LaVonna Roth - IGNITE your Shine

LaVonna Roth is a savvy thought leader who blends education, science and psychology. She works with educators and business professionals, teaching them how to connect, engage and motivate.   

Roth is the creator and owner of Ignite your S.H.I.N.E. The acronym stands for:

Self

Heart

Ignite

Navigate

Exceptional

LaVonna Roth is on a mission to provide professional development – virtual or on-site - for educators and corporate clients.  She’s written books on brain research and engaging instruction.  As an elementary and secondary educator, keynote speaker, author, consultant and mom, she teaches educators how to effectively serve students through the lens of brain research, social-emotional needs and the whole child. She also works with business clients on staff development and corporate culture initiatives.  

During our conversation, LaVonna and I talked about the importance of focusing on our strengths.  In my role as a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, I can relate to this strength-based approach. 

You will love learning about LaVonna’s journey.  She talks about how moments in life don’t define us but instead, refine us.  I hope you enjoy the interview.  

You can check out some of her presentations.  

Her books are available from Teacher Created Materials.

For more information, contact:
Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E.®
Phone: (813) 360-0630
Email: LaVonna@igniteyourSHINE.com

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Transcript

Judy Oskam :   0:03
Welcome to Stories of Change and Creativity. I'm Judy Oskam a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University. Throughout my career as a television journalist, video producer, PR professional and educator. I've always been drawn to stories, stories about people and how they deal with change and embrace creativity. I hope you enjoy listening. LaVonna Roth is a savvy thought leader who blends education, science and psychology. She works with corporate and education experts about ways to connect, engage and motivate

LaVonna Roth:   0:43
Hi I'm LaVonna Roth and I have had the privilege of being an educator for 10 years, and now I actually stepped out the classroom a while ago, about 12 years ago, and I'm out consulting, speaking, working with educators and corporations and something I never planned on

Judy Oskam :   0:58
and the name of your company is

LaVonna Roth:   1:00
Ignite your Shine.

Judy Oskam :   1:02
Talk about your story, what got you out of the classroom and into not only the corporate world but also the educational landscape.

LaVonna Roth:   1:10
Yes, it was. I guess that was not anything I planned on at all. And so I was a teacher for 10 years, and people kept saying to me, LaVonna you need to go into administration. You need to become the sister principle, the principle, and that never appealed to me. But I did go back and got my second Masters in educational leadership, and I had a friend call me and she said, Labonte, you really need to take over my position And I said, What is that? As you said, IM 42 sales rep for Walden University. And I thought, Well, that sounds great, but, you know, I don't want on a like for like, sales, like I'm not really interested. Bottom line is, I end up taking this job. I am promoted to regional manager of the Southeast, so managing reps and five states again, never planning on it. But along the way, I'm learning sales, marketing, all right, managing people. And that ended up going where I stepped away from it and did several other jobs in the crazy part. Judy, is that everything that I look back on and now plays a part and wear him in my business today, like I couldn't see the journey right at the time. Even one time I was laid off, and that was detrimental to me, and I kept thinking, Oh my goodness. But now I understand everything. Lead me to push me to the next thing you know. So there's always that saying that you know, when one door closes, another one opens. I truly, truly believe in that. And so I just kept on this different path and trying to figure out who I was in that journey, and it involved a lot of changes. But I've learned to welcome that my life. There's so much that can come with that and learning that occurs, and you just have to change the lens of how you approach it. And so I end up being were now. I got my speak all the time and I'm traveling the world. I speak internationally and mostly schools, but also do corporate talks. And when I started ignite your sign, it was literally to help students, and I wouldn't students understand that they shine like every child is gifted. The question is how and so I wanted them to embrace themselves and who they were, but what I didn't realize until people were coming up to me and saying you have no idea how badly I needed this. And they were adults,

Judy Oskam :   3:07
Well and and your your approach and your and your focus is all science based. So talk about that. Because I think, you know, as far as the Gallup strengths coaching. I'm a Gallup Strengths, coach. And you can see the transformation when you when you tell people what their natural talents are. And you you saw that in the classroom, and then you created that talk about your company and shine and what that means, what that stands for

LaVonna Roth:   3:36
So SHINE is an acronym, and shine is the letter stand S I was all about self. So exactly what you just said with Gallup Strengths Finder. I approach it a little bit different, but it all plays into the big picture of you looking at you. And I think people are very fascinated learning about themselves. Other people, yes, but more themselves, So S is all about self. And what I mean by that is it's about your strengths, gift skills and talents. But it's also within that your mindset about you and your belief in who you are And then when you get to H, H is heart and we use that in place of the word passion because otherwise shine would've been spine. Now one really working well working? No, but not because it is great. So  H is all about heart. It's about passion. And so we teach individuals to look for their strengths and their passions and then marry the two together because if one, is missing you're out of balance. Right..then you get to I. You can have this great package of S and H right, your strengths and your passions. But if you don't know how to stay inspired, letter I is inspire you're gonna crumble. You're gonna fall, right? And it's also about inspiring others. We get to N and N is navigate. What do you do with all the greatness I just talked about? The point is to do something with why you're here, that your purpose and have that fulfilled life and then E is exceptional because you're becoming exceptional person. You were meant to be not anybody else who you were meant to be. And so we're all about taking this all these different components and putting them together to find who you are. But it back in the classroom I knew.. I had won awards as a teacher at the school, county and state level. But I couldn't tell you why..... I could not tell you why. What what worked in the classroom worked until I got into psychology and neuroscience and everything began to click because I began to learn how the brain learns and then thats when things started to make sense. The why certain students achieved at certain things. Why certain things? They were way better performance and the same thing as adults. You know, when we learn how we shine, we begin to thrive instead of beating ourselves up over our weaknesses.

Judy Oskam :   5:32
Why do you think people naturally focus on weakness? Because I with with the Gallup we always focus on the top five and they don't call the bottom 34 a. A weakness. It's just a lesser talent. Why do you think people focus on their weakness?

LaVonna Roth:   5:53
Yes, So what I realized is again, the brain research right, understanding how the brain learns and how we perceive things. And so the brain is designed for one thing, and that has survive to thrive.  . We're all about survival. So in order to survive, we have to constantly be aware of anything negative around us, and that could be a negative expression. It could be negative words. It could be a negative action taken towards us, physically or emotionally. And so for that reason, I think we're just innate to look for all those negative things. Weaknesses, lesser, you know, strengths, whatever words we want to use there. But when we start looking at the strengths instead of the what we're not great at doing, we began to rise into who we are, right. We begin toe the shine in that way. But you have to teach yourself because your innate ability is to look for all of the negatives. And I have had to teach myself and I still catch myself. Other people catch me, you know, in saying Wait, Lavonna.. I'm like, right? oh yes, catch me because I'm human too.

Judy Oskam :   6:46
Yeah, so it's part of that limbic fight or flight mechanism in our brain that's that's making us react or be proactive so we don't have that Negative.

LaVonna Roth:   7:03
Yes, yes, you're right ..limbic is all about that emotion, but within the limbic system you have the medulla and theamygdala is it's one thing that cares about your survival, and it's filtering every single sound. Temperature, words, actions. Everything is getting filtered through there, and the brain is deciding. Is anything a threat? And then you have the reptilian brain in the very, very back. You know the base of your skull, and that's gonna be where it's all about the fight flight freeze. And so your brain is designed to do those actions. And so I think it's incredibly fascinating the fact that we find ways to learn, ways to sit and pay attention and just the creativity of what we do and our brain is beyond what any other, of course, but it's just it's fascinating to me that how we do this,

Judy Oskam :   7:46
what's the major thing that teachers or maybe corporate executives are looking for when they when they when they want you to come in and talk to to their people, whether it's teachers or executives or staffers or whatever, What are they looking for?

LaVonna Roth:   8:00
I think it's a little different in education to corporate. The words are a little different, so I would say corporate, it's more of the engagement, you know, the happiness, because happiness,  people are finally realizing that leads to productivity. So you can want your all your employees to come in and work 9 to 5 solid and get everything done and you just skyrocket the financial aspect of the reach that that company has. But if your people aren't happy, they're bringing all that baggage and with, um, and that's definitely going to effect, because the brain is now focusing on that and running energy on it instead of being in a place of I'm good with who I am. And, yeah, this may be happening my life. But we're gonna get through this. It's that mindset. You know. Carol Dweck talks about a fixed on a growth mindset. Exactly what this is education. They use the word achievement, you know, over productivity. I think you sending the basically same thing, Yes, but it's the same thing. If we want our students to learn, do we have to put them into a learning state? And so they're coming with all the social emotional learning that needs to be done so really social, emotional, wellness, social, emotional, well being, and we're finally seeing that in education as well. But we put the brain into a state of learning. Now you're gonna see the achievements skyrocket. So they're both going after the same thing, you know? And I think the underlying piece that we have to realize is people need to understand that I think happiness within yourself and how to get there. And then to take that one of my stories I'm creating, you know, in my own head. And are they really true stories? Are they? What I talk about in my keynotes of my sessions with people in workshops is that you know, you can have words, and but when you keep hearing these words over and over, they actually become a belief. But it does not mean that belief is truth,

Judy Oskam :   9:42
right? Right. And I think you've got to start in the classroom with the teacher, right? So you're working with the teacher and then then it trickles down to the students. That's your hope. I'm sure, right?

LaVonna Roth:   9:54
And that was what I didn't see. I didn't see that teachers are bringing their own baggage. Teachers are burnt out right now. They're spent more and more demands or coming down the pike, and nothing's being taken off. It's almost as if the feeling is our. Maybe the feeling actually is I should say that they're not good enough because there's more to do. There's more to learn. There's different strategies and behavior and more phone calls and e mails, and the list goes on and on, and rightfully so. They feel that way. So we have to switch it and a way to switch it though is that we have to help them with their social emotional wellness. And how do they change the lens of how they view things to you? I often say your brain believes what you tell it, and so if that's true because it is right, will you tell your brain your believes again. Going from thoughts into beliefs is that when teachers come in and they begin to form a belief about them as a teacher, that dramatically affects how they teach, which then affects our students. So that's exactly what I realized is that we have to help our teachers first, and so unfortunately, there's not a lot of funding when it comes that direction, but we can and more and more is coming. I will say that, but what we can do is when businesses approach I had to take for a while. I'm seeing a shift now, but I would come in to give mindset and social emotional wellness of how you do in your classroom and how you find the strengths and passions of your students. And how do you keep the inspiration going? How do you teach them to take action through navigate to be the exceptional students are supposed to be. The person is supposed to be by teaching that way, it reached the teachers, right? So sometimes you have to come in one way, That's where you get creative right?

Judy Oskam :   11:28
That's right. That's right. Well, and and and what are some things that our listeners can do to empower ourselves? What do you you know? Because you said you have to give the right messages to your brain. What are some things we can do?

LaVonna Roth:   11:41
I tnink one very, very first thing you do is be aware of your thoughts. We have so many thoughts a day, and we're not even aware of the impact they have in our life. So having an accountability partner that when you're talking to someone and you're saying something negative about yourself, boom, catch it at that word. Whether is a code word that you say just as a laughing point, Not why you being negative?. You know, maybe the word is Butterfly. You know, it's only Butterfly, and they're like, Oh, cut myself, guys. Be negative. But then also yourself, Like I am by nature I'm a pretty positive person. I've had to adjust things, especially about myself, until one day, Judy, I said, you know what? I'm going to  as often as I can. I'm gonna catch my thoughts about myself. And at the end of the day, I was shocked, shocked at  how many negative things I said about myself.

Judy Oskam :   12:26
So be aware of your thoughts. Yes. And there's control because some people would say, Well, they just fly into my head and I can't do that. And I'm thinking of mainly, you know, I work with a lot of college students and, ah, lot of perspective college students, and I think they see all of the glamour and all of the good stuff on social media. And I think that's Ah, I'm sure you've talked a lot about that, and you've got some good good resource is on your website about that as well. But How do you How do you teach people that might be seeing everything is rosy out there on there and there, putting it back in on themselves.

LaVonna Roth:   13:05
And I think that's, ahuge issue we're having. You know, it's a comparison. It's Ah, foam OAS, I say. Fear of missing out. Yes, all right. And so I think it's the danger of Social Media's. So for most of us were posting things that are happy things. They're wonderful in our life. But it doesn't mean that there is nothing going on behind that. You know, the thing is, we're not gonna post that now. Some people dio right, but we're not gonna share our dirty laundry is one. It's really not anyone's business, right? Right. We're trying to deal with it and go through it. And two, it's not the right platform. And so for me, this is where people have to understand. What you are seeing is one thing. The second thing I must say is that as you scroll through, you're seeing the person who bought the new home. The person who got the car that they wanted the person whose child got into the school of their dreams you're seeing all of this and what happens is we start to compare as if it's one person having all of that. So the perception becomes, Oh my goodness, five people just on social media There is this this this this but our mind. We see there's one person and we're like, I don't have that. I don't have that. That is my dream. I'm on my way to that and I don't have that. And you just told yourself, I don't have I don't have it. What are all the things you do? Have them and so is it goes back to even self look at strengths, not physical things, but even emotional. Or that the greatness about you we talked. We call ourselves lions of greatness and shine, and that's exactly what everybody is. But the moment you start comparing, you started down, come down. So whether if I like when I work with teachers, I share with them, you have to understand what you see. The teacher who does the most amazing bulletin boards. You have a teacher who handles every every behavior mangement issue, right that child gets sent to you, and you can handle it. You have the one with the most engaging lessons. You're the one who has creative lessons, and you see all this and you start comparing and you're thinking, OK, I'm not at that level. I'm not even close to that that I'm terrible at gave that. I do rock at, but I mean you compared. And there's four things or three things against your one or two that you saw and you really going? Oh, my goodness. Have all this work to do? I'm not good enough. Yes, you are. What if? And this is the same for corporate. What if we came together and we shared the strength? So, Judy, you're amazing at podcasting will use that just as a quick example. I Let's say I look at you and I go. Oh, my goodness. I don't know how she does the podcasting. How did you figure this out? How does she do it? How she have the time. And let's say I start comparing it. I'm like, you know what? Some day I'd like to have a podcast and I'm going. Yeah, but Judy's way ahead of me, I won't be able do that. I'm not good is Judy. Judy is so phenomenal. She knows what to ask. I went on this whole rabbit hole, comparing myself against you instead of my own in my own strengths. So what if though I wanted podcast, I say, Hey, Judy, I am. Think about doing a podcast. Would you be willing to help me? What is three steps I need to do to get started? And then I used to come to meters a Labonte. I'm having a day of where I am really negative in my head,

Judy Oskam :   15:49
right? Help me with that. Yes. Help me

LaVonna Roth:   15:51
when you see how we job right now and recreate this This whole community, this culture where everybody is unstoppable in your honor and value each other

Judy Oskam :   15:59
well, how do we get to that point? That's that's the That's the challenge, right? Bring me in. Yeah. Yeah, and and again, it's knowing that there is a need for that, and I think people might not realize that there's another way for them to live in their own skin, to actually be and think. I really like what you said about controlling the messages in the input. What else do you tell your clients? about about how to do that, The actual How is it? Is it visual cues? Is it messages that they leave in front of them? Is it what are some tricks and tools you could share

LaVonna Roth:   16:35
so it could be opposed to note with a word of affirmation or something that for you again, it could be Butterfly? It could be Checkpoint like cause. What is it that I've done? Imposed to note I would put everywhere. You know, I put on the steering with the car ride on the back of the toilet leg. Enough. Your mail. You see that? You know, whatever it works, there could be in your kitchen cupboard or when you open the door, you know? But you put those that it's just that checkpoint of Reminder. That's right. Having done this, that's right. What are my thoughts been about myself today? One of my questioning, Um, there's also setting a reminder on your phone. Your the alarm goes off and you're just doing maybe it's every 30 minutes and it's just your quick little reminder of again a checkpoint. Where am I in this process? And am I catching these thoughts? Because again, if you don't catch him, then they continue to continue. I love Dr Daniel. Amen. Talks about ants, and he calls them automatic negative thoughts. And so our brain has all these automatic negative thought to come in. So I love his little acronym of ants. I took it a step further, and I think about it is if I came to your kitchen and I put a little breadcrumb on the counter and one little ant found it. What else is coming? The entire colony. Uh, your brain is no different. You put one little bassett visual exactly their porn in. They got the whole trail going there and back. Yes, yes. Well, it's no different to me in your brain. You allow one negative thought and you may think it's not a big deal was I've always had this. No, but it's true. And then more coming. And that really does become that belief.

Judy Oskam :   18:04
Do you recommend that? Say we dio a sort of an audit or an analysis and then take a full day and just gauge that and then work from there? I'm thinking of a process or a strategy that people would say, I don't have 30 minutes to do that all the time. But if they set a Sunday afternoon and just did a four hour period or something, I mean, what's the process that I can get from point A to point B?

LaVonna Roth:   18:30
Absolutely, I would do it looks, let's say it's the time factor. So let's say it's a Sunday afternoon where you are inter necessary, interrupting work time. Then I would still set a time every 15 or 30 minutes, and it whatever it is you write down and the thoughts that you've had, The thing is, is that you have to become aware of those thoughts. But that's a starting point. But it's amazing how many thoughts we don't even realize comes into her head. But with a moment you have one when you record these down. But the moment you have one, you need to question yourself. Is that true? Right? So I have a thought. Is that true? And part of you because of past experiences of past story, you solidified. You may say yes and But you really have to ask, you know, is that actually true? If I ask my best friend is that true and ask your best friend if you need to ask your significant other. Is this true? Because you sometimes we need to hear from outside sources to then begin to question. I think it's the strategies first becoming aware of it. It really is

Judy Oskam :   19:22
becoming aware Fact check and then

LaVonna Roth:   19:25
in power and take action and power and take actions. They take action as in reframe it Or How would you rephrase it? Right? So if I if I say for example, I'm not enough, is that actually true? And my reaction might be, Yeah, it is true. And then that's when I need to turn to somebody else and say, Is it true that I'm not enough? Of course. Yeah.

Judy Oskam :   19:45
And they say, What does that mean exactly? Like, everybody's in nothing. Yeah.

LaVonna Roth:   19:49
Yes. And so the question then I would ask that person to do is now dig deeper into the past. Where did you get that? Why do you think it's not enough? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Because eventually you're gonna go. Oh, my goodness. It's because of my relationship with my father. Whatever it may be for that person where it takes me back to the moment in time where a friend that I thought was a friend who was not actually a friend said this to me and everybody turned against me. We bring all of that with us to the current state were today. So I love the strategy of being able to just become aware to the fact check. Like you said, No question yourself. Is this really true? And if you're telling yourself yes and it's a negative thought, we should go ask three other people that you know and ask them. Is this true? Now? I would not ask the person that, for example, let's go back to the father example. We're not getting the father, you know, true people who really have your back who were going to give you the feedback that you need. And you have that great relationship there, your cheerleader in your

Judy Oskam :   20:44
life. And we all need those. We all we all need a cheerleader.

LaVonna Roth:   20:48
Yeah. Oh, yeah,

Judy Oskam :   20:49
it's great. Well, speaking of your journey and everything, give us a little known fact that people might not know about you that you wouldn't mind sharing.

LaVonna Roth:   20:56
Yeah, so I actually was not playing sports when I was in school like elementary, middle and High, and I had thought about doing it, but it really wasn't in line with what my family liked. And so I looked at the path of okay, what about musical instruments and that music instrument end up being? It was piano at first when I was younger, but then became the flu in the pick low. And then I became the field commander of the marching band.

Judy Oskam :   21:22
Oh yes, and a lot of paper. Like, I thought you were a cheerleader because you just have the positivity of this energy as the field commander of the marching band. Oh, wow, that's great. That's great. That's great. How can we accept that that all of those different bends in the road or part of our journey it's That's exactly

LaVonna Roth:   21:42
what it is. If you just nailed it right there, Judy vice, by calling it that it is a journey. When we talk about end near the navigate in Shine, it is. We saved your journey nature story, and we I at my degree is actually my bachelor's degree. Isn't special education teaching the hearing impaired? So I sign, So when we do shine, we actually teach how to sign self heart, inspire navigate an exceptional. But when we do navigate instead of doing search, which would be a navigate and sign language, we actually change it into navigators if it was a path. But when we take, our hands are handled parallel. So if your listeners would put their hands up in front of parallel to each other like kind of like

Judy Oskam :   22:20
I'm doing it right now. Yes, here, Low

LaVonna Roth:   22:22
right there, right thumbs up and fingers are, you know, a lined up on top of each other. And instead of going from let's say you brought your hands to your chest and straight out. That's not what happens in life. We don't go from here to here in a straight path. Also, in our sandwich for shine, we wave it right like a winding roads. Have you imagine a parallel hands being a road and now you move them to the right on the left, together, staying parallel. You now created the path, and that's the journey. So we understand that mistakes happen. We're human. We're going to go off the beaten path and that opens Shoot. That was my goal to get back on. I was doing that. Let me get back on or this happened. Life happened. The point is not to worry about going from here to here as fast as you can be. Great if that was the way it was, but it's not. And each journey, each lesson that we take. We're learning about ourselves, and I think that's so cool is learning to embrace that. I didn't realize about me, and if everything was easy, we wouldn't know that when I look back on, everyone's happened in my life and I've had a lot happening. My life negative. But everyone I look back now It's played into Julia, right? It's made me me right. That's the for exceptional embrace. Who the is.

Judy Oskam :   23:28
Don't worry about everything else embrace you are You need to come talk to all of my classes and all of our businesses. I thank you for joining us today. I appreciate it. Great. Great information.

LaVonna Roth:   23:39
Judy, Thank you for all that you're doing. You're helping change the world because of podcasts like this, the reach that you would. But you have to change lives. And for people like me to be able to share it But we wouldn't have that without you, right? Right, So we get the privilege of having a greater impact because of you.

Judy Oskam :   23:54
Is that collaboration is Thank you for listening to stories of change and creativity. Check out the show notes. For more information about this episode, you confined this podcast on any of your favorites. Streaming platforms. Please subscribe. Leave a review and share this podcast with a friend. If you have a story to tell or know someone who does, reach out to be a judy Oskin dot com or Dr Judy Oscar at gmail dot com. That's d. R Judy Oscar at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening.