EPISODE #288

Asking the Right Questions Part 2

You're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 288. 

Hey, builders, before we begin, I have a quick question for you. Are we connected on social media? The reason I'm asking is because as much as I love giving you the podcast episode every single week, I'd love to take our relationship deeper. So if we're not connected on social media, let's connect.

I'm on LinkedIn at Robyn underscore MindSteps. I'm on Twitter at Robyn underscore MindSteps. I'm on Facebook at Robyn Jackson.

Please, let's connect so we can keep the conversation going. Now, on with the show. You're listening to the School Leadership Reimagined podcast, episode 288.

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 a 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 today we are continuing our series on some critical questions that all administrators need to be asking themselves right now that can help you unearth new, innovative ways of approaching your work and also help you to stop doing some things that you've been doing for a long time without even thinking about it that are really taking up a lot of your time and keeping you from focusing on the things that really matter. So today we're going to contemplate another question, but before I share the question, let me give you some background. So, you know, I am getting older and I have been trying to do a better job of how I eat. And so, you know, I've been trying to be more mindful and intentional about what I eat and, you know, that sort of thing.

And so I'm finding it really challenging because, you know, it's hard to decipher what I should be doing right now. I mean, back in the day, eggs were bad and all of a sudden they were good again. Only now I hear they're bad again. You know, on one hand, they're high cholesterol, but on the other hand, they're great little protein bombs. But on the other hand, they really don't have as much protein. So it's really hard to figure out what to eat when. Now, what does this have to do with you and your school? The same thing is true for a lot of stuff that we're doing in school. There were some rules about how school needed to be done, and some of those rules have changed. They no longer apply.

And yet we're still doing things the same way that they've always been done without questioning those rules. So today's question is this, what rules are you following that no longer apply? Now, this question can be really liberating if you take it seriously, because I would argue there's a large percentage of the stuff we do in schools that we do just because it's always been done that way, regardless of whether or not it's providing any kind of benefit to our kids. So I bet right now, if you looked around your school, there are tons of things that you are doing. You don't even know why you're doing. I heard someone tell the story recently about how his wife, there's a man and his wife was making a big roast, like a big pot roast for him. And she cut off the end of the pot roast and either threw it away or put it aside. And he said, why are you cutting off the end of the pot roast? And she goes, that's because that's what my mother always did. He said, but it doesn't make sense. She goes, I don't know, but my mother always did it and her pot roast always tasted great.

So I need to do it too. 

So he said, well, let's get your mother on the phone. They called her mother. They asked her mother, hey, hey, why do you cut the end of the pot roast off every time you make a pot roast? And she goes, you know, I don't know. It's what my, my mother always did. And so that year during the holidays, during Thanksgiving, they got together as a family and the grandma was there. And so they said, hey, grandma, by the way, why do you cut off the end of your pot roast? She said, well, I started doing it because my pan was too small. So for years, the mother and the daughter thought that there was something special and magical about cutting off the end of the pot roast, when in reality, the reason for doing it had been lost. It was no longer necessary to do it anymore, but they kept doing it because it's what they'd always been done. Now, that's a silly example, but I hope it illustrates for you the importance of questioning the rules that you consider sacrosanct to find out if they really are that way anymore. Okay. Let's talk about it.

So let's say that you go in and do a classroom observation and there are a lot of things that are not working. There is an unwritten rule that says, hey, if you have a lot going on, the first thing you have to do is you have to get classroom management under control because if you don't get that under control, the kids can't learn. Is that really true? Are there instances where if you get a more interesting and organized lesson, more kids would learn and you wouldn't have as many classroom management issues? Of course there is, but we just go in and we just say, oh, well, first thing we're going to work on is classroom management because that's what's always been done when that may not be what that particular teacher needs. It's a rule. It's an unwritten rule, but we all follow it. Another unwritten rule is that when a student comes to the office for a referral, we have to do investigations and the student has to wait until there's investigation is completed before they return to class.

Is that really true? Is it always true? We have other rules. We have rules that say new teachers need mentors. Do they? And we say, oh, if a teacher is struggling, then they need to see a model lesson. Do they? Sometimes looking at the model lesson makes it worse. It's confusing. It's overwhelming to a teacher. Maybe instead of having them go see a model lesson, you help them work on one specific skill and they become their own model. So there are all these things that we do by default and we need to get in the habit of starting to question whether or not that rule is still true. The big one for builders is that there's a rule that says you're not going to get all kids right away and the best you can do is focus on incremental improvement. Every single year, we are told not to set our goals too high. Slow down, cowboy. You know, I know you want all means all and I really appreciate your enthusiasm, but it doesn't happen that way.

You have to make gains over time, incremental growth. 

That's all you can expect. No, not true. There are builders right now in BU who are making exponential growth every single year because they decided to stop buying into the false rule that incremental growth is all you can do. And so if you're right now thinking, oh, well, the only way we can grow is we have to write a school improvement plan and we have to, you know, pick a number between three and seven for a percentile growth. And then we have to, you know, those rules don't always apply.As a builder, you don't have to follow those rules. Those rules don't apply to you. And the problem is that when we pick an incremental goal, then we use incremental strategies and get incremental results. If you pick that 100% goal and you say, there's nothing stopping me from making significant progress towards a 100% this year, especially if I do one, if I use 100% strategies, you break the rules and you change the game. Now, my sister always gets on me. She says, I'm not a rule follower. I'm a rule breaker. That's not true. I believe you understand the rules, you understand why they exist, and then you discard the rules that no longer apply.

And right now, many of you are being held hostage by a set of rules that you learned, maybe by very well-intentioned people, but they no longer apply to you, to your school. And schools are riddled with these kind of rules. We have to take attendance in a particular way. We have to acknowledge teachers in a particular way. We have to give teachers feedback in a particular way. We have to deal with student discipline in a particular way. We have to support teachers in a particular way. There's an unwritten rule that you do PD on PD days, and it's a whole staff PD. And you pick something that you need to work on and you give your entire staff PD around that one thing. Or if your staff is really stressed out, there's another rule that says you can't put one more thing on their plate, so you don't raise expectations about teaching and learning across the school. Instead, give them back their time. Those rules don't apply when you're a builder.

You don't have to either do a one-size-fits-all PD on some randomly selected thing, nor do you have to, the only way you can help people with overwhelm is to quote-unquote give them back their time, as if it belongs to you to begin with, rather than belonging to your students. Instead, you could create a situation where on PD days, because you've given teachers one-thing feedback, every teacher is doing something intentional to work on their one thing, and you and your team are providing support for teachers around their one thing. So they're working on the thing they need the most and showing major progress. They don't feel like their time is being robbed because a PD is relevant to them specifically and individualized to them, and everybody is getting what they need, and you're not wearing yourself out in the process. You see, when we're bound by rules, it stifles our creativity. 

It keeps us from finding innovative ways of answering.

I can't tell you how many teachers I've worked with who, you know, they're struggling with a problem. I offer them a solution. They say, I can't do that. And then I say, why not? And they don't have an answer other than I've not seen anybody do it. I didn't know I had permission to do it. It's never been done that way. And if you're being held hostage by an old way of doing things or a set of unwritten rules by which you continually abide, then I want this episode to free you. And it starts with questioning your rules. So whenever you find yourself saying, we can't do that, I want you to ask yourself, why not? Well, we need money.

Do you? I mean, maybe the old rule said that in order to do this certain thing this way, you needed funding, but do you need money? Is money the only way to accomplish that? You know, I have worked, you know, I remember once where we had a group of young men in our school who were struggling and we were trying all kinds of things to help them and support them. And one of the things we realized is that they could really benefit from having a mentor who looked like them. And so we didn't have any money for a program or to start a mentorship program. We had nothing. And what I did is I started calling around to some of the local chapters of some of the fraternities, because I know that fraternities have to do a community service. They have a community service piece for their work. And asked if they had any volunteers who would come and mentor a group of young men every single week and would commit to mentoring them for the rest of the school year. Finally found a fraternity would do that. We got the background checks.

We got the guy all cleared. He came in. It without spending any money, because they had to do it for their community service piece and their outreach. We needed the help without spending any money, expending any resources. We were able to get these 10 young men the mentor that they need and the difference that it made in their behavior in school and their academic performance in school for that year was incredible. We didn't have any money for a program, but we got creative. I've worked with principals who have not had money or resources. And then they said, okay, those are the old rules. Is there another way we can do this without money and resources? And they figure it out and they get stuff done. I've worked with principals who have said, oh, well, you know, my district would never let me do it. And my question is, why not? Have you asked? And if you can align the work that you're doing with the district's goals, why wouldn't they do it for you? Why wouldn't they allow it? We are so busy asking for permission. What we really need to be asking for is support. We are waiting for somebody in some office somewhere to look in their rule book and tell us whether or not we can do something when in the meantime, our kids are suffering. Our kids are not getting what they need. And as a fierce advocate for your kids, you've got to stop feeling bound by these rules that don't even apply to you anymore.

It's just the way somebody else did it back in the day. 

Doesn't mean that that's the way it has to be now. Right now, you have a school and there are things that are being done in your school that have always been done that way, even though they're not serving kids. We all do. And so you have to ask yourself the question, what's more important, maintaining the status quo or changing outcomes for these kids who are not being served by these rules? And so my challenge to you this week is really, really simple and straightforward. Ask yourself the question when you feel like you are, are, are, are held back or you can't do something or you feel like you're not allowed or you feel stuck, ask yourself, what are the unwritten rules that I'm still following that no longer apply? 

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 Buildership 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 Buildership. So would you mind just leaving a quick review? It would mean the world to me. Okay, now back to the show. And I'm going to urge you to question everything. The district says, well, this is the way we've always been done, but why? And I want to urge you to ask the questions, not in a insubordinate way.

I'm not trying to get anybody fired here, but I think it bears asking. I remember being a, um, I'm an assistant principal and I'd come to a new school and they were doing something, you know, the master schedule was done a specific way. And I was assigned to be the master schedule for the school. And so they gave me all this stuff, told me this is the way it has to be done. There were deadlines, you know, like for instance, I'm not going to say, listen, there's a rule that I have to get my master schedule in by May 1. And I'm not going to say, hey, that rule no longer applies to me. That's the district rule. I mean, whatever. I'm going to, I'm going to abide by that rule. That's the deadline. I understand why the district has that deadline, but there were other rules about the master schedule that didn't make sense to me. There were rules about, um, you know, teachers having certain periods off. And I said, well, why is this teacher always get this period off? Well, she really likes it and it works. Yeah, it may work for her, but it's not working for the kids. 

That rule no longer applies. 

Now that we have this vision focused on the kids, I wouldn't talk to the teacher. She understood we move things around. It wasn't punitive against the teacher, but we had to stay focused on what was bigger. What was the bigger vision? There were other processes, like there was an unwritten rule that I didn't start the master schedule until January or February, January, February is too late to be starting your master scheduling process. It needs to be a year long process. There's always stuff that you need to be doing when you create it and start making it a year long process. You're not, you know, like tied up. In fact, next year, in a few months, we're going to do a master scheduling masterclass so you can see how you can get through the master scheduling season this year, but also how you can set yourself up so you don't have another stressful master scheduling season. We have a whole kind of year long calendar we're going to be sharing. So that's what we did. I created it back then. It still works. And so we changed the rhythm of how we do master schedules and created a new set of rules.

When I was a teacher, one of the rules was that, you know, kids need it. You have to grade a particular way, but it didn't always apply to my kids. So I started asking and questioning the rules. They no longer apply. One of the big ones, and you all know my story, was that when I was a teacher, the one of the rules was that you could not be in an AP class if you'd never taken an honors class before. That's ridiculous. There's some kids who bloom late. There are other kids who weren't ever guided towards an honors class. There are other kids who may not have taken honors class, but something is turned on and they want to do something. Why can't they take an AP class? And I know things are different now, but back then that was a rule. That rule didn't make sense and it was hurting kids. I questioned the rule. We broke the rule. We let everybody in. We had incredible results.

What rules are you living by right now that just no longer apply? Here's another one. You have to answer every single text and email and phone call you get. I don't know who wrote that rule, but they obviously hated us all. You don't have to answer every text, email, or phone call you get. Now, you need to be careful and judicious and answer the ones that, you know, think about if I don't answer this, is it going to create bigger problems down the road? Okay, answer it. But you don't have to. If you're CC'd on something, you don't have to answer every email. If people are sending you text messages that are FYI, you don't have to be like, got it and staying up all night answering emails and texts. You just don't have to do it. That rule no longer applies to you. So I mean, that's it. That's the episode. There's not much to it because the work is really up to you. What I'm encouraging you to do this week is to question everything. 

Sometimes you'll realize that there's a rule that still applies.

It makes sense. You understand it. Take time to understand it, but then you understand it and you can do it and fulfill it in a way that maybe, you know, find ways to make fulfilling it a lot easier, but follow the rule. And then there's some things that you are doing that you believe you have to do that you don't have to do. One of the things I love about having a 100% vision is that it's very binary. Either it's 100% or it's not. And that kind of binary thinking helps you to weed through a lot of the nonsense to figure out what's really important and what isn't. I was asked, is this going to help me get to my 100%? If it's not, not important. And if you can go through and weed through things and have that kind of understanding, is this going to help us get there? If not, not important. Is this rule something that makes sense for our students, our goals, and what we're trying to do? Is this a rule that still is relevant or is it not? And when you can understand that, you can free yourself of the baggage. You know, a lot of times, I'll tell you another rule. I, you know, when I was an administrator, I thought there was an unwritten rule that I had to stay late. You know, I want to be one of the last people to leave, people leave in the building every single day. I thought that was the expectation, otherwise people think I'm slacking. Then I realized, no, I, you know, what was happening is that because I felt like I had to stay late, I was just dragging my feet at the end of the day.

I was wasting a lot of time just, you know, without even realizing it, just trying to figure out when was a good time to leave. If my work was done, why couldn't I leave? I felt like it was sacrilege for me to leave at four o'clock. Now I needed to wait until all the buses were back, that I get, right? Because stuff happens. But once the buses came back and the buses would get back about 3.30, then I was just kind of waiting around until five o'clock some days, and some days I had to work, but other days I literally was just waiting around until five o'clock. So one day I said, why does it, what rule says that I have to be the last one in the building every single day? What rule says that if I leave before five o'clock, I'm slacking? That rule doesn't apply. Is my work done? Yes. If I stay, would I be any more productive? No, that I should be able to walk out the door. So I started leaving several days at four o'clock and then I said, Oh, this is great. And I started getting more and more efficient throughout the day so that I can leave at four o'clock so that four o'clock, leaving at four o'clock could be my norm. And then people start questioning me, Oh, you know, you're getting, you're getting out here a little early, aren't you? And, you know, first it was joking, ha ha ha, but they weren't really joking. And then after I kept doing it, they were like, well, what's going on? You, you're leaving early. I said, well, no, I'm leaving.

The buses are back. Everything's good. I don't have, I don't need to be here. Well, you know, and I'm like, why do I need to be here? There's nothing happening, you know, in the middle school. So there were, there weren't games, you know, if I had to stay for games or things like that, I'd stay. But most days it was just time to go. And I said, my work is done for the day. I am caught up on everything I need to catch up on so I can leave. And I didn't have an answer for it other than that unwritten rule that, I don't know, the administrator is supposed to be the last one to leave the building.

That rule doesn't apply. It's a stupid rule. 

If you want to stay late and work, great. You know, I remember as a teacher, sometimes I'd be there till six o'clock because I wanted to get my stuff graded and leave it at the school and not take anything home. But that was my choice. Administrators shouldn't have to stay until 630 because I chose to stay at six o'clock. And so I just said, that's a rule that no longer applies. I will stay late when I need to. But if I don't need to stay late and my work is done, I'm going home. And not only that, I'm going to make sure that on most days my work is done so I can go home. And when people started, you know, when they really considered it, I said, why, what is it about my staying late that, that is tied to this job? If the work is done, why am I staying late? And I had no answer for me. It was just a rule. And so we changed the rule, get your work done and go have a life. And that's what we did. You right now are suffering under the burden. You are carrying the weight of somebody else's rule and it no longer applies, but you're still following it slavishly because you believe you haven't, you've never done the work of questioning that rule to figure out if it still applies. Now I gotta be careful here because I'm not trying to tell you to go around and just start bashing rules. Some rules are good. They do still apply. The only thing I'm asking you is to question it. Is this a rule that I'm following that no longer applies? And if it is that I want you to let it go, just want you to let it go. And if nobody else tells you this, I want to tell you that you don't have to carry the burden of rules that no longer apply. Let them go. Like a builder.

I'll 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 Buildership 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 Buildership University. Just go to buildershipuniversity.com and get started writing your school success story today.

Hey, this is Robyn and thanks for listening to the show. Now, if you really enjoyed the content, would you do me a favor and share it with somebody else? All you need to do is pull out your phone, click on the little three dots next to the show and you'll see an option there to share the show. Click that and send it to somebody else who could really benefit from what you learned here today.

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Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.

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