EPISODE #325

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 on social media, let's connect. I'm on LinkedIn at Robyn_mindsteps. I'm on Twitter at Robyn_Mindstep. Someone's on Facebook and Robyn Jackson, please let's connect so we can keep the conversation going.

Now on with the show. 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? 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.

The secret weapon, the thing that's going to make the difference between a school year that feels chaotic and the school year that feels that you are actually making progress. 

The school year where you actually show progress and you feel more in control and, and, and you feel more like you're, you're, you're doing the right work and that you're seeing results from that work. You know, most of us spend a lot of our time working really hard and then not having anything to show for that hard work at the end of the day. I mean how many times have we worked really hard on a school plan during the summer and then the we start the school year and we're working really hard on that school improvement plan. And then we hit our first snag and we get thrown off course and then we battled to get back on course and then we go on winter break and we get off course again. Then we battled to get back on course in the most testing. And by the end of the year we look at our school improvement plan and we realized that we haven't made the progress.

We thought we would make a call that the school improvement hamster wheel. And the reason that I call it a hamster wheel, it's because when you do that, you spend all of your time and energy completing tasks and doing things. But at the end of the day, you haven't moved anywhere. You're just running as hard as you can. And the harder you run, the more the wheel spins. But it never creates progress. And so I want to talk to you today about the secret to that progress. And the secret to that progress is focus. And, and I know that sounds simplistic, but I love this acronym for focus, which is follow one course until successful. FOCUS, Follow one course until successful. That to me is what focus is really about.

Now the challenge is that a lot of times we don't know what course to follow. And so we we think that we have a course that we want to follow and we start in that direction only to realize that that's not the right course for our school. Or every year we pick a course, a new course to follow and we never stick with anything until we're successful. One of the things that frustrates me as I'm, as I'm working with principals and superintendents is they're always saying what's next. And when you are a builder, you're not so interested in what's next.

So when you know Buildership University, we walk you through everything you need to do to become successful to, to achieve your vision for your school in three years. But those three years are not new stuff being added every single year. The first year in your buildership journey is really the year where you're getting some key things established. You're getting your vision, mission and core values established. You're putting systems in place and establishing that. You're establishing a new rhythm for how you're going to plan and track your progress throughout and how you're going to execute on your plan throughout your journey to get to that 100% goal. And then you're establishing teams and communication structures to make sure that everybody stays focused on doing the right work.

So the first year of your buildership journey is really about getting established. 

Now after people go through that first year, they're like, OK, what's next? You got another tool. We're we're so excited. This is so fun. Give me something else to do. And they're always disappointed when I say no, because the second year of your buildership journey is really about execution. So you're not putting new systems in place. You've spent an entire year doing that last year. This year is really about executing on the systems you put in place. You know, the big mistake that we make as educators is we, we, even when we do something that that is good, that could work, we don't stick with it long enough for it to actually work.

So when you're a builder, that second year of your journey, you're not doing anything new. You are taking what you've already established in year 1. You're executing on it and getting better at it. And that gives it time to work. And so year 2 is often the hardest year of your buildership journey because that's the year that you have to resist the shiny objects. That's the year that you have to really trust the process that it will work. So that's your two. Then year three, you're still not doing anything new. Year 3 is about embedding and extending. So in year 3, by the time you get to the year 30 year buildership, you've gotten 70 to 80% towards your 100% call. You've seen huge gains. You know a lot of those gains come in year 2 when you are when you're actually executing on your systems, they're working, you can see them working, you see those gains. But what it took to get to 70 or 80% is going to be different than what it's going to take to close that last 3020 to 30%. And so in year 3, you are not putting anything new in place, but you are, this is where you're going to take what you've already put in place and you're going to start adjusting it to make sure that it it, it's working for all kids.

This is where you're going to make adaptations to what you've already done. But again, no new strategy, no new, you know, brand new thing that we're rolling out, though. It's just the same work that that you established in year 1, but now you're going to be adapting it to make sure that it works for everybody so that you can close that last gap and get to 100% and that level of focus. Giving yourself three years to commit to something and then watching the results happen gets you off of the hamster wheel and gets you on what we call that buildership flywheel. The first year you're, you're, you're, you're, you're turning the wheel and it's kind of hard because you're, you're priming it, you're getting it going. But the second year you gain that momentum and it goes faster and faster and faster. And then that third year, sticking with that same wheel, that's when you start to see things really take off and you achieve your goal.

So people say, you know, when should I do a new vision? 

After you've achieved the vision you've had, When do we need a new mission? Once you have a new vision, when do we need a new set of core values? Maybe never. When will I implement this new thing? Probably not going to happen if it didn't happen that first year. You are staying focused. Follow one course until successful. So that's the way that buildership works. You're not trying all these new things. You're committing to something. The challenge becomes what are you committing to? And that's where the hard part happens because a lot of times the, the, the, the problem isn't that we aren't focused.

The problem is that we're focused on the wrong thing. And one of the tools that we are using now in Buildership University is something that we call the One Plan. And we created the One Plan because we found that a lot of times the principles we were serving, we're trying to do too much. And it's really hard to get good at and be successful with 25 different programs. I remember early in my consulting career, I went to one school and it was a high school. And we looked at, we did an initiative audit and we found that they had, I want to say 11 or 14 new initiatives. And they were not little initiatives. They were trying to start an AVID program. They were establishing two or three new AP courses. They were trying to get IB certification. They were trying to establish a 9th grade Academy. And the list went on and on and on. It's really hard to be good at 11 things at once. And so I kept the, the question that I kept asking them. And the question that I, I continue to ask to this day is of, of all these activities, which one will have the highest impact on achieving your goal? It's that micro slicing question that we ask when we go into classrooms.

You go into a classroom when you're micro slicing and you see the instructions all over the place. All these different things are happening and you're trying to figure out what is, you know, you, you, how do we fix this classroom? And so the the impulse, the way we were trained is we try to fix everything, but that doesn't work. And what micro slicing forces you to do is to ask the question, if I change this one thing, but everything else stayed exactly the same, is that one change enough to turn this lesson from ineffective to effective? Well, in the same way that you do that in a classroom as an administrator, you need to be doing that with your school or your district. So you want to ask yourself, if everything fell apart, if if it hit the fan and we could only do one thing, what would that one thing be that would still keep our school on the pathway towards 100% success for students.

And so the one plan helps you figure that out. 

And that one plan helps you figure out what's the one most important thing you need to do in seven categories, the seven most important categories for instruction in your school. And those 7 categories, coincidentally enough, are the seven principles of effective instruction. So just as a reminder, the seven principles of effective instruction come from my book Never Work Harder Than Your Students. And those principles have stood the test of time. That book is almost 20 years old and those principles still work. People are still writing me and saying once I, I really understood instruction in this way, things got better. And so those 7 principles are principle number one, start where your students are. How do we recognize the currencies that kids bring to us and bring them to the classroom into our schools? And how do we help them leverage those currencies to be able to access the capital of the classroom? What does that mean? And like plain English, it means what are we doing to make sure that we're meeting all the needs of the kids? How do we recognize what those kids needs are? And, and then how do we make sure that we're staying on time top of that, we're staying in touch with their needs and we're responding to their needs beyond their academic needs to the other things that they're doing.

And so a lot of times schools say, yeah, you know, we have a lot of SCL issues right now. And so they, you know, they're doing PBIS and then they have an SCL initiative and then they're doing a character counts thing and they're, you know, the five different things all to address that one problem. And the problem is all five of those things require a lot of attention and effort and energy, and it's hard to expend it on all five things at once in a way that will actually move the needle. Instead, what if he said, OK, I can't do these five things. But if I, if I only had to do one of these five things, which one of these five things would best help my students meet their SCL needs, meet the needs that that are are beyond the academic needs of the classroom so that they're ready to learn and so that they they feel supported. If they feel engaged, they feel recognized, they feel honored. What's the one most important thing I can do? And when you take time to understand that, first of all, you're often surprised because it's not what you think all the time. But secondly, when you really hone in and focus on that, then your students get better served. No, it's not 5 different programs because you're doing 5 different programs poorly or five different programs meet with mediocrity versus 1 program with excellence.

You're going to meet the needs of more kids. So what's that one thing that that your school needs to do? That if everything else fell apart, this is the, the one thing you'd hold onto the with regard to starting where your students are, the next one, the next principle. Principle 2 is know where your students are going. And this is really about how do we understand what the destination looks like, What are our standards and how are we planning based on those standards so that the work we're doing with students is actually moving them forward. We have all these different things. We have lesson planning templates, we collect lesson plans, we have unit planning templates, We have, you know, unpacking standards exercises. We have curriculum documents, all these different things.

But if we had to only do one thing, what is the one most important thing we do as a school that ensures that instruction is moving students consistently towards the standards and the goals? 

Now, I bet you've never considered that before because we've been taught you have to do all the things, but we're not doing all the things well, right? So if you really sat down and said what's the one most important thing that's going to make a difference, you'd stop overwhelming your teachers with these unreasonable and questionable demands and instead could get teachers focused on the work that's really important. One of the things that breaks my heart is that I see very well meaning principles go to district workshops and trainings and everybody says, OK, we need to do X. And so they go back and ask teachers to do X. And then a month later somebody says, you know what, Y is really important too. So we go back and we ask our teachers to do Y and we think we are. That's what being a good leader is.

But in reality, all you're doing is stacking all these things on on your teachers plates. And then teachers get overwhelmed. You're like, oh, we need to take something off the teachers plates, but what? Which one thing do we need to take off their plates that that doesn't that doesn't make everything fall apart? And I see people pulling things off teachers plates that are critical and leaving things on teachers plates that aren't critical. And then we wonder why we're stuck and why teachers are frustrated. We need to sit down and say what is the one most important thing that we do in this area that makes a difference where if everything else hit the fan, this is the one thing that if we only could do one thing, it would still get us to 100% success for our students. That's thing that you need to focus on and nothing else. All right, so principle number one. Start where students are. Principle 2 know where they're going. Principle 3 expect to get them there. This is really about teacher efficacy.

So what is the one thing that you do in your school that helps teachers feel like they can still make a difference in the lives of kids? What's the one thing that you do in your school that empowers teachers to go the extra mile to make sure that they are moving their students towards 100%? All that other stuff can go away, but this can't go away. And understanding that can help make sure that you are meeting the needs of your teachers and serving them so that they can serve kids. So principal 1 start where your students are. Principal 2 know where they're going. Principal 3 expect to get them there. Principal 4 support them along the way. What is the one thing? You know, we have all these support programs and remedial programs and they never work kids. Kids are go through these programs and it doesn't help them become learners. It it, it drags them through the curriculum. It often the remedial programs have kids backwards facing instead of frontwards facing.

So the kids never feel like they're making progress. 

It's demoralizing to students. It's it's like pulling teeth for the teachers. Instead of doing all of that, what's the one most important thing you can do to make sure that kids get support when they need it, not after they fail, when they need it, in the time that they need it. And if you just focused on one thing but did it well, you wouldn't have failures because you want to look for the thing that keeps kids from failing in the 1st place, not the thing that picks them up after they fail. So what's the one thing that you know that if everybody focused on doing this one thing, we would not have students failing. All right, Start where your students are and know where they're going. Expect them to get there. Support them along the way. Principal 5 use feedback to help you both get better. And So what is the one thing that you do that help students understand where they are so that they can continue to grow students and their families? And that you can also use the feedback that you're giving to students to help inform your instructional practices, the way things that you're doing in schools to support students. Not 25 different survey surveys and, and, and all of this.

What's the one thing that you do that gives people the feedback they need? Your students get their feedback, your teachers get their feedback. What's the one thing you do? Let's get rid of all this stuff that we have too much noise. You know, these data dies where, you know, just swimming in numbers. What's the one thing you need to focus on that gives you the best feedback to help you best serve kids and for kids to best be able to to leverage that feedback to get better? And then the next principle is that you want to focus on quality versus quantity. So what do you do? How do you prioritize what work is important? Work isn't important in your schools. And how do you make sure that you're focusing on the right work and you're not focusing on the wrong work? Often times we don't have any system for that at all, but we should. And there should be one thing that we do that we can trust to keep us focused on the right work. And then the last principal, never work harder than your students.

That principal is really about student ownership. What's the one thing your school can do to empower students to take ownership over their their learning and then empowers teachers to take ownership over the work? So they're not sitting passively by and waiting for you to make all the decisions. Instead, they are actively engaged in building with you. So those seven things, so 7 principles, though, the challenge for you is to identify one thing in each of those categories that will help you stay focused. And when you do that, when you create that one plan for your school, here's what you're doing. You now have identified the work. This is the most important work. This is where we focus. Anything else we do is extra, but we're going to get these pieces right first. And then when you're sitting down and you're trying to figure out, OK, where do we need to work on first? You're not, you know, swimming in the sea of initiatives. You're looking at your one plan and you're saying these are the seven areas of our school. How are we doing in each of these seven areas? What needs, where do we need to grow? What do we need to tweak so that we get better at it? And if you did that and stuck with it, three things happened.

First of all, you reduce overwhelm you, you get rid of the chaos. 

It's not. You're working on 25 different things. You're working on 7 and it's one thing in each category and you've identified, you've been careful and thoughtful about what that one thing is. So you're not overwhelmed, you're not asking people to to do all the things. Instead, you've got that focus and that clarity. So every day, you know when you come to work, you're going to do something that supports one of those seven things. And teachers, when they're doing their work, they know that their work, the most important work they do are these seven things. This is what you're holding them accountable for and it gives everybody clarity and focus and reduces the chaos. Secondly, you have a chance to make a real difference because what you've identified, you spent time thinking about all the things that you do and deciding which one has the biggest impact on students. And when you focus on those, just those things that have the biggest impact, you magnify your impact.

When you're doing all the things, you blunt your impact because your energy is going in all these different directions and you can't do anything well. You focus on these seven things, you magnify your impact because you get good at the things that matter most and 3 you get a lot more clarity. You see a lot of us, if we're really honest, we are leading and I'm using air quotes here by just throwing a whole bunch of stuff up against the wall and hoping something sticks. We're guessing we're, we're hoping we're, you know, we went to a conference and read a book this summer, like, oh, that's what we need to do. And we're trying stuff out and we're experimenting at the expense of kids. But when you sit down and take time to look at and weigh all the things you're doing and say, if we didn't do just if we if we couldn't do everything else and we can only do this, would this be enough to make a difference? You start to realize what has real impact in your school and where you wasting your time. And therefore, when you come out of that exercise, you have, you have that clarity about what it really is going to take for you to achieve your vision for 100% of your students. And armed with that clarity, you help people do work where they can be successful.

You're setting people up for success because you've already done the thinking to say this thing is the thing that's going to help us get the most success. Let's do that. So when you go in front of people, you have more credibility because you've been clear, because you've done the thinking and because it works because you've already thought that through ahead of time. So that's why I want to encourage you today to do 1 plan. Now, if you are already a member of Buildership University, you know we have the One Plan training and you can also take a look at it. The recording should be up inside of Buildership University by now and you can take a look at the One Plan training and download your One Plan. So if you're in Buildership University, we got you covered. But if you're not in Buildership University and you want to get started right away, all you need to do is think about what's my vision, mission, and core values. And then think about what is the one thing I can do in each of the seven categories, the seven principles that is most likely to move my school towards my vision, mission, and core values. And if everything else went away and we just focus on that, this is what's going to give us the most potent, powerful movement forward.

So I want to challenge you this week. 

Just just ask yourself that question of all the things we do, what are the things that really matter most? Can you distill that down to five to seven things? Do you know what they are? Do you, do you have clarity around that or are you just doing all the things and hoping that something will work? The difference this year for you is really and how well you focus, follow one course until successful. So let's stop doing all the things. Let's focus like a builder. I'm glad to be back with you. I'll talk to you next time. 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 games 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, 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 buildership out to more people, but you're going to look like a rock star because you're going to 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.