Read the full transcript of Episode 50 of the NAIS New View EDU podcast, which school leader Briel Schmitz reflectsingon her sabbatical journey along the Camino de Santiago in Europe, and how taking that time away from work has influenced her whole school community. Schmitz, head of Spruce Street School (WA), talks with host Tim Fish about the unique experience they share: Each of them embarked upon a sabbatical to walk the 500-mile Camino de Santiago in the fall of 2023.
Tim Fish: Well, my friends, we’ve done it again! We’ve arrived at the end of another season. What an awesome journey it’s been. You know, I have truly, truly enjoyed all of our conversations this season. I hope you have as well. I’m so grateful for all of our guests.
To end our season we’ve decided to do something a little different. We’re going to get a little more personal. From mid-August to mid-October this year, I had the amazing opportunity to take a sabbatical from my work at NAIS, and I decided to venture to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. Now, the Camino is a 500-mile journey from a small town in southern France to Santiago de Compostela on the west coast of Spain. Pilgrims have been walking this path for over 800 years, and while I went alone, I wasn’t alone for long. My Camino family started from the moment I got off the bus until the very last moment I left Spain.
As it turns out, also, my dear friend Briel Schmitz, head of school at Spruce Street School in Seattle Washington, was also taking a sabbatical this fall and decided to walk the Camino as well. Now, she started her journey two weeks after me, so we didn’t have the opportunity to actually walk together. But we certainly walked the same path.
Today, Briel and I are going to reflect on our shared experiences. We’re going to talk about lessons learned, wonderings we’ve had, questions that came into our minds. And our goal is to share not only those lessons we’ve had, but to put them into context for leaders of schools at this moment. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Briel, it is so good to see you. Welcome back from the Camino and welcome to New View EDU. We are so, so fortunate to have you join us today.
Briel Schmitz: Thank you. I am delighted to be here and get to talk about this incredible experience with you. That's amazing.
Tim Fish: It's so cool. You know, you have been an inspiration to me since I started at NAIS seven years ago. I think we met early on in that time. And certainly you're one of those heads of school that I look to for how to do it really, really well and how to, frankly, keep it all in balance. You've been the head at Spruce Street School since 2002. And I know that you are passionate also about supporting women who are interested in leadership roles in independent schools.
So before we talk about the walk and the Camino and 500 miles and how you survived, I would love it if you could just tell our listeners a little bit around this idea of a sabbatical. And as a head of a school, how did you end up making that happen? And what was it like?
Briel Schmitz: Oh, I'm so excited to talk about this. And I'm really hopeful that people that are listening will hear my version and think about, hmm, what would that look like for me? Is there a possibility that could happen at my school? Is that something that could benefit my educational program? And really listen to this and then see what you could do with it.
So I have been at Spruce Street School— this is my 22nd year. And over the years, I've worked with my board on different things that would be beneficial for me. Like what keeps me interested in the work? Why do I keep showing up? Why do I want to stay in this school? Which I do. And over the years, there have been different things that were important to me that made my job really interesting. One of the things that Tim mentioned is I run a program for women who are interested in the headship. It's called Pathways to Leadership.
And the board supporting my work outside of school, the extra time, the energy, meetings, that sort of thing, they see that it fuels my work inside the school. So I have a really great partnership with my board.
Tim Fish: Love it. I love that.
Briel Schmitz: Yeah, and thinking about what do I need? And it might be different than what someone else needs. So we were coming up on my 20th anniversary—
Tim Fish: —Congratulations, by the way. That is just so, so awesome. 20 years at one school. I love it.
Briel Schmitz: Well, I'm trying to help the statistics out there. So we started a conversation and I said, well, you know, there is actually something I really want to do. And I have wanted to walk the Camino Frances for probably about 20 years, interestingly enough. And when I started having this conversation with my board, they got really excited about it. They're like, that is really cool. We really want you to do that. Let's figure out how to make that happen.
And the conversation from there went, I actually did not want it to be my vacation. Like I wanted to still have, you know, my regular vacation time because this needed to be something unique and special and outside the norm. And so that's where we started the conversation. And I will say, here's one of the things that the board did that I think was smart. When we came to agreement on, it was going to be a six week paid leave, they put it into my contract.
And they said, if you don't use it, you don't get anything.
Tim Fish: You mean if you don't go, you don't get paid for those six weeks?
Briel Schmitz: Right? Like basically, you gotta go. And so there wasn't like I could get paid out on that time. I needed to take the time away from school.
Tim Fish: Oh, I love it. So you can't bank it and just take it out later. It's use it or essentially lose it.
Briel Schmitz: That's right. That's right. And they were, they were doing that to emphasize how true it was. They wanted me to take the time. So that is how it came to be. You'll probably ask me some other questions about, then, well how do you actually do that? Because having the opportunity to do it and actually doing it are two different things.
Tim Fish: Absolutely. That's where I was headed next. Like, OK, you're a head of school. I know Spruce Street, Spruce Street’s about— For those who don't know, the amazing Spruce Street school is a school of about a hundred ish students in pre-K through fifth grade, right?
Briel Schmitz: Kindergarten through fifth grade, but close enough, Tim.
Tim Fish: Kindergarten through fifth grade, located right in downtown Seattle, it is a remarkable place. I'll tell you for those who have never been there, I often tell this story. There is, there is a lunch table in a little tiny room. It is not an amazingly huge physical plant. It is, you make the most of every inch of that place. And there is a table where the faculty gather to eat lunch, and people are moving in and out of the space and they're sharing each other's lunch and they're making, there's a really good coffee maker, no surprise, inside of that room.
And whenever I am in Seattle, I have got to get to Spruce Street and eat lunch in that space. It is the warmest, most welcoming space that I mean, one of my top five favorite places in the independent school world. And Briel, it has a lot to do with your leadership and has a lot to do with your incredible team and the culture you have built. And I see in that space that everybody is doing everything. You are a place where it is all hands on deck every day. And so I've got to think, as the head of school, how did you design to not be there for six weeks? And six weeks right at the beginning of the school year? Like, how did you figure out how to do it?
Briel Schmitz: Well, I think it's really helpful that you gave some context. It's a small organization. This isn't a place where there's a lot of humans running the school. There's a small number. There's seven people on my admin team, and only five of us are full time. So this is, or four of us are full time, three are part time. And that means there's just not a lot of extra people to all of a sudden, oh, she's gone, let's jump in and do that. So it had to be really strategic and really intentional, so that I got to leave, the school could thrive and be successful, and the people that were here doing the work felt supported. It wouldn't work any other way.
So I started, I actually spent, I would say about a year and a half pacing the school year and thinking about when is the best time. And look, there's a combination of weather in Spain and the school year and all sorts of, I mean, so it's not like every month was up for grabs.
And what I realized is once school started, the very beginning of school is kind of a routine. There are things that happen, at least in our program, that are very systematic and I felt like could easily happen and keep going when I wasn't here. And that proved to be true. It actually, when I came back, people were like, oh, now we understand this is why you left, because there's all these things that are happening that were just going to kind of happen. And once I got school going, they were just going to cruise through and be able to do. So that's why I chose the beginning of the school year.
I actually started the school year. I was here to welcome everyone. My face was visible. I stood up in front of the entire school community on the first day of school, families, staff, the whole community, and shared that I was going to leave, why I was going, and that everybody was going to be OK. And it turned out they were OK. So that's why I chose that time.
One thing that we did is that in our admin retreat in the summer before, I hired a facilitator specifically to come in to give us space for people to talk about their concerns and their worries and what they were maybe afraid of with me being gone. And it was really helpful to have that facilitator, the outside person, really guide us in being able to say the things that were on our mind. And there were some laughs, you know, there were funny things that we put out on the table, and there were really serious things that we put out on the table. And by naming them, I mean, I'm a big believer that when you name something, you have power with it.
Tim Fish: That's right.
Briel Schmitz: And it's in the like, pretending it's not happening or ignoring it or hoping it won't happen, that it grows. So as soon as we named these things, it gave us so much more power to talk about them, and to say to each other that we had each other's back.
And for example, we're a small school. My assistant had said she was really worried that like five teachers were going to call in sick and she wouldn't know what to do. And five teachers is a lot, because we have six classrooms.
Here's the beautiful thing that happened in that moment. Another member of the admin team who has been a teacher in the past said, ask me, I would love to sub.
Tim Fish: Wow.
Briel Schmitz: Right, I thought it was, and then as my assistant had looked at her and said, thank you for saying that, I don't know that I would have remembered that. And there it was. I mean, that's a very small thing, but I hope it illustrates kind of what that meeting was all about.
Tim Fish: No, but it's really powerful.
Briel Schmitz: So that was like a, to me, an emotional, a social emotional thing that I did to support everyone. I also worked really hard ahead of time to map out the things that each person was taking over.
And in my small team, here is what I did. My business manager works 80% time because that's what works for her. And I asked her to work full-time while I was gone, which she did. And she took over all of the work, coordinating the board, doing the board meetings, all of that work, attending board committee meetings. She has been at the school one year less than I have, so she's seen it all. And so she took on that piece.
My communications and marketing person took on my email and managed all of my email while I was gone, answering things, sorting, organizing, contacting me if there was something critical that I needed to respond to. And then the assistant head took on all of the additional, you know, family, faculty, any other problem, and yes, problems came up. She was the one who was going to have to manage that. But I think that dividing it up and being explicit about different people taking on different parts was very helpful to them. So that's a beginning.
Tim Fish: That's so good, that's so good. And what did you as a community learn about Briel stepping away for six weeks? What did you personally learn, what did your community learn, what did your team learn?
Briel Schmitz: Well, I will say that we're at the beginning of that. I've been back, this is Friday when we're recording this of my first week, I've been back for five days. So I'm going to say both, I hope I don't know everything we've learned and also yes, I can share some things that we learned. I want to share that one of the things I was worried about before I left and this is, I'm going to be vulnerable here. I was like, what if I'm not missed?
And I put that into the table and I said this out loud. And of course everybody laughed, but when you have been leading an organization for 22 years, 21 years. What if I'm not that important? And that may seem silly to say, but I want to share it because what's important there is: A) I could say what I was worried about, and it allowed people to know that it was helpful to say they missed me.
Right? Like I told them part of what I needed. So I think one of the things that we learned is that a person can be gone and can be missed and the school can still function. Right? That those two things didn't have to be together. So it wasn't that I wanted the school to not be successful, to not thrive, to not have wonderful things happen, but I also was hopeful that they would be able to share back, yeah, and we missed you in this moment. Or, you know, here's a story that happened and we want you to be a part of that too.
And one of the things that they did in, to help me with that, is they created in the lunch room that Tim was talking about, they created a place where they put Post-It notes up of things that they wanted me to know happened while I was gone that were funny or special or just, I don't know, something that might, uh, help me feel connected to what had happened while I was gone. But I think you have to say what you need and want.
Tim Fish: Wow.
Briel Schmitz: And if you don't say what you need and want, then you're not going to get that back. So that's the first thing. And the next thing is that when a person like myself, who has a big personality in an organization, has been here for a long time, leaves, it allows everyone else the opportunity to grow into a space that they couldn't before.
And this is what I most hoped, is that in the space I was leaving, that different people would have an opportunity to say, oh, I actually can do that, or I like doing that, or I'm good at doing that, or I don't really like doing that, but I know I can if I have to. And it takes, it's like a beginning teacher who, you know, if somebody's watching them all the time, I think it's hard for them to really take a risk and try something.
But if they're alone in the classroom, they're more likely to give it a go and maybe try that cool new activity that they had imagined. I think it's the same thing. I wasn't here. They got to try things out without me watching and they really, really built their confidence. There's a totally different vibe. This is the learning. I think the most critical thing that they've learned is confidence that they actually can do all of this.
Tim Fish: Hmm. I love that. You know, so for you, I was on a 10 year journey to find or try to find a way to get myself onto the Camino. And you were on a 20 year journey of thinking this is what you wanted to do. Why? Why this long walk in Spain, Briel? What was it that was calling you to walk 500 miles across Northern Spain?
Briel Schmitz: This is a question that I ask myself, actually. What was I thinking? No. I, first of all, I love the country. I was, had the opportunity to live in Spain when I was in college. So I have had a long connection to the country and I like being there. I speak Spanish pretty fluently and it's a place that I like to be. So there was that. There's an affinity with the country. And then honestly, I don't know.
I think I just was called to do it. It's something, and I tried to get rid of it. I tried to do all these things to, like, exorcize it, or get it out of my system. My husband and I actually drove most of the Camino route one year for a vacation, but that did not change how I felt about it. I wanted to do this. And for listeners, I'll share, I'm not a super athletic or sporty person. I'm also not an outdoorsy person. And I'm also a person who doesn't really like to be alone.
So I say all of that because this was a real outside of the box thing for me to do. And I think that might be part of it, right? To do something that was completely outside of every part of my life.
Tim Fish: I'm right with you and you know what, on the extrovert introvert scale, I think I like, I'm falling off the edge of the extrovert scale. I'm so far out there.
Briel Schmitz: I'm right there with you, Tim.
Tim Fish: It's not an asset, right? There is so much I miss and there's so much that I appreciate about my friends who are, and my colleagues who are, much more an introvert. And, you know, I think it was the same thing for me. There was something that was just calling me to do this, to do this walk. To spend that time, to disconnect, to, if you will, get off the grid. And I happened to do it alone. I happened to go, as I mentioned in the intro, I happened to go without anyone else, but very quickly I was with others. The family formed very, very quickly.
And what I found was that the beauty for me was in the simplicity, right? And the beauty for me was in like, I just, this, you know, I was carrying everything on my back that I had, I had to make very strategic decisions about what went in that pack and what didn't. And I just learned sort of this notion that we overcomplicate in our lives, I think, every day in terms of what we have around us. And in fact, it can be much more simple than that.
You know, the other thing for me that was really key was this idea like, people said, why 500 miles? Why this whole thing? Cause a lot of people don't do the whole Camino Frances, right? The Camino de Santiago beginning in France, they end up, you know, doing other parts and one of the key things you learn on the Camino is everybody walks their own Camino and it's completely OK, wherever you decide to do it. But what was interesting to me was that it was in that commitment for me, where there was enough time to actually sort of transition to a new way of being. And I think if I had gone shorter, I'm not sure I would have achieved that.
I'm curious about for you, what were some of the things that you discovered along the way, on the journey?
Briel Schmitz: Thanks for sharing that. I want to add to that I also went on my own. So I did have a friend that joined me for the first 10 days. And after that, I was on my own. That was the plan. So most of this, I was by myself. And again, with Tim, I'm way out there on the extrovert scale. So this was a whole new thing to experience. And I think that in my work and in my life and in my family and with my friend group, I'm an organizer, I'm a doer, I'm a think about all the things. I can think about multiple things at the same time. I can connect things. I'm, that's who I am. I'm constantly doing that.
And in this walk, it was a forced, in a good way, opportunity that I think rarely comes in anyone's life, to only think about what you have to do today to get from point A to point B. It includes what you shared, Tim, of the things in your backpack, which are metaphorical and real. However, to me, there was, I couldn't believe what it felt like to not, there was nothing else to think about. And that doesn't mean I didn't think about other things, but there was nothing that demanded my attention. And to release everything else and begin to allow my brain to just be one step after another, after another. I do think that will forever change me.
Tim Fish: I think you're a hundred percent right. And when you do it for one, for in my case, 1.2 million steps, it has a long-term effect. You know, for me, I was always saying, like I was thinking one day, if I were going to write a book, right, for my Camino journey, what would I call the book? And my title that I came up with was, I sure hope my socks are going to be dry, right?
'Cause every day you don't carry very much clothing. So you do your wash in your sink, or a sink, or somewhere every day. And then you kind of let your stuff, you find a place, a strategic place for your stuff to dry. And literally my biggest anxiety for those period of time was, are my socks going to be dry in the morning when I get up? I found I struggled most with socks and there was a, there was, to your really good point, there was a Zen to the repetition.
There was, each day, my only job was to get up, to get going, to start in, what it became, in the darkness, to eat a simple breakfast, right? One of the things I love about Spain is like, just kind of, there's just coffee, there's just bread, there's sort of fruit and cheese, and like, that's it. Like, there is not, you don't have a wine list of 5,000 different kinds of wine. If you want a glass of red wine, it's just vino tinto. You get what you get.
And I love that simplicity, but each day you just, you're walking and you know where you're going. And there's these markers on the way that keep you on the trail. So you don't have to really be worried that you're going to wander off. And you just, or you're just doing that, in that repetition comes the sort of space for you to go to other places mentally.
You know, one person I talked to early on said that the first third of it is very physical. Your body is getting used to what it's like to walk 15 plus miles a day or something. The second half is, or second third, is kind of psychological. You're going through this kind of long, pretty flat, pretty isolated part of the walk. And the last part is somewhat spiritual, that you're sort of having these revelations interiorly, however you see spiritual in that last phase.
I wonder, would you agree with that? And did you find an, or did you find some other way of thinking about the stages of the journey?
Briel Schmitz: I love that metaphor actually, and I think it was helpful in some ways because what you haven't said, and what I want to say, is it's actually really hard, or it was for me. I found it to be physically very challenging. And so that beginning, knowing when it felt physically challenging and my feet hurt all the time, that, OK, this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. This is the physical part. Like let your body feel this and keep going. Don't give up.
And I think knowing that kind of that was the frame allowed me to keep going to the second part, where really there is the space. And at that point you've been gone long enough, and you've done it long enough, that you understand how to do it. So then your mind really does have the space to start thinking about things. And I was thinking about what it felt like to be a beginner.
What it felt like to be doing something that was difficult, what it felt like to maybe not be the best person at this, because I'm at a point in my career where I've had some success and I know what it feels like to be good at things, and I know the things I'm good at. And to really put myself in a position where I wasn't the best at this. What do I do in that moment? How do I respond to that? What self-talk do I give myself, which I think leads, right, to that next, that mental, it's a very mental experience of telling yourself, you can do this, you are getting stronger, you're getting more able and competent to do this. So that as I got into the third part, I do feel like not only was it soulful or spiritual or fulfilling, it was enjoyable in a different way. I was really, I could take great pleasure in the experience that I was having while I was having it.
Tim Fish: Oh, yes. So true. You know, for me, one of the things I jotted down. I tried to keep this little notebook of just little things, ideas that came to mind for me. And one of them was what I called the relationship between discomfort and discovery. That it was in having that discomfort, right, the doing something hard, where we find out new things about ourselves, right?
Briel Schmitz: Yes.
Tim Fish: And so for me, it was hard for me as well. I don't think it's, quite frankly, I don't think it's really easy for anyone to walk that much. But you know, the other part for me that was so interesting was how the community formed. So one night I had this opportunity, I was in a restaurant and some folks came into the restaurant and someone sat down next to me and there was this woman that, she was on the bus version of the Camino, right? So they do the Camino in a week or a week, a week and a couple of days, and they do it on a bus, and they get out and they walk like short distances just to get a feel for it, which is great. No problem with that at all.
But I asked her, I said, Hey, you've been on the bus with all these people. You're staying in a hotel with all these people every night. I said, have you found that like, this great community has formed? And she said, no, like no community has formed at all. Like we all just get on the bus. We don't really talk to each other. And then we ride until we get off the bus the next time.
And I found that, what was so different is that the, on the Camino, those who are walking, the community forms very quickly and a deep community forms. And I wondered why, well, it's because we have a shared struggle, right? When you arrive in a cafe eight miles in for the day and everyone's getting a cup of coffee or a, or a Bocadillo or something, there's this sort of shared camaraderie around that table. People will give of themselves because they know what the other person is going through.
And I think so much as school leaders and folks in schools, we have that as well. One of the things that's always amazed me about our schools is the way that community forms. And because I think we are doing hard things together, I think teaching and leading a school is hard, hard work. And so for me, that was the big revelation, that it's in the hard things that great community forms and self-discovery forms.
Briel Schmitz: I completely agree. And we say this to our kids. We say, if you're feeling uncomfortable, you are learning. And yet, how often do we as adults put ourselves in a position where really we're doing that? Because actually it's not really fun. I mean, this is an amazing experience, but the moment of discomfort or difficulty or even the questioning, can I do this?
I mean, people say, oh, are you going to walk all the way to Santiago? Because different people do different lengths. And I said, well, I hope so. Right in the beginning, I was like, well, I sure hope so. That's the goal. But it wasn't a given. It wasn't. It was something that I had to work for and figure out. And I think you're exactly right. And that idea of learning and doing something you're not good at is really something I think is important. I'm in an elementary school. We're asking kids to do this all the time in front of each other.
So this really came to me in that last third in thinking about, and you mentioned this, everybody does their Camino their own way, right? And really leaning into what do I need and what is good for me in my Camino, and it might be different than someone else's.
And what I really realized is I had to make myself stop and take breaks. It is very compelling to keep going. Oh, you know, there's another few kilometers or, you know, one more town or, and you can see, and you see the end goal. And what happened to me a couple of times is I did that and I got to the end of the day, and I hadn't eaten enough and I hadn't taken enough breaks and it didn't feel good. Like literally, it didn't feel physically good and it didn't feel emotionally good or, anyway.
So I was like, you know what? That actually doesn't work. So I started pacing my days in such a way that even if I was only five kilometers from the end point, I stopped, I had lunch, I took half an hour to an hour break. Part of it is the community, but part of it was physical.
I could walk into that lunch stop and feel like, ugh, I can barely keep going. And I would get up from that lunch stop being, oh, I'm totally ready to do this. And I think this is such an important thing because especially in America, I mean, we are just like, do one more thing. Read one more email. Work one more hour. And what my body told me is, yeah, you can do that. You can keep walking. But it's A) going to take you longer, and you're going to feel worse.
Tim Fish: Yes. You know, and I'll tell you culturally also, one of the things I discovered is that, boy, do Americans, like, have a certain way of, of seeing the world. And I don't mean that, I don't want to paint with too wide of a brush, but just culturally, you know, especially for the first 10 days, like the American friends I found and was walking with, it, we were like, go, go, go. We were like, we were on some race to beat somebody. Right? I, and I know that's me personally, I'm sure.
But then I went through this period where I was like, oh no, I need to walk slower because I knew I'm going to savor it and I want to take it in. And walking slowly drove me crazy. Because I was like, this isn't, like, I don't feel right. I felt horrible when I got done at the end of the day if I walked too slowly. So my sort of tagline for myself was walk fast and take a lot of breaks. And so I walked, I did, I walked at a pretty good clip, but then I would take a lot of breaks, and those breaks, and I'll tell you, to your really good point, is for our school leaders as well.
How do we find those moments to take the break during the school day? But the other thing was it wasn't just taking a break for me, it was also take your socks off, take your shoes off, take your socks off, let your feet breathe, right? And when I really did that, when I took that time to take a moment and take my socks off and just really let my feet breathe for 15 minutes, man, did that feel better.
I didn't have two hours. Didn't need it. I needed 15 minutes, 20 minutes with my, with my socks off. And so when can we do that in school? When can we take our, literally or metaphorically, right? My friend once gave me a book from Jon Kabat-Zinn that was basically the whole notion was just lie down on the floor, just, and so literally in my office, I would close the door and I would just lie down on the floor for 30 seconds, and it made such a difference even on a busy, busy day at school.
Briel Schmitz: Well, I think that these are things that actually, when we're talking about sustainability and longevity, these are really important things. They're important things for me as a leader of an organization to model, because if I do it, then it means it's OK for other people to do it too. And that might mean I try to leave my office and have lunch as many times as I can in that lunch room.
Part of that is because it tells everyone else that you get to do that. Whatever, and some people the break needs to be away from people because they need to be alone, and that's totally fine. The idea though, that if we just keep going all the time, that that's what everybody's going to think they need to do as well. I've talked about this a lot since I've come back, but trying to listen to yourself of when you get to that place, where you're just like, oh, just one more thing, that might be exactly the time to take your shoes and socks off. Lay down on the floor.
Tim Fish: That's right. You know, the other thing I discovered along the way was, you know, we don't need, we just don't need that many choices. As I was mentioning about vino tinto, also, you had introduced me to the concept of ensalada mixta, the sort of salad with tuna, right. Which is everywhere. Right?
Briel Schmitz: And always slightly different.
Tim Fish: And always slightly different. And you know what? You just ask for ensalada mixta, and you get what you get and you don't get upset. That's what my kids used to always say to me, right? And what's so interesting is, I was talking with a school leader the other day who was talking about how one of the things that's been so hard for her culture is that they have been always trying to be responsive to children and families.
And so as kids want to do a thing, start a thing, create a thing, whatever, they just say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And the next thing you know, she said, it's unsustainable for this community. It's unsustainable for our adults. We've gotta figure out how to sort of just be OK with just a salad, right? Like, and I wonder, and I've been thinking about independent schools, and I've been thinking about how we have created this thing where we just keep doing more and more and more. And how do we find the magic in that simplicity? Because it feels, that was a huge discovery for me, that in that simplicity came wisdom, right? And everything else was really just a lot of noise sometimes.
Briel Schmitz: I think it takes a lot of energy to say no. It's fun to say yes, in the sense of you're building something, you're creating something, it's something new, and saying yes is important, but I think our schools may benefit from some clarity that allows it to be more possible to say no. Like that's not actually a part of what we do, and that it gives you more time and space to do the things that you're saying yes to.
In fact, I was talking to another person on the Camino who had accidentally left a pair of her shorts on the line drying. So she's like, I need to buy another pair of shorts. And I was like, oh, I only have one pair. She's like, you only have one pair? I'm like, yeah, I wear them every day. And she goes, you wear the same shorts every day? I'm like, sure, why not? And she's like, huh, maybe I'll do that too. But that idea that you might only need one pair of shorts, you might only need to do this one thing really well.
Tim Fish: Yeah. And it, and it, for me, it's that same, it's that idea, right? Like what are the essentials, right? If you think about what are the essentials in a classroom, what are the essentials in a school, what are the things that are really important? How do we really invest in those? That was one of the questions that I was, that I've been wondering a lot about, because when I came back, I was on overload walking into a US American grocery store and just seeing like the ketchup aisle, right? And was just like, holy moly, It was really seriously overload.
And it made me just, and now I've been trying to take on this sort of simple ... . The other piece for me is this idea, do what you do and do it really well.
Briel Schmitz: You know, one of the other things about, you know, from a leadership perspective, I think it's really important for us to be able to go away and let, you know, all the things we've talked about, let people have the experience and then come back and validate. I've worked really hard and not that it's been hard to do, but I don't need to come back and critique anything that happened while I was gone. This does not benefit anyone or my school or the experience, because people did amazing things that maybe are what I would do and maybe not, but they're still excellently done. And to come back and be able to affirm and say, thank you for doing that work and to have the gratitude, because the thing that hasn't come up yet in this conversation is I was many, many days just completely full of gratitude, like all day.
I would walk and feel this deep, deep gratitude for my family, for the school, for all of the people here that were working so that I could be doing what you and I were talking about, let everything out of my brain and just walk and have this experience. And if that's what I was feeling while I was having the experience, which it is true, how do I bring that back and demonstrate that in a true and meaningful way? So I've been really trying to find all the things and point them out to people, all the things that they did. Like, look at this amazing thing you did. Look at this decision you made. Thank you for taking the time to do that thing that was really hard. And I don't know, there's just, I feel a lot of gratitude.
Tim Fish: Yes. Overwhelmed by it. And many times.
Briel Schmitz: Yes. Many times.
Tim Fish: So there were times when I walked with people, there were times where I spent an entire day walking with one person and having this great conversation. And I was always blown away because it often would take like a whole day before I'd ever say to somebody, so like, what do you do when you're not on the Camino, right? Like your, your professional life was not something that people normally talked about, or certainly not talked about right away.
And, and then the other time though, there would be times when I'd be walking, and I would just, and you could just say like, Hey, I just, I'm going to be on my own for a little bit. And that was totally OK. You know, there wasn't this expectation, like, well, don't you want to be with me? Like, there was none of those like, social dynamics, everybody gets that you, you kind of walk the Camino you need at that moment.
And again, it made me think about how we do that with teachers and how we do that with staff and how we do that with students. How do we give people the space they need to do the work the way they're going to do it? And when do we close that down, was a question I was wondering about on my own.
Briel Schmitz: Yeah, I think it's hard because schools are busy places. There's not as many opportunities to be alone in a school. And honestly, I don't really need to be alone a lot, but some people do. And how are we giving them that space so that they can be their best selves when we're asking them to fully participate, right, in all the social things that are going on?
But yeah, and I also think, you know, one of the things that was really special to me about the Camino was the intergenerational aspect. So you, I walked with people significantly younger than I am, my same age, significantly older than I am. And, and that didn't matter either. Like age was not a super defining characteristic. And I think we get, we get very used to being in our bubble, whatever our bubble is, and the Camino has no bubble. It's all across the world. It's all ages. It's all religions.
It’s anything you could imagine, and that you get to show up and have a conversation with someone, without there being all these other rules around it, was a really magical thing. And how do we do that, right? How do we let our family show up and fully belong and be who they are?
Tim Fish: And just, and talk about global, right? I mean, it is just incredibly global and you're just with people, different people. And the other part for me was language. Like you figure it out. You figure it out, like the person might be from, you know, I don't know, Germany, and they have very little English. One night I was in, I was staying in a place and it was really a simple little place and there was one other woman who was staying there, who was from France, she had almost no English, and I have almost no French.
And so we were either just going to like, we were in this little place and we were the only two eating dinner there. So it was either going to be, we just were going to sit alone and eat, or we were going to try and sit together and sort of try to find a way to make some kind of conversation.
Briel Schmitz: And how cool is that? That you can do it.
Tim Fish: And how cool is that? How cool is that to sort of be figuring out how to do that in a way that was energizing and fun and kept, and I just kept bumping into her. That was the other thing. You just keep bumping into people along the way.
And you know, one of the things someone said to me also is this notion, one of the things I heard often was this idea of let it go, just let it go. You know, and there is a, there's a moment, there's something called Crucifero, where you carry a rock with you and you leave that rock behind when you get to the highest point in the Camino, somewhere around two thirds of the way through, and you leave that rock. And it's a pretty powerful experience. But the part for me that was also really powerful was these tables that existed in the various places where you would stay. And people would leave stuff from their pack that they just didn't want to carry anymore. Like they would just leave it there, right? And even in the airport, I was leaving the airport in Santiago de Compostela and there's this big bin with just tons of hiking poles in it that people were leaving behind.
And I thought about that idea that we, even in our best planning, sometimes we just don't need something. And I thought about like, in all of our infrastructure, what can we leave behind? What don't we, back to that simplicity, right? What can we sort of strip away and get to, get to the essence of what we do every day in our schools?
Briel Schmitz: And if we're honest about it, how heavy are those things? Right, like how heavy is that in your pack that you're carrying? How much weight is that on the organization, on the community, on the kids, whatever? And I think it's hard to see it, but when you're carrying it every day all day long, you feel it.
Tim Fish: So, Briel, this is so, so fun. I just want to say thank you so much for your time and thank you for sharing your vulnerability with us around the sabbatical and what you were worried about. And I love that idea of will I be missed, right? What a powerful, profound idea that I think we all feel when we think about our schools.
I'm curious, is there something that you think is long-term, something from your experience on the sabbatical as a school leader that you think is going to stick with you for a long, long time that maybe we haven't yet spoken about?
Briel Schmitz: It's a good question. I actually, I think some people are telling me that, some things they're seeing in me, but I will say that for me, and this is just a very personal experience, I really left with the belief and feeling that I'm in the right place. I have no desire to go to another school, to be in a different place. So hopefully my board totally agrees with this, but it was a very, I feel very grounded in this, because on the rare opportunities that I did get to talk about what I did, like, which didn't happen that much because it just wasn't important. But when I did, the feedback that I got about how important this work is from others was such a great reminder.
The work we do at Spruce Street School is nuanced and complicated, and I believe very important in validating humans and humanity, honestly. And I just, I think that getting far enough away where you can see it from a distance and imagine not being there, it absolutely grounded me in that I'm in the right place. This is what I want to be doing. This is important. And I have renewed energy. I'm super enthusiastic and refreshed. People say, are you exhausted? And I'm always like, really? I'm not exhausted. I'm not tired at all. In fact, I'm not tired at all. I'm like, ready to go.
Tim Fish: That’s so fun. Thank you, thank you, thank you. What a great conversation. And I know that it will continue. And you were so generous. Only one week since you got back, you were so generous to spend time with New View EDU and with our listeners. And I just want to say how much we appreciate that.
Briel Schmitz: Well, I appreciate you, Tim. You are inspiring, kind, and always interested in hearing something from someone. And it's a really beautiful part of your personality.
Tim Fish: Well, thank you. You have the same thing. All the best, Briel.
Briel Schmitz: You too. ¡Buen Camino!
Tim Fish: Haha, ¡Buen Camino!