This is a different type of episode for the Just Schools Podcast! This time Jon Eckert is interviewed by Beck Iselin.  The conversation explores the role of joy in education and how it connects to feedback, engagement, and well-being (FEW). Jon shares how his research builds on past work, emphasizing that joy isn’t something artificially created—it comes from a deep understanding of our identity and purpose. He reflects on how students today often equate happiness with well-being and why educators must help them see joy as something deeper and more enduring. This conversation offers insight into how teachers can cultivate meaningful engagement and resilience in their classrooms. The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership.Be encouraged.Mentioned:How to Know A Person by David Brooks Reset by Dan Heath Lincoln Versus Davis: The War of the Presidents by Nigel Hamilton   Connect with us:Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcslBaylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInBCSL LinkedIn   Jon Eckert: Welcome back to Just Schools. We have a treat for you today. We have a guest host in the studio all the way from Brisbane, Australia. We have Beck Iselin. She's a returning Just Schools podcast person, but the last time she was the person I got to interview along with her dad about the work that she does as a school teacher in Brisbane, and so she listens to Just Schools and we were discussing this over the weekend and she said, there's so many questions I would like to ask you as someone who listens, and she said, "Do you ever do the podcast where someone interviews you?" So I said, "Well, why don't you take that role?" So we have our first ever guest host, so take it away Beck, you get to be the interviewer. Beck Iselin: Thank you, Jon. I'm so grateful for the one and only Dr. Jon Eckert joining us on the other side of the podcast today. Yeah, I guess I wanted to really start off by asking you, I know that you're involved in a lot of current research at the moment, stemming out of your real passion for kids and for the educational leadership space. So can you speak to a little bit about what your current research looks like? Jon Eckert: No, I'd love to do that. So all of my research always builds on previous research. So the collective leadership work became the feedback, engagement, and wellbeing for each educator and each student work. That was what animated Just Teaching, and now what I've realized is our profession needs more joy and it can't be artificially cultivated. It comes from the deep joy that comes from our knowledge that we are created in the image of God and we're broken and flawed, and out of that brokenness comes joy and so when we think about FEW, feedback, engagement, wellbeing for each kid, we need to make sure they understand what joy is because I'm not sure kids do understand that right now. I think they think if they don't feel happy that they aren't well, and if they aren't well, then they don't feel like they should show up and our happiness is circumstantial. Beck Iselin: It's not contingent. Jon Eckert: Right, it's this self-focused thing where joy should effervesce through struggle and in the Bible you see this over and over again. Joy is always connected to adversity and suffering, and we don't wish adversity and suffering on people. We certainly don't wish trauma on people, but there is this idea that in a classroom, we have to be able to move through adversity with others and as we do that, that builds that gritty optimism that we can do more. Beck Iselin: That's where the joy is, some would say. Jon Eckert: That's it. That's where the joy is, well said. So that's what we're researching right now. We've gotten about 20,000 surveys in from around the world on what that looks like in classrooms and so that's the next book that we're working on, Joy Over Happiness and what that looks like. Beck