Sara Jay
I feel intensely which means I empathize intensely.
Many of the answers we are so desperate for in societal, institutional, commercial & self improvement are quite simple and actually involve slowing down, doing less, and paying more attention to ourselves and one another.
By working with individuals and teams to understand their desired experiences in work, play, and learning I help install small routines & practices that across time can transform outcomes but most importantly what it feels like to learn & g r o w .
Sara Jay
My name is Sara Jay. Data tracking and scope and sequenced continuous improvement guide my way of being.
I have always experienced this world in an intense fashion guiding me to feel a need to eliminate opportunities for repeated negative experiences. The best way I have found to ensure this has been to use evidence to support the claims I make to myself and others regarding my behavior; if I am going to do something, it better be on purpose & for a reason. I call that intentionality.
As a middle schooler, I felt an intense need to eliminate the utterly nasty physiological experience of being embarrassed by an outfit fail. That led to me video journalling all of my outfits with coordinated songs to make sure that I set the right vibe, and more importantly never repeated an outfit. I kept track of what I wore, using anecdotal data to determine which pieces to redesign. For these reasons, I always felt confident in the way that I presented myself to others.
During my first year of teaching math, I had another nasty physiological experience, this time from my wildly controlling and intimidating building principal at about my student’s mid year geometry scores in the corner of my brightly colored classroom library. My instructional coach ensured me that we had not yet taught covered any geometry in the curriculum, but we could install a small group block to make sure students were exposed to the standards.
I spent the entire two weeks of winter break building a guided math curriculum for each goal strand and each RIT range of all of the students in both of my math classes based on the triggering NWEA data I had just been mortified over. I had the data, I had a plan, and I was sure that because of it, my students would score higher in geometry; I would feel confident in the way that those scores represented my leadership in the classroom.
Those kids scored higher, and all of our lives were changed.
As my experiences teaching math went on, so did my exposure to the traumas of working in a highly toxic environment in a literally dangerous neighborhood. I noticed myself kind of “freaking out” for lack of a better term at the time, whenever I would get really close to work, as I was exiting from the highway.
One day, I blasted this Pretty Lights, ODESZA Remixed song right as I curved the corner to exit the highway. I felt exhilarated, in control, and alive. I began listening to that song every day as I was about to get to work. I recorded it in my Happy Planners and notebooks because recording my existence & emotions was what I had done since I was small. After looking at the planner I noticed I was significantly calmer on the days I listened to a song on purpose for a reason right before I turned the car off, so I installed that practice into my way of being and have never turned back since.
The playlist is often different every week or so, and it’s often 60% plus Drake, but what matters is that by using one of the human senses on purpose, for a reason, I can drastically shift my experience in reality. For the better. DataBased is about helping others do the same.
