Episode 153: Hope Theory with Donita Grissom
In this episode, I talk to Donita Grissom, a senior lecturer at the University of Central Florida and co-author of the book High Five to Thrive. She is also the CEO of Best Questers, which provides teachers with practical, effective teaching strategies that they can immediately implement in their classrooms to help create resilient, thriving school communities.
In this episode, Donita and I talk about her start in education as a K–12 ESOL teacher and how that led to her training other ESOL teachers. She also explains her Hope Theory and her belief in the importance of goal-setting. This interview is full of great tips to reignite your passion for teaching!
Topics Discussed:
How teacher burnout is a serious issue
Teacher wellness and the impact on students’ learning
Motivating yourself to overcome challenges
Resources mentioned:
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Read the transcript for this episode:
Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.
Dr. Donita Grissom is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Florida, an educator, author, consultant, certified life coach and speaker. A former K 12 ESOL teacher and district specialist. Donita equips schools worldwide with practical tools that boost engagement, morale and retention. As CEO of Best Questers, she leads initiatives blending social and emotional learning, hope theory and brain based research to build resilient, thriving school communities. She is co author of "High Five To Thrive," and a nationally recognized voice reminding educators that hope isn't fluffy, it's functional. Welcome Donita, so nice to have you here.
Donita Grissom 0:36
Thank you, Lily. It's my honor to be here with you.
Lily Jones 0:39
Well, I would love for you to take us in whatever direction you'd like through your journey as an educator.
Donita Grissom 0:45
Oh, my goodness, actually, being an educator is my like second career path. I used to be in the legal work for over 20 some odd years, but I've always had the heart of a teacher. I've always loved children, and so whenever my daughter graduated college, I then pursued my education. Great educator. I already had my education degree, but I started being an educator.
Lily Jones 1:13
What do you do first?
Donita Grissom 1:15
Well, my very first job was teaching music. I do not have a music degree, although I do sing and play music, but anyway, and then I, got asked by this... was in Tennessee, and I got asked by this organization if I would teach ESOL. And I'm like, sure. What is that? So that's how that started. And I actually, I went from school to school, pulling out children. So I had kindergarten children all the way through seniors in high school from all over the world, and I absolutely fell in love. So I moved to Florida, and this is so funny. So here I am with an elementary education degree, early childhood specialization, and they hired me for a high school job. Why? I was scared to death the first year of these children ate me up for lunch.So I learned from my I went back to all the experienced teachers, and I'm like, Do your children do this? Do they do that? They're like, No. I'm like, Okay, help me out here. I learned the the tricks of the trade there, and I literally fell in love teaching high school. I wouldn't have wanted to teach anything else but high school. So that's that. Was that part of my journey.
Lily Jones 2:39
Yeah, how interesting I taught kindergarten and first grade. So high school definitely feels too much for me.
Donita Grissom 2:45
You know what I learned about all of that? My teenagers were actually little kids and big bodies.
Lily Jones 2:52
Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.
Donita Grissom 2:54
I used all of my elementary education tricks with them, and we had a blast in our room, You know, so and teaching ESOL, they needed, they needed interactive, engaging, fun games. I set up my room and with learning stations like elementary teachers do, because I had children from all over the world, 14 different countries, in one room. I had them at various proficiency levels all in one room. So,you know, I didn't know, like from education, what to do. I just I picked up what to do at that particular time because I saw their needs, you know. And then later I went on to get my master's degree from University of Florida. And then I went on to get my PhD from University of Central Florida, and now I train teachers all over the world. So that was I just, I just took you through a lot of years really fast.
Lily Jones 3:49
That's fantastic.
Donita Grissom 3:50
Lot of hard work there, but so that's what I do now.
Lily Jones 3:55
Wonderful.
Donita Grissom 3:56
I work at the University of Central Florida. I train pre service teachers in techniques of teaching ESOL. But in my journey, I as an educator, and what I lived through and what I experienced when I started training teachers,...I do have a professional consulting business Best Questions, which I can tell you more about that later.... but, what I learned is, I was training teachers around the world, they had certain needs. They had the heart of the teacher. They want to help their students. But they are just in such stress and anxiety and panic because of overwork, underpaid, long hours, not enough resources, and right now, 2025 the biggest critical issue... Well, there's two. One, teacher wellness, two, teacher burnout and retention.
Lily Jones 4:57
Mm, hmm, absolutely.
Donita Grissom 4:59
Top two critical issues. So my partners at Best Questions and I, we decided -- my southern -- to back up and punt. We're like, we're out there trying to teach teachers these wonderful strategies. And I even had some teachers tell me, I know what you're teaching us is really great, but please don't teach us anything else, because we'll have to be responsible for it. And we're just, we're just, we're just overwhelmed,
Lily Jones 5:25
Relatable, yes.
Donita Grissom 5:28
So we backed up and punted, and we've, -- I'm going to show you more -- but we it's kind of backwards, I guess, but we wrote High Five to Thrive. And what High Five to Thrive is it's meeting the needs of teachers. It's not everything in the world. Anybody out there that has a self care book and they tell you, Oh, you do this, you get our book, and you know your whole life will change. Everything will change. Better. Run from them, because that's not true. But one of my partners is a mental health counselor, and she has, she's ran mental health clinics at universities. She's at JMU James Madison University now, Dr Vicki couchner, so she's a mental health person. I did my dissertation on hope theory, because I was always interested in trauma with my students and their families, and so it went together in a different way. With my ESOL, it had to do with my students and what their needs were, because that's always what I'm concerned about. And then my other partner, Debbie Simoes, she has been a principal. She's been a trainer with different publishing companies all over she's taught kindergarten as you did wonderful. He's an incredible, incredible teacher trainer and person. I have just the best team. And so we put this book together five proven practices, and we wrote it because we knew that teachers were out there. They they need to be able to put an oxygen mask on them so they can help the children, but their mask is running out of oxygen. Resuscitate them! What? Yeah, and
Donita Grissom 7:08
So this is the reason why we wrote the book. And so we have other things we want to write about, share about, teach teachers about. But you know, when we talk to leaders in the field, they're like, Well, you know, I don't know if we could afford do that right now teacher wellness, and we don't know if teachers have the time to do that, because they think it's like a whole different class. And I'm like, No, that's not what we're talking about. You can't afford not to take care of your teacher, because that teacher is the most critical person in that room. Because without a teacher who's fully present, who's stress free, who is not experiencing anxiety, learning is not going to happen in that room.
Lily Jones 7:58
Absolutely yes.
Donita Grissom 7:59
The teacher sets the tone, she sets the he or she sets the atmosphere for optimal learning to happen. And, you know, I know a lot of teachers, they'll think, Well, I'm not nervous. I'm I'm not feeling anxious. You know, even though they have all these burdens on them, they've been in the teacher's lounge complaining, you know, oh my gosh, I have all this happening. They walk into the room, they put on a smile, and they think that that anxiety and stress didn't enter that room with them, but it did, and the feel it,
Lily Jones 8:31
Mm hmm.
Donita Grissom 8:31
So we have to learn, we have to learn how to help ourselves so we can truly help our students.
Lily Jones 8:39
I 100% agree. I think that my work with teachers at Educator Forever, so much is focused on wellness for these same reasons, like whether teachers are within the classroom or moving beyond the classroom, really intentionally building that wellness piece. And I think it's so interesting and like sometimes disheartening, that we can teach kids all these social and emotional strategies, and, you know, give all this kindness to them and give them all this time to learn and try new things, and we don't do the same thing for ourselves. And so I don't think that we can really lead children towards these things unless we're practicing them ourselves. And so I think it's so key, not only for teacher well being and teacher retention, but also as a model for children. You know, I want people who are fully supported to be teaching my own children and everybody else's children, right? And who feel like they can do this sustainably without self sacrifice.
Donita Grissom 9:31
And then let me just add this, if you don't mind.
Lily Jones 9:34
Oh, please.
Donita Grissom 9:34
What about leaders, principals and superintendents and all the support staff?
Lily Jones 9:38
Yes.
Donita Grissom 9:39
They they need this too, because they're stressed that, you know, they're the ones that people are pointing fingers to. You know, why is this not happening in your schools? And so if you, if you take that approach about modeling these good wellness behaviors and things that we've written about, and there's other methods as well, but we stuck with five. Because we didn't want to overwhelm anyone. We want it to be doable. You know, I'll tell you one of the things that's in the book. It's about setting habits, and how long it takes to set a habit, make it, make it something that's that's your first response, not your last. And it takes 62 days to actually even like a mindset. We talk about mindsets. I have one whole chapter that we wrote. It's about flipping. We call it flipping the script, those mindsets, that inner critic that just hounds you every day and really prevents you from realizing goals Absolutely. And so these are things that we have to put into practice. And so it becomes our automatic and we're just automatically modeling it to our students. And think about the change that that can happen in their homes. Yeah, for sure. I mean, so So needed, and I appreciate the thinking about the time frame too, because teachers, sometimes everyone, I think, feels like, all right, I'm going to implement this thing, and then it's going to go well, and then I'm going to move on. And really it's something that has to be woven into your life practice. One of the things we talk about at one of our chapters is is the very first thing is just noticing we don't notice those sometimes, those those thoughts. I remember the first time someone told talk to me about that, about different thoughts, because they would hear, they would notice what was coming out of my mouth, and they were like, did you notice that you always say, I'm sorry all the time? And I'm like, No, I didn't. And so once you start noticing, and I didn't even know that that ended was an indicator of something being that that I could do better. But really it was coming from a place of shame, but I didn't know that. Mm hmm. And so I had to work on that in my life and and once they pointed it out to me, you can bet every time it would come up, I would go, oops. I didn't mean to do that. Wait a minute. I gotta reframe that, you know, but that noticing is the first step just noticing.
Lily Jones 12:12
Mm hmm so powerful. And I think with teachers, there's just, it's such an impossible job, right? And there's not even mental capacity sometimes to do the noticing or the reflection. And so I think even carving out like these little moments, and I think it comes back to what you were saying before, with talking to the school leaders and administrators, of seeing the value you know, seeing what a difference I can make and what you can change through carving out time for reflection and like building that capacity.
Donita Grissom 12:33
And then I'll take it a step further. This is not in this book, something that I do. And maybe next year, you'll see a book about it. It's already.... wheels are turning! But I teach this. I teach how to implement some of these social learning, emotional learning tools through content. So for example, in the noticing part, if you're in if you're reading a story, and one of the characters has a thought pattern that they talk about in the story, so it just becomes this natural pattern of questioning and critically and analyzing this character and what they're thinking. So it comes through this. So I teach teachers how to do this. And for me, it's called the hope action, excuse me, the hope operation, no thinking strategies. It's a cycle questions that I have developed through hope, my hope research. And so you can look at, look at those thought patterns. And then you can ask the students, well, what are some thought patterns that would have helped this character? Who's somebody they could have asked for help? What is something different, another strategy that they could have used to meet that goal or solve that problem, and so on and so forth. So I take them, the teachers through this cycle of questioning, which develops critical thinking, and it also raises hope levels, which, that's a whole nother topic, but there's such huge benefits, which you do learn about in our book, high five to thrive. It's been a lot of research that the Gallup poll has done about children with high hope levels and how they can attain a whole lot letter grade higher than their lower hope peers and and many other things they do better on test achievement test, they set more goals. They realize more goals. And this is for people, but this particular research is about children, so that's in the book as well. It's, it's incredible what we can do, and it's not an extra class period, it's just woven into our day.
Lily Jones 14:54
So powerful. And I'm so intrigued and interested with your research on hope. Can you talk to us a little bit about hope levels and hope theory? I want to know all about this.
Donita Grissom 15:05
So hope is a positive psychological construct. It has three components, the first being either a goal or problem. And always ask everybody, is there anybody in this room who does not have a problem? Oh, okay, if you raise your hand, you need to come up here and talk, because we all have we all have them. And so obviously goal theory, and in all this goal setting, wisdom and knowledge comes into play there. So we work with people on on their goals and on their problems. The next component is the strategy, or the how, how are you going to solve this problem? How are you going to meet this goal? And so some people have a goal, but they don't. They don't have strategies. I don't have any idea how to do this. And so we work with people on strategies. Then the next component, and this is the real big one. This is, it's the agency factor, and that includes the mindset, the thinking. That includes, do I have enough energy, the kind of energy it takes to walk these strategies out? I call it like the gas in the gas tank. If you don't have any gas, you may have the strategy, but you're not going anywhere. This fuel. You gotta have all this happening to get from point A to point B, and then this is not a component. But I speak about this in everywhere, because I feel like Two are better than one. And so I always say, who's your hope agent, who's going to help you, who's been there and done that, whatever that is, and it gets, could be a lot of different people, right? But I know that if I have someone expecting me to be go for that walk every afternoon or whatever, I'm going to be there. But if they're not, probably going to go, I don't think I feel like doing it today. Nobody care. Nobody's there, whatever, exactly. And so. So that is not necessarily. They do talk about it in hope theory, but it's not a construct. So you can't have actual hope unless all of those components are present when we measure hope. Which hope can be measured by the way we look at all three of the component components, but together. So some of the benefits, some of the many, many benefits of having high hope is the fact that you will set more goals. You will realize more goals. You're just plain happier people, happier at work. You achieve more at work. And let me just tell you, it's like little ducklings people's brains are primed to follow people with high hope. Who would you rather be around somebody that's happy and and hopeful? You may not know it's hopeful, but you know they're they're positive, they're the glass half full. Or would you be around someone who's ornery? And...
Lily Jones 18:05
I choose the first.
Donita Grissom 18:10
And so that that's another benefit. And children, as I said, that they they make better relationships with their peers when bad things happen. Because, guess what? Hope. Having high hope does not keep bad things from happening. Let's not because, see, as matter of fact, if, if someone says that having high hope means that nothing bad is ever going to happen to you, that is just wishful thinking that is toxic, yes, because it's not true. It's not real. Real having real high hope is really critical thinking. It's a thinking process. And you know, when I ask people, What do you think hope is? You know, you have, you know, heard the song high hopes. And hi, hopes. I got high hopes. Well, yes, dreaming is good. Any kind of goal can start with a dream, but it doesn't end. It would end there if we didn't put all the other critical thinking aspects to the whole process.
Lily Jones 19:17
Mm, I love that having I wrote down. Having high hopes is critical thinking. I mean, that makes so much sense to me. I think so much of the work that I've done with teachers is helping them see possibilities, which I see connections to the hope too. Of just you can only see a narrow view sometimes, you know, oh, and once you start looking and around other people like you're saying this hope agents, right? You can see it in other people. Sometimes before you can see it in yourself. And so do you have any suggestions for teachers, or, really, anyone who's feeling like, oh, that sounds great, but my hope level maybe is kind of low. What can they do?
Donita Grissom 19:52
So, so you can buy my book first.
Lily Jones 19:55
Great.
Donita Grissom 19:56
Hopefully you can attend a workshop. Uh. Soon, we will have some online courses, but let's talk about some strategies. So So one of the strategies where let's talk about the flip the script, because that's one of the hardest, and the fact is, we have to notice them. So in our book, we talk about some of those cognitive distortions that that caught that, some of those I call it, we call it hope hacking, and and then so we give examples, so people can notice through that, like, Oops, I do that. Well, there's nothing wrong with you if you do that. Guess what we all do. But then we give some alternatives, and we call that the flip the script, the hope full. And I use f u l, l, but anyway, in the book, they probably said f u l, but I always say hope, full thought. And so you have to start on purpose. When you, when you that thought comes to you. Okay, you that thought is there. You can you can't deny it. You didn't manufacture it. It just came. So I'm, I'm going to flip that and I'm going to exchange it for this hopeful thought. Now, at first, you may have to do that like 20 times a day on purpose, but eventually and we can put, and I we even give some suggestions about put put sticky notes everywhere you see this. I mean literally, when it's on your mirror, you know, you get in the car, it's on your dash at school, it's on your computer screen. That might sound silly, but it's not visually. You know, we get see it in our eyes. We hear it when you speak it, and eventually, not automatically, but eventually, as you really put your intention to do this, it will become your automatic thought. So that's one big thing, and and when you're doing that, the agency part of Hope theory tells you that you're going to have more of that energy to do the things you want to do, because what's happening in your body is you're letting off the happy juice, is what I call it, that endorphins and that dopamine, that that help you persist. Dopamine, higher levels of dopamine, cause you to persist obstacles that happy endorphins and hormones they cause. Do you know if it even opens up your brain? In the brain, I believe it, if you're having stress and anxiety, I put my hand back here, because that's where it is. It closes up. So think about your students in that classroom, and there's tension in the room. They're nervous, they're anxious that, you know, the teacher's having in a bad mood, and she's, you know, being kind of snippy with them. That closes, there's nothing. Thing is just going to pop off. It's nothing's going in. So it's a two way street. It helps you be happier in the classroom and then as a person, and it helps you to work through those goal setting strategies, because you're you have the right fuel in you to do so that's one big strategy.
Lily Jones 23:25
I love that.
Donita Grissom 23:26
I can't give them all away, because I want you to buy the book.
Lily Jones 23:26
Yes. I mean, it's so powerful thinking about this is something that you can change, right? Like, if you're that agency piece, I think is so key, right? Like you can change it and so and then you can see that it can become this ripple effect of like a little change leads to another little change leads to another little change, and then suddenly you have big effects.
Donita Grissom 23:49
And so let me give you another one. We've already talked about hope agents, but think about this. So my my audience out there, I've done this a million times, but you can talk about just something like losing weight, or something about what you know you're trying to be better at, whatever it is you're trying to be better at, and you're going, I've tried everything. If you ever said that nothing works, sure, guess what? Did you ask somebody for help, because that person that you ask for help may have something that you've never thought of, you never would think of. I've had that happen to me so many times. I'm like, Oh my gosh. Why didn't I know that? Yes, worked. Saying it never works for me, because, guess what? It worked?
Lily Jones 24:42
Yes, we can get so stuck in our own minds, right? Like, it becomes this creative thinking practice. So when you hear other people's ideas, right? Like, I think there's some part of pushing yourself outside of your own constructs of what you think is possible, and often we need somebody else to do that. We get so stuck.
Donita Grissom 25:02
And if you're not asking for help, why? You have to analyze that. Like, is it because you're afraid? Is it because you have too much pride, you don't want someone to realize that? Ooh, I don't know everything. I mean, you know, there's a lot of different reasons, and I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm not putting some sort of connotation on that, other than if you really want to change then get help. Ask people for help. If you don't know who to ask, maybe you know, notice somebody who you know, you know them, and you know they've been through something, and you can ask them, mm hmm, and they sound like simple things. And I'm going to tell you in our book, there's nothing rocket science. We all. We do give you the science behind everything, because, and not in a, not in a, a wordy way, we made this book very simple. We did add the science, because what we have found is that people who have a strong why for whatever a why for why they do things a why for why you should do something, you're more likely to do it whatever it is. So our book Start starts out with, why are you a teacher? Why did you want to be a teacher? Because if you have that strong why, and then you're having that, that not so good day, and you and you've just like, I don't think I can do this another day. Well, sometimes that strong lie is what's going to you can hold on to that in your heart, because that's what's going to get you through that day? Mm hmm, believe me, I've had, we've all had many of those days. Mm hmm, absolutely and so, so we give you the science behind that. But another thing we did in our book, we know that there's a lot of different people who have a lot of different outlooks on and perspectives in life, world views, we know we're all made up different as we should be and so, so we put the science in there for the people who really need the science. But we made stories because some people need stories, sure, and they need to see the before and the after. So we put that in there because we wanted to try to reach as many people as we could. But we also, you can see, it's not very big, okay?
Lily Jones 27:26
Yes, accessible.
Donita Grissom 27:30
Who wants a big old fat book? I don't. And we made it doable. And we, you know, we made activities that you can pick up and you can choose to do for yourself. We even say in here, you know, you may not have time to do all six chapters. Choose one. Mm, hmm, go through and pick one to start with, something that you know you really need the worst. I mean, look at the the table contents, you know, and and so it's our hope, wish, and I hope it's been a wish. It's our dream that teachers will and leaders and counselors, parents even, because this is just it's the stories are from teachers, but the practices are for human beings. Mm, hmm, whatever they are, one of our goals is to take our book and turn it into like the chicken or the Chicken Soup for the Soul, you know? Oh, yeah, high five to thrive for the workplace. High five to thrive for parents. So those sort of things. But we haven't found enough hours in the day to do all that yet. You'll get there. That's we'll get there. But this is where we're starting, because these were our stories we you know, it's not our names in there, but these are things that happened to us as educators and that we were able to put into this. And so now all of us have been in the workplace, as I said, 20 plus years in the legal field, so I'll be able to work, give you stories for that one too, workplaces. All of us have have done that too, but we knew that teachers, we just have the heart of a teacher. So we, our hearts and passion are for teachers and for our students.
Lily Jones 29:16
Wonderful. I love that. Congratulations. I mean, it's such a great book, and so helpful. And I love that you're thinking about not only for teachers, but for humans. I think that that is something I think about all the time. You know, all these strategies we use in the classroom, all these things we know about learning, and then they stay in the classroom, and we're learning all the time. Everyone is right. Yes, I love this plan to bring it to a broader audience. Thank you. Thank you. So I know you've done so many amazing things beyond the classroom, and a lot of our audience are educators looking to maybe expand their impact beyond the classroom, try new things. Maybe they want to write a book or train teachers or do something else in education. Do you have any advice for them?
Donita Grissom 29:59
Yes, I do. So first of all, as as a doc student, when I was a doctoral student, I had the opportunity to be the grunt worker for some state department projects at my university. Moving fast forward with the day came that I these people came into my path again asking me to be an English language specialist. Is because they remembered me when I did the grunt work. And so now they send me all over the world during trainings. So I do that on the side as well. As a matter of fact, I'm getting ready this, this at the end of this month, I'm starting a six workshop, six workshops for 500 Russian teachers. It will be on, obviously, online. But I am so honored to do that. I've done this before with them, not not six of them, but and it changed my life. So my whole point is, when projects come up for you to do, and they spark your interest, do to them, because you never know what that's going to lead you to. So that that's one thing, yes, yeah. And if you're creative, I remember when I was doing, I was doing my bachelor's degree in education. I had considered, this was back then I had construction paper and all the things, you know, because we didn't have computers and all that. And I remember someone telling me, you just, are you just play every day. And I'm like, Yes, I love it. I was making teaching materials, you know, with construction paper. And so if you're creative in any way, I can't draw a stick person, but I could cut up paper and construction paper, make things with it. And so to this day, then I create curriculum for for teachers. So what is that thing that you have, that that you could do. Maybe you're really good at doing PowerPoint presentations. You can get side gigs doing that for people like me. I mean, call me, send me an email. Now, who can you know you could do? You can do many things. And another thing is that I learned when, when PowerPoint came out, I didn't know how to use PowerPoint. And I remember my colleagues were like, Oh, I'm scared to do that. And I'm like, I'm not. So I would assign my high school students to do PowerPoint presentations, and then I would say, Okay, now you guys teach me how you did that!
Lily Jones 32:40
That's perfect.
Donita Grissom 32:42
So just and here's another thing, we all and I understand this, you don't have time. You will make time for things you love. For years, I wanted to take dancing lessons, but I never did, because I didn't think I had time. Finally, one day, I just got so aggravated that I never had time. I just took the time and I found a Groupon coupon because, you know, I'm a teacher, I like lots of money, and now, for the last three years, I do ballroom dancing, and I perform with my with my wonderful instructor, and I love it. It's my hobby. So I don't know, I just so what, I guess my bottom line is, step out. These are things that you love to do, whatever that is.
Lily Jones 33:37
Yes, fantastic advice. And I think it's like, it doesn't have to be the whole thing at once. And so thinking about that grunt work, thinking about that one project, oftentimes we don't get to where we want to go right away, but through this path of trying these things and learning through doing it and not waiting, I love this ballroom example too, of just like not waiting. You know, we always make excuses. And so just trying it out, it doesn't, you know, it's an hour a week or whatever it is, right? Like, it doesn't take that much time. And so, really, just diving in.
Donita Grissom 34:10
Well, I was just gonna say but, but it does something to your soul.
Lily Jones 34:14
yes, yes. And it's betting on you, you know, it's showing you true like self love, right? If you're interested in ballroom dancing, or you're interested in writing curriculum or whatever it might be, right, showing yourself that compassion and confidence that you could try it out.
Donita Grissom 34:32
Yeah, I have a doc student right now who I just spoke with yesterday, and she she knows about my Russian project, and so she has been learning Russian, because she has Russian students in her fourth grade class. And so we connected through I was asking her to do some filming of some videos I have to do for that project. And so she see she's giving up her time. So obviously she'll get some points for her her coursework. It's a connection with something that is she's very interested in Russian culture. She's learning the Russian language because she wants to connect with her students and their parents. And for me, this opportunity just came up. And so see, you never know.
Lily Jones 35:20
You never know. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Donita, it's been a true pleasure talking with you. I've loved learning about your work and your book. Can you tell folks where they can connect with you?
Donita Grissom 35:31
Yes, please. So my website is www, dot best clusters.net, and you can, you can find out about my book, and we have another book coming out real soon. It's, it's a on ESOL strategies for K through 12 content teachers called the boost playbook, but you can find all of that there. The book is available on Amazon. It's also available in ebook format on at Barnes and Noble, so you can get either the the paperback or the ebook. Um, best questions. We are on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. Donita Grissom, oh, you can get me at my email, doctor, D, D, R, D. Grissom@gmail.com and can I, Lily, can I send you all of that?
Lily Jones 36:17
Oh, please, yes, absolutely. We'll put it in the show notes.
Donita Grissom 36:21
Yes, and obviously we're on Instagram. I'm not too good at Instagram, but I'm learning. Anyways, yeah, so those are, those are the places that you can find us, wonderful.
Lily Jones 36:31
Yes, we'll add them all to the show notes. And again, thank you so much.
Donita Grissom 36:34
Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai