IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Attorney, author and Southern storyteller
Jo Hackl, building grit
Jo and Bob Hackl love Boca Grande and appreciate the sense of “intellectual curiosity” and “generosity” they feel when on the island. They enjoy the movies at the Community Center, the interesting speakers and the overall depth of community involvement they experience when in Boca Grande.
The Hackls are on Harbor Drive, across from Whidden’s Marina. “The Hackls” is a pretty big clan, not just Bob and Jo and their three grown kids, Abby, Catherine and Robert. Bob’s parents bought the house in 1992. It was smaller and less sturdy then. The senior Hackls built it up and enjoyed it, but then decided to sell. Six of their eight children decided to keep the house in the family, and bought it as a group. It’s worked out well for the whole family.
Jo said they helped Bob’s parents select this house and were impressed with Boca Grande back 30 years ago. They are even more impressed with it now.
“We consider ourselves life-long learners, and very much like to be surrounded by like-minded folks,” she said. She has found those sort of folks in Boca Grande. “I was really, really lucky to get to go to Yale Law School, and one of my friends, who was a couple of years ahead of me, Akhil Amar, is one of the leading constitutional scholars in the world, and I look in the Boca Beacon, and there’s Akil! It’s great! And he loves it here. He’s been here more than once,” she added.
Jo is also an author, and finds Boca Grande to be a good place to write and edit. Her debut novel is “Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe,” a book that speaks to both young and adult readers. Published by Random House in 2018, it has brought her attention and awards. It won the 2019 Southern Book Award in the Children’s Category; the 2020 Mississippi Library Association Children’s Author Award and it was selected as a Read Across America book.
Her favorite accolades, however, come from teachers and young readers who hear her talks and read her book. Jo has made a whole industry of her book, an industry she hopes will empower young people, especially those from low-income families, to think boldly and develop the confidence to “take a chance on themselves.”
Jo came from a modest family in rural Mississippi. She loved to explore, discover new things and read, read, read.
“I grew up in very, very rural Mississippi,” she said, “in the Piney Woods, where storytelling is a major form of entertainment. We would have regular fish fries, have friends over and talk. We only got three TV channels – not well – so the conversations were the entertainment. So, there’s a real appreciation for the art of story telling. And I really enjoy working with words.
Schools and programs
Not only does she write, she has been developing instructional aids that young people and educators can use to stimulate interest in reading, and boost self-confidence, imagination and problem-solving skills. She uses her book’s character and situations to model all these things, while never losing any of the fun and excitement of the story.
She makes visits to schools, and often provides a way for all the students to receive a copy of the book. This may be done by having the honorarium they might have expected to give her used, instead, to buy books. Another way she has helped this happen is to raise funds through other sources to support purchase of the books for the students.
“The students are just ecstatic when this happens,” she said. “One school where every single student was to get a book, the reaction in the crowd was as though Oprah Winfrey had just given them a car!”
In some cases she works with the school to develop ongoing programs. She is also involved in an empirical study on the effect simple exposure to outdoor activities can improve standardized test scores. She has received reports of success in such things as taking students on a walk outdoors before taking the tests, and having their scores show a measurable boost. She wants to formalize the research on this phenomenon, so she has begun an empirical study, herself.
All of these programs are available at no cost. “As a first generation college graduate, it’s really important to me to create some tools to give back to educators,” she said.
In addition to all of this, Jo is an attorney, and has been with the same firm since finishing law school at Yale. The Wyche Law firm of Greenville, South Carolina, recruited her as a newly minted lawyer.
She said Tommy Wyche was a mentor to her, helping her see the value of trusting your instincts and abilities, overcoming obstacles and moving forward. He had done that for Greenville, and she feels she is following in his footsteps.
In addition to her law work, Jo is vice chair of the Greenville Technical College Area Commission.
“Helping people move up the ladder is really important to me. I’m looking forward to continuing my impact as vice chair and moving into the chair position,” she said.
She is on the executive committee of the Hollingsworth Foundation, which promotes economic mobility and also supports revitalization in Greenville. She is also on the Executive Committee of the South Carolina Research Authority, promoting innovation.
“I’d like to expand my work beyond South Carolina, and continue to be curious; continue to learn,” she said. “It’s been gratifying. Everything I’ve done, I’ve gotten involved because I was super excited about their mission, and felt it was the right thing to do.”
She added: “… but every single thing that I’ve done, I’ve learned things that have helped me in other positions and in serving other organizations – and even in my writing.”
She said all of these things have contributed to the “notebook” she has in her computer, which is probably about 300 pages long. She calls it her “Odd, Weird and Interesting Facts Book.” She has material she can pull out for any situation.
One place she has been able to use some of her “odd, weird and interesting facts” has been in the program called the “Building Grit Kit.” She has worked with a neuro-science major and experienced educators to developed this kit. She has used her own book as a “springboard to help young people gain skills that develop grit and resiliency,” she said. “They first analyze the fictional characters in ‘Smack Dab’. Students love, love, love to point out everything the character did wrong, which is great. But as they’re going through that process they’re becoming more fluent in a growth mindset, and some of that vocabulary.”
She went on: “And then they turn to the personal, and they envision themselves as the hero of their own story. They identify their strengths, weaknesses and things that they’d like to work on. They set short, medium and long-term goals. And for every goal, they identify at least three obstacles. Then, for every obstacle they develop at least three strategies.”
Many children, especially those from high poverty backgrounds, flip into panic mode when they hit an unexpected obstacle, making it hard for the brain to think rationally.
“But if the student has anticipated the obstacles in advance,” she said, “they never go into panic mode because they can think, ‘OK, this is a bad thing that happened; I knew it might happen; and I’ve developed three strategies to work around it.’ Then they go into implementation mode.”
The kit also helps them work to create a team of allies, and there’s a whole category of things to look for to make sure they are positive role models. Children are not the only audience Jo speaks to or tries to motivate. She is an in-demand speaker for adults, as well. Among the topics she speaks on are, Women’s Leadership: It’s Time to Start Taking Chances on Yourself and Living a Curious and Creative Life.
Her speaker fee? “In lieu of an honorarium, Jo requests that your organization purchase copies of her book from an independent bookstore and give them to attendees and to students at a Title 1 school your organization selects. She is happy to autograph each copy.”
Rural values
Even when she is home and relatively quiet, Jo finds ways to motivate people, including her friends and family members. Their home in South Carolina sits on the side of a mountain, and they grow “everything that can be grown there,” she said. “That includes fruit, flowers, vegetables and weeds that could be used for food in an emergency …”
She said she is a good person to know if there is ever a zombie apocalypse. She has spent years taking classes on outdoor self-reliance.
“Just about any place, there’s plenty of food to keep you alive and healthy and safe, if you know what to look for,” she said. “I do some work with small groups of students and introduce them to something like woods sorrel, which tastes great, has kind of a lemony flavor, is high in vitamin C and most people consider it a weed. To equip students with the knowledge about their own environment is super fun.”
During the pandemic, Jo decided she had to do something to keep her own spirits up. “What can I do to put some positivity out into the world,” she asked herself. Her answer was to create the hashtag: #joyscavengerhunt. She went into her garden six days a week, and took a picture of something that gave her joy. Then she would post it on Facebook, Instagram or X. She encouraged others to do the same, and post pictures of things in nature that brought them joy. She has continued it even until today.
When asked who her mentor has been to work so tirelessly for so many causes, Jo said there were many, beginning with her parents, who always made sure she had good books to read and who always valued education. Three others came to mind immediately for her: her third grade teacher, Mrs. Bullard, who was the first to publish a writing of hers and who rewarded her curious nature; high school math teacher, Mr. Briggs, who was another “encourager” for her; and John Quincy Adams, a professor at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. (and a descendant of the more famous person of the same name), who helped her qualify for admission to several top law schools and threatened to blackball her if she settled for a lesser college.
