EPISODE #183

You're listening to School Leadership Reimagined, episode number 183.

Welcome to the School Leadership Reimagined podcast...

where we rethink what's possible to transform your school. If you're tired of settling for small wins and incremental improvement, then stay tuned to discover powerful and practical strategies for getting every teacher in your school moving towards excellence. Now, here's your host, Robyn Jackson.

Hello there, and welcome back to another episode of School Leadership Reimagined. I'm your host Robyn Jackson, And today we're going to talk about a counterintuitive way to look at your school. 

You see, whenever I talk to people are coaching or mentoring people around their schools and how to turn their schools into success stories. They tell me over and over again, they give me this long litany of everything that's working incorrectly all the things that are going wrong, all the things that are just not working. And a lot of times I'll stop them, and I'll say, Okay, you're very clear about what isn't working. Can you tell me what is working? And every time I asked that question, people pause, or really quick to take a look at everything that's going wrong, everything that's not working, that we often miss some valuable information about what is working. So today, we're going to talk about a powerful strategy to help you figure out a way forward for your school to help you to stop spending all your time just putting out fires and dealing with problems and actually move your school for it's something that a lot of leaders miss. And it's really about finding the bright spots.

Now before I jump into that, just a quick update of everything that's going on at mindsets. So builder ship University is now closed for the rest of the year, we will not open up another cohort until 2023. But if you're dying to get into Build district University thing you need to do is get on the waitlist because occasionally a spot will open up inside a bill to ship University and between cohort onboarding. And during that time, if you're on the waitlist, we'll go on the waitlist and we'll reach out to the waitlist and say hey, there's a spot opened up. So if you want to get into builder ship University before 2023 If you want to get started right away on putting the systems in place in your school that you really need to build, then get on the waitlist, go to builder ship university.com and get on the waitlist and and here's why this is important.

You see the moment you start builder ship University, we start right away by helping you to start put in those builder ship systems into your school that actually can make a difference this school year. So the first thing you'll do is we're going to help you really get clear about your vision, and then facilitate a mission and core values conversation to your school now. Although those things seem like kind of, you know, those are nice to nose and I really need to get discipline straighter and really to get this other thing straight. Those are the most critical things you can do for your school. It is where you need to start. I know discipline's bothering you I know that maybe culture and, and and other climate.

Other things are bothering you right now. 

But if you don't have a vision, mission and core values in place, nothing else matters. You know, it's an office hours with builders ship University last week and office hours is for those of you not a bill to ship University office hours are this this time that we get together once a week, and I'm just personally mentoring everybody who shows up. So they're optional. You don't have to come every single week. But the people who do come, they bring a challenge something that they're working on, and they get unstuck, and then they get back to work right away. So it's probably my favorite thing to do and build us up University. Because, you know, it's where we get to really connect with each other. And because I'm invested in the people and build a ship University and they and their work, I get to see the progress. You know, a lot of times people get on office hours, not because of a problem, but because they did have a problem and they got a solution at office hours and they applied it and it worked. Some people just come because they just want to be reminded about builders and you know, they're round a lot of leaders and bosses all day long. And they just want to be reminded about what it means to be a builder anyway.

Within Office Hours and someone came in and she was just overwhelmed. And you know, she was named with all the things that she had to do and I said, Okay, let's stop. What is your vision? And we went back to her Her vision. And in her vision are all the answers she needed. She named five or six things that weren't working in her district at the time. And when we went back to her vision, we found a solution for all five, six things. And instead of feeling overwhelmed, she says me, you could just see it, we everybody was on the call saw just her body, just like how to release its tension. But she said at the end of that, oh, my goodness, I was so stressed out. And I finally feel like there's a way forward. It all starts with your vision.

So the first thing we don't build us up universities, we help you get that vision, mission and core values in place it, it's all so many things when you have that done. But the next thing we do is when we start helping you get your school in alignment, because a lot of the challenges you're filling in your school right now are really because you're out of alignment with your vision, mission and core values, you're doing work. And you're spending a lot of effort and time and energy on something that isn't going to move the needle isn't going to make a difference. And so we help you figure that out. So that you can spend your time when the things that actually will make a difference. And we do that in two ways. One is the alignment architecture. And then the second thing you're going to do is the one plan, the one plan is awesome, because the one plan helps you kind of just drown out all the noise and focus on the things that really are gonna matter. Right. So then once you do that, the next thing we do is we help you install the four key systems that you need in order to get your people on board. Right. So once you have the vision, mission and core values, once you have your one plan and your alignment architecture, your your your your your institution is ready. But now you know, you got to get the people ready.

And so then the next thing we do is we help you install four key systems. 

And this I mean, this is where you start seeing the magic, this is where the game starts really changing for your school, and you get the systems in place. And instead of running around with a chicken, like its head cut off, you are actually feeling more in control more in control of your day and in control have all of your time, you can see a difference in your school, your school operates in a different way. And you that's when you know, stuff starts clicking. And that's when people start posting these huge wins and test scores, because the systems are there to support the people to get everybody on board and moving in the same direction. And then from there, we show you how to develop a system for identifying and solving challenges really quickly, 90 days or less. And then finally, we show you a system for how do you remove yourself as the bottleneck from your school. So your school is, is running smoothly. Even when you're not there, people are doing the right thing, even when you're not there. Once you do all of that you've got these things in place the systems in place in your school, then we help you execute on those systems, we show you how to make those systems work even better and better and better. You get better your school gets better the teachers get better. And and so instead of learning something new, once you've learned the new systems, we are there to support you in executing them.

So you're not just keep you don't keep piling stuff on. In fact, you're taking more and more stuff off your plate and your school is becoming more focused, and more efficient and more effective. And then we stick with you until you get to 100%. That's our commitment. When you join bill to ship University. It's another membership program. It's not a course it is a mentorship. And what we do is we mentor you until you get in achieve your 100% vision. That's our commitment. That's that's where I love spending my time right now anyway, like I said, if you want to join bill to ship University, the best thing you can do is go to build a ship university.com and get on the waitlist, because you'll be the first to know when it opens. If something opens up in between times where we're opening up cohorts, then you can get in, I have to tell you, we're not opening. You know, this past year, we opened up several different cohorts. But we are not opening up those cohorts as frequently as we've done in the past because we want to really invest in the people who come in. So we open up a cohort. And that's the opportunity come in, everybody comes in and when we close it down, then we just focus all of our time or energy or effort on serving getting those people in that new cohort up to speed and ready to go and established and getting what they need. So that's why you know, we're closing down and we're not opening up to next year we're supporting the people in there now but if you want to slip in waitlist is the best way to do that. And again, that's builder ship university.com. All right. Didn't mean to go so long web builders university, but as you can see, I really really love that program. I just, I was telling someone the other day, it's just, I don't know it's the best. It's the best thing we've ever done and the successes that we're seeing the people who are in there I love the builders and builders ship University, these I mean they're just amazing, incredible administrators and I just I'm so lucky that I get to spend every day serving them they're just amazing. Anyway, enough gushing.

Let's talk about the bright spots.

And you know kind of gushing is a good lead into the bright spots because it is so easy to get caught up in the negativity right when we go to work every day. especially when you're an administrator, everybody comes to you and they dump their problems on you. And if you're not careful over time, that's all you see problems, stuff that's not working, right, because so much of your day is spent with people coming to you and saying, This doesn't work. And we need help with this, and this isn't working and this isn't working, that we can easily get overwhelmed with the problems that are out there. And we fail to see the bright spots. And here's why that's dangerous.

You see, your problems are distorted reality, the problems are what's not working the problems, get you focused on digging out of a hole. And when you do that, you miss the opportunities that already exist in your school. It's one of the reasons why we fall into the trap. So often, of going outside of ourselves and reaching for solution, right, we gotta find a program, or we all need to, you know, bring in this consultant, and the consultant needs to come in and fix this, you know, I used to be a consultant, and, you know, I get calls all the time this isn't working, can you come in and fix us. And I'd say we wait, slow down. And we actually didn't take every consulting gig that came my way. Because if it was just about plugging this consulting into a problem with really, without understanding how the whole system was working, then it was going to be wasted time and money. Because I'd come in for a day or two, I do my little thing. And the system was so broken that what I did wasn't going to change outcomes, right? So that's the challenge when you're focused on your problems, because you don't understand the whole bigger picture. And you end up looking for a solution that doesn't work. I mean, how many times have you had a problem and then read an article or looked online or called some sort of consultant to come in to fix the problem, and it doesn't get fixed. I mean, I was just talking to somebody last week, and she was saying, we just had this, you know, we just paid all this money and have this big name consultant come in. And and they did all this training for us. And you know, what, if there's no shade to the consultant, that wasn't the consultants fault. The problem was, they were so focused on problems. And oh, we got to find a solution to this problem, that they weren't, they were solving the wrong problems, they paid somebody a lot of money to come in and provide training throughout the entire district to provide a solution for a problem.

That wasn't the real problem, right? 

That's what happens when you just focus on your problems, you, you get so caught up in your problems that that you've reached for solutions that often don't work, because you're so like, you know, just myopic about, I want the pain to go away, I want this problem to be solved. And and that's one of the reasons why as builders, we're focused on systems, not problems, not not, you know, individual solutions to individual problems, but we're thinking about how the entire system works. And I would argue that we spend entirely too much time focused on what is wrong instead of focusing on what's right. And it's not even our fault. It's it's kind of how we were wired, right. Like, let's say, I've seen this experiment done a lot. But so the think about, like, let's say you have a kid, and your kid comes home with a report card, and they got a B and math, they got an A in English, they got a, b and PE, they got an F in social studies, and they got to be in science. What are you focused on? Well, if you're like most people, you're going to focus on that F and social studies, you're going to say, Oh, what did you do to get this app? I mean, you know, you've got somebody at the great rates, how what happened in social studies, and you laser focus in on social studies, you don't say, Hey, what did you do in your English class? I got you an A? And how can we take that same thing and use it to help you improve your grade and social studies, we never think that way. We ignore all of the other good grades, and we focus just on the F. I see this a lot in data meetings, right?

People will have these data meetings, and they go straight for the red numbers, they go straight for the numbers that aren't working. And they look at the problems that the kids got wrong on the test. And they never spent any time looking at what what kind of problems are the kids getting? Right? What what did we do teaching that concept that that we need to be doing teaching this other concept where they're not as successful, we immediately go to the negative and we miss all the positive. And the challenge with that is that that severely impairs your ability to move your school forward. Because the negative information is often representative of an outlier and may not be indicative of how your entire organization works. It's only half of the story. What about the other half of the story? What about the things that are working? Well? Well, we just kind of ignore that same thing is true for the way that we deal with teachers, right? Let's say we have a department. And in that department, we have two superstar teachers, we have five teachers that are kind of, you know, average. And then we have three teachers who are really struggling and they're complaining a lot. They're saying they're going to quit. And they're constantly pushing back on, on on what's going on in the department and how you're supporting them. Where do you spend your time? Well, if you're like most leaders, you spend your time, the majority of your time in the classrooms of the teachers who are struggling the most. Those are the classrooms you are in every single day, or every single week. Those are the write ups, you're doing it, sometimes you're doing it for the paperwork. So you get rid of the teacher, sometimes you're doing it because those teachers are struggling and those kids need you. And you know what happens to those two high flying teachers? They are the most neglected teachers in your building.

But why wouldn't we spend some time in those classrooms? 

Understanding what makes those classrooms work? Not just looking at the individual personalities of the teachers who are in those classrooms, but really sitting there and saying, These are the same kids that are in the other classrooms? Why the kids thriving here, but they're not thriving in the other classrooms? What's different about these classrooms? Why aren't we leveraging the skill set of those two teachers not to mentor you know what we do? A lot of times, we have great teachers who are saying, Hey, you go work with the struggling teachers, why aren't we instead feeding that that genius that's happening in the classrooms?

You know, I always say, my best teachers get to go to the conferences, right? Those are the teachers who have earned the right to go to additional training on things that are interesting to them. Those are the teachers who really need the stimulation of of talking to other experts, those are the teachers that I give opportunities to experiment in the classroom because they're ready for that. Why wouldn't we be nurturing our best teachers and spending time with them? Understanding what what makes them so good, so that we can replicate that and support our teachers who are struggling? What we do instead is we say that those teachers are going to be okay, I don't have a lot of time to be in classrooms. So let me get in the classrooms that, you know, really struggling before hear from parents. And that's a band aid that's not moving your school forward. It's only part of the the picture. And and without the complete picture, it's really hard to make good decisions.

Data meetings have already talked about we focus on the red numbers, and how do we get this number up? How often do we spend time in our data meetings focused on what is working? And then we wonder why our data meetings or our can be so negative, we wonder why nobody wants to look at the data? Well, I wouldn't want to look at the data either. If all we're doing is looking at bad news, right? While the good news has just as much information as the bad news, why are we spending time looking at that data to why aren't we looking at Hey, what were our kids the most successful? What are they getting? Right? Why is that happening? How do we replicate that? How do we clone our successes? And then how do we scale our success? Seems to me be a lot more motivating than looking at Oh, here's another way we failed. Then we wonder why teachers go to Data meetings and they start blaming the kids, wouldn't you?

If all we did was look at here's another week where we're going to look how we're failing? 

Wouldn't you start to say, hey, let's spread some blame around a little bit, because I'm working as hard as I can. And these numbers don't reflect it. So maybe it's not me. What if instead, we showed teachers, what is working, we help teachers understand how there are some things they're doing that are working? And and why don't we study those successes and figure out how do we replicate those successes, and scale them so that we can have more success? Wouldn't that be a better way of having a data meeting than than having a meeting and saying, here's another way that we failed this week? Here's something else we're not doing. Here's, here's another thing that that isn't working? How depressing is that? Why would why would you expect to have a positive morale? When all the conversations look negative like that, because all we do is spend time thinking about our problems?

You know, one of the things that I do I don't talk about a lot, but I've reserved some time in my schedule every year to do private coaching. And mostly it's superintendents or associate superintendents, helping them take this whole idea of builder ship and bring it to a district and and helping them think through how they are going to help all of their schools in our district be successful at that. I know I don't talk about it. There's no website. These are, you know, people who've reached out to me directly and I want to provide support for them. But here's the thing that I see over and over again, whenever I'm talking about Talking to the superintendents that I'm coaching, you know that first conversation. Again, they're they're stuck, they're telling me these are the things that are not working. These are my frustrations in the district. And then I asked them, hey, what's where the bright spots in your district? And again, they have to think about it. I do some work with school boards, and, you know, especially around strategic planning, and when we're looking at the strategic plan, they're quick to show me here's the data from the last five years here were our goals. Here's where we fell short. Here's where we did this. And, and I ask them, okay, I see all of that. But what are the bright spots in the district? What are you proud of that you've done over the last five years? And it takes a moment, we are so quick, to focus on our problems, that we miss valuable information by looking at the bright spots.

So here are a couple of questions that I'm encouraging you to consider. 

Over the next few weeks, as you're reflecting on the first half of the school year, you're thinking about what you want to do for the second half of the school year to finish strong. Here's some questions that I want you to consider. The first question I want you to consider is, what do we do well as a school in fact, what do we do as a school that is probably better than what most schools do? Now for some people it's going to be we have a really strong culture, we, we support each other we have, we have clean identity, the kids are happy here. All right, but that down, for others of you, it's going to be that you know, as a school, we are really good at serving our our ELL population, we have a great thriving el program and the kids get all kinds of support. Right write that down. We might say at this school, we're really good at SEL we love our kids. Our kids come here every day they know they are loved. They know they are nurtured. We do a good job of helping students find their way write that down. Maybe for your school, it's you know, we are really strong in the curriculum we have our teams work really well together and plan really well together. We have some great lesson plans that we produce in our teams. We know our curriculum were solid, but that down maybe it's our school is really good with struggling learners, we catch kids early, we use a combination of remediation acceleration, no kid is is lost. We're good at that. Put that down are good is great at at at sports. We we our communities come out and really support our sports, we rally around our teams, our teams are successful, but we even when they're not. We do a good job. Our athletics program is a shining point. But that doubt, we're great with career and technology we we have our teachers are really adept in technology. They're helping students find options other than college so that the students have great interest. Put that down. Our school is really good about celebrations, we have baby showers and birthday celebrations. And we do a big meal at Thanksgiving. And so we're really good at celebrating, put that down. Every school is something that they're good at that don't get cynical on me, right? Don't say, Well, my school is really good at complaining. No, no, no, no, we're really looking for genuine bright spots. And I've not seen a school yet that doesn't have one. So you'd have a look for it. What is your school good at and not just good at? But great dad? What is your school so good at that? It's probably best at that even better than other schools at that same thing. Every school hasn't? Find yours. Write it down.

Okay, second question that I want you to think about is what's the biggest success we've had in the last two years. And the reason I want you to think about two years is because I want you to have a long view of your school, right? I don't want you to just think about the success story that you just have last week, I want you to think about over the two years and weigh all of the successes you've had and find the one that's the biggest one for you for your school and might be you know what we did a really good job of pulling together during the pandemic, we have each other's backs. Write that down. For some others of you might be you know, what our biggest success was that we came through a really difficult transition.

I came in as a new principal, the other principal left the school in shambles. And we fought back from that, and we've really rebuild our program, write that down. You might say, you know, our biggest success in the last two years was what we did for this one student. This one student that you know, we didn't we didn't think of this was going to make a big difference. The student we thought was lost, but we the team rallied behind we found a way to reach the student, that student is our biggest success, whatever that big success is, and I you know, look over the last few years of all the successes you've had. Find the one that you feel the most proud of the biggest success. Write that down. And that leads me to your third question. Then, what are you most proud of for your school? Right? are you most proud of the facilities that you've got really clean hallways write that down? are you most proud of the way that your teachers come together in crisis? Write that down? are you most proud of the way that you've really kind of cleaned up the curriculum?

And now you have a lot of focus. 

And everybody does, you know, there's a standard way that you all deliver instruction, write that down, what are you most proud of? And here's the thing, it can't be a value, right? So you can't say I'm most proud of the fact that I came into school and it was a mess. And I got rid of all the bad people. And now they're and I hired some great people. That's not the school success this year a success. I want you to think about what are you most proud of that your school has done? That's what I want you to think about them proud moment, what's a source of pride for your staff, right. Some staffs feel like, you know, their pride is that they are they're good under pressure. Other staff say our pride is we love kids will it when a kid comes here, we will love them up, and they will, they will walk out of here taller, you're your staff, you know, so think about not just what a you personally most proud of, but as a staff, what's a source of pride for you, every school has something that they're proud of find it, write it down?

And then last, I want you to think about what is currently working in your school. Right? Maybe if 25 different initiatives, and a lot of them are working. But is there something that is working? Is there something that teachers have picked up and all of them are pretty much doing, you may have to go visit some classrooms and and and really figure that out. But I would love for you to do a walk through over the next week or two. Just go into classrooms, don't take any paper, don't write anything down. Just go into classrooms and just be present for five to seven minutes. And instead of looking for what isn't working, I want you to look for what trends do you see what is working? Is discipline under control? Do the teachers bring a lot of energy to their lessons are all the teachers where they need to be in the curriculum? What is something that you see in your school that's really working.

Now, in some cases, it may not be in the classroom, like maybe you can't find anything that consistently works across classrooms. But you know what your guidance department is on top of things or your parent outreach is the bomb or your main office secretaries and the way that they greet people when they come into the main office. So welcoming, or, you know, all of your students are are enthusiastic and coming to school every day, eager to learn, look for the bright spots. So walk through classrooms, see if you see it in the classrooms, if not walk the halls, spend some time at the lunch room go out on the playground at recess, if you have recess, you know, watch the drop offs and pickups, you might find that you know what one thing that really works, our parents, our parents are committed to the school. One thing that really works is our community our community continually gives to the school, find those bright spots, and write them down. When you're done. When you take a look. And I want you to see what do you learn from the bright spots? You know, if if you're finding that you've got some bright spots around instruction, why are those things working? What was it about those things that made those things stick that made maybe you could replicate and some of the things that aren't sticking? If your bright spot is around kids? What is it about the kids that makes them the way they are? What, what what's happening in the school that is promoting that behavior and kids? Think about it and figure out how do you take that thing and make it work on some area that isn't working so much for kids. You see the bright spots when you spend time intentionally looking at the bright spots, you find gold, you find gold, I was working with a principal a couple of weeks ago. And they were talking about what was happening in their school it was negative, negative, negative and I'm not you know, I don't believe in toxic positivity.

So I wasn't like just let's just look on the bright spot. 

You know that I wasn't thinking about that like that. But I did ask the question. Is there anything in your school that is working? And he thought for a second, I mean, took a while and he said Well, one thing that we're really good That is, in the teams. In the team meetings, we really do. The meetings really are kind of focused on kids. But sometimes it turns negative, right. But we're not doing like, you know, administrative stuff during team meetings, we're really focused on on kids and my team wants to find solutions. And, and when it gets negative, it's usually because because, you know, the people have exhausted all their current, you know, outcomes. And so then they're just, they're just tired, and they're just bitter. And, you know, so but for the most part, people really do seem to care about wanting to support kids. And so I said, Okay, let's, let's talk about that. What can we learn from that? You know, right? And how if they really want to support kids, and they care about it, and kids are still failing? What's getting in the way of that desire translating into the work? You know, we realize, well, it's because we've got too many things going on. We're trying everything. I said, Okay, let's look at the thing, of all the things you're trying what thing is working the most. And the thing that was working the most for instruction, was really around just focusing on a simplified planning process that the people who were just going in, and they had, you know, in every day in class, they had a learning outcome. They did some work to help suit, you know, they did some, you know, some instruction, and then they gave kids time to practice in class before they send kids home for homework. When they did that there was a clear learning outcome, there was work and instruction around that, and then giving kids time to practice before they went home. That thing was working better than anything in the classes where they did that the kids were doing better. And the classrooms were they weren't doing that, or they were trying all the things and, you know, it just wasn't working as well. So I said, Okay, if that's what's working the best, and people sincerely want to get good. And that's the thing that is making folks good right now, just do that. Principle it to me, Well, we got this pick up. stuff isn't working, what is working. And let's focus on that. And the reason that that thing that maybe the other stuff isn't working is just too much. Let's take our energy, and let's concentrate it on the thing that is working, let's try to clone the successes, and make them work and make them better and extend scale that success so that more teachers can be successful. So that's what we did.

And that difference was almost immediate, because we already knew it worked with these kids. And so when we went to teachers and said, You know what, take all this off, you really want to serve kids, this is the thing we know is working the best right now in this school. And we did that. And the difference was almost right away. And the momentum that it created around, you know, teachers finally feeling successful, transformed to those those team meetings helped, you know, crease, increase motivation. And then it made people willing to try some of the other stuff that we back burnered Because now they had some success. And they were more intentional about the things that that were that we were asking them about other things that they needed to try because they were building on success rather than desperately grabbing on to anything that they hope will work in a demoralized state.

That's a difference. 

When you focus on the bright spots, you build on your successes rather than wallowing in your failures. So I want to challenge you this week to try it. Take a break from focusing on what's not working and spend some time focusing on what does work. Not in some sort of toxic positivity, Pollyanna, I'm just gonna lalalalala ignore all the things that are, you know, not working while the building burns down around me. But you're being very, you're being very, very intentional and strategic about looking at what does work so that you can learn from it so that you can build upon it so that you can take the successes and clone them. And then scale them about what you do. You're going to learn some things about your school that even ignoring your you're going to see some things about your school and the potential that it has for success that you didn't even know were there. And instead of going outside of you in adding something new to something that already isn't working, you're going to take what is working in your building and you're just going to you're going to lot, you're going to make it better, you're going to take it and expand it out, you're not adding anything to your plate, you're just focusing on the parts of your plate that are working. And using that leveraging those successes, to create even more success in your building.

Hey, if you're ready to get started being a builder right away, then I want to invite you to join us at builder ship University. It's our exclusive online community for builders just like you where you'll be able to get the exact training that you need to turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Inside. You'll find our best online courses, live trainings with me tons of resources, templates and exemplars and monthly live office hours with me where you can ask me anything and get my help on whatever challenge you're facing right now. If you're tired of hitting obstacle after obstacle and you're sick of tiny little incremental gains each year, if you're ready to make a dramatic difference in your school right now, then you need to Join builders ship University. Just go to build a ship university.com and get started writing your school success story today

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