How We Nearly Doubled Math Scores with Kevin Finnegan Transformative Principal 333

Social Media: When we saw Math could be a discussion, it totally changed everything.

Kevin Finnegan is the principal of Prairie Hill School in Illinois. His students recently showed a 77% growth in Math, and we talk about how he made that happen.

• Prairie hill is the school and the community comes together around it.
• Northern Illinois, PK–4th grade.
• 9 years as the principal.
• Mission statement: Students first, always.
• PLC school
• Reformed schedule so that every day (4 teachers per team) have an hour of common collaborative time every day.
• Why are we making this decision? The students are always the bringback.
• Norms: imagine the students you are talking about are here.
• To be a great principal is easy. You just have to have a great staff.
• PE teacher said, “I want students more.”
• Each class has 10 half hour blocks each week: Art, PE, STEM,
• Always been a high performing district. Makes change really hard when you have had success in the past.
• staff is competitive within themselves.
• Noticed that math scores were less than we expected.
• Dove into the data.
• Computation was awesome, but they struggled with elaborating on their thoughts.
• In every math assignment, adding the words, “I know this because…”
• If you see something that can be done in Kindergarten it can be done anywhere.
• Ready Math - iReady as platforms for learning.
• Standards based School, done in isolation.
• Common language in math.
• Didn’t get good training at first, but then got good training and that made a huge difference.
• Math has always dealt black and white.
• Math didn’t have to be one answer, it could be a discussion, totally changed everything.
• Talking about kids’ growth, talking about assessments, classwork, and then looking at the data.
• It’s not about what you teach, it’s about what we learned.
• How long did it take to understand that it was working?
• It fit us, rather than us fitting it.
• How to be a transformative principal? Spend a little time with kids, like on their birthday. It’s a constant reminder that kids come first.

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

Jaime Casap is the Education Evangelist at Google. Jaime evangelizes the power and potential of technology and the web as enabling and supporting tools in pursuit of promoting inquiry-driven learning models. Jaime collaborates with school systems, educational organizations, and leaders focused on building innovation and iteration into our education policies and practices. He speaks on education, technology, innovation, and generation z, at events around the world.
 
In addition to his role at Google, Jaime is also an author and serves on a number of boards for organizations focused on education, innovation, and equity. Jaime teaches a 10th-grade communication class at the Phoenix Coding Academy in Phoenix and is an adjunct professor at Arizona State University, where he teaches classes on policy, innovation, and leadership.

• Education evangelist.
• Launched Gmail, G-suite for education, and chromebooks.
• Transforming education
• Facts - education is not broken, graduation rates higher than anywhere else
• 21st century skills - Critical skill - ability to learn.
• Education has become a process, but it is a mindset.
• Our students have to be self-directed.
• Let kids choose what they want to learn!
• Math is the most important thing because everything has math in it.
• There’s nothing that we can’t teach kids when they’re curious.
• If you want to see pure creative genius, look at an undisciplined two year old.
• 7 minute meetings.
• Linear vs vision ways of approaching things - to do list.
• How to be a transformative principal? Whatever time you set up for a meeting is how long it’s going to take. Empower your teachers! We all want autonomy, purpose, and mastery.

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

JC Pohl is the co-founder and CEO of TeenTruth.net/schoolculture

• Young filmmakers looked at coverage of Columbine, and we always saw adults telling the story of what happened.
• Look into teenage life.
• Giving students a voice.
• How to give kids voice?
• Control - told what to do, what classes to take, and everything else in between.
• Lack of control really causes a lot of stress in students.
• Are we doing a disservice to kids by not giving them control?
• Three major buckets (school assemblies, )
• These kids made a movie, what are you going to do?
• Students can take ownership by getting involved.
• How do you want to solve it?
• It’s about creating culture of agency and ownership for kids.
• There are so many kids on our campuses that it’s easy to get lost.
• Kids desperately want to be there.
• It’s up to us to create an environment that makes them want to be included.
• Finding their thing.
• Open up as many opportunities as we can for kids to get involved.
• What were some of the data points that came out.
• Principals get caught up in the data.
• One goal: work for Disney!
• If you have a school motto on your campus and you don’t hear your kids say it, it’s not working!
• If you don’t have a tight brand, your school culture is not as strong as it could be.
• Don’t mess with Texas.
• “We > I”
• We form an emotional connection with some brands.
• Got to involve students in the process.
• How to be a transformative principal? Your job is so important. Every principal needs to go all in, even with a slogan. Every student and every staff member is doing their best.

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze

• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner

• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom

• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington

• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal

• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

Dr. Wendy Oliver serves as Chief Learning Officer for EdisonLearning, a leading international educational services provider with nearly a generation of experience creating effective and sustainable solutions to raise student achievement.  In this role, her experience in digital learning and curriculum design, paired with her expertise in assessment and evaluation, are leveraged to design an innovative, learner-centered curriculum.

• Expectations around online learning
• How good design applies to online learning.
• Teachers are working themselves into the ground to reach students!
• 19% of teachers said they were adjusted!
• Also have an 8 year old in her second grade studies.
• Everyone is in survival mode.
• Edison learning offering free courses to seniors.
• Where to go to get help.
• quality matters and common sense media.
• How to make things look better?
• Less is more.
• How to be a transformative principal? Care about kids.

Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D. is a mental success coach and cutting-edge leadership consultant, author, trainer, and researcher. He helps improve organizations, leaders, teams, and employees by improving their mindsets. Ryan is currently a leadership and management professor at the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton (CSUF). He holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources from Indiana University, and a B.A. from Brigham Young University.
Ryan is the author of “Success Mindsets: The Key to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership.” (Morgan James Publishing)

• How a school changed their growth mindsets.

• We take on the mindsets of our collective culture.

• When people have a fixed mindset they focus on looking good.

• When we are emphasizing grades and not learning and growing, we are emphasizing a fixed mindset.

• Fixed vs. Growth mindset

• 90% of our thinking feeling acting is driven subconsciously. What drives that? Our mindsets.

• Study about when kids faced difficult questions.

• When we don’t believe we can improve, and we fail, we feel that we are failures.

• Growth mindset - when we have that belief that we can change, we see growth as an opportunity to learn.

• 50/50 growth vs. fixed

• Intervention for growth mindsets.

• Small interventions can shift our mindsets for 2–4 weeks.

• 15 minute training just talking about how people are not fixed can be beneficial.

• TED Talks and brain plasticity.

• Open vs. Closed mindset

• Compare our mind to a bucket relating to a particular area.

• Closed minded don’t invite feedback.

• Open minded folks leave space in their bucket.

• Book recommendations: Success Mindsets

• Bridgewater Associates - Principles by Ray Dalio.

• Discussions - are we a team or a group where ideas can be heard?

• Principles for success

• Prevention vs. Promotion mindsets

• Compliance is the stereotypical prevention mindset.

• Is that place of safety the intended destination.

• Interventions: Have a destination.

• Amy Purdy ted talk

• Greatest Showman Keala Settle

• Inward mindsets: we see ourselves as being more important than others.

• Outward mindset: others have needs just as great as my own.

• Interventions: positive self talk. Am I seeing people as tools?

• The Arbinger Institute: Leadership and self-deception

• TED talk Benjamin Xander

• When we have an inward mindset, we expect students to cater to us.

• The most powerful thing we can do as educators is see students as people.

• How to be a transformative principal? Go individually to his or her teachers and ask what stands in your way of being your ideal self?

Nhon Ma is the co-founder of numerade.com

• Mom was an educator in South Vietnam, Chinese immigrants who then moved to LA.
• Grew up in LAUSD system.
• Better Chance program in middle school. Placed me in a top private school.
• Shaped my thinking around education.
• Ride bus to school in a completely different culture.
• Close educational opportunity gap
• Prices for tutoring for synchronous doesn’t drop.
• Largest STEM video library.
• Jethro’s YouTube channel from when he was an English teacher
• Mass adoption of synchronous learning through zoom.
• Participation rates are much lower.
• Office hours, daily creation, Students consume content at their own time.
• Anonymous q&a feature.
• Especially with STEM students, if there is a fall-off, it’s very hard to make up lost ground.
• Stitching together playlists of math and science for students.
• How to be a transformative leader? Always focus on the why!

Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D. is a mental success coach and cutting-edge leadership consultant, author, trainer, and researcher. He helps improve organizations, leaders, teams, and employees by improving their mindsets. Ryan is currently a leadership and management professor at the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton (CSUF). He holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources from Indiana University, and a B.A. from Brigham Young University.
Ryan is the author of “Success Mindsets: The Key to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership.” (Morgan James Publishing)

• How do we tap into the “being” element of leadership?

• different types of mindset:

• Fixed vs. Growth mindset

• Open vs. closed mindset

• Prevention vs. promotion mindset

• Inward vs. outward

• Continuum of positive and negative.

• The more we are towards the positive, the better we interact with our environment.

• Innate beliefs about our ability to change affect how we interact with the world.

• With a fixed mindset, we internalize failure as though it means we are a failure.

• What kinds of interventions can help improve our mindset?

• Engage in interventions to promote growth mindset but if the culture doesn’t support it, there’s no point.

• How Jethro and Ryan each reacted when doing poorly in a class in their freshman year of college.

• Our mindsets are foundational to everything we do. They shape how we see the world, and how we operate in the world.

• Assess teacher’s mindset across the school and determine what our collective mindsets are across the school and what does that teach our students.

• How a school changed their growth mindsets.

• We take on the mindsets of our collective culture.

• When people have a fixed mindset they focus on looking good.

• When we are emphasizing grades and not learning and growing, we are emphasizing a fixed mindset.

• Fixed vs. Growth mindset

• 90% of our thinking feeling acting is driven subconsciously. What drives that? Our mindsets.

• Study about when kids faced difficult questions.

• When we don’t believe we can improve, and we fail, we feel that we are failures.

• Growth mindset - when we have that belief that we can change, we see growth as an opportunity to learn.

• 50/50 growth vs. fixed

• Intervention for growth mindsets.

Ross Romano is Managing Director of Communications & Public Affairs for MindRocket Media Group, a strategic advisory firm providing a range of services to companies and institutions operating within the K–20 education and education technology sectors worldwide.

In his current role, Ross oversees all corporate communications for MindRocket, as well as communications and public relations strategy and execution for MindRocket clients. He supervises PR, media relations, social media, and digital marketing efforts, is creative director for editorial content development, and drives significant efforts in partnership development and expansion into new lines of business.

Ross has built a reputation as a creative communications leader with expertise in telling compelling stories via diverse media. He has created and executive produced a number of successful podcast series, created and edited book projects, provided initial platforms to numerous authors, educators, and industry leaders, and more.

Prior to joining MindRocket, Ross spent time as the communications lead for the global education leadership association ASCD, where his media relations and publicity work contributed to multiple national award-winning communications teams. Earlier in his career, he worked in different roles for Major League Baseball, both in the US and internationally. Ross has a BA from The George Washington University, a Master’s of Professional Studies from Georgetown University, and is a member of the Education Writers Association (EWA) and Public Relations Society of merica (PRSA).

• Works with ed tech companies and publishers and schools in K–20 space.
• Comprehensive communication for stakeholders
• When free isn’t really free.
• Start with Empathy
• Recognize startup situation.
• Quick drop off in usage after a week.
• Have a little patience for companies reaching out.
• Before we put them on the do not buy list, let’s have empathy.
• Everybody’s perspective is valid and understood.
• Many different stakeholders have different expectations.
• It works up until what point?
• This is an extra long back to school period.
• Wrap up the school year as best as possible.
• Put the plan in place now and start warming up to it.
• We can’t fail to learn from the challenges facing us right now.
• How to be a transformative principal? Communicating. So important, all the time. If can communicate how I make decisions, it helps them make better decisions too.

Thom Gibson is a middle school math and robotics teacher and high school YouTube teacher in Austin, Texas.

• Budgeting, saving and spending
• How we should teach kids about money.
• Rafe Esquith - Teach like your hair’s on fire.
• Are you still using classroom economy?
• Moved away from paper money to all digital
• Automate a lot of things with it.
• Classroom jobs.
• Beginning of year is full of prep work.
• Jobs that free up your time as the teacher.
• Auctioneer takes a letter to local businesses.
• Virtual bank for the kids’ money. paygrade.io
• Forcing kids to do jobs.
• Get Thom’s course 20% discount code - transformative
• How to be a transformative principal? Look for an opportunity to let your teachers do something they would flourish in.

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

Tom Murray and I did office hours to support schools during this closure. Here are the questions we answered.

If you were on a leadership team, what would you be focusing on right now? High school, middle school, elementary school? People, equity, vision for your school

http://bit.ly/ToolsForEngagement 

How are you managing fears and anxieties around fall planning? How do you build trust in this environment?

Have a great network. Join the Mastermind

Jethro Jones met up with Marlena Gross-Taylor at the Future of Educational Technology Conference earlier this year. 

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

Tom Murray and Jethro Jones hosted office hours for people to answer questions during these school closures. 

Katie and Camille are the dynamic duo of Educational Technologists in Canyons District. I worked with them nearly a decade ago. This interview is from #FETC2020

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

An interview with Ed Tech Digest's Mark Gura and Victor Rivero from #FETC2020

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

Adam Geller is the Founder of Edthena, a video coaching program. 

Enjoy this chat from #FETC2020

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

Join host Tamara Fyke and Jethro Jones of Transformative Principal for a conversation about how to keep yourself calm when you’re feeling stressed and nervous.

We will talk about:

• Phrases to show empathy
• Phrases to give yourself some time to think!
• Phrases to calm fears
• How to control your voice.
• Phone vs. in person vs. video conversations.

A great interview with Tom Murray at #FETC20 earlier this year. 

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

At FETC2020, I had the privilege of interviewing Rebekah McPherson and Nikoski Darnell. 

Such a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. 

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

I had a 1:1 coaching call with Natalie Irons. She’s awesome.

If you want to reach out for help, you can send me a text: 801–252–6368

Matt Pavao is a principal in Burlingame, California. The following is a transcript of our conversation. 

I'd love to talk about my school will be a lot lots of things going great at the school in the district. I have a small district in in the Bay Area, like you said, We're right near the San Francisco Airport. We are a school of 338 students k five. We are title one school. We are also school. It's very dedicated to innovation and very dedicated to our community and being a real community school all the school district all the schools in Burlingame are committed to being really community schools. So we're really tight and tight knit community at our and in our district. 338 today? Yeah. You know, we always say about 350, actually, but we just did the count the other day, so 338 Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I've been at the school for eight years. My eighth year at the school. Yeah. As the principal the whole time. Yeah. It's my 20 I think third year in education. I'm done. Teaching and then other administration jobs at middle school and then and then this my first principalship first sponsorship, I'm eight years Hey, yes. Yeah. Yeah, we did. All right. We're doing okay.

Well, yeah, no,

I Well, the interesting thing about the school is I'm only the third principle they've had and Something like they reopen the school. It's the school is hundred years old this year. So it was built in 1919. But it was closed for some years in the end up until about and I think believe 1988. And since then we've only had three principals. So there was the principal there for 10 years. And the one before me was 11. And then mean, so I have, I'm the young still, I'm still the newbie in that group. You know, it's such a wonderful job and a wonderful community that I have such exciting people that I work with, and really inspired teachers and really inspired district that's allows me to have this community that allows me to have this, why they there is an expectation that we continue to push towards a very innovative practices. And we're in the kind of the north end of the Silicon Valley. So a lot of our parents work in the Silicon Valley in jobs that require the creativity and the collaboration and then the, you know, the critical thing that we talked about the communication. So they understand that's an important factor, and what we have to teach, so to give you this wide berth to kind of really push out into some things that aren't You know, you must be on page 25 of the textbook today. And we are. And at the same time, you know, I think we're a good example to other districts in that we have a wide range of students, you know, we have students of all socio economic backgrounds will talk about, you know, we have 27 different languages at the school. And that's not that's typical, actually, for our area, you know, our we have a very diverse population. And in that we still have achieved we were still able to achieve at high high levels of the typical if you want to call them that academic backgrounds, while at the same time really pushing our innovative practices into things like today where we're looking at podcasting or when we're doing a lot of creative work with presentations and so, a lot of creative creativity and design thinking and things like that. Okay,

Yeah, my advice would be one is to reach out to them. A lot of times we have this shutdown method of like you stay on your side of the fence and I'll stay on my side of the fence. But at Roosevelt and in Burlingame, we definitely encourage parent participation. So a lot of the ideas we have come from parent groups, you know, you meet with them after school and or in the evenings and if they're willing to give their time to you, and then you can listen to their great ideas and you can take that and put the educators lens at the same time possibly because not impossible because of the principles that came before me. There was this foundation of real partnership with the parents that I just inherited it worked hard to keep that going. But it's always been part of our culture at the school and in the district that there's a real partnership. And certainly, there are helicopter parents in all walks, but even we don't. We don't I wouldn't say we even have I can't name any that we would have even at my site, but we've always really valued our partnership with the parents and they valued our professionalism. It's really, really a special kind of place in that respect.

So hundred years. Yeah, this year Well, 1990 is actually passed over but 1919 we're gonna have the celebration this year.

It's real. And it's a real balancing between honoring what was before you, and then building, you know, continue to build. And so we tried to do that in the years I've been there and it's been successful. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Sure. Let me preface a little bit. We, we so we have this giant wall in our school that we painted this mural on a while back for a lot of different reasons. We had an event, an unfortunate event of some graffiti that we and so it's This speaks to what our parents are like as well, that we, in typically, we just cross out the graffiti move on our day, the parents want to do more we did that. Got it down immediately, and then went about our day and then went to say, No, we want to express who we are. And part of that is our 27 languages that we spoke at the time and I think was 24. We've grown. So we put this wall that said, we are Roosevelt. Roosevelt elementary is my school. And so we and then we wrote in every different language on the wall. We are Roosevelt in that language. So if you had someone who was speaking to golic it's up there if you have Russian it's up there Chinese Portuguese. And after you when you see it, and I look at it almost every day when you come in it's really keeps you focused. So one of the parts we were having struggles with we you know, we have a wee hours about night where we celebrate all the cultures, but we weren't getting party active participation from all our parents. And one of the ideas was, well, we need a translation service to translate our newsletters and we went through that and there's a price to that. And then we thought what we have experts Right here in the school, so we should have an audio audio Translation by our students using podcasts. We'll just attach it right to a link on our newsletters and we so what we do is we have, so we get we put it out to the parents and the teachers in the fifth grade, our students in the fifth grade, come and help us translate our newsletter. And so they would show up on our newsletters go out on Thursdays, they would show up on Tuesdays, I would give them kind of these are the highlights. They would take it home, they write it out with their parents, and then they would come so we had the first year we had Japanese and Portuguese and Japanese Portuguese, Spanish, and not Russian, but I'm forgetting we had one more. And we've now since expanded to Turkish and China we have Mandarin Chinese now. So we're confused. We don't have all 27 right now but it's it's powerful for lots of reasons. If you just take out even the parties, the students feel valued, which is actually the number one piece. There's a technical aspect to it that the kids are learning how to do podcasting, there's a some of these kids knew how to speak the language. They didn't necessarily know how to write it out. So they're even learning their own language which is how to their parents language how to write it out, but so there's children

Well, you just bring up something, it's just my my wife's family comes from China. two generations ago her grandmother came from China and who just passed at 98 years old. And one of the things that her uncle brought up at the thing was even he had a commute there was always a communication issue with them and, and it was powerful it and so the other thing that we say is these and you just reminded me of another thing we do with students of second their second language students is we honor them, when they when they do learn English when they do read designated as English learners. And we have a full Berlin game. We had 100 and some odd students this year that we designated. We have celebration, we have metals and things like that, but when we do in front of the school, we always talk about how special these students are because of immigration stories like that. that at some point during the life of a family, someone is brave enough to learn English it was with my, my grandfather was the first one and then you see how that then expands out? So if we can hold on to it because you're right people then give up the language was isn't what necessarily we want? Right, right. Oh, it's a superpower. Yeah and in this world and what we're talking about at our students all the time is, you know, the flattening of the world, and how we need to be able to now cross culturally talk to people. And if you know about other cultures, you all of a sudden have a leg up where you thought it was something that was pulling you down, it's actually going to lift you up and the new economy or the new world for sure. 

When we do and so and with our translators they become a place where they become hope elevated at the school because we do acknowledge them at our assemblies. He's these people are doing this translation for you guys. So more so the parents will know it's out there, but also to honor them for doing the work.

Yes, no kidding. Right. And some of these kids come in. We had a student last year who could do the Portuguese like, I give it to you do it. Others need to take it home and write it down and really fit this guy was and he was having struggles in other areas. But you could see if you go in this route you are URL had, you know head and shoulders above the rest of the translators that we have at the school because I mean, if I was told, you know, you need go you're gonna be sitting in a classroom of all Spanish speakers and they all started speaking Spanish. I wouldn't be participating. I know a little bit of Spanish but I wouldn't be participating and this is similar similar sort of thing. Right? You got to put yourself in their shoes on that on those respects. Yeah. It's pretty brave kids.

It's it's one of those real low floor high ceilings, like it's very easy to do and you get tons out of it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, well, one of the things we're really proud of is we have a full and we talked about communication in this. And we have, we're very dedicated to giving our students the skills to communicate with others. We have this thought that, you know, and I know a lot of schools are working on design process, and it's fantastic. And certainly we are to getting kids to be creative problem solvers and things like this. All right. Our philosophy is that it's not an idea unless you can share it with someone and get them to understand your idea. So how do we do that? Well, so we worked with a company in the Silicon Valley and there's a long story about how we came about with this, but Duarte, Duarte, marketing or duardo, we just call them dorky But anyway, the dirty design, the Silicon Valley and she Nancy Duarte and her husband Mark started this company and they work on giving high powered CEOs the skills to give presentations. They were going to work with college level students. I knew someone at the company, we kind of worked it out so that they came and worked to elementary school. So now, yeah, it was very Yeah, it's been fantastic. They've been working with us for six years now. Which is interesting. So we've gone through a full cycle now from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade or they don't know any different. So this is this year for it. So every year fifth graders give what we call our Teddy talks were Teddy Roosevelt elementary school. So we give our Teddy talks at the end of year and they give a presentation in front of a room full of about 200 people. We invites local celebrities, our local Congress, people and things like that come and visit. And they stand up there and give about a five minute presentation in a TED TED Talks type format about an idea That they've had and they're they're trying to move people forward and you'd be hard pressed to find people at the conference today, which is a great conference that give better presentations than these kids. At 10 years old, it's fantastic and it's transformative in how they view themselves. So what we do that's one thing we're very proud of his heart Teddy talks program.

I will tell you that is that not only is it hard for adults to give presentations is that they learn about giving presentations from watching other people that don't know how to give presentations. So it's just perpetuating this bad presentations that you sit Through, it all comes from our need to do this comes from me walking into a classroom and seeing my third grade teacher suffering while her kids were up there giving presentations that were boring and uninspiring and, and it was typical of everything I'd seen in all my years of education, there has to be a better way. And we went and found a better way. So we're hoping that we're changing the way and again in this age where you're going to need to be able to get your ideas out there. We think we're giving our students a real skill that they're going to need. Sure. Sure. Sure, the number one is that the audience is first meaning it's not about you. It's about your audience. What do they need you give it to them? The second is, if it's a good presentation, it vacillates between what is now and what will be. So this is why your life is down. But if you listen to my ideas, this is what it will be. It'll be my veteran you almost the audience, you almost feel like they're going on a rollercoaster ride where it's like, oh, I don't know about this. Oh, it's gonna be great. Oh, I don't know about this. Oh, it's going to be great. And then we have a few other things like how to do an introduction and how to finish it off with what Nancy Duarte calls something they'll always remember or your star moments sta or something that always remember. So we try to do that and there's a few other and then the other main probably thing is how they do their slides. So we do they do present with slides and they have to control you know, a PowerPoint presentation or a Google Slides presentation. But there's things that we put in that likes, lots of slides are too busy or they're showing me five words on a slide are you should be able to read it in three seconds and understand it. It ruins you from going to other presentations because you sit there go oh that's a terrible slide. And there's another teacher that have some time so if I ever see you giving a presentation I take out my phone and take a picture of the slide. I might be sending it to the My another teacher that I always said look at this slide.

Add that to the collection but it has been wonderful. This is for the city. years that we've been doing this that kids just they get it and that you start see changes now over time because we check in with the middle school and things like that. Okay.

And it also comes in that you're totally right. It also comes from the planning of the presentation like our students. Oftentimes, it's the last, you know, you'll do a project, their presentations, the last day, go do your project. Now I want to presentation. They're doing the work on the presentation the whole time. They're doing the research and the project and so they're laying out their slides using posts. And they're talking about what questions the audience might have. They're drawing pictures of the audience who's gonna be sitting there watching me. So they're considering it all the time. Well, if you, you know, read the book, read it resonate by Nancy Duarte, their little plug for Nancy and her company in. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. She has several books out but that's the the cornerstone one, I think slide. ology is another one but okay. Yeah. So she works. We work with her. Yeah, it's great. It is we have we have been very fortunate with that one, and they've been very, very nice to us.

Okay, I would say just, I've taught me how to get into classrooms and talk to teachers and really not only have the expectation that they'll keep pushing their practice, but also have the trust in They need to have trust with you, that you will back them if they're going to try. They're gonna try something new. You know, oftentimes we have teachers at, it's always an easy default. Well, I'll get in trouble if I do that. I Roosevelt, you know, we don't try to get in trouble. But we certainly haven't. We always kind of have an explanation as to why we're doing something. And that's easy for me to then go tell my people, you know, my superintendent, hey, we're going to try this out. See how it goes. Or we're trying this out, and we'll see how it goes. But we want brave leaders are brave teachers. So we need to be brave leaders. So I would get get into two classrooms as much as possibly my number one go talk to teachers, you know.

Sponsorship:

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

Jeff Becker and I are hosting a webinar about how to implement SEL in your school. Register here! Jeff is a former school counselor and current video production teacher in Florida. He also hosts the CanDoU SEL podcast and produces courses for high schools to use to support their students. Check those out here.

• It won’t work unless you address SEL with staff, too
• People feel ill-equipped to do SEL.
• The students will lead you through the process.
• CASEL Core Competencies - Self-awareness, Self-management, Social awareness, Relationship skills, Responsible decision-making
• What is SEL?
• SEL just feels fluffy.
• Professional development on social emotional learning.
• Teachers hate to be put in a situation where they don’t feel set up for success.
• If you work with kids, and you do care, you’ve already won 80–90% of the battle.
• You know more than you know.
• Kids just want to be listened to.
• Create a space to talk about what the kids want to talk about.
• Think about when you had a connection
• At worst, SEL shows kids how much you care.
• Data on success from doing SEL.
• Write down all your problems in your school, and fit them into each of the buckets from CASEL.
• When given the opportunity, they want to know how to stop using substances to stop numbing feelings.
• How to be a transformative principal? Give your teachers the green light to carve in time to talk about something non-academic in your class.
•  

Systematizing Our Professional Development For The Charter School with Amanda Huza Transformative Principal 320

Social Media: We’re not wasting the time of teachers who have already mastered that aspect of teaching.

Amanda Huza is the principal of Equality charter school.

• Serve about 630 middle and high school students in the bronx.
• Share space with two other partner schools.
• 27 teachers - 50% of them are new or 2 years or less.
• Important to accelerate their growth.
• Want them to feel successful enough to improve student learning.
• Data-based professional development.
• Focus on 10 pieces of Danielson framework.
• Create rich cultures of learning, routines and procedures, logical consequences in the classroom,
• Provide examples and non examples.
• Informal observation on a weekly basis. Teachers know that someone could be in classrooms at any time.
• higher order thinking questions and wait time. Scaffolding questions.
• Focus on specific areas of mastery and track those.
• We’re not wasting the time of teachers who have already mastered that aspect of teaching.
• The list is not concrete, we want to think about the people that we have in front of us.
• Scholar data as well.
• 1–2 day opportunities for teachers to be learners themselves.
• Peer observations.
• coaching role and supervision, then principal position.
• goal is expanding to elementary school.
• Systematizing our professional development for the charter school
• Building up to socratic seminar.
• Get feedback from their peers and from their coaches.
• Large group of kids who need intervention.
• Footage of a demonstration lesson, then feedback from peers.
• Swivl
• Edthena
• Can see videos of exemplars in their school.
• Teachers are on an equal playing field.
• Helps the administrator move away from being a judge.
• To put the pressure on you to remember everything is really unkind to both the administrator and the teacher.
• There’s pretty much always someone coming into the classrooms each day.
• Informal observations happen weekly.
• Weekly coaching meeting.
• Coaching meeting is a debrief of the observation and a review of the data.
• Provided weekly lesson plan feedback.
• Video is 1 time per month at least, sometimes more if they are in higher need.
• Explorations in EdThena.
• Teachers create a professional development support plan.
• Weekly professional development time on Tuesdays.
• Quarterly data meetings.
• How to be a transformative principal? Don’t forget that the work that’s happening is the most important work and the work we used to do, so we need to not be afraid to learn with them.
• Really helps teachers feel supported and valued. amanda.huza@equalitycharter.org

Kim Marshall is the founder of the Marshall Memo and Jenn David-Lang is the founder of the Main Idea. We talk about their new book, “The Best of the Marshall Memo,”

• As a principal I rarely had time to read in a thoughtful way.
• Why write a book about the Marshall Memo.
• Articles not organized.
• Professional development ideas.
• Educational journals have theme issues.
• How to take the next step from the learning to the doing.
• Practical article about how to have conversations - Don’t email criticism
• Watching a teacher who made a grammatical mistake.
• It’s going to be in the principal’s hands. One strategy, what do you notice?
• Why have a conversation about the grammatical error? Are there reasons why you should talk with this teacher?
• She was miseducating the kids. We couldn’t let that go by.
• Has the leader created a culture of feedback?
• Getting into classrooms enough that you see the bigger picture.
• Teachers need to be appreciated.
• Real time coaching vs after-the-event feedback.
• Routine for principals to take over the class.
• Have a conversation so that the teacher comes to the conclusion on what behavior comes next.
• Sanebox - take control of your email
• How to be a transformative principal? Kim: Have an out of office response on email. Jenn: Ask for feedback.
• If you want to work with Jethro, please get in touch jethrojones.com or schedule a call

Phil Echols is an Administrator of Professional Learning supporting K-12 needs in the area of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and coaching in Wake County Public Schools in North Carolina.

• Psychology major and teacher in his home town.

• Counseling

• The power of Twitter.

• People often find a way to monetize things

• Monetization of the network. You can’t monetize the network - via @adamcurry

* #BMETalk - Black male educators
* Black males are like unicorns in so many spaces.
* Every time I meet someone face to face at a conference I create a twitter list with them on it.
* How do you mentor those unicorns?
* 100+ staff members. 1200 students.
* Why do you stay here?
* You could be in a school where there are more minority students. Why do you stay here?
* Good things come from my DNA.
* Patience and reflection comes from my parents.
* Enter spaces with the mindset of who do I need to be in this space?
* How to decide who you need to be in a meeting.
* The relationships of the people at the table require a different approach.
* Paying attention to what people might need.
* Presume positive intent.
* Relationships are foundational.
* Sometimes I can be too heavy on the relationship and we don’t get everything done that we need to!
* Facilitated leadership equilateral relationships, processes, and tasks.
* Leader member exchange theory - focuses on three components: leader follower, and exchanges between those two.
* Leaders often have in groups and out groups.
* Out groups don’t always get everything they need.
* Help people feel like they are in the “in group!“
* How to be a transformative principal? Be more mindful of your individual interactions with all of your staff members.

Cristina Garza is the director of social impact for the Mission Economic Development Corporation. She curates and leads all STEAM and entrepreneurship initiatives for this EDC, and through this work commits herself improving the financial mobility of area residents, and fostering progressive and equitable economic development practices. Among the programs she founded are Web of Women, an initiative to teach technical skills to women professionals, and Career Readiness and Empowerment of Women (CREW), a multidisciplinary internship that trains young high-school women to serve as leaders in STEM and entrepreneurship. She is  2017 Next City Vanguard and named by CityLab Latino one of the Top 20 Young Civic Leaders of 2017. Before her career in economic development, Cristina worked in several museums in New York City including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin of Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Brooklyn Museum. 

• What prevents the community relationships from having this kind of impact?
• By the time they leave your school, they are not attractive to industry.
• Don’t want to give tax incentives just to have them import their talent!
• It’s not worth it to train someone who doesn’t have the soft skills.
• There could be better systems where EDC pays for the high schoolers to work somewhere.
• Challenges with push to early-college schools.
• You were ready to get out of your hometown.
• Too scared and insecure to do the real things that I wanted to.
• Seeing myself as being capable of talking about.
• Shy away from educational issues that are hard to measure
• Feeling like we are not good enough.
• Define what is important.
• Everyone is measured by their productivity and we are teaching kids that.
• Reevaluate how much time we are putting in kids’ schedules to think about these issues.
• Have time in kids’ schedules to go to counseling and go to group therapy.
• There are only two things that kids do all day in school: Compete or try to get good grades
• How rare it is for kids to have an opportunity to work on something that is open ended.
• Hard to ideate because they have never been given a prompt and how to deal with it.
• Ideas come from spending time thinking.
• Start the semester with what are the problems you see affecting you and others?
• Giving kids time to find their own story and their own why
• They are experts in their lives.
• Policies should be done in consideration of their voices.
• The level of complexity that youth today are experiencing.
• Understanding their power and owning their truth.
• how to be a transformative principal? Spend at least one hour sending emails to industry leaders asking about how to prepare their kids?

Cristina Garza is the director of social impact for the Mission Economic Development Corporation. She curates and leads all STEAM and entrepreneurship initiatives for this EDC, and through this work commits herself improving the financial mobility of area residents, and fostering progressive and equitable economic development practices. Among the programs she founded are Web of Women, an initiative to teach technical skills to women professionals, and Career Readiness and Empowerment of Women (CREW), a multidisciplinary internship that trains young high-school women to serve as leaders in STEM and entrepreneurship. She is  2017 Next City Vanguard and named by CityLab Latino one of the Top 20 Young Civic Leaders of 2017. Before her career in economic development, Cristina worked in several museums in New York City including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin of Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Brooklyn Museum. 

• CREW is a year-long internship and career preparation program for women and non-binary individuals.
• Getting mentored by women in industries that don’t exist in this town.
• I wanted to create a program that I would have benefited from when I was 17
• They are the first in their families to go to college.
• Only Latina in the classroom or the workspace.
• Integration of entrepreneurship and leadership.
• Thinking about the statistics of women in Tech.
• Why are we keeping women of color out of these leadership positions?
• Instead of just putting kids in coding camps, we need to
• Looking at problems that are affecting their communities, then create products or policies that fix that problem.
• Jobs are not just for software engineers.
• Not waiting for someone to tap them on the shoulder and say they are chosen.
• You create change by doing it.
• The coding doesn’t happen until the end of the internship so that they have a purpose for the coding.
• Kids learn way more way faster when they have a problem they are trying to solve.
• We’re not spending enough time simply talking to youth and seeing how they can solve problems in their communities.
• You’ve got to create partnerships with the school and community partners.

Sam Brooks is honored to have worked for Putnam County Schools (TN) for the past 27 years. Brooks leads all student/teacher personalized learning opportunities in the district, which includes online, dual enrollment, dual credit, and industry certification options. Mr. Brooks is a Google Certified Trainer and was recognized by the Center for Digital Education as a national Top 30 Technologists, Transformers, Trailblazers in 2014 and his program has been identified in several national publications.

• Director of Personalized Learning - started as credit options for kids. Now is for so much more.
• How can we meet the individual needs of each child in the classroom?
• State level personalized learning.
• VITAL - virtual instruction to accentuate learning
• Personalized learning task force.
• Mimic task force in our own district.
• Doing a lot with credit recovery.
• Pockets of innovation.
• Future Ready - Getting a student to be ready for whatever they want their future to be.
• I only saw how things affected me as a teacher within my four walls.
• How to be a transformative principal? Be open minded and take on the mindset of working for the students.

Zachary Hartzman is a high school Economics & English teacher in New York City.

• Taught many different social studies classes.
• International and transfer school. 100% immigrant & ELL students.
• Passionate about videos games.
• Getting kids to interact with games
• Florence - great app for relationships.
• Using games to deal with discussing heavy issues.
• Whenever I teach one of these lessons, I write a post showing how it went.
• It’s been really hard to find engaging content that
• 3 days a week, I teach an ELA course using video games as the main text.
• Gone Home
• What Remains of Edith Finch?
• One student playing while everyone else is talking about the gameplay.
• Regents exam required for graduation - read a text and identify the central idea, so we use the videos games to focus on those literary events.
• You have to give them time to learn how to use the controller.
• Positive outcomes: Whenever I teach with a game, there’s never a head down that day.
• Expanding the curriculum, but would love to get more science and math.
• How to be a transformative principal? If a teacher comes to you with a potentially wacky idea, hear them out.

I'd love to work with you! To learn more about working with Jethro, go here.

I've got some exciting news to share with you....

But first, a little context.

The last few months have been pretty exciting.

I've started a student driven learning newsletter in partnership with ASCD.

I spoke at the ReWire conference in New Jersey.

I've been at FETC this week, and have some amazing interviews coming out on the podcast soon.

The podcast is at 600,000 downloads for its six-year anniversary. (click here to get an email each Sunday when it is released!)

I am a New Team Habits Champion!

My wife and I have started coaching families on how to set goals in a family setting! How cool is that?

I'm giving a keynote at a conference in February, more details soon...

And here's the big news:

At the end of this school year I will be leaving Fairbanks and start supporting principals directly full time through the mastermind, speaking, and consulting.

I'm pretty excited about our new adventure, and I hope that I can work with you! If you've got a need for a speaker in the next six months, please reach out.

This is an amazing story of how Kimberly's district set them up for success so they could find time for the important things in life. What a cool and unique approach. 

Kimberly Dixon is principal in Toronto

• Took a year off to take some coursework.
• Mother had supported her at the beginning of her career.
• Lacking balance.
• Four over 5. Paid 80% over four years then paid 80% for fifth year.
• Typically accept about a dozen people for that in our district.
• Became principal and started coursework to become a superintendent at the same time.
• I realized I had been working really hard so travel was definitely a goal.
• I had to operate within the parameters of
• Principal of a summer school program in South Korea, kids met in South Korea and then went to the Philippines.
• Be present as a mother and take care of myself.
• The year was very unplanned.
• School seems very Eurocentric, but our schools are so diverse.
• Families are always excited
• The balance needed in life to be your best.
• Without balance, we run into issues of burnout
• It’s about putting myself well into the time I have.
• Not having that rushed approach. Respecting my time when I’m not in school and not “on.”
• Giving a lot of yourself to other people’s children.
• Having a purpose for my days.
• Be in each classroom before every major break in the day.
• None of my goals could happen unless I built the relationships.
• No more than one evening event each week.
• More balanced for my own kids and the kids at school.
• How to be a transformative principal? I’ve discovered who being me is! Try to center yourself in some way to figure out what makes you peaceful.

Work with Jethro

This is an amazing story of how Kimberly's district set them up for success so they could find time for the important things in life. What a cool and unique approach. 

Kimberly Dixon is principal in Toronto

• Took a year off to take some coursework.
• Mother had supported her at the beginning of her career.
• Lacking balance.
• Four over 5. Paid 80% over four years then paid 80% for fifth year.
• Typically accept about a dozen people for that in our district.
• Became principal and started coursework to become a superintendent at the same time.
• I realized I had been working really hard so travel was definitely a goal.
• I had to operate within the parameters of
• Principal of a summer school program in South Korea, kids met in South Korea and then went to the Philippines.
• Be present as a mother and take care of myself.
• The year was very unplanned.
• School seems very Eurocentric, but our schools are so diverse.
• Families are always excited
• The balance needed in life to be your best.
• Without balance, we run into issues of burnout
• It’s about putting myself well into the time I have.
• Not having that rushed approach. Respecting my time when I’m not in school and not “on.”
• Giving a lot of yourself to other people’s children.
• Having a purpose for my days.
• Be in each classroom before every major break in the day.
• None of my goals could happen unless I built the relationships.
• No more than one evening event each week.
• More balanced for my own kids and the kids at school.
• How to be a transformative principal? I’ve discovered who being me is! Try to center yourself in some way to figure out what makes you peaceful.

Work with Jethro

Turner is the principal of Tristate State Christian Academy in Elkton Maryland.

• Rewire conference - really powerful conference in New Jersey
• It’s easy to get the ideas of a person by reading their blogs or listening to a podcast
• Most recent fascination is Disney.
• Disney does this better than anyone else in the world.
• Creating Disney Magic podcast.
• Parents are church leaders and they read diverse materials.
• We are all aiming for the same thing: becoming great leaders
• The one thing podcast interview referenced.
• The Way Of The Shepherd book.
• Building a Storybrand book.
• businessmadesimple.com
• Becoming Your Best: The 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders
• How to be a transformative principal? Check in on your teachers because you care

Work with Jethro

Tessa works with teenagers, and has decided to take on parenting from a new perspective.   While patiently waiting for her book’s completion "For the Sake of Our Youth: A Therapist's Perspective on Raising Kids in Today's Culture" (due to hit the shelves Spring 2020) Tessa coaches and presents to parents her research on today’s teen depression, anxiety and suicide rate focusing on parent/child connection. You can connect with her at her website Tessastuckey.com or follow her on instagram @themomtherapist.

• Why she wanted to work with teens and parents.
• Kids came to me with suicidal thoughts.
• It scared me that they were going to grow up in a world where suicide was so common.

6 cultural influences that are happening in today’s world.

1. Social Trend - people see it and so they think it. Not being balanced with appropriate preventative care.
2. Immediate gratification - everything is just a click away. Teaching our kids how to struggle. There is no instant fix for an emotional hardship. You have to think a little unnaturally to slow things down a little bit.
3. Lack of personal connections are being made. Social media is meant for connection but it doesn’t create the same closeness and bond.
4. Attention seeking - longing to feel important. It has become an acceptable way to get attention in our society. Reacting to a lack of attention and lack of resilience.
5. Social media - 5 categories: don’t need to connect face to face, comparison, kids can’t turn their social life, cyberbullying (hurt people hurt people), phone addiction.
6. Pressure - we live a go-go-go lifestyle. No mercy and no grace. Everyone is striving to be perfect.
7. Be the supporter and helper for your child and not the fixer for all their problems.
8. How to be a transformative principal? Understand your own philosophies on the kids you interact with. What are the core values you want kids to have when they leave your school? This is not just mental illness anymore.

Rachel Brown is a Curriculum, Instruction, & Professional Growth Strategist for Douglas County School District.

• Power in the missed opportunities
• You have the power of leading culture in your building.
• Even the opportunity of saying hello to a kid is really powerful.
• Each teacher had to own making a positive interaction with each child.
• When things were going unsaid, they festered
• Confronting with Kindness
• the things you don’t say could have a big impact on the climate and culture.
• Emotional intelligence - Elena Aguilar work on the art of coaching teams.
• Have to get rid of your ego, go in in a way that you open yourself up like a book.
• Buy the Communication Cards
• We didn’t do our best work.
• Kids couldn’t tell who was the principal
• New principal was very communicative and it changed the culture.
• How to be a transformative principal? This is a rough time for some kids and you can take the time to be an impactful person and not miss the opportunity to make a little adjustment to make your school feel like the safest home for those kids.

Turmoil with change in leadership because of lack of communication and emotional intelligence.
* Talking with team about how to make things better.
* People coming to say

• Lost sight of standards - using the standards as our base.
• student centered coaching - to try to come
• http://calendly.com/jethro-jones/transformative-principal-interview
• https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best
• http://www.jethrojones.com/presentations
•  

Adam Bellow is a dedicated educational technologist and father of two young boys. Adam is the co-founder of Breakout EDU, the immersive gaming platform that enables teachers and students to turn their classrooms into a place of discovery and inquiry based learning. Today we will be talking about learning with AI.

• How AI will play into education.
• Metacognitive piece - technology is serving our needs.
• Really helpful to a teacher.
• Empowering kids to get access to their own information before you.
• Building a voice profile.
• The use of the tool will have to outweigh the fears we have of it.
• You likely have an assistant available.
• My kids are very comfortable with robots.
• Game Designer
• Askmyclass
• Giving them the open-endedness is really powerful.
• as we look at school as more than just work-produced.
• How to be a transformative leader? Have a conversation with a small group of students

My Grandma’s Kitchen with Dr. A. Katrise Perera and Dr. Kimberly Miles Transformative Principal 307

Social Media: Learning should be joyful. - @afewthingsworth

Dr. A. Katrise Perera peers acknowledge her commitment, her dedication, her courageous leadership and for being an “equity warriorette.” In 2015, the National Association of School Superintendents (NASS) named her the National Superintendent of the Year. Before being recruited and hired by the Gresham-Barlow School District (Oregon) in May of 2017, she served in a variety of school leadership positions in Virginia, Texas, and as an executive leader with McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.

Dr. Kimberly Miles is principal of East Gresham elementary, a turnaround principal and voracious reader.

In this episode we will discuss equity in leadership and how to have joyful moments.

• Be determined.
• Perspectives of many other experiences.
• Equity in a school system is that it involves more than just a student and a teacher.
• Giving kids what they need when they need.
• In the kitchen with my grandmother.
• To have equity, you have to look at what kids are actually in need of.
• Look at policies, practices, systems, and more.
• what little things should we focus on?
• Is my approach helping them thrive?
• The foundation is culture.
• Need to know social and political response as well.
• Community Success Act
• We’re all going to get what we need.
• how to change the culture of putting the newest teachers with the most challenging situations?
• New teachers to the profession, because I can partner them with a collaborative team.
• Mentor teacher leaders.
• Benefit for new teachers to be supported by master teachers.
• Starts with professional development.
• How to be a transformative principal?
• Kimberly: Share the responsibility of change with someone else. Bring along your community together.
• Katrise: commitments—commit to reducing disproportionate suspension rates, early college, cultural competencies - commit to one!

Katie Novak, Ed.D. is an internationally renowned education consultant as well as a practicing leader in education as an Assistant Superintendent of Schools in Massachusetts. With 15 years of experience in teaching and administration, an earned doctorate in curriculum and teaching, and 3 books published by CAST Professional Publications, Katie designs and presents workshops both nationally and internationally focusing on implementation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and universally designed leadership.

Today we talk about her book with George Couros, Innovate Inside the Box.

• UDL what is it?
• Multiple means of engagement
• multiple means of representation
• multiple means of action and expression
• Universal design stolen from architecture.
• The traditional model of education is there is “one way to do it.”
• We’re making content accessible as retrofits for really inaccessible lessons.
• Dinner party.
• Engagement is equal parts commitment and attention.
• Enrollment vs. engagement.
• When things get touch, I know how to manage it.
• Macro success looks like little bits of attention.
• Application for students with disabilities.
• If we want kids to be learners, we are much better slated to help kids create their own journeys to get there.
• How do we scaffold up to make it accessible and engaging.
• In my loyalty to that ____, I am excluding students.
• How do we teach empathy through these multiple means lenses?
• What do I have to do so every single student can do that?
• General ed teachers started referring to kids with special needs as their kids.
• When we see growth, it’s because of the teachers.
• How to be a transformative principal? In a classroom I believe in cocreation. Work with teachers to co-create professional learning and school improvement plans.

In this Jolt episode, Sarah Johnson shares about the transformative power of practicing gratitude for ourselves as well a those around us. She shares research alignment, stories, and illustrates points from stories features during the month of November on the In AWE Podcast. 

Check out the The In AWE Podcast or In AWE Website
Engage with Sarah at Sarah’s Website

Resources for Gratitude:
The Transformative Power of Gratitude Huffington Post
Four Gratitude Strategies Berkeley
The It’s Worth It Box

TJ Vari and Joe Jones are practicing Superintendents and coauthors of the book “Candid and Compassionate Feedback“.

• Result of fear of offending people is that it becomes offensive anyway.
• Ask questions to get them to see what they need to improve.
• The lack of candor can be what people are offended by.
• The candor is actually what is compassionate! TJ
• Turning the corner so your empathy is backed with concrete evidence backed with what to do better.
• Consistency is key.
• People are given that advice when they go into schools.
• Direct, sincere, accurate feedback.
• Identified the problem.
• Gave evidence.
• Provided a solution.
• Being clear does work.
• Learning walks are like formative assessments.
• Are the teachers using the “Goal” in their classroom?
• As teachers are teaching they’re often not aware of what they’re doing. Joe
• No way will a teacher ever grow through the formal observation process.
• We really should be getting into the mindset work among the staff.
• How to be a transformative principal? TJ: spend your time in the most important spaces in your school
  Joe: Disrupt your day. Speak to someone tomorrow that you haven’t spoken with this year.
• Bonus question: how to keep principals in the building?

Keara Mascareñaz Managing Partner, Organizational Design at Education Elements. She helps schools and districts focuses build and scale a culture of innovation through leadership development, team habits, and human-centered organizational design.

• Learning, meeting, projects
• How do you create the environment of psychological safety?
• the team that is more effective would be making less mistakes.
• more comfort to talk about mistakes
• Amy Edmondson TED talk
• I didn’t say “I don’t know what I’m doing!“
• It can feel high stakes, even though it is not.
• Two types of leaders: one best ideas should strive - leaders are smarter and make fewer mistakes.
• Interrogating archetypes.
• Two books: Multipliers with Liz Wiseman As soon as a speaker starts speaking, everyone stops talking.
• Here’s my interview with Liz Wiseman.
• Talking about Failure is crucial for Growth
• Noticing it is the first step to change.
• It’s hard to make big shifts.
• What foundation have I laid and signal have I given to my team about this?
• “I’ve had good ideas before that haven’t worked out!”
• So much deference made to people in power and authority.
• Habit of talking about mistakes.
• The more people in power can model talking about mistakes the more you can model and give more power to your people.
• How to be a transformative principal? Next time you’re in front of your staff think about 1. Learning challenge, vulnerability, asking for advice.

A Story about Fish with Danny Bauer and Dr. Kelly Crane Transformative Principal 302

Social media: All of us are better than any of us.

Danny Bauer and Kelly Crane are co-conspirators of Better Leaders Better Schools

• What do principals need to know about being a superintendent.
• Legal, politics, finance.
• Network.
• How to start acting as if.
• All of us are better than any of us.
• When you’re so close to the situation, it is really hard to see.
• Instructional leadership knowledge.
• Following through.
• Being authentic.
• Empathy when visiting
• Vulnerability.
• Radical listening.
• The mastermind is a sacred space.
• You gotta learn from the mistakes of others.
• How to be a transformative principal? Danny: Join a PLN! Kelly: be vulnerable when it is necessary. We don’t know it all and we have to reach out to others.

Adam Fachler has a proven process for planning amazing lessons. Take the 

• EMPOWER Method for planning amazing lessons.
• We are all searching!
• Little quality control

• Making inquiry method a little less messy.
• Envision - see the end in mind.
• Map - simplifies a complex process.
• Prime - prior knowledge, emotional aspect of learning
• Orient
• Walkthrough
• Explore
• Reflect
• Teachers’ time to plan is too little. Yes this does take time.
• Whether you win in your classroom is decided well before you enter the classroom.
• Do this at the unit level - a time investment.
• Crystalize your learning outcome in a GEM: goal, evidence, measure of success.
• You are envisioning a destination for them.
• Mapping the path to mastery.
• School in the Square
• How to be a transformative principal? Start from the beginning, what’s the GEM for your upcoming unit?

Here's some excitement: Episode 300! I give updates on my professional life, the podcast, and more! Tune in!

Link to my speaking page

Dr. Grayson Maas is the Director of Communications for the Art of Problem Solving, a unique solution to teaching math anytime, anywhere.

• Talking about dissertation - how we create scientific knowledge as a society - who can become a scientist and who cannot.
• Scientific knowledge and how it gets created.
• It’s no secret that there’s underrepresentation in science.
• What is funneling certain groups towards science and what is not?
• Science for all
• Tests measure what we value.
• Tests can be an unreliable indicator.
• It’s a common experience that the scores you got on classes and tests to tell you if you’re smart.
• All those tests are telling you, “are you good at that instrument on that day?”
• Extremely difficult to identify high-ability kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Ability grouping is not a bad thing for the kids in the high group.
• Kids know who is in different groups.
• We need to reconfigure the labels we use.
• For us to lose sight of kids that don’t get extra opportunities is not working for those kids.
• It’s incumbent on us as a society to meet these kids where they’re at.
• Providing the “right” amount of challenge.
• We’re going to set the bar right above where you grasp it and help them reach the next level.
• You deserve to be challenged and we’re going to make sure you get that.
• Learning about the water cycle.
• Their version of learning about the water cycle was a youtube water cycle rap song.
• The kids in the low group developed low self-perception.
• Constantly reinforce these students and tell them they are capable and can accomplish the work before them.

I am super excited whenever I get to talk with Will Parker, and today is no different.

Today we are tackling three questions that principal listeners have shared with us from our podcasts, covering these topics:

1. What to do if or when your teachers give you the cold shoulder about learning something new. 

2. How to manage student dynamics in competency-based instruction. 

3. Ways to measuring student growth in Social Emotional Learning settings.

Listen-in for the complete conversation.

Questions for Jethro and Will:

1. My teachers give me the cold shoulder when I try to introduce them to new ways of teaching. What should I do?

• Jethro and I discuss the following:

• Modeling for teachers

• Observation of other teachers

• What is he/she doing well already? Praise first, then instruct.

• Lead with the question, “Where do you want to grow?”

• Creating an enviornment where teachers ask for help

• Celebrating innovative teaching

• Learning to say yes before saying no

2. How do you make sure that students who struggle don't feel embarrassed or ashamed that they aren't working with their peers? When competency-based, what happens?...

We discuss this question with suggestions about:

• Defining expecations so that students measure against standards, not other students

• They are already in different places! Your expectations matter in their perceptions...

• Help them identify where they are good. And celebrate!

• It’s not about competition with peers, but competition with themselves. 

3. How can Social Emotional Learning success be measured?

We respond with the following:

Discover the importantce of self-reflection. It’s okay to embrace different standards for everyone. 

Resilient students don’t really need more resiliency training. They need something else. 

A student with trauma needs different things than a student without. 

Creat an environment where you want your own chidren

You can measure the indicators like discipline, attendance and graduation/completion rates 

We share examples of SEL through FOMO -- karaoke cafeteria -- from Principal Kim Coody’s High School in Okahoma and Amy Fast’s emotional learning practices in Oregon

Recource recommended: Barb Sorrels - http://transformativeprincipal.org/episode269

Now It’s Your Turn

What is one new method or strategy you could model for your teachers or team? How can you instll in others the freedom to believe it’s okay to try and fail and in learning? And how can you celebrate the wins along the way?

Akhil is the business development manager at ChargePoint, a fast-growing start-up in the San Francisco Bay Area that provides electric vehicle charging solutions to businesses. Prior to ChargePoint, he spent 5 years in the clean tech and consumer mobile app spaces. Akhil is an alumnus from the 2010 Conrad Challenge, where his finalist team from the North Carolina School of Science and Math designed a latticed pod system that generated electricity from wave energy using internally-housed piezoelectric ceramics.

Register for the Conrad challenge here

* North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics
* Didn’t know what I wanted to do.
* Always wanted to be a doctor and ended up doing a ton of work in environmental areas.
* Starting out with very little information.
* Students start from two different places.
* 1. Technology they are really excited about.
* 2. We have a group of students really passionate about a specific problem and start to ideate about how to solve that problem.
* We knew we wanted to build a wave energy device.
* Knew nothing about piezoelectric ceramics.
* Spent hours learning about the physics behind the technology.
* Chemistry professor - her job was keeping us accountable.
* What has changed since you did Conrad Challenge?
* Shifted from focus on medicine to product management.
* Conrad in college admissions process.
* Spoke about the spirit of creativity.
* most capable people I’ve ever known. Still in touch with many of them today.
* I discovered my purpose. It challenged me to be a change-maker!
* Group of students created a device to put out fires by sound waves in forests.
* We champion no-box thinking.
* How to be a transformative principal? Embrace divergent thinking.

Jayme Hull helps schools and churches make millennial friendly environments. She also mentors millennials so that they can be successful. Check out her free resource for principals at her web site.

• They want to be connected and work somewhere they can make an impact.
• They have heard their parents talk about how bored or angry they are at work.
• Very few parents and grandparents were actually happy.
• The fear of change is strong!
• Millennials don’t even have the choices like they had in the past.
• More than 50% cannot stay where they grew up to find work.
• Completely consumed with staying up on the digital happenings are.
• They have to be learning or they’ll lose their jobs.
• You give and you receive. Build a relationship first.
• Mentorships are really beneficial for millennials.
• Care about the person first, not what you can get from them.
• We’ve forgotten how to encourage our new teachers.
• Make sure they have downtime
• Their deepest heart’s desire is to have a desire.
• The millennial are a gift to us. They are demanding that we get back to what we used to do.
• We have forgotten how to teach what is essential.
• Mentoring program - The older generation will be blessed. Don’t tack on any more paperwork or extra hours.
• 2 kinds of mentors - someone on staff willing to pour into the next generation. Group of retired teachers. Never more than 30 minutes for 6–12 weeks.
• Their words and encouragement.
• Millennials are so tired of being on a checklist.
• It’s not about the nail
• How to be a transformative leader? Look three teachers in the eyes and tell them thanks!
• Face to face mentoring podcast.

Michael Horn is the co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and author of Blended and Disrupting Class, and the new book coming out this week called “Choosing College!”, which is the book we are talking about today!

• The book is about more than just choosing college, right? Tell me about that.
• There are a few stats about college that are just appalling, so many people not finishing, so much debt. Why do we still support it?
• boost in wages, employers require it.
• military or college!
• Personally fulfilling
• A lot of people don’t know.
• What language do people use to describe what they did.
• A lot more students should be taking a gap year.
• Working on the newspaper in high school.
• Let’s talk about quality assurance. I hear people give advice that it doesn’t matter at all where you go or what you major in.
• What’s the value I’m getting from this experience?
• We don’t have enough data while we do have too much data!
• I am not a historian, even though my major was history.
• We don’t know what we don’t know.
• We have to give kids experiences about what they can be doing.
• Make it tangible with an emotional connection.
• Give kids immersive experiences in those fields so they can see themselves in that setting!
• Do your strengths and abilities allow you to get into that field?
• Learning starts with engagement.
• What do you think about something like Lambda school, which doesn’t offer a degree, but rather a skill, and you don’t pay for that?
• More than a coding bootcamp.
• Might ultimately replace college.
• Purdue university has an income share agreement.
• University of Utah.
• Traditional top universities are going to continue to drive up costs.
• Price competition among universities.
• understanding your “why” is important.
• Understanding what progress looks like for you.
• Find out what you want and work backwards.
• Not seeing distinct spheres but rather integrated parts of our lives.
• Kids look more at what you say than what you do.

• Loves this from the Forbes’ piece:

  “Because no one understands the precise mix of what external supports cause student outcomes to improve, a theory of innovation—the theory of interdependence and modularity—suggests that schools must integrate to control every critical component of a student’s life that isn’t “good enough” to ensure academic achievement. In other words, when driving toward greater performance with moving parts that are unpredictably interdependent, in order to do anything, schools must do nearly everything.”

  “From the vantage point of our theory, it appears one of the reasons for City Connect’s success is that its school-based coordinator starts with the teacher and each student’s academic goals. That is, the organization integrates the supports it provides in a tight, interdependent manner with each teacher and around the needs of each individual student in a personalized way—not in a tiered way that treats cohorts of students judged to have similar risk profiles in the same way.”

• Much to love about the personalized approach,
• Let’s play to your strengths and support you in your weaknesses.
• How to be a transformative principal? Principals ought to step back and ask, how do I integrate more authentic experiences?

Brad Barber is a former business owner who is now an educator who founded a school called the Tesla Academy. At the Tesla Academy, they coach students rather than teach them.

• We are an academy, not a school.
• Agnostic about the school kids attend, it just needs to be good.
• We can react very quickly and give support to kids.
• We diagnose their problems.
• Sometimes they take notes to impress someone else.
• When you get into the business world, you have to learn really rapidly.
• Why would kids want to come to the Tesla Academy?
• It feels so weird to do something different.
• There’s a generation gap in parents: younger parents totally get it.
• How to be a transformative principal? My model could really take off in special education. My model would work perfect with 20-40 students.

Brad Barber is a former business owner who is now an educator who founded a school called the Tesla Academy. At the Tesla Academy, they coach students rather than teach them.

* Business process outsourcing.
* Went back to school as a teacher.
* Started at a charter school.
* Not the primary person who delivers the content.
* Education is so inefficient.
* I can teach it, but I want my students to learn how to learn.
* The difference between a coach and a teacher.
* They’ve been surviving school for 9 or 10 years.
* The teachers become babysitters (in other classes) and that’s not what we’re about.
* We’re observing the entire time.
* Kids understand that the technique wasn’t right

Dr. Grayson Maas is the Director of Communications for the Art of Problem Solving, a unique solution to teaching math anytime, anywhere.

• Motivated students in grades 2–12.
• We are the place students come to to learn math that they aren’t going to learn in school.
• Instill motivation in kids to want to do math.
• By and large math is traditionally taught with an emphasis on procedures, memorizing, and pattern matching.
• We are losing the art and beauty of mathematics by how we teach math in schools.
• We challenge them and ask them to rise to the occasion.
• We give them puzzles.
• We get a flood of serotonin when we solve problems.
• It’s not wrong to have the wrote, it’s wrong if that’s all you have.
• If you don’t move beyond the basics, you won’t be able to apply it later.
• If you take a problem-solving approach…
• We need to carve out time for kids to be uncomfortable with a problem.
• But how do we make time for that?
• It limits the incentive for kids to take intellectual risks.
• We can do this together. Education doesn’t just have to be teachers in a classroom alone.
• There’s a dissatisfaction because there is still a lingering question about how I would have done that.
• Rigorous activities early on!
• ASTE Keynote
• How to be a transformative principal? Carve out time and space for students to do some thinking without a goal in mind! gmaas@aops.com

Creating Better Learning Environments with Kevin Stoller Transformative Principal 291

Social Media: Every school has defined their vision, the space should reflect that.

Over the past 10 years, Kevin has visited over 1,000 schools and spoke with educators and students to learn how student outcomes are impacted by the learning environment. As CEO of Kay-Twelve, a company committed to improving learning environments for 10,000,000 students, Kevin wants to share his findings with others involved with education.

• Came from a family of educators.
• Hesitant to get into education furniture business because it was all the same.
• If you’re implementing change, it’s really difficult to do without changing the environment.
• Start small, learn from it, and then make the changes needed.
• The furniture is preventing me from doing it.
• It’s not about the furniture.
• Every school has defined their vision, the space should reflect that.
• Need to establish some rules around chaotic furniture.
• Space can have a big impact on driving change.
• Start with shared spaces.
• Flex seating or student choice seating.
• Get your free copy of “Creating Better Learning Environments”
• How to be a transformative principal? Find a network where you can be talking to other people. Join the mastermind

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Communicating to Create Happy Families with Jennifer Larson Transformative Principal 290

Social media: If you have a good communication system and everyone is engaged, there’s a positive buzz to the school.

Jennifer Larson is he co-founder and CEO of Hive Digital Minds, which provides parent-school communication solutions through schoolbzz.com

• Completely overwhelmed
• Couldn’t keep up.
• Shift towards personalized learning means there are a lot of different adults supporting a student.
• “I don’t even read the newsletter anymore.”
• Parents want to know what the two or three places for information.
• Grades communication is an important part of it as well.
• School website is a great marketing tool to recruit students, teachers, and families to your school.
• Figure out what information you want to share with the public and put that on the web site.
• Find tools that work well for your enrolled families.
• Build a communication strategy that gets information to the families quickly and efficiently.
• Do a communication audit to see what you are currently using.
• Which have information that parents might want access to.
• Need to implement a multi-year strategy.
• Talk to your parents.
• When schools jump into parent engagement, they are probably meeting the needs of those who were already having their needs met.
• Challenges around native languages spoken.
• Focus on mobile.
• Recognize that not all parents can be there physically at the school.
• Parent engagement is about making sure the families understand the value of education.
• Volunteer hours.
• Parents want to be engaged but they don’t know how.
• If you have a good communication system and everyone is engaged, there’s a positive buzz to the school.
• If you have happy families at your school, there is no other better testimonial.
• How to be a transformative principal? It all comes down to communication. Connect with each of your staff members and parents.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Danielle Nuhfer is a teacher who helps other teachers focus on self-care and you can find more information about her at teachingwell.life

Kip Motta is a principal in Rich Utah.

• You have to deal with people.
• Everything is about relationships.
• Doing what’s best for the team.
• Everyone is different, and you need to adapt your leadership to that person.
• A history of four-day school weeks.
• Change based on school district transportation costs.
• Waiver to reduce day requirement (152 vs 182) and still meet 990 hour requirement (now meet over 1000 hours)
• Start school at 8 am, out at 3:30.
• Parent teacher conferences count as
• Very few breaks - Labor Day, thanksgiving, Christmas for 1 week.
• Student and staff attendance increased.
• Ask staff and community to do personal appointments on Fridays
• 4 day school week is much more difficult for elementary school.
• Helped us go down the road of standards-based instruction.
• Struggles with 4 day school week
• Finding coaches is difficult
• Daycare for Friday’s with no school.
• You have to do everything through the lens of what is best for the most children.
• Kids are more recharged after a 3-day weekend every week!
• March and April can be long months with no break.
• Restorative practices, mindfulness to help kids cope with added pressure.
• How to be a transformative principal? Find someplace to go and learn!
• Contact kmotta@kipmotta.com

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Revolutions Start with Relationships with Darren Ellwein Transformative Principal 286

Social media: Tailor everything to the learner - via @dellwein

Darren Ellwein is my dessert bro and principal at the middle level in South Dakota!

• Revolution is about a group of people.
• From a staff culture standpoint: there was some kickback.
• It’s so much fun!
• Personalizing learning - what small steps do you need to take?
• Tailor everything to the learner.
• Mastery projects - success criteria
• You have to give up control.
• Relationships “it feels like my family.”
• Let the kids decide the norms.
• Waiting on content for 2-3 weeks.
• Done with our standards before we get to the standardized tests.
• personalizedlearningtools.com
• Personalized Learning is not about sitting in front of a computer all day.
• Starts with a relationship, then goes on to flexible content.
• Those kids broke in adults every year!
• Hannah and Alex - there was a pace set for everyone, even though it didn’t match.
• She would tell you she wouldn’t go back to the way it was.
• How to be a transformative principal? Be your own person. Hold on to your beliefs. Have the mindset of serving kids.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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After a career in innovation, Ted Dintersmith is most well-known to educators as the executive producer of the movie, Most Likely to Succeed, coauthor of the book of the same, and the man who traveled all fifty states to see What Schools Could Be.

• How to change schools?
• Changing everything overnight - the sharp knives come out.
• Thoughtful, supportive resources at innovationplaylist.org
• Have your community define essential competencies for your kids.
• Look for success points in your school.
• Encourage the innovators to do things.
• Ask them to keep an open mind.
• Native villages
• Carving up a moose carcass.
• How to be a transformative principal? Spend some time with young kids and recognize that this is the fight we can take on. change happens slowly right up until it happens quick
• What do teachers have in common that do innovative things within the system?
• What are you seeing China?
• Deleted scenes about kids not having homework from Most Likely to Succeed - share that story.
• http://teddintersmith.com/innovation-playlist/ *

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

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After a career in innovation, Ted Dintersmith is most well-known to educators as the executive producer of the movie, Most Likely to Succeed, coauthor of the book of the same, and the man who traveled all fifty states to see What Schools Could Be.

• Education is the only antidote
• Machines are taking over so many jobs.
• Social media fueled technology is making it challenging to know what is real.
• What they could do vs. what they do.
• the people who get to the top of these bureaucratic systems are bureaucrats
• If we just focused on setting up the conditions for educators to do their best work.
• It’s time for us to be more like activists.
• What are you working on and why?
• The purpose of school is to rank kids.
• Why isn’t that the way we do it?
• New Hampshire portfolio assessment system.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Mia Pumo is a former teacher and math specialist and currently is the cofounder of Constructive Learning Design, which supports teachers and learners by making learning joyful.

• Partnering with community organizations.
• Schools often don’t know how to partner.
• Businesses don’t know how to join in the work with schools.
• Use coaching skills to build relationships.
• Learning is much more beneficial when they come together and make a real impact.
• Experiential learning - year long process developing a plan around a real issue.
• You never know what seeds have been planted through that experience.
• How to start the conversation.
• Focus on quality partnerships.
• How to be a transformative principal? Active listening to create a shared vision.

Mia Pumo is a former teacher and math specialist and currently is the cofounder of Constructive Learning Design, which supports teachers and learners by making learning joyful.

• Making learning joyful
• I was really starting to contemplate leaving the profession I love because the joy was not there.
• We believe that if we design and deliver powerful learning experiences for educators, they will design and deliver powerful learning experiences for students.
• Coaches can transform the learning and cultural experiences of a school.
• You can’t afford to not have coaches! There are many ways to incorporate coaching into a culture.
• Leaders with coaching skills are more effective and more impactful.
• Communication, active listening, developing a culture where coaching and feedback are part of the norm.
• Have leaders take on that coaching role as part of what they do.
• Developing culture falls on the leader.
• Set up protocols and structures to make that an enjoyable experience.
• Coaching cycles
• The best professional development is the teacher down the hall.
• Position coaching to the staff as a support, not another observation.
• Why is there a stigma related to coaching?

Brittni Schroeder is the founder of Compassion Clubs, dedicated to the memory of her late son who passed away tragically at the age of 14.

• Started with a scholarship fund for students.
• Received hundreds of cards and letters from people who cared about Gage.
• The “Can Man”
• People wanted to be with our family.
• “We only suffer when we think about ourselves.” - Tony Robbins
• We have to serve. That’s how we heal.
• Gave kids pizzas and told them to sit with kids who didn’t have anyone sitting with them.
• Elementary and secondary curriculum.
• Secondary the kids lead it.
• Elementary is teacher/counselor/parent run.
• If they don’t know how to serve and think outside of themselves they are going to have a rough adult life.
• 12 different values: compassion, kindness, gratitude, charity, courage, etc.
• Teach about the value, share a story, then serve.
• Teenagers don’t seem to have coping skills.
• Nominate kids for scholarships and grants.
• My son’s legacy is compassion.
• Most successful club in Michigan.
• How to be a transformative principal? Look for those kids that need to belong.

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, @jchorvath is an educator and researcher with expertise in the areas of cognitive neuroscience, biological psychology, brain simulation, the learning sciences, and effective teaching/learning practices

• There is 1 learning process!
• It is the same for everyone.
• You don’t differentiate so students learn differently, you differentiate so students engage differently.
• If you want to learn something you have to engage in it, but not too much!
• Attenborough effect.
• Science of learning and craft of teaching.
• Thinking principle
• Learning principle - all learning has to begin with facts.
• Semantic memories for the key 10 or 15 facts. Three episodic memories for a fact.
• Episodic memories vs. semantic memories.
• All starting of learning builds episodic memories.
• How we use inquiry wrong in education.
• Surface learning is semantic facts. Binary.
• Conceptualization - how are you going to organize your facts. Forming a concept. Can’t be binary.
• Contextually emergent skills.
• Fear of failure
• Learning resilience
• Education gives you experience in learning.
• How to be a transformative principal? People who you don’t really know what they think at the end, because they are trying to get you to question your own assumptions.

Michael Reichert is an applied and research psychologist who has long been an advocate for children and families. From counseling youth involved in the juvenile justice system through experiences leading treatment teams in a psychiatric hospital, all the while managing an independent clinical practice, Dr. Reichert has tested his understanding of children with practical, even life-saving, challenges.

• Every single kind of problem was transformed based on relationship.
• It’s the adult’s job to be the relationship manager.
• Live up to your goals.
• Relational breakdowns.
• How do we promote the relationship between the boy and the teacher.
• Breakdowns happen all the time.
• It’s the responsibility of the relationship manager to monitor whether it has broken down.
• The boy that simply checks out and underperforms.
• Book I Can Learn From You: Boys as Relational Learners
• I won’t learn from you
• You may have to develop new skills out of your repertoire to reach kids.
• Every type of boy can be reached.
• When a teacher reaches their end of their rope, they need to reach out for their help.
• You recognize that this is really challenging and it is frustrating. You have the power to change this boy’s life, and I know it is hard, If you can bear with him and continue to check in with him, you can reach him.
• How to be a transformative principal? Understand that you are asking your teachers to do this emotional work and validate the challenge that it is while saying boys are relational learners first!

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Michael Reichert is an applied and research psychologist who has long been an advocate for children and families. From counseling youth involved in the juvenile justice system through experiences leading treatment teams in a psychiatric hospital, all the while managing an independent clinical practice, Dr. Reichert has tested his understanding of children with practical, even life-saving, challenges.

• The stereotypes of women has changed significantly in the last 40 years.
• There’s been very little to counteract stereotypes of men and boys.
• Stereotypes shape boys’ lives early on.
• We cannot say that women are limited because of biology, but we still say that about boys.
• When Boys become “Boys” - Judy Chu
• Started out as direct, authentic and able to articulate themselves. Traveled from presence to pretense by way of posturing.
• Inauthentic and less willing to articulate their feelings.
• Conditioning comes from everywhere: teachers, parents, peers.
• A man box study - messages about being a man. Stoic, unemotional, strong, etc. Men more associated with man box stereotypes were more prone to negative behaviors, including suicidal ideation.
• Schools play a profound role in organizing the messages about what Men are.
• Every school is occupied by a hidden curriculum.
• Most educators feel as though they can’t get their arms around it.
• Boys have very little efficacy over the hidden curriculum. Policed by other boys. Often receive subtle and not-so-subtle redirection from adults and other boys.
• Student-teacher relationship and significance
• One-dimensional type of masculinity that is rewarded in school cultures.
• 1500-member study of boys and 1000 of their teachers. Tell us a story about a relationship that went well and oe that didn’t go well.
• So reassuring that the mask can be taken away when they do have a relationship.
• Relationships are transformative in three ways: practically, psychologically, existentially.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Derek McCoy is a middle school principal in Georgia, and a fellow Digital Principal of the Year. He is also the coauthor of “The Revolution: It’s Time To Empower Change In Our Schools”

• We still sit in rows, we still deliver everything the same as we always.
• The time for shifting is over.
• Shift gives comfort, but we’ve got to make some change for our kids.
• We’re asking adults to change.
• 3 R’s is how we conduct business, and it always has been. That’s not going anywhere.
• We also know better.
• Shifting from the three R’s
• Passion - finding something that you’re passionate about. You might have some parents that can’t get into all the fundamental three R’s.
• When you’re passionate about it, you don’t give up.
• There is a disconnect with schools and parents now.
• We know better. We know how the brain works. Learning is more social than it is memorization.
• Don’t be the teacher you had as a student,
• It’s about learning new, and trying new for our learners.
• Change is going to happen, so we can embrace that change for our students.
• How do we get the whole system to change?
• The revolution@ries primary responsibility to build a vision!
• Committing to learner-centered change!
• Find your pusher who is going to support you through it and ground your thinking.
• Significant change is relative.
• Survey and talk to kids?
• Getting learner input.
• Control vs. Trust
• 5 core values: communicators, collaborators, __, have integrity, act with purpose
• Giving kids opportunity to provide input.
• Ask the kids, “How do you see this working?“
• How to be a transformative principal? Get into classrooms. Spend half your day in there talking to kids. Let that be the formative assessment for how you

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Christopher is a principal at Whitman Hansen Regional High School.

• Transitioning to a new high school.
• A new position gives you the opportunity to reflect on where you want to go and who you want to go.
• Sharing yourself first.
• I’m not a student-centered principal!
• I’m a staff-centered principal.
• Build staff meetings around getting to know each other.
• Building relationships
• Every day, with some exceptions, I’m in classrooms giving feedback to teachers.
• Out in front playing music with kids.
• Using Voxer to give immediate feedback and face-to-face meetings.
• Three simple questions: What’s working? What do I need to stop doing? What can I do to make your life better or easier?
• Start by supporting, then you engage them, then you empower them.
• A good leader is a servant leader.
• A good leader becomes a better leader by making others more successful.
• Clear the road for others.
• Experience is so important and we have to fail to keep learning.
• We don’t know how good we can be.
• Every student leaving the high school with something in their pocket to prepare them for the next level.
• Key components of S1 to raise failing grade to passing grade.
• Empowering teachers to give kids hope and keep integrity of the grades.
• Teachers choose most important units and then give kids an opportunity to make things happen.
• 92% of the kids who did winter school passed the year-long course.
• Summer Read Smackdown!
• Interdisciplinary days - kids don’t come back to a test on the book.
• How to be a transformative principal? Get into classrooms and give honest feedback to teachers so you can have a conversation with them.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Mike Fisher author of Hacking Instructional Design. Shoutout to @elizabethfisher

• All this stuff that is eating up teachers’ time to plan.
• Easier to just purchase a program or a plan.
• Shift focus to contemporary instructional design.
• Why is it so hard to move away from
• Decision paralysis. So many decisions to make that we don’t know what to do.
• How well we need to design assessments.
• Standards, resources, external assessments.
• The What - standards
• The How - activities
• The How Well? - assessments.
• Tripticks from AAA
• Trying things out - gives you some freedom.
• Being a lead learner is pushed aside to get things done.
• Right-sizing the work. Allow students to be cocreators in instructional design.
• Breaking the standard into manageable bits for teachers and for students.
• Learning targets “standard statement“ with I can in front of it.
• Help students have high level of mastery.
• Kids do not care about your grades!
• Let them be accountable to each other and accountable to the world.
• How to be a transformative Principal? Invite conversation, collaboration. How do we remain loyal to the learner and learning?

This is a keynote that I presented for the Alaska Society for Technology in Education Conference in February. Here is the link to the video of it. 

Byron Darnall is the principal of Potter Gray Elementary School in Bowling Green Kentucky

• Long term sustainable change is slow.
• How do you improve something that is already successful?
• Examine the student experience.
• Who’s school is it?
• As educators we tend to operate from the center.
• Busyness is the disease of our time.
• How are you? Busy! <-bothersome
• “I would love to, but I’m too busy.“
• Am I too busy to get better?
• How to be less busy?
• Every day shouldn’t lead to absolute exhaustion.
• There is nothing easy about it, but we have to be open to finding someone we trust to give us good feedback about our time management
• Systems thinking - not exposed to it as a teacher or
• Centralize school-wide communication through a blog. If it matters, it is on the blog.
• If it can’t be said in 1-2 sentences, it’s a conversation.
• How to be a transformative principal? Talk to your students and ask them questions.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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RTI process for Lyn Marsilio's elementary school.

• Set a couple goals: know their letters, ICU.
• 4 rotations, 6 minute rotations
• Letter writing, letter sorts, tracing, sound sorts.
• After the first 20 days, graduated kids went back into the classroom.
• Did a round 2 to add rhyming and took out tactile piece.
• Taking attendance for kids to see how many times they went to this intervention.
• Out of the 20 days, some kids only made 14, and so called him to make sure kids
• Our third round, the teachers are finally seeing why we take data.
• Kids making the goals early are taking off in other areas because they had those foundational skills.
• 80% on grade level vs. 40% that were on grade level last year.
• Narrows down who needs special skills.
• In the past, title I data has felt like a collection with no meaning. Up until this year, that has been data that we collect, not that we use.
• Teachers plan it, teacher assistants implement it.
• 1st grade - 46 kids, three title I teachers are working with these kids. We have seen 84% of the kids in 1st grade making progress.
• Co planning with the reading teachers.
• In second grade, about 50% of kids have rotated out because of progress.
• There is a great benefit in being targeted.
• 3rd graders, all but 2 of the 25 kids needing intervention are making great progress.
• Lots of young staff, and they are still doing well.
• Teachers are seeing why the planning is affecting instruction and what that impact is.
• foundational skills in 2nd and 3rd grade: decoding, then once they hit grade level, push comprehension.
• Holding on to them a little longer.
• Got push back in the beginning because we are doing something different.
• Now that they are seeing why we structured that the way did, there is more excitement.
• 2nd and 3rd grade, asked teachers for input to make sure they felt supported.
• Success is contagious.
• What haven't we figured out: 4th and 5th grade.
• Looking at budget as people and not programs.
• We are getting kids to be readers.

Larry Villiard is the principal of a K-12 school in Bruce Wisconsin.

• Leadership team, started with 12 people, now we have up to 20 people come to the leadership team meeting each month. Follow up leadership team meeting after PD.
• Anybody who wants to be part of leadership team can join us.
• Leadership Meeting norms.
• Six Step Process
• Weekly article share at 7:30
• Book studies.
• Tight and loose.
• Need more time if we are going to teach the curriculum with fidelity.
• Seniors leave a week earlier than the rest of the student body, so they are going to do a test run with the new schedule.
• How to be a transformative principal? Have an open mind. Tap into your talented staff.
• call bruce high school.

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Larry Villiard is the principal of a K-12 school in Bruce Wisconsin.

• Larry has been there since 1995
• Moved from a junior high school to a middle school.
• About 500 students
• 2 classes per grade
• Middle school has a separate schedule from everyone else. Extended core classes 80 minutes long.
• The staff is the key to making kids successful.
• How has the PLC approach helped you.
• Took ideas from the staff to make it successful. Transitions getting kids moving around more.
• Give kids 20 minutes of homework time during the class period.
• Lengthened class periods decreased ODRs.
• A small little man can't make all the decisions.
• People couldn't believe that people just went about their business when they visited the school.
• In one school year, we lost superintendent and elementary principal. I was going to be moved out of my comfort zone.
• They came back like new staff, like new people.
• A PLC cannot be a set of meetings!
• A PLC has to become your culture.
• Take what is working best and eliminate what is not working.
• Data Days 3 times per year - drives all interventions
• Were dead last in our achievement and now are in 1st place.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Dr. Barbara is Executive Director of The Institute for Childhood Education, a professional development and consulting firm for those who live and work with children.

• Barbara started rocking abandoned babies when she was in high school in Washington, D.C.
• First year teaching was in the inner city.
• The role of spirituality and faith in children.
• Faith community is a resilience factor.
• Faith enables us to have connection.
• Children have innate understanding of God.
• When you have that child standing in front of you that can sometimes get on your last nerve, ask not what is wrong with you, but what has happened to you?
• Impacts us at the cellular level.
• I look at you with compassion for your story.
• The kids’ history has told them that the world is not a safe place.
• “Children act out“ in behavior what they do not have the words to say.
• How much do we need to know about student’s trauma?
• The trauma determines the impact.
• The behavior speaks for itself.
• Need to look at trauma with a broader lens.
• What happens inside a child’s body when they experience trauma.
• FAE and Pre-natal drug exposure impacts organization of brain.
• Most vulnerable time is in-utero and first two months of life as it relates to brain development.
• Dr. Perry and neurotransmitters.
• ADHD medication manipulates one of the three neurotransmitters.
• Dendrites on neurons related to quality and health of early life.
• Trauma can interrupt two hemispheres of the brain.
• Memory, language, using symbols can be compromised by trauma.
• Moral classrooms, moral children.
• Children with trauma will only thrive in a community.
• Developmentally appropriate practice with kids exposed to trauma - Narrow window of strategies.
• Children with significant trauma act at half their chronological age.
• Active learning engagement for kids exposed to trauma.
• Primary strategy is a do-over or reboot. “Let’s try that again!” - may need to model that first.
• Goal is not to manage behavior but to heal them from inside out.
• Ignore the no and give two choices!
• Cozy corner: “You let me know when you’re ready to go back to class.“
• Simply changing the location is sometimes enough.
• Pattern, repetitive movement is calming to the brain.
• Wet washcloth is a tangible symbol of empathy.
• How to be a transformative principal? When you see those children who are struggling, remind yourself it’s not about what’s wrong with you, but about what’s happened to you. I know who you are.

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Jason Glass is the superintendent of Jeffco Public Schools

• 85,000 students on the west side of Denver, Colorado.
• Lots of great people in the district.
• Community is politically divided 1/3 democrats, 1/3 independent, 1/3 republican
• When it comes to our kids, it should be an area where everyone can work together.
• PBS Documentary about the Jeffco recall
• Things that disturb the balance here get noticed
• How do we prepare the students for the right future.
• Green Mountain Youtube Video
• Changing the student experience through changing the student task
• Information is really easy to acquire.
• Problem and project-based learning across the entire organization
• Three categories of practitioners: those who have always taught in authentic: Allow those teachers to be influencers.
• Second group is those who see the changes and are willing to engage but don’t know how: provide lots of opportunities for them to see what it looks like.
• Third group: waiting to see if this is a fad.
• How do you inspire your leadership to do these things as well?
• This is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult change to make.
• “This is exactly why I got into education”
• Really hard because this is not a technical change
• Much deeper and more meaningful change approach.
• Have the changes really changed what students experience
• how to be a transformative principal? Principals can support, encourage and help a teacher take a risk to create an authentic meaningful approach for a student.
• @cojasonglass Jason.glass@jeffco.k12.co.us

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

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Greg Goins is a former superintendent, principal, teacher and coach who is now the host of the Reimagine Schools Podcast

In our Simulcast we talk about the K12 Magnet. Here is the 1 Pager and here is the infographic and here is the video.

Sign up for updates about the K12 Magnet school here

• Reimagine Schools
• Twitter opened my eyes greatly.
• Find some life skills.
• Someone has dealt with a similar problem.
• School Leadership can be a very isolating profession.
• Have the courage to have some really difficult conversations.
• Ask why we are doing the things we are doing.
• Nothing wrong with starting slow
• When I was in school.
• Stop looking at kids as part of groups.
• Change is the most feared word in education, but we need to embrace it.
• Being highly innovative is a scary proposition for many people.
• How to implement change: We’re going to try something new and see how it goes.
• Henry Ford, “Those who have never made a mistake work for those who have.“
• Create a culture of Yes.
• How to be a transformative principal? Be a connected educator.
• Learn as much as you can.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

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Jeremy Williams is the principal of Manor Hall International School in United Arab Emirates

• 600 students from 46 countries
• Bitcoin and blockchain
• Bitcoin made it speculation.
• At its core, it is a ledger. A record of transactions and accounts.
• Eliminate Higher ed from being the sole guarantor of credentials.
• Blockchain seeks to destroy intermediaries.
• Blockchain verifies information and can’t be hacked.
• Blockchain authenticated vs university degree.
• What it would look like in the K-12 system.
• If we had the ability for authentic assessments that were performance oriented and we attached blockchain credential instead of a grade. It’s not just about getting the A.
• How to know it is good enough.
• You can store as much as you want on the transaction.
• Tasks have to be structured in a way that are binary.
• Publicly declare purpose and passion.
• Tie to the credential where people could see the work.
• Assess where the viability would be for you.
• For the teacher who wants kids to be motivated intrinsically.
• You have to have a low barrier to entry.
• Upskilling people who are already working.
• Blockchain is not bitcoin.
• Technology is going to impact the future of jobs.
• Discerning passion and purpose vs. understanding what jobs are possible with that.
• Parents exposed her to a lot of things when she was younger.
• It’s our opportunity to expose kids to things to see what they like.
• Genius hour model.
• How to be a transformative principal? Spend time with yourself and figure out what it is that you love about the work you do. Help 1 kid learn about what they love.

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Claude Charron is a Teacher in Miami Florida and director of STEM program in Gulliver Florida. Claude@conradawards.org

• Empowering students to make change
• Sports has it right in being able to expose kids at a young age to become an athlete.
• Things that will not work.
• Keeping kids safe doesn’t inspire.
• Kids have to choose something they are interested in.
• Empathy is vital.
• When students are inspired by seeing someone challenged by something, they have a purpose for working hard.
• Designing something that matters is what inspires kids.
• How designing something that matters inspires kids.
• Getting kids to agree on something is an art.
• How do you get kids to engage and go down the path where they want to design something that matters.
• You do learn things through projects.
• Design process since 1997!
• What is the art?
• We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. How do you go from an idea to a working prototype?
• Google Sprint method. Book
• Modules that would help teachers.
• How to select a challenge.
• Visualize everything on a board.
• No Box Toolbox -
• Collaborate with someone visually.
• It’s our responsibility to engage kids
• If kids aren’t engaged it’s a personal failure on me as the teacher
• Shows that kids can each communicate in an effective way to give everyone a voice.
• Haven’t reinvented the process. The difference is they are not working in silos.
• Once you have the clarity within a team, you have the power to do what the team wants to do.
• How to be a transformative principal?
• Ask faculty, how can we work together in a way where we are going deeper with kids.

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Jennifer Hogan is an assistant principal in Hoover, Alabama. Her web site is The Compelled Educator

• Rising Tide Radio Focused on women in ed leadership.
• Guide on the side for PD with her teachers
• School goals take the learning outside the classroom walls.
• First session wasn’t about the technology, but about gathering courage and thinking differently about how they thought of their classroom in the past.
• Jump-start ideas.
• Connect with an expert in their content areas.
• Walked around and listened is all Jennifer did.
• Decide on something, then figure out technology.
• Timeline
• Skype and blog with experts
• Connections with other classrooms.
• What is holding principals back from doing things this way.
• How do we want to go about doing that?
• Think of as many ideas as possible.
• Not many challenges.
• School has three goals for learning
• How to be a transformative principal? Get into classrooms.

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Kelly Young is the Executive Director at Education Reimagined, where they seek to help educators create a learner-centered learning environment.

• What happens when kids don’t learn the same thing!?
• It is a myth that just because things are being taught that all students are all learning the same thing.
• Kids are not learning the same things now even though we may be teaching the same thing now.
• What are the competencies that kids need to have?
• Once kids get over the fear, they realize they have a lot to say.
• All of your learning is not going to be in K12
• Inspire life-long learning
• Equity issues
• Examining what bias we might be bringing.
• This process of education is incredibly liberating for educators.
• How to be a transformative principal? 2 things: 1. Listening and being a team with the educators 2. Actually asking 5 young people and five teachers what it is like for them in the school.
• *

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Kelly Young is the Executive Director at Education Reimagined, where they seek to help educators create a learner-centered learning environment.

• Non profit in Washington, D.C. that figures out how we can accelerate the transition from school-centered to student-centered
• All kids and outcomes that are actually relevant.
• A whole new way of seeing education.
• Learning is a natural phenomenon.
• Unfurl students’ unique potential.
• Shifting from the transfer of knowledge to the investigation of unknown knowledge
• Einstein National Geographic.
• Asking teachers about passionate learning experiences that they had.
• Had people that cared about them and what they learned.
• Great learning experiences rarely happen in a classroom setting.
• Relevant to what kids need to learn.
• Why is it so hard for educators to let this go?
• It’s what we experienced and what we know.
• Maybe there is something wrong with me.
• When you’re really struggling with a student, ask what might I do differently and what role can the kids take in fixing the problem.
• It always feels risky to invite kids into the conversation.
• Iowa BIG - architecture project.
• He didn’t have the words to describe what he was missing.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Jeff Kubiak is a principal in Davis, California.

• Didn’t really like school growing up.
• Pushed to be an administrator by his now-superintendent.
• One of the most diverse counties in the United States.
• MAP assessment closely related to state test.
• Much more small group instruction and intervention. MAP skills tied in with Khan Academy.
• Reclaiming our child by Brad Gustafson.
• Technology makes it possible
• It might be a little bit loud, but I can still have my kids in the back, and we can be rocking!
• Have a hard time having videos to show my teachers.
• Encourage teachers to go check out other teachers’ classrooms.
• Students set goals with teachers.
• Start with why.
• Then add the what.
• How to help teachers change
• Lots of PD - how to have a MAP goal setting conference with students.
• Approach each teacher with how it will work for them.
• We ask 800 kids to change every day! Why can’t we as adults make one little adjustment?
• We don’t gossip.
• How to be a transformative principal? Get into all the classrooms. Gotta get out of the office!

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Bridget Belcastro is the principal of Johnnsburg Elementary School.

• Principal of every grade level in K-12
• Why Bridget joined the mastermind.
• I’m always just starting out, even in my 12th year.
• Makes me reflect on things that I have experienced.
• I can give recommendations or experiences that helped me.
• I do have some very specific goals for my career, and I get those through the mastermind.
• Intimacy of it, we all have time each week to share what we are doing.
• GRIT Program - Greatness Requires Internal Toughness.
• A team of 10 teachers developed the lessons.
• There is a new series of lessons for each grade level.
• We talk about Goal Setting, Perseverance, Overcoming Obstacles, Reflection, Growth Mindset, Etc.
• Talk about brain research and famous failures.
• Teachers buy into it more when we create it.
• Year 1 was very easy, all the lessons look the same.
• Year 2 was a little more challenging with fresh approach and different topics.
• Year 3 is really challenging.
• Teachers have t-shirts Got GRIT?
• If I fail, I’ll be OK. I’ll just try it a different way!
• Restorative practices - Problem-solving skills
• Working through frustrations with kids.
• Make sure our practice matches what we’re preaching.
• Are we giving kids chances to show that the “Yet” part?
• How to be a transformative principal? Reminding yourself that you’re all in this together. Making sure that your staff believes it!

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Social Media 259: Students choose a topic they want to study, and ask the teacher to help them understand that culture’s values.

Joel Lavin is the principal of River Road / El Camino Del Rio

• Teachers that put up welcome signs that were edgy.
• Opinion piece following the vandalism.
• Discussing racism head-on.
• Being inclusive not exclusive
• Equity committee that meets to discuss culture, morale, language barriers, etc.
• Support students that are not documented immigrants, but make sure that their rights are preserved.
• Students choose a topic they want to study, and ask the teacher to help them understand that culture’s values.
• How the mastermind benefits Joel.
• How to be a transformative principal? Get in a lot of steps to be out in your school!
• Dual Language Principal Katherine

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

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Joel Lavin is the principal of River Road / El Camino Del Rio

• Dual Language is much different.
• Studied science and Spanish in college.
• We as a nation are just starting to realize how important it is to speak another language.
• Broca’s area
• Families wanted to have their own language spoken in the school.
• Family resource center
• 2009 started as a dual language program
• There were reluctant dual language program.
• Change is hard.
• Some staff members left.
• Teachers are a major factor in school culture.
• Talking and being out in the community is really important to help with a big cultural change.
• Funds of knowledge community.
• Parents’ values reflect what they want their kids to learn.

• Change school became a powerful space for people to have powerful conversations about school.
• Change school brings a level of transparency and honesty that is really powerful.
• Have an ongoing conversation with people who have similar ideas and understandings and have had experiences to make it possible.
• People feel trusted inside this community.
• It can be a difficult conversation about what modern learning should look like.
• Constant learning is fascinating.
• Tried to create some space for people to connect who don’t have room for that in their physical spaces.
• It is very dependent on whether people are school leaders or something else.
• The dark ages of change - leadership from the middle.
• People who can be influencers - parents, students,
• suddenly it’s not just about one teacher or one principal.
• How to get parent and student feedback.
• You often see yourself very isolated in a school.
• People are looking for direct prompts and cues
• So much of the educational conversation is led by journalists and politicians. We have to stop that.
• People respond with a blank look to a blank slate because they don’t have the practice at it.
• Modern Learners Lens
• Existing schools - best vehicle for communication is your students.
• We’ve conditioned kids to do what we say.
• The notion of setting expectations.
• If we’re going to shift the goalpost, we need to spend a lot of time talking to parents about the what and the why.
• TED Podcast
• Do we trust kids?
• Four areas that we have to think hard about - Modern Learners Lens
• Schools don’t know what they believe, they don’t articulate what they believe
• Understand how literacy is changing.
• Understand what is actually possible in schools now.
• Peter Senge
• Most change efforts are not grounded in those conversations.
• Modern Learner Community
• Change.school for more information
• How to be a transformative principal?
• Bruce: Engage more deeply in the spaces we already referred to.
• Will: Have a willingness to see if you are actually doing what you believe in your classrooms!

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

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Interviews about awesome synergy project: ed Videos

Rachael and John George Both principals in Oregon share their experiences of turning around schools.

• PreK involvement
• Trauma-informed practices
• Stronger voice for advocacy
• Building strong relationships.
• Can’t personalize learning unless you know about the kids!
• Different levels for leaders learning at their own pace.
• There needs to be customization because different people need different things.
• Culturally responsive teaching and Trauma
• How do people get involved?
• Contact someone and say you want to be involved.
• How to be a transformative principal? Get into classrooms and support teachers.

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

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Rachael and John George Both principals in Oregon share their experiences of turning around schools.

• The Three Amigos
• Sandy Green Elementary School - lowest 10% of the schools. Working with a well-known publisher on reading and writing, and it wasn’t going as well as they thought!
• Year 1 from 10%ile to 50%ile. Year 4 82%ile. With highest Free and Reduced lunch rate in the district.
• Honed in on systems and structures
• Full staff turnover in those four years.
• 3-4 year plan
  1. First thing you need to do is establish relationships.
  1. You’ve got to be the examiner of systems and structures.
• Identify holes in intervention and enrichment.
• Each building has its own issues.
• Three changes in the first year: 1. Slow 2. Integrated with content, but lost on the students 3. No engagement
• Students were passively sitting there, while the teacher was doing all the heavy lifting.
• Level of community involvement.
• Need to do different because we are teaching different students.
• How do we do different different?
• It’s supposed to be hard.
  1. Be the filter: teach to cause a positive result.
• Modified Danielson Rubric for evaluation. I can’t evaluate you in Domain 1 unless I see your lesson plans.
• You can’t be good with what you do without a game plan.
• Look at the standards and make them meaningful.
• New teachers out perform due to effective lesson plans.
• Need guidance and coaching and mentoring around lesson plans. Provides the opportunity for reflection in lesson plans and it makes them better as teachers.
• Lesson plans provide feedback on Professional Development - if we can’t see it reflected in lesson plans.
• Keeping your lesson plans to reflect on later.
• Planning formative assessment.
• CoTeach model - special education & ELL population
  1. Be in classrooms a lot.

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Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

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Invitation Only Parent Teacher Conferences with Jay Posick Transformative Principal 254

Social Media: If you’re sitting in your office, trouble is going to come find you so you might as well go find it!

Jay Posick is principal of Merton Intermediate school in Merton Wisconsin

• How our culture came to be here in Merton.
• Weekly nuts and bolts emails “Good Morning Merton Family“
• Take care of kids…
• Connect with people face to face.
• There aren’t silver bullets.
• Get out of your office.
• If you’re sitting in your office, trouble is going to come find you so you might as well go find it!
• 3 all-staff meetings each year that I’m in charge of.
• First agenda item on grade level meetings is kids.
• There are times as educators where we focus more on the negative than on the positive
• Recognize kids that are going above and beyond.
• Be kind, be safe, do your job.
• Good news call of the day. #mertonproud
• Finding ways to recognize kids.
• Find a way for teachers to share more with others.
• Mark French came up with the idea.
• Have a positive phone call at the end of the week.
• Ordinary to you, amazing to everyone else.
• Invitation only conferences
• Pat on the back or a kick in the butt!
• Building Leadership Team.
• More on invitation only conferences.
• Great things, challenges, great things.
• How to be a transformative principal? Get out of your office!

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

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Hi, this is jethro, host of transformative principal! You can reach me @jethrojones on twitter or at http://transformativeprincipal.org/

Today is episode 253 and I am so excited about what I am going to share.

My school is rocking and rolling in an amazing way! We are positively impacting kids not just academically, but socially, as well. It’s fantastic. In fact, I’m much more proud of our soft skills growth than I am of our academic success, because today, kids can learn anything anywhere!

Much of that growth is happening in Synergy, which I will talk about later.

But first, everyone is always asking, how do we get our schools to change. You’re listening to this podcast because that is what you want to know! In the fall listener survey there were about 90% of my listeners so far who said they wanted to learn more about the school change process.

Well, I’m going to tell you the secret.

Ready?

Here’s my four-step process guaranteed to bring about school change:

1. Vision
2. Communication
3. Empowerment of faculty, parents, and students
4. Continuous improvement

First, vision. Where there is not vision there is death. Do you want to be “just another school?“ No! That’s why you’re listening to some guy in Alaska describe how his school has dramatically changed over the last 18 months

If you go back to episode 1001 of Transformative Principal you will see how we did a ton of stuff at my last school. The same is happening here, with one notable exception. Everything that we are doing is centered around a vision for personalized learning. If it doesn’t have to do with personalizing learning for our students, I don’t touch it.

Our vision is clear. We are going to give kids what they need when they need it. That is personalized learning.

Our vision is clear: if something doesn’t contribute to personalizing learning, we don’t waste time on it.

Whatever training we do goes back to personalizing learning for our students.

We have a ton of new stuff happening in our school this year. Why? Because we are personalizing learning.

Math - project-based learning
Science - switching between 7th and 8th grade teachers each quarter-long unit to give kids choice and voice in their learning.

So, let’s talk about how all these things happened.

Step 2: communication

When I got hired, I came up and met the staff at the end of the school year. I talked at length with a few of them, and started communicating over the summer more extensively. There was a lot going on.

When I got to the school, I met with every teacher I could to ask, “What should we start, stop, or continue doing?” I got a lot of feedback from that. There weren’t a lot of opportunities to talk with parents, yet, but those that I did shared some of their concerns. The biggest thing that I learned in my four months’ research was that there were a lot of problems. It was tough coming into the school.

I did a survey at the end of the school year, and when I asked a question about culture at the school, only 2 responses were something positive. All the others were negative. ALL the others were negative.

This was tough for me. As a side note, one of the ways you measure culture is through little things, like how many people sit together at district-wide professional development. At our PD on Monday, we had the biggest group we’ve had sitting together. It’s working.

We also had a school district strategic vision and big push from the school board and superintendent to personalize learning for our students, which is what I really wanted to do in education anyway!

After all this research, we needed a direction. Many teachers responded to another survey that they wanted to be known for something. They had different ideas, but they desperately wanted to be known for doing something that no other schools were doing.

So, with their input, I created a vision for where Tanana would go in four years.

Here it is: We would fulfill our school district’s strategic vision by becoming the most personalized school in the district.

I announced to the teachers at the start of the year and then reviewed it again. I help monthly meetings with parents to explain where we were going to go in the future.

Part of the challenge was that we would only have students for 2 years.

Step 3: empowerment of faculty, parents, and students

This one is really exciting. I could write a whole book about this!

In our four year plan, there are outlines, and there is room for growth. There is room for personal accountability.

I learned long ago that a leader’s job is not to cap the top end, but rather to help light a fire under someone else.

Through this process parents and students and teachers may feel like they have a little too much power. The reality is you always have that power. It’s ironic that this piece is called empowerment, when we take that power away ourselves and think that we need permission to do good things. We don’t.

Throughout this whole process, teachers and students have been given great latitude to make their own decisions and do things how they think is best. They are the people with the most information about what works for them, so why should I, as the principal, who doesn’t know a lot of what is going on, be making all the decisions.

I do my best to teach them good principles, and then I let them govern themselves accordingly.

One of the other things that I have learned is that if I am running the ship, when I turn my back the ship crashes. There are initiatives that are happening solely because I am in charge of them. This is a recipe for disaster! This will not continue if I am not working my tail off to make sure that happens. I need to distance myself from that so other people can take ownership.

Right now, synergy is in that camp. But it is a school-wide effort and not many people have the capacity or opportunity to see all that there is to be seen! Even still, I need to move that away from me, and give more opportunities to others.

*What is Synergy?

You’d probably call it project based learning. And that would be pretty accurate. But it’s not exactly that.

Synergy is a time for students to learn without limitations. Synergy is a time when students bring all their skills and knowledge together to do something that leaves an impact.

I made a little video to explain it to my students, and I’d like to share it here.

What makes synergy so awesome? It’s all driven by kids. They come up with the ideas. They do the work. Teachers are very much guides on the side supporting them. It’s so exciting to see what kids are creating.

I’m working on a list that shows everything that kids are doing in Synergy, but it isn’t quite done, yet. Kids are writing novels, making scale models of battleships, organizing a step team, finding ways help homeless youth, raising awareness about LGBT issues, decorating our school, writing uplifting messages on origami to give to others, upcycling, organizing after-school programs (sports and chess) for a neighboring school, creating a smoothie company, a locker decorations company, a vinyl decal company, and so much more. It’s exciting!

I can’t believe what I get to witness every week with these kids. Stay tuned for more to come about this exciting chapter in our school.

Step 4: Continuous improvement

This is where it gets really exciting for me. Nothing is ever good enough. Good is the enemy of great. I want my school to be amazing, and it is never going to be if I settle for anything. For me, change and improvement is exciting and fun. For others, change is scary and challenging.

So, how do we make this happen? We constantly evolve in every area we can.

It means that I have a critical eye, and that means critical for the things that I want to have happen, too. Synergy is a good example of that. It started way back when I was a teacher and has been evolving ever since. It has different names in different schools, but the base idea is the same. You might call it Genius Hour or 20% time. I’ve called it “special projects,“ “tutorials,” “advisory,” and now “synergy.”

What is important in whatever process you are evaluating, is that you continually evaluate how things are going. You can’t settle for anything, anytime.

There are challenges with this. But this is where it goes back to the vision that you have for your school. If you don’t have that vision of what we are doing, the improvements can be seen as changes, and that doesn’t help anyone!!! People don’t like to change for change’s sake. They are willing to improve and grow, but they need to do it with an eye toward a vision of some sort.

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