We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ryanne Plaisance a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ryanne thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?
It’s an unbelievable gift to have your work also be your passion. To envision something that will be impactful to people while serving your community is truly meaningful. Watching our school grow over the years of is one of the greatest joys of my life. To have the ability to meet students’ needs and provide them with an environment in which they get to explore and develop their own passions is an amazing position to have. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t incredibly hard moments. The best thing about running your own business is often that you get to make the decisions. The hardest thing is that you have to make the decisions. Before being fully responsible for those decisions, I would dream about what it would be like if I could just make decisions in the best interest of families and in the best interest of students. However, what I’ve learned, which has been hard, is that even every day when I wake up and my goal is to make the best decisions I can for the constituents of our school, it doesn’t mean that everyone is going to be happy. When you are working with people’s children, a lot of times if you’re not able to do what they want, it can be very emotional for them. And that can be very difficult because you can’t make everybody happy. Not everyone is going to like the rules or understand the rules. When you’re working within a school community, you have a lot of different people that are impacted including your teachers, your families, your parents, and your students. All those people should be wanting and fighting for the same goal, but they all have different needs. And so that makes the question of how best do you meet everyone’s needs challenging. Every leader in any business faces similar challenges but in a service industry that is so personal and the relationships can last for many years it is exceptionally challenging. I have found that the only thing that we can do is to continue to reflect on our decisions, continue to meet with our constituents and ensure that how were measuring success is transparent. The most challenging thing for me has been not losing myself in other people’s doubts or other people’s unhappiness. COVID really changed our world and it shined a light for many people into how our education system was and is struggling and for many failing our kids. There is a great distrust between schools, teachers and families in our country right now. What this means is that expectations have changed and the teacher parent relationship has changed making the work in education difficult in a new way. The system needs to change but it needs to do so mindfully and with these groups working together. To answer your question, this work is my passion and yet I still have days I wish I had a normal 9-5. However, I probably wouldn’t stick to that for very long!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I started my career in the social services field working with homeless and foster care youth. I was working this job while pursuing my ultimate goal at the time of being an actress. I gravitated towards telling stories through theatre or film that gave people different perspectives. It was during this time I became really interested in our education system and started writing grants for an LA non-profit to provide additional funding for programs. I started working with alternative education programs and working with youth and schools to support the many years these kids had fallen behind in school. The year I started a program with homeless kids in La and homeless kids in Malawi Africa was really the first time I became thinking of working in education. Students in Malawi had far less material items and opportunities than our kids but had a wealth of community love and a respect for the gift of education. A year after I came home from Malawi I contacted a rare illness called Transverse Mylitis that left me paralyzed for almost two years. At first I was devastated as all the work and contacts I had made in the acting world seemed to disappear. However, this time away from the world allowed me to deeply focus on myself and what I really wanted to do. I had dreamed of starting a school that could better address the times and needs of our kids but would not have done so if it weren’t for my Gaines appreciation of time. We all really only have a brief time in this life. My new understanding of this led my partner and I to start saving to open our first school. For the next few years I worked in education policy and private schools. I went back to school and attained my Masters in Education, specializing in early childhood development and we visited and researched school across our nation and internationally. In 2015 we had finally saved enough to open our first preschool. I’m 2017 we opened our first center preschool and elementary school and in 2020 we expanded to middle school. Our school specializes in three things: 1) Individualized Learning Plans 2) Experiential Learning and 3) Spanish Immersion.
Our goal is for each student to find their passions and become lifelong learners. Our students learn math and science through scuba diving and sailing. They go at their own pace academically which means they might skip a grade if they need more challenging work or they might be given extra support if they are struggling. We are a research focused school and have the ability to implement the current educational research on how kids learn best and that memorizing information just to regurgitate it on a test does not help our kids succeed in this world. We need problem solvers and critical thinkers who understand it’s ok to fail at an idea and have the grit to keep going. We need students who can speak different languages fluently so they can keep up with communication in our technologically advanced world. Our kids deserve a place of learning that sees them and our country needs passionate individuals who care deeply about the world we live in and each other.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
“Be careful who you let on your ship, because some people will sink the whole ship just because they can’t be the captain.” – anonymous
Relationships and community were two of the most important factors in our schools success. I had been working in the community, in education, for several years and had a lot of help from wonderful families in spreading the word about our schools opening. Word of mouth from current families became exceptionally important in the growth of our school.
I had a boss in my early career who told me to never underestimate any relationships because you will never know where you will end up. She said to always leave a job through the front door, even if it was a job you didn’t like and never be too important to do any job you ask someone else to do.
I have always followed these words of advice and they have helped me tremendously as a leader and community advocate. I also learned a very difficult lesson this past year about relationships and power. I enjoyed giving credit to many people for the schools successes. It wasn’t important to myself or my partner to take credit for things. Many people work hard to make a community and I was more than willing to give people power that I trusted in helping to lead the school.A good leader needs to delegate and have trusted people beside them. My mistake was not truly knowing the people I gave power to. I didn’t ask the right questions and took actions of good will without seeing some people’s true intentions. Inadvertently, by giving certain people power, I publicly made them a person the community could trust. When a disagreement about our schools DEI program came underway (we had become too diverse for some) this person tried to take over the school. They spread rumors and told half truths and caused a lot of negativity within our community. They caused issues with our permitting and tried to sabotage community relationships. I didn’t see what was happening until it was too late. I couldn’t imagine these people I trusted would intentionally try to cause harm. It will be one of the biggest lessons I have ever learned and big lessons are usually painful, as this one was. At the same time, there were many more families and relationships we built over the years that truly stepped up in support. Relationships are key to anyone trying to do something big, something outside yourself. My take away from this experience, that I hope can help someone else, is don’t give away your trust too easily. Vet your people and ask them the hard questions. When you disagree can you discuss it? Why are they wanting to be involved? What is their work history like? Allow people into your life and be open to the wonderful people you will meet along the way but stay aware and gain knowledge before allowing anyone to steer your ship.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I woke up and my hands and feet were tingling. It’s what we say when our hand falls asleep but I couldn’t get the tingling to stop. I had just gotten over a bad case of food poisoning and thought it must be that as my boyfriend and I drove to the airport. I was getting on a plan to visit my best friend for a much needed girls weekend. As I sat in my seat on the plan the tingling started to go up my entire body. That’s the last thing I remember before opening my eyes on the ground. I thought the plan must have crashed and when I tried to move I couldn’t feel my legs. The paramedics were already there taking me to the hospital. The plan didn’t crash. I’d soon find out I had a rare illness that would leave me paralyzed for almost two years. I regained my upper body in the first 24 hours but my legs remained numb for another 6 months and it would then take me another year to learn to walk again. My life felt like it was over. I couldn’t work, or dress myself, or drive. I became deeply depressed and was not the most fun person to be around. It was at this time, when everything felt dark, that I slowly became grateful for the small things around me. My boyfriend, who is now my husband, never left my side. Even when many of our friends stopped coming around he stayed by me. I started seeing a therapist (yes, let’s talk about the importance of mental health and wellness) that helped change my perspective. I long for the day when therapy is as common as seeing your general practitioner. It was a slow process for me to walk again but also to understand that the plans we make don’t often go as we want. Sometimes, we have to let go in order to see something else. If I hadn’t gone through what I thought was the worst time in my life, I never would have started a school or married my husband. I had to pivot because life gave me no option. We now have four girls that attend our school and two dogs and two cats! As a business owner and Head of School there are many hard days and when I’m in them I remember this time, when everything felt out of my control. Sometimes we need to slow down to see new opportunities. Change is hard but staying open is imperative in life and business.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Www.theargoschool.com
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/argo.navis.school/
- Yelp: https://yelp.to/DgqMVmxCLP
Image Credits
Argo Navis School