The Popsicle Hotline: What we learned from superintendents about creating moments of joy
Team Letter | March 10, 2025
March 10, 2025
Happy Monday, Alpaca!
After a HUGE week at SXSW EDU and then AASA’s National Conference on Education, I cannot wait to join you back in our office, hear about your adventures last week, and get some big work done to close out our quarter.
One of my favorite moments of last week was our roundtable at AASA that we presented with the team from Nelson Mandela, where we talked with school leaders about storytelling as a way to drive wellbeing for educators. The format allowed us to truly engage in conversation with school leaders and superintendents from around the country, share our ideas and experiences, and then hear about the ways these leaders are building wellbeing in their schools.
My favorite was when we started talking about the power of hospitality, and about creating surprising, lovely moments for educators.
One principal said “instead of coming around school with a coffee or snack cart, try doing it “on-demand,” like Uber Eats for a snack cart. Teachers will feel even more special!” and one superintendent took it a step further by telling us about an idea she adopted from, unexpectedly, a hotel in LA.
The Magic Castle Hotel in Los Angeles is very famous for a peculiar feature at its pool — the Popsicle Hotline. It’s pretty simple — you pick up a red phone, and someone answers “Popsicle Hotline!” You tell them what kind of popsicle you’d like, and then moments later, a popsicle arrives via a white-gloved server, on a silver platter. Silly, yes. Unforgettable? Yes.
I’ve heard this story before — it’s a well-known lesson in hospitality and customer service — that moments of surprise, joy, and delight can transcend any experience, and can be accomplished anywhere. But I’ve never thought about it for a school district.
One of the superintendents we met adopted this idea for her small Wisconsin district. She publishes a Popsicle Hotline to her educators in her weekly newsletter — the number is, of course, her cell phone number. The instructions are: text the Popsicle Lady and a popsicle will arrive at your classroom today! Sometimes she changes it up in the winter time to include coffee or hot chocolate. (After all, they’re in Wisconsin!)
She said that teachers are always so completely delighted and surprised when she shows up at their classroom door. Plus, it gives her a perfect reason to visit the school, say hello to their principals, and walk the halls, creating connection to her entire school community.
Why is it that the act of your leader delivering something delightful to your classroom would be SO much more powerful than a snack cart traveling around the school or a party in the teachers’ lounge? Because it transcends an expected experience, and creates a memorable personal connection.
The authors Chip and Dan Heath dig into that question in their book The Power of Moments. An Inc Magazine article summarizes their idea well:
In The Power of Moments, the Heath brothers identify four types of moments:
Elevation moments transcend ordinary experience, like the arrival of an ice-pop on a silver platter.
Insight moments rewire our understanding of the world, like George de Mestral pulling burrs from his clothes after a hike and getting the idea for Velcro.
Moments of pride accompany achievement, which is why employee recognition is such a powerful tool.
Moments of connection — like weddings, graduations, and retirements — strengthen relationships.
In a lot of ways, teacher recognition has always been focused only on these “moments of pride” — celebrations of student test scores, making it to the end of the year, or achieving attendance goals. These are important moments, and should be celebrated!
But great school leaders see opportunities in the other three moments. And when a superintendent drives across town to deliver you a popsicle, as a teacher, that’s not only an “elevation moment,” but also a “moment of connection.” It shows elevated service (even in small acts), and it shows care and connection beyond the typical employee-employer relationship.
Those moments create depth of experience for our educators that I believe can be the difference in where they choose to work.
I invite you this week to look for— and create — some of these moments! Look for them in the stories you hear from our customers, in your own interactions with potential customers, or in your work with each other. Find an opportunity to deliver one moment, and tell us about it!
My favorite thing about the ideas I heard at the roundtable, and the ideas in this book, is that they are SO much fun. They’re creative, silly, and sometimes hilarious. And — they change things up, break patterns, and create joy. So what moment might you create this week?
Keep going, Alpaca!
KB