Not All Who Wonder Are Lost Dr. Becky Bailey and Conscious Discipline By Josh Duke
D
reams are life’s compass. Even if you feel lost and don’t know what comes next, you can still head in the general direction you want to go. The trick is to know how to read that compass. Sometimes you have to study your map diligently, retrace your steps and make difficult treks. And sometimes you just need to follow the sun. Literally, in the case of Dr. Becky Bailey. Bailey is the founder of Conscious Discipline, a company known around the world for its social-emotional learning curriculum and classroom management strategies. The methodology she developed has been translated into more than 20 languages and has helped students, teachers and administrators through her research-backed approach. She has earned recognition from a number of organizations, including a lifetime achievement award at the 2017 SPLASH Conference and the 2020 Professional Development Teachers’ Choice Award from Learning magazine. To an outsider, her prolific accomplishments seem to indicate that she had always known what she wanted to do in life. But she will be the first to tell you that wasn’t the case. “When it came time to go to college, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do,” she says with a warm laugh. “I got my bachelor’s degree and still didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So, then I went to Appalachian State, and I just wanted to learn. I learned a great deal from that school, including the fact that it’s very cold in Boone [North Carolina]! The honest truth of how I got to FSU is because it was warmer.” She explains that she likes to tell that story to dispel the idea that everyone has to stick to a path and know exactly where they’re going. People all too often believe that they don’t have a path, or they feel a pressure to know exactly what comes next, who to follow, or how to find a path.
Her journey might “not sound like a great path,” she says, “but I also don’t believe in accidents. I think that’s part of the entrepreneurial mindset, that everything that happens to you happens for a reason, and the reason—even though it doesn’t look good or feel good at the time, it’s also a very expansive reason. Something to expand your mind to get rid of some limiting beliefs you have in yourself.” While the nice weather brought her to Florida State University, she found something even more nourishing than sunshine at the Stone building: her life’s mission.
“I also don’t believe in accidents. I think that’s part of the entrepreneurial mindset, that everything that happens to you happens for a reason.” THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING Bailey came to FSU to earn her doctorate in early childhood education. Her studies quickly brought her out into the field, and what she discovered focused her passion for learning and teaching into what she calls her quest. Her fieldwork brought her to a local childcare center, and she was surprised at what she saw. After learning so much about the impact early education can have on the life of a child, she was surprised at what she saw when her fieldwork brought her to a local childcare center. The childcare center, although meeting and exceeding state requirements, had what felt like a high ratio of children to teachers. “At the end of the day I thought, ‘You simply cannot meet the needs of those children with one teacher for every twelve or so 2-year-olds.’” With the ratio as skewed as it was, toddlers weren’t receiving the one-on-one attention critical to their early development. Immediately, she thought that she had to find a way to do things differently. This one assignment changed everything for Bailey, and decades later, she still attributes that moment as a turning point for what came next. “If I hadn’t been at FSU, if I hadn’t had that assignment, if I hadn’t been sent out to the field to address some real-life
4
Dr. Bailey works on a project with elementary school children as part of her 2004 video series “Conscious Discipline LIVE.”
