EPISODE #252

You're listening to School Leadership Reimagined, episode number 252

Hey builders before we jump into today's show, I need to know something, are you and I connected on the socials? Because if we're not we need to be so connect with me. I'm on Facebook at Robyn Jackson, I am on Twitter at Robyn underscore mine steps. I'm on LinkedIn at Robyn Jackson. Let's connect and let's keep the conversation going. Now, onto the show. You're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 252. How do builders like us make a dramatic difference in the lives of our students? In spite of all the obstacles we face? How do you keep your vision for your school from being held hostage by resistant teachers, uncooperative parents, ridiculous district policies or lack of time, money or resources. If you're facing those challenges, right now, here's where you'll find the answers strategies, and actionable tips you need to overcome any obstacle you face. You don't have to wait to make a difference in the lives of the people you serve. You can turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Let's get started.

Hey, builders, welcome to another episode of the school leadership reimagined podcast

I'm your host, Robyn Jackson. And I have a question for you. Have you ever gone to a conference and gotten all this material and been to the sessions and, and gotten really excited about what you've learned, and then you bring everything back fully intending to use it, but then stuff gets busy, you might even start using it. But then you know, over time, other stuff takes over. And you find that file a month or three months or a year later. And you're like, Oh, I meant to do this, and I never did. But by that time, it's just like it's too late. And it just I'll do it someday. And it just sits in a folder and file until you retire. And then you throw everything out. Or maybe you've read a book and been so excited about what the book is, is it's awakening for you. And you're like, yeah, I gotta do this. And you mean to do it, but you just don't have the time to do it or you don't feel equipped to do it, you or you start doing it. And then you quickly learn that it's more complicated or harder than you thought and you give up and you let out?

Well, if that's you, then today's episode is really going to help you because I used to be just like that. I read a lot, I would go to conferences, especially early in my career, I would go to all these things, I had all these challenges that I was trying to solve in my school in my classroom. And then when I became an administrator in the school, and I was looking for solutions, and I'd meet people who are doing great things in their schools, I go to conferences, or I read a book or, or listen to something, and I will get so excited about and I was like this, I think could work. But then I never did it. And then after I did this a couple of times, I started to beat myself up, I started thinking well, maybe I'm just not serious enough. Or maybe I need to get myself more organized. Or maybe, you know, I I'm just not an implementer. And there are people who implement, then there are people who talk about it, and I talk about it, but I rarely, you know, do the work to be about it. And so I started to think it was a personal flaw. And then I realized, maybe it's not a personal flood just the same way that that we teach kids how to study in the same way that we help kids learn. Maybe it's not a flaw, maybe it's just a skill that I made. And I came to that realization because I was talking to a teacher, you know, teachers saying these kids don't know how to study. And I'm like, you have to teach them how to study if they don't know how to do something, you show them how to do it. It's a skill like everything else we treat, you know, knowing how to study as if it's some sort of character trait. And if kids don't study then it's a character flaw when in reality, it's just that they don't know how. And I'm not talking about how to take notes, some kids, that's the issue, but for other kids, the issue is really about the how do I get myself in a space? How do I how do I see value in studying how do I how do I sit down and resist the law and the call of something else in order to sit down and study and I realized I had the same problem. That wasn't that I was disorganized or wasn't serious or that I really didn't want to solve the problem. But I hadn't figured out how to make it work for me.

And once I understood that then I said Okay, so what's the skill? What will it take? I started looking at people who are really good implementers I started trying to study Okay, what do they do? I started looking at myself and trying to figure out okay, what do what when I do implement, what do I do? What's the difference? And I realized that that taking something you know, having a problem, a reading a whole bunch of stuff and finding solutions and then implementing it is a skill. And so today I want to break down that skill. Are you so if you are the same way, if you go to stuff all the time, if you're consuming a lot of information, but you don't ever do anything with it, it's not you. It's not because you are disorganized, you're not serious or you're too busy. It's none of those things, it's because I believe it just no one's ever shown you how. So today, we're going to learn how to do that. So let's get started.

And the first thing that you have to do is, we can't just blindly randomly consume information, I mean, you can, but you won't implement it. 

Because you're just kind of, you know, gobbling up this information, and you're not doing anything with it. So the first thing you have to do in order to really get to the point where you're going to implement something, is you have to first come to the information clear about what problem you're trying to solve. Now, I've done a whole episode about that question, you know, really getting down to what problem are you trying to sell, but it is critical, you know, if I just go to a conference, and just say, I'm just gonna pick up some things and learn some things, I'll get a lot of stuff. And it's all random. When I go into a conference, or when I dive into a book, when I, when I am looking to solve a specific problem, and I have that problem in mind when I go, I start to see solutions everywhere. It's a it's a subtle trick, but it's really important. So we've got a lot of compliment, you know, we're entering conference season right now, for educators. And a lot of people just go to a conference to say, you know, just want to learn a few things. I just see what's out there and pick some things up. And you you know, it's like going down on the exhibit floor, you just you come away with a bag full of junk that, you know, seemed cute at the time. But then you get back into like, Why did I get this paperclip? Again, I don't know what to do with that.

So if you go into the situation without clarity around what problem you're trying to solve right now, then you miss solutions that are out there, because they're not obvious to you, because you're not thinking about the problem. So the way that I do it, is before I go before I look at anything before I go to a conference, before I go to a webinar, I asked myself this one question. If what is the problem that if I solve it makes all my other problems, either insignificant or irrelevant? That's a tough question. I remember the first time somebody asked me that question, I didn't know the answer. And it took me a long time to figure it out. But it is key to you know, something that those of you and B, you know, we do all the time, which is micro slicing, but we get to if we can get to the real, the root cause the one thing, and if you can understand what that is, and then you work ruthlessly, to solve that problem, then all of a sudden, the solutions become a lot more obvious. I think that for most people, you know, who are feeling confused, okay, if you're feeling I don't know what to do, I don't know where to start. And then we just, we don't ever take time to figure that part out, we just start grabbing solutions to make us feel better. Because we're overwhelmed by our problems, those solutions are not going to make you feel better, they're going to make you feel more overwhelmed. And so if you're feeling like you just have a lot of information out there, you're not doing anything with it.

If you feel like you don't know where to start, and you're hoping that going to a conference or listening to a podcast or reading a whole bunch of books is going to help you then you are wrong, you have to start and deal with the issue of what problem you're trying to solve first. If you do that you are 80% of the way there. And to me, that's the key to implementation. How do I know how can I implement when I don't even know what problem I'm trying to solve? So I'll ask the question again, what is the problem that if you were to solve it in your school will make all of the problems either insignificant or completely irrelevant. And that's what you know, those of you and be you, we're going to be doing quarterly planning this week. That's the big thing we're going to be talking about. That's the big thing we're going to be looking for is trying to figure that out. Because if you figure that out, the solutions become a lot more obvious. They're right there. We are not suffering from a lack of solutions. We are suffering from a lack of understanding about our problems.

Any problem you have right now has a solution. 

So it's not that, you know, you don't know what solution to do or you're going to get the wrong solution. Every single problem you have right now, there is a solution to it. But the problem is we can't recognize a solution if we don't truly understand the problem. If you don't know what problem you're trying to solve, then any solution seems good. And so we waste a lot of time doing stuff that isn't going to really settle things. And you know, as builders, we're not looking to address a problem. We're looking to eliminate a problem. So that's the question you want to ask. Let me give you like a real example. A few years ago I was I was trying to solve the problem of of of helping every kid be successful. In my classroom, and the thing that I was the when I, you know, that's kind of the big goal. That's that wasn't the problem. But my goal was I wanted, I didn't want any failures. And so I had to figure out, why are my kids failing? Why are they failing in my classroom. And when I dug into it, I realized that they're getting overwhelmed by the work that if I could break the work down into smaller chunks, and give them success in smaller chunks, they would stick with it until they succeeded. So that's what I did.

I'll give you another example. When I became an administrator, one of the big problems that we had in our school was, you know, it's a pretty high performing school. But we had an issue with that there were there was a percentage of kids who were not being successful. And it got worse, I was in middle school, so they would come in in sixth grade. And then we'll be back fine academically, but something would happen between seventh grade and eighth grade, that by the time they got to eighth grade, they won the verge of dropping out. And if so, I had to figure out what was this group of kids and then I realized that it was mostly happening with African American boys. And so I was trying to figure out how do we get these students to, to stay engaged, what was happening, they would come in, in sixth grade, they'd be fine. But by the time they get to eighth grade, something was happening there. And so I tried to figure it out. And I couldn't figure it out for a long time. And then, one day, I was in my office, and we had a young man who had been transferred to our school. He was in our, in our one of our self contained special education programs. And he was having a really tough day, we had to call his mom. And when his mom showed up, his mom and his sister arrived.

This is a child who, for months had just been given us, you know, he just been having such a hard time, we have been trying everything we could to help him. He was a runner, he often got violent, you know, there was he just was not thriving in our school. And we were trying to figure this out, and we had met, and we couldn't figure it out. And we were trying everything that we need to do, and it wasn't working. But we were sitting in that meeting. And he test he went off and he started yelling and screaming, and his sister grabbed him and threw him up against the wall. And then I'm like, Okay, this is not going well. So we got her to let him go. And then I took her into another room to calm her down, while they were still working with the young man and his mom. And while we were talking, the sister just started crying. She was just like, I'm so sick of this, you know, because she was dealing with the same thing at home. And she's seeing her mom was struggling. And then she said something that just lit a light bulb for me. She said, The problem is there's no man at home, and we can't teach them how to be a man. And because I have been looking at so we gotta we gotta get him straight. You know, we've tried all these other things, because I was understanding the problem we need to solve, which is how do we help him stay engaged in school? How do we help him invest? How do we help him to to not just address this behavior, but help them thrive in school? Once you set that ding, ding, ding, ding, because I've been looking to solve that problem. The solution was right there. It was a throwaway line for her. She was just expressing her frustration. But I heard that. And so the next thing I did is I said, Let's start a mentorship program. Because if it's happening for him, maybe it's happening for a lot of the other African American males in our school who were not thriving. So I reached out, we found a mentor. He was amazed. It was like six, six, he was a former professional basketball player. And he said, Yeah, I'll work with them. And he came in.

The first aid came into this huge duffel bag, and it was full of like Gatorade and snacks. 

And he sat down with the young men, and he started talking to him. And then he started saying, then he talked to them for a little bit, then he takes him to the gym, play basketball. They loved him, they call them coach, all of a sudden, you know, he's sitting down, he's talking to them about what does it mean to be a man, he's sitting down and going over their grades with him every single time? He's, you know, all we have to do afterwards was to just you know, he will come in the kids will come by my office coach come in today. And I was like, yeah, he's come in, and it listen, it changed everything. And these young men began to thrive in our school. And that helped us get closer to our goal of every child 100% of our students thriving. But if I hadn't understood the problem that I was trying to solve, that it wasn't an academic problem, that it wasn't to, to my biggest problem wasn't even the student special education needs. The biggest problem that we had to solve was that these students needed somebody in the building, who looked like them, who they could relate to, who they cared about who they admired. And that person could help them see value in school. And that person can help them to teach them the things that they needed to know about how you know, that critical development period period they were going through, and they didn't have access to that in most cases. And so once They had that, that solved the problem.

And so if you start out by thinking about what problem are you trying to solve? And then you go and and you just you, it makes your eyes open so that you can find the solutions everywhere. Every time I've done that. I've seen solutions in places that I wouldn't have seen it otherwise, because I was the mike subconscious brain was looking for those solutions. Okay, so step one, the most important step before you go to a conference before you read a book, know why you're reading it, know why you're going, what problem are you trying to solve, put that in the back of your head, because that makes you open to and aware of solutions. Okay, step number two, after you understand what problem you're trying to solve, then you want to make sure that you pick resources that are designed to solve that problem, right? So you're not just going to read everything, when you go to a conference, you're not just going to like wander into stuff, be open, be curious, but also be strategic. So if you go to a conference, you need to gameplan What's your going to do at the conference? What sessions do you think are designed to solve the problem you're trying to solve? If you you know, I read widely, so I don't just read education books, I find a lot of Education Solutions outside of the education field. So once I understand the essence of the problem that I want to solve, it leads me to different books that that may, that I may not have considered before, because that book has a nugget or this session as a nugget or that podcast as a nugget that helps me solve a problem.

So the second step is then you can be strategic, I know a problem I'm trying to solve, what things what are what are some of the things that are designed to solve that problem, so that I'm consuming things that actually helped me, and I'm open to those solutions. So you're going to be very strategic about it. The third thing is that you've been once you start reading, or once you go, you start listening or attending a conference, or workshop or webinar, or whatever it is. The third step is now you need to be selfish. Everything you hear, you need to immediately say, How can I use that. And you need to tune out everything else. So I always say my workshops, treat what I'm about to say, like you're eating fish, eat the meat, spit out the bones, not everything's going to be relevant to you. And so what you do is when you're sitting in a session, and someone says, This is what I did, you immediately start thinking about if I that did that in my school, what would that look like? How would I do that? What would the results be? And you're selfish, I get to the point now where I write notes, and instead of saying this person said this, I take the notes in my head and translate it to action steps. So sometimes if somebody says something really brilliant, you know, I might write it down the quote, because, you know, I liked the quote, but then immediately afterwards, I'm starting to think about okay, so what would that mean for me?

Hey, Robyn here, and I just want to break in real quick to ask you a huge favor. You see, I want to get the word out to everybody about builder ship, and I could use your help. If you're really enjoying this episode, would you mind just going to your podcast platform and leaving a quick review? You see the reviews, get the word out? They tell other people this is a great show other people who have never heard of school leadership reimagined before can hear about it, and you'd be sharing the word about builder chips. So would you mind just leaving a quick review? It would mean the world to me. Okay, now back to the show.

What would that look like for me? How would I use that? 

And so I always tell people, you know, we, when we do builder's lab, I always tell people be selfish. It's one of our agreements that we have at the top of the sessions is that you have to be selfish, everything you hear, I want you to immediately apply it to you. And if it doesn't apply it to your situation, you did stop me and ask, when we do our free trainings, I tell people the same thing. In fact, we design our training so that you take the information and then immediately plug in your stuff. That's the way we design it, because that's what will make you implement it. That's what will show you whether or not it's going to work before you waste time trying to do it. Here's what most people do. They go to a conference, they hear somebody else's program or somebody else's strategy. They write down the tactics, and then they try to go do it in their school without ever considering thinking it through and saying, Will this fit? Will this solve my problem? What would that look like? So what I do, even when I'm taking notes, is instead of writing everything down, I take the point. And then I say, what would that mean for me? And then I write it down that way so that I'm constantly thinking about what this work, how would this look? How would I do it? Because when you do that you're more likely to implement it.

Okay, so the next thing is that after you've collected the information, whether you're reading a book, whether you're attending a conference session, whether you go to a webinar or workshop, as soon as you're done with the information, what we do is we close the notebook and then go on to the next thing and what you should We'll be doing is taking time to go through your notes and pick one thing that you want to implement immediately. The first time I learned this was I took a team member of mine, we went to a conference. And it wasn't an education conference, it was another kind of conference and some business conference. And in the past, we go to these business conferences, we learn a lot, we get all excited about it. But then when we get back to work, it felt overwhelming, because we have pages of notes and handouts. And then we tried to weed through all of that stuff. While we're also trying to catch up on everything that we missed when we were gone. One of the things we started doing was we started building in an extra day into the country.

Now not everybody can afford to do that. And you know, you sometimes you have to get back. But when you can build an extra day or take a later flight. So instead of flying out the first flight, as soon as it's done, if you can still get home, take a later flight or on the flight do this work. And what we did is we sat down together as a team. And we went through all of our notes, we went through everything that we done, we talked about what we what we learned at the conference, we talked about the problem that we're trying to solve. And then we picked one thing, just one thing that we thought would make the biggest dent in the problem that we're trying to solve. And we committed to doing that as soon as we got back and became an action item. So rather than going home with 25, different things to do, we had gone through everything and said, This is the one thing that we need to do first didn't mean we weren't gonna do the other stuff. But we didn't put the pressure on ourselves to make ourselves feel like because we went to this conference and got all this information, we had to do everything right away. We talked it through, we talked it through in the context of what we were trying to do our goals. And then we said, this is the one thing we're going to do. Which is why I think it's really important that you bring your team to conferences, you know, when we do our free events, we encourage people to come as a team. And we find that when people do come together as a team, they implement more, they're more likely to implement because everybody's hearing the same information, they have time to talk about it. You know, one of the things that we the upgrades to build a ship University, we have now said everybody who invest in build ship University, we don't just support you, we also provide training for your team. And you and your team gets to come to some things and then work together back to our hosting a our first admin team retreat inside of BU, and that's coming up in the next month or so. So those of you in BU look out for that, because you're going to everybody, and BU is going to be able to bring your team and we're going to have a half day retreat, where we're going to work through some things together as a team and help you start to think about what's the most improbable, most important problem you need to solve in your school right now.

Because there's something about talking it through. 

Now, if you can't bring your team, then what I suggest you do is you can either meet with another colleague, somebody else who's at the conference, and talk it through with them. Or if you're there by yourself, or there's no other colleague there, then you need to have a convert, you need to schedule a meeting with yourself. So sometimes I'm in conferences by myself, or I read a book that nobody else on my team has read. But after I finish, I sit down, I go through all of my notes that I took. And I say okay, based on what I'm trying to solve right now, what is the one thing that I'm going to implement from this book? What is the one thing I'm going to do? Now with conferences, you know, going back and then immediately kind of starting and implementing makes a lot of sense. And same thing with books, but a lot of times with a book or with an article or or with an online training or even a podcast episode. Sometimes after I do that, I might go back and reread parts of it. I might go back and re listen to that podcast episode. And then because there's nuances, right, so I just did this the other day, there's something there's, it's there's, there's, there's something I've been familiar with for years some of the strategy a process that somebody has been teaching for years.

And I thought I understood it pretty thoroughly. I studied it really well the first time. But then I haven't looked at it in a while. And I went back and listened to a podcast episode again. And I got nuance that I missed the first couple of times that I listened to it. Because I'm now a different person. I'm coming back to that information as a different person knowing some different things now having different perspective now. So I actually got more out of listening to an old podcast episode that I would have gotten from trying to get something new. And that's really important to a lot of times we're off you know, we listen to one thing, we're off to the next thing. You know, I read all the time, but I am not widely read and I you know, as a former English teacher, I had to admit this to myself. I know people were like, Oh, I read 72 books a year. We I couldn't imagine reading 72 books a year because that's too much information and I think a lot of us are consuming too much information. And people always like, what's the next book to read? What's a good book for this? And what's What are y'all reading right now, you know, one of the reasons we do a summer reading list and we do three to five books, those three to five books should last year, the whole year, right. Because if you are reading them and taking time to think about them, and going back and rereading them, you really can get the information and apply it. That's why we're so kind of careful about the books we put on that summer reading list, I don't put books on that list, that can't be reread, there's some books I've read, and I can read them in a day, or I can read them in a weekend. And then I'm just like, I mean, you know, whatever. But then there's some books where I read have to stop have to think about, um, you know, the bookstore after like, this is I got to put this away for a little bit, or I read it through, and then I'm like, You know what, I need to read that again. And so I am not widely read, but I'm deeply read. And I would encourage you to do the same thing.

Don't try to implement everything, right, you can't, but pick one thing to implement. And then all the other stuff, this is the secret, take all that other stuff and put it in the hopper, the hopper is my secret weapon. I used to try to hold all that information, or I'd have all these notes. And then I'd feel guilty by doing one thing. And everything else in my notebook is just kind of sitting there mocking me because I haven't done it. So what I've learned to do is to take the pieces that I think are really important, but not right for me right now. They're not the one thing, and I put those pieces in the hopper. It's a document that I keep. And as I'm implementing those things, I cross it out in the hopper are deleted from the hopper, but the hopper has, it's like a bank of, of ideas that I think are really great, but they're not the right time for me. And that takes the pressure off. So all of that other stuff that I learned at the conference, all those other notes that I wrote down from the book that I think are really great, and I don't want to lose them. I put them in the hopper, so they're not in my face every single day. So that way I can focus on the one thing, but the stuff that's in the hopper, when it's time, you know, once I've done the one thing, then I can go back to the hopper and say, Okay, what else, so I don't always have to get new stuff, I can go to this, I can go back to the stuff that I know I need to implement, and then do that stuff, right? Even when I'm ready. So for instance, right now, I've just started writing another book, which might end up being two books. I don't know, y'all, it's early in the process. But if you want to follow along in the process, I am keeping myself accountable by posting updates pretty much daily on Facebook. So if you're not following me on Facebook, or we're not friends on Facebook, let's go ahead and connect on Facebook, I'm just robbing Jackson on Facebook, you'll find me there.

But anyway, every single day, you know, kind of documenting my writing journey. 

And one of the things that happens when you write is that you might get on a tear and write a whole bunch of stuff. But in order to keep the book focus, a lot of the stuff you wrote isn't useful. It isn't right for that book. But it's still good. And you don't want to delete and that's why people get stuck, right? They're like, Oh, if I delete this, when I wrote it, it's so good. But it's not right for your book. And if you're going to write a good book you have to ruthlessly edit so that nothing is in that book that shouldn't be there. And I used to really struggle with that, because I knew it shouldn't be there. But it was so good. I don't want to lose it. So what I started doing was I created a section in my document called purgatory. And those are things that I feel are good, but they're not right there. They maybe write someplace else. Or maybe that becomes a podcast episode. Or maybe it becomes a blog post. Or maybe it's a quote that I put out on social media, but it's not right for the book. Or maybe it's right for the book, but not there. And later on in the book, I'll say, Oh, wait, I wrote something about this already. And I can go back and grab it. And that's the same thing. As a hopper, you you give yourself a place to put the ideas that may be great ideas, but not right for right now for this context, it takes the pressure off. So you don't feel like you're wasting that idea. You don't feel like you're disorganized or not serious because you didn't implement that idea at the time.

And so if you don't have a hopper, if you don't have a place like I have a huge Google Doc, where I just have tons of ideas. And then over time, what happens to as I go through that document, and I see an idea that I thought was good at the time. But then I realized after I've learned more or done more that either that's no longer relevant because I've solved the problem. So that idea is no longer useful to me. Or I realized that what I thought was a good idea really wasn't a good idea. And had I pursued it, it probably would have taken me in the wrong direction. In either case, I can just take it off. I just I can get rid of it because it's no longer useful to me. So my hopper is a goldmine of ideas, which then helps me when I get stuck, right? So if I'm stuck on something, I can go to my Hopper when when when I need content for something else, I can go to my Hopper if somebody else is struggling with an idea with with something and it's not the Like I'm struggling with right now I've gotten my hopper and I'm like, oh, wait a minute, I saw something about that. And I can help that other person. Having that hopper is really, really important. Okay. And then the last thing that I do is the hopper is often a storehouse, but it can just get bloated, unless you are reviewing it quarterly. So one of the things that I try to do is monthly or quarterly, I go back, and I just sit and I read through all those ideas that I've been collecting. And because I have them in one place, I'm not digging through files, and you know, I just have one place where I've collected things.

Now, if I really get good, I've organized those things into different categories. So I might have in my Hopper, these are things that are relevant to this, these are things that are relevant to that. These are things I don't know where they go, but I just think I like them, I think they're important. And then I just go through the hopper. And I'm just looking to see if there, you know, if there's any new insight, so again, rather than going out and saying, oh, you know, look, what's the new book I need to read? Or what's the new thing I need to listen to? I just go back through things, right. So in my Hopper, our notes, ideas, links to articles, links to podcast episodes, links to YouTube videos. If I have I've gotten to the point now I've gotten really sophisticated, well, I can like scan notes and stick them in the hopper, and I can annotate notes and then stick them in the hopper electronically. So I just go through everything, and just kind of read through refresh. Some things are irrelevant, I get rid, like, Why did I put that here, and then get rid of it. Some things, I'm like, holy, no, this is good. This is good, because I'm at the point now where I can use that idea. But that's what helps me implement. You see, I think that a lot of educators, we because we're learners, we consume a lot of stuff. But we don't implement a lot, or we try to implement everything. And then we're overwhelmed and we got a mess on our hands.

What we should do is we should see ourselves less as consumers, and more as curators.

we should, we should, instead of trying to consume a whole bunch of information, we should be curating an arsenal of solutions to the challenges that we face. And when we do that, when we curate things rather than just accumulate things and then consume things, then it makes us dangerous, because we can see a problem. And remember, every problem has a solution. But when we see a problem, and we understand what the problem is, we then can come up with a solution that actually solves the problem. Because we've been thinking that way. Because we have been we've been we've been taking information, and not just storing it, but processing it and and understanding it so that we can begin to implement it. What will happen is, you will feel so wise when you do this, there are times when people come to me with problems and only Well, I don't know, but then the solution comes to me because I've been curating solutions. Because over the years, as I'm looking at information, I'm not just consuming it, I'm processing it. And I don't even realize that I know some of the stuff I know. And it comes out and then people think, Oh, you're so smart. No, I just, I just have over the years, been curating a lot of information and solutions. And that's what creates wisdom. And so, as you do this, you begin to feel so much less overwhelmed. Because instead of just you know, having all this information and then feeling guilty, because you're not using it. Even the way that you process and store the information is creating wisdom and you it's creating a sense of surety in you, when you when you when you answer questions, you you can be sure of it and you don't know why you're sure of it. But because you've processed the information you just didn't store it.

And so as we get into conference season, and you know, as we start thinking about, you know, a lot of us are starting to think about, you know, ending the school year and what we do differently and what does next year look like? I want to encourage you to be a curator and stop being a consumer. I want to encourage you to not just store information but process it and implement it. I want to encourage you to start building your wisdom, not just your knowledge, so that when when you encounter information, you can actually use it to solve problems. So that when you encounter with information, you don't feel overwhelmed by it. You you feel inspired by it because you've you've consumed it and you've you've processed In the right way, I want you to start developing the wisdom that you need in order to be able to serve 100% of your students. Because you have you have you've, you've stayed learning, you know, we always talk about lifelong learning. But most people are not life long learners, they are lifelong consumers. They just gobble up a lot of information, but they don't really learn from it. I want you to be a true lifelong learner, because that's what it's going to take to solve the challenges that we face in order to help every child be successful. So as you go into conference season, as you begin to look at, you know, start reading books as, as you'd have conversations with people as you listen to podcasts, including this one, as you go to workshops and different training that you're going through over this next season. I want you to not just encounter information or consume information, I want you to implement it, like a builder. Talk to you next time.

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 bill to ship University. Just go to build a ship university.com and get started writing your school success story today. Hey, real quick before you go. If you enjoyed today's episode, and you know someone who would really benefit from what you heard here today, maybe they're struggling with a thing that we talked about in today's episode. Would you take a moment and share this episode with them? You see, not only will it help us get the word about builder ship out to more people, but you're gonna look like a rockstar because you're gonna give people something they can really use to help them get unstuck and be better at building their schools. Plus, it would mean the world to me. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.