Beyond Bowling Nights: How Skyrocket Education is Redefining Workplace Wellness in Schools

When Dr. Shane Nelson, Managing Partner at Thoughtphil, sat down with Michael Sonbert, founder of Skyrocket Education, their conversation quickly zeroed in on one of education's most misunderstood concepts: workplace wellness. As someone who helps nonprofits navigate complex challenges and has seen firsthand the disruptions in the sector, Dr. Nelson was particularly interested in how Skyrocket approaches the human side of educational transformation.

"There's a lot of talk about wellness in education right now. Everyone's throwing the term around," Dr. Nelson observed. "But you have a very different take on what workplace wellness actually means in schools, don't you?"

Sonbert's response cut through the typical corporate wellness rhetoric. "To answer that question, Shane, we have to land on what wellness actually is. Oftentimes, what we see play out are unhealthy, toxic workplaces where gossip, infighting, and poor communication rule," he explained. These are environments where employees—from teachers to cafeteria workers—actively dislike their leadership team. Yet these same leaders, he noted with irony, will declare, "We've got to cultivate a culture of wellness. Let's go bowling."

The Science of True Wellness

The disconnect between surface-level wellness initiatives and genuine organizational health resonated with Dr. Nelson, whose work at Thoughtphil involves helping organizations create sustainable change. Sonbert grounded his answer in classic organizational psychology, specifically the Herzberg study from the 1960s, which identified two key factors for employee satisfaction: doing meaningful work and being acknowledged for that meaningful work.

"If you work in school, you're doing meaningful work, that's just baked into the DNA of it," Sonbert explained. The challenge lies in the second factor: recognition. This is where Skyrocket Education has built something different.

The organization has embedded gratitude practices into its core operations. In one exercise, team members sent personal notes of gratitude to partner schools. The responses revealed the power of genuine acknowledgment: "This is the nicest note I've ever received." "This made my day." "Thank you so much for thinking of me."

"That's wellness, that's happiness, that's contentment," Sonbert emphasized. "And we help people foster that."

The Personal Trainer Philosophy

When Dr. Nelson asked what sets Skyrocket apart from traditional professional development providers, Sonbert offered a fitness analogy. "We're the personal trainer who gets you on the treadmill at 5am every day," he said. "Not everybody loves that, but it's the thing that actually makes change."

This approach stands in sharp contrast to what Sonbert calls "drive-by PD," organizations that deliver a workshop and disappear. Skyrocket coaches remain "side by side with folks looking at what's actually happening in the school, norming around data, and creating actionable and tangible next steps."

The organization's models are designed to be "the simplest, most digestible and most precise models in education today." There's no wasted verbiage or theoretical 30,000-foot views—an approach that aligns with Thoughtphil's own philosophy of delivering practical solutions to complex issues.

Meeting the Moment

As someone who has helped raise over $1.5 million for BIPOC-serving nonprofits, Dr. Nelson understands the pressures facing educational organizations. When he asked how leaders can maintain morale while pursuing ambitious goal, especially when they might feel pressure to sacrifice wellness boundaries, Sonbert's response was refreshingly practical.

"The most important thing is to be really honest about the current situation," Sonbert said. "People are smart and they're not looking for any false positivity." But honesty doesn't mean catastrophizing. His message to his team is consistent: "Control what you can control."

"You cannot release millions or billions of dollars that aren't being released," Sonbert acknowledged. "What you do have is the ability to control the messaging that you're sending to people, how you show up for them."

Even when external chaos reigns, he insists on maintaining standards. "We can acknowledge that something is real," he explained, using a phrase from his former school: "We can acknowledge that something's true, but we can also name that it's useless information." When funding streams change, the response isn't to lower expectations but to ask: "We need to still be unstoppable for kids. So let's determine what that looks like."

This philosophy of authentic wellness, built on meaningful work, genuine recognition, and relentless focus on what can be controlled, has driven Skyrocket's growth entirely through word of mouth, without a single advertisement. It's an approach that resonates in the nonprofit sector, where Dr. Nelson and Thoughtphil work to inspire generations of people to influence change through practical, community-led solutions.