Danielle Lindner | Access to Innovators Podcast | Watch HPU

Chapters & Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Access to Innovators podcast powered by the premier life skills university, High Point University.

Hello, my name is Camila Wyrick and I'm a junior here at High Point University studying elementary education from Raleigh, North Carolina. And today I'm going one-on-one with High Point University's entrepreneur and educator in residence, Danielle Lindner.

And thank you so much, Miss Lindner, for joining us today. Um, it's such a pleasure to be able to speak with you. I had the privilege of hearing you speak this morning in my methods of teaching literacy class, and I heard so many great things. So, I'm so excited to speak with you today.

Um, and as a college student just beginning my journey in education, I would love to ask you a couple questions about your career path and your journey in education and get some advice from you to give to other college students um about their journey.

Sure. Thank you for having me.

Of course. Um, so we'll just get started. Uh, you are someone who has worn many hats. You're an educator, an entrepreneur, a businesswoman, and a mother. Um, so how do all of those roles influence each other in your life? And how do you balance those roles?

1:14

That's a good question. Um, I think I've always had sort of an entrepreneurial spirit, but I also loved working with kids and, you know, I loved babysitting and then I was a preschool teacher for a little while. Um, and then I moved into elementary education.

And when I was in elementary education, I realized that it wasn't really for me. Not the teaching part, but the red tape of being in a public school system because I would want to do things that were outside the box. Um, and the public school system, they don't always embrace that.

So, for example, I was teaching kindergarten and I had a dad who worked for Berlitz. It's a language company. And he said, "I could come in, you know, once a week for five minutes during snack and teach some Italian to the kids." And I said, "That is amazing." Like, "Thank you. What a great opportunity for our kids." So, he was coming in and he would come in for five ten minutes and just doing snack. He would teach some Italian words and it was fun and the kids loved it.

And after a couple weeks, I got called into the principal's office and she said, "What are you doing?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "That's not part of our curriculum." I said, "But that's okay. You know, it's during lunch, you know, it's just extra. It's enrichment." And she said, "It hasn't been approved by the board, so you have to stop doing that." And that's when I realized that it wasn't for me.

So I left teaching and my husband was also an entrepreneur and he had um a pretty big company so I left and I just went to work as his director of operations for ten years and then I really started to miss it when I had my kids and I felt like you know I'm an entrepreneur but I'm also a teacher so maybe I could merge those two and open a preschool and make it the place that I think it should be where there's character ed and there's enrichment and there's STEM and there's foreign language and he said go for it and so the rest is history I guess as they say.

3:47

That's amazing. I love what you said about I feel like there's so much that happens outside of that just instructional classroom time that you can use to help kids learn and I really do like that story. I think it's interesting um to think about how you can impact kids outside of just that classroom time but I would love to ask you what motivated you to um begin a career in early childhood education and why do you think early childhood education is so important for a child's future success?

So, I originally, and we talked a little bit about this this morning, I originally um I was a political science major and I wanted to be a lawyer. Um but I only saw lawyers on TV and they usually were yelling and they were fighting and they were in a courtroom and that wasn't really my personality.

And you know, I always say I wish someone had told me you could be an entertainment lawyer and you can work with movie stars because I would have loved that or a contracts attorney like, but I didn't really have a mentor that was telling me that there's other opportunities. And my family were all educators. So I thought, all right, well, you know, I like babysitting, I like kids, I I'll go for my masters in elementary education.

And during that time, I got a job and in a preschool and I realized that it was the only and I had lots of different jobs through college and I realized it was the only job where I wanted to go back every day. And so that was really what made me want to, you know, I found my passion and I realized that this is for me. And when I was spending all my own money because teachers usually they don't always make very much. Don't be a teacher if you want to be a millionaire. But um you know um I realized it didn't matter. I was just happy to be there.

5:14

And I realized that what I was doing for these kids was setting them up for the future and setting them up to feel confident, good about themselves. Um, I realized that the character education that we could do in at the preschool level was going to teach kids to feel confident, to be stewards of their own decisions, to have some, you know, decision-making powers, and then they don't become the schoolyard bullies because usually the bully is the kid that doesn't feel good about themselves. And so you really do change the way a child thinks about themselves and who they eventually become.

And I always say that some of our world leaders probably didn't go to a great preschool. That's funny because they haven't learned conflict resolution.

Yeah. I feel like there's so much that happens in those early years that can really set the stage for the rest of the child's future career and their success. So I love that. I think that's amazing.

6:17

Um, I wanted to talk to you about the London Day School. You're the founder of London Day School and um, you've created a very innovative curriculum there. So, I'd love to hear more about that experience and how you go about blending structure and creativity in your instructional approach.

Sure. So, um, I started London Day School in 2010 and it was, you know, I walked into my, it was a funny story. I walked into my daughter's preschool class and it was a snowy day and they were in front of this old-fashioned like big TV with a VCR. I don't know if anybody knows knows what a VCR is anymore, but and they were watching a Disney movie and you know, being someone who loves children's television, it's not that I'm against a Disney movie, but you know, you're paying a lot for your kids to go to preschool and it's winter and it's, you know, I'm like, why aren't they bringing snow into a water table and teaching them about freezing and melting and why are they this seems like this doesn't seem like a great use of their time.

And so, um, at the same time, the church that the school was in sent out a letter that they were not going to be running the preschool anymore, and they were going to be looking for someone to take over the management of it. So, I said to my husband that night, "What do you think about me going in tomorrow and telling the director, "How about I take over the school and you can run it and we'll work together to make this like a really amazing place?" And he said, "Yeah, that sounds good." So, I went in there the next day ready to tell her, "I want to take over the school and purchase the program and we'll work together." And she was out sick.

So, I didn't get to talk to her. And that night, I said to my husband, you know, she wasn't there today. And I was kind of looking around thinking, you know, we have a building that has, you know, half your company, but we had some tenants that had moved out. And I was like, "What if I just make my own school and and not fix fix a school, start from scratch?" And he said, "Well, what do you have in mind?" I said, "Well, a school that embraces the sciences for little kids and uses real words. Like, if we're going to make slime, we're going to tell them it's a chemistry lesson. if we're going to, you know, do gardening, we're going to talk about, you know, ecology and we're going to use the words so that they become familiar with science and they love science and they can embrace it and not be scared of it. And we'll do engineering like with Legos and um and then I said, and the other thing is I want to really focus on character ed because I think it's so important for kids to be, you know, good citizens of the world. So he said, "Great, give it a try." And after a lot of trials and tribulations, um, we finally opened. And we opened with five kids. And the only reason we opened with five kids was because I said to my husband, "All your employees that have kids, I'm going to give them free preschool for a year because no one's going to be sign up for a school that has no kids in it." Um, and so that's what we did. we you know we gave free preschool so that when parents were coming in they saw active classrooms and they saw things happening and then I started writing children's books based on character education. Now I have 16 books.

9:35

Um, and we we used them for our character education program. And then a couple years later, I actually um created a children's television show called Miss Danielle's Preschool Buds based on eight of the books. And so if you are two, three, or four years old, you might like this little series. It's on Amazon Prime. And um little kids like it. Is it for adults? Not so much. But the little ones seem to enjoy it.

Yeah. I think if it's for kids, it's helpful for adults, too. And any parents who have kids. So, I think that's amazing. And um I want to ask you a little bit more about your children's books. I know your children's books kind of address life skills in a fun and an approachable way. And as you know, we are the premier life skills university. So I would love to ask you how do you think these life skills can apply to college students and what messages would you want to send to college students about these life skills?

10:41

Sure. So I think one of the biggest things is conflict resolution. So um the books, you know, there's one book about Betsy B goes to preschool and she is a bee and bees have you know hundreds of brothers and sisters, right? So, she's always fighting to get her little bit of time or her little bit of honey. And so, she goes to preschool thinking that she needs to just keep everything to herself, keep all the toys to herself, and she doesn't share. But what she learns is that if you don't share and you don't work with other people, and you don't take a team approach, you don't have any friends. And I think that really like that that can be helpful to college students, too. You know, if you if you have a group project, you know, embrace everyone in your group. Try and bring everybody together. Try and work together as a team so that you get something good. Also, you know, don't do all the work yourself. Some people are are real doers and they just say, "It's easier for me to do than delegate." But it's important to learn how to delegate. It's important to learn how to ask for help. It's important to get other people's views.

Um there's another book about um a little dog, Rupert, who cries all the time for everything. Anytime he doesn't get his way, he cries and eventually he runs out of tears. And so when he hurts himself, he like falls and hurts himself. He no one believes him and nobody pays attention to him because he has no tears and he's always getting upset about something. And I think like as we get older and even as college students, things aren't going to always go our way. And it's important to learn how to be flexible and how to think about what's really important and also have gratitude and you know only make a big deal about things that are really really important that are really like I'll say to parents um your child wants to go to school in polka dot pants and you know a striped shirt. Is that a battle you really need to fight? you know, is that really that important? Um, I was fighting that battle as a parent and telling my daughter all the time, you can't wear this. That's, you know, you can't go to school like this. You can't go to school like that. And then finally, I gave in. I said, just wear whatever you want. And now she's like a fashionista with a makeup company. So, you know, sometimes the things that um you think kids are like might bug you the most about kids are the things that make them who they are. Um, but they do need to learn flexibility. Parents need to be flexible. Students need to be flexible. We as people need to be flexible. And I think I try to teach that at a at a young age. Um, so I hope that comes out in my books. Also being afraid of the dark. I don't know how that relates to college students, but some might be you never know. You never know. Some kids are, you know, that's a really big thing for them. Or getting glasses. I mean that, you know, and and the story about this little bat Arabel who gets these beautiful pink glasses. She feels embarrassed and different and it really just says, you know, embrace your differences. Embrace who you are. Go to college and if you want to do something like start a fashion magazine or start a little, you know, club for educators, do it. Be different. Try things. Be creative. Not everything will work, but that's okay, you know.

14:40

Yeah, that's amazing. I think there's so many simple things in children's books and stories that are often overlooked by um adults, but I think those things can sometimes apply throughout our lives and it's really important um to take that from those books and kind of go back and think about what they mean and talk about that with your kids. So, I think that's really amazing. Um I would love to ask you what life skill do you think is the most important for students to develop and this is not just for academic success but for their future in any field. What skill would you say you think is most important?

I think resilience, you know, especially in the world we're in now, we're getting, you know, we live through COVID. We live through there's wars going on now. There's, you know, there's all sorts of things being thrown at us. And you know, there's we've never been really in a time where um you know, people get so heated over elections and who's winning, who's not winning, and and I think it's important to have resilience and to um be able to just take on things that are hard and tough and push through it. And I think co taught us a lot about that. A lot about like if you had said to us 10 years ago, here's what I'm going to throw you into. you're going to get there's going to be a terrible world disease and everybody's going to be locked in their houses and you're going to have to wear masks all the time and not go to work um and then work from home and how would you you'd be like forget it. I could never live through something like that. That was going to be the worst thing ever. And yet we did. We made it through. Most people made it through. And I think that's a good lesson that if you can say, "All right, well, I have these things being thrown at me, whether it's like a friend being mean to you or it's um trouble in school or it's um you know, a hard exam or COVID things like that. Whatever it is, if you can try and be resilient and try and think of solutions to the problem, I think that will carry you through your life like and really help you to be successful. Especially, you know, me as an entrepreneur, there's always things coming at me, changes, regulations changed. Oh, great. Now, you know, especially in COVID at a school, they said you have to come in with sneakers on and then take off the sneakers and then put on new sneakers. Luckily, they got rid of that within couple weeks cuz that was like what? Like, how am I We're doing so many things already and now we have to do this thing and you know, you have to have 18-month-old kids in a mask. How are we going to get them to keep a mask on? Like, it seemed insurmountable, but we were resilient and we thought of ideas and we, you know, played around with different techniques and and you make it work.

18:00

That's amazing. I think resilience is really important. So, I love that advice that you just gave. So, the last thing I want to ask you today is just what's next for you? Um, are you working on anything exciting or do you have new projects coming up that you think you would want college students to look for?

So, I just wrote a book called the um parents pocket guide to surviving the preschool years. It's really it's meant for parents, but it's really also meant for educators to kind of read through the different chapters and the stories and the and the challenges and sort of see a parents perspective because I think by having a parents perspective, teachers will have a better uh relationship with their parents and and then it makes it a better year for them as an educator. And then I've just launched a training company. And so the training company is is basically focused on individualized courses for parents. So that instead of doing onetoone I do onetoone coaching now I can do one to many. And you know parents I have a course that's going to be launched soon called tantrum tamers. So parents at their own you know rate they can watch the course and learn about like what causes a tantrum. Why is it happening? Why does my child have these problems? Why am I, you know, what are some strategies? So, all my courses that I'm building are really a toolbox um to give parents so that they can have more peaceful experience with their kids and also I talk about how to have a better relationship with your child's teacher because that's so important too from both both sides and for the child. So, yeah, that's my next big real big project.

Yeah. Well, that's super exciting. I'll definitely be looking out for that. But thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a pleasure to be able to speak with you and I feel like I've learned so much already. So, thank you so much. It's been a joy.

Thank you for having me. It was lovely.

Danielle Lindner, High Point University's entrepreneur and educator in residence, discusses her journey from political science student to preschool educator and founder of London Day School. She shares how frustrating bureaucratic constraints in the public school system inspired her to create an innovative preschool emphasizing character education, STEM, and enrichment activities. Lindner emphasizes that resilience and conflict resolution are critical life skills for children and college students, best developed through early childhood education, character-building books, and understanding different perspectives. Her recent projects include a parent coaching guide and training courses designed to help parents navigate early childhood challenges and build stronger relationships with educators.

Danielle Lindner | Access to Innovators Podcast

Danielle Lindner | Access to Innovators Podcast

Who is the High Point University Educator in Residence?

Why do educators leave the public school system?

What inspires a career in early childhood education?

Why is character education important in preschool?

How do you blend creativity and structure in preschool?

How can children's books teach character education?

Why is conflict resolution an important life skill?

What is the most important life skill for students?

What are the benefits of early childhood parent coaching?