead with purpose, please follow the show and tell a friend. It helps us reach more educators who want to make a difference. For more stories, resources, and tools to support your leadership journey, visit graceland.edu. Until next time, keep leading with courage and care.