EPISODE #353

Hey, builders. Before we start today's episode, I wanna talk about Tier one instruction. If you are like most principals that I talk to these days, Tier 1 is a bit of a mess, right? We all know why it's important, but we're struggling to get teachers to do it, to do it consistently, to do it in every single classroom. And so there are a lot of kids who are struggling, but they're not getting the help they need in time. They're getting it too late after they've gotten to a free fall of failure and they've fallen through the cracks. Well, we have built a tool to fix it. It's called the Supporting Struggling Students Implementation Kit.

Now, we've been secretly using this with several of our members inside of Buildership University for a few months now, and the results have been pretty incredible. And now we are making 10 kits available to the public. Now, this is not PD. This is not a bunch of stuff you have to read. These are implementation kits, which means that they have everything you need, everything you need to be able to have an amazing Tier one program, an effective Tier one program up and running in the next month. Again, we are only releasing 10 of these kits because I'm going to be supporting you. I want to be able to kind of roll up my sleeves and get in there with you and make sure that they work. So we're only releasing 10 of them.

And if you want one of these kits or if you just want to learn more, go to buildershipuniversity.com ImplementationKit that's buildershipuniversity.com Implementationkit. Now, on with the show. You're listening to the School Leadership reimagine podcast, episode 353. 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, Robin Jackson, and today I want to talk about something we don't always talk about right so we all say on the surface that, hey, we all believe in 100% vision. But you know that not everybody on your staff truly believes that. Sure, they pay lip service to it. They nod in the staff meeting, they say, hey, thumbs up. That's a great idea.

But you know, right? You think you know. At least you think you do, right? And the way that you think you know is that you, you know, you pay attention to their body language during pd or, you know, you pay attention to how they show up in meetings, or you, you think you can tell by their attitude. And while those often good signals, you really don't know. Right? Sometimes the person who looks like they're not paying attention is one of the most passionate advocates for 100%. And sometimes the person who says, yes, me, I believe in 100%, they are secretly undermining your vision without you even knowing it.

So how can you really tell if your staff is truly aligned around 100%? Well, there is a test, and today I'm going to talk to you about the test. And it's a test that doesn't require a single walkthrough or a single data meeting. It doesn't require you to read people's minds or dive into the data. It's a very simple test that I bet you could apply this week until very quickly, if your staff is truly aligned around 100% or are they just paying that 100% vision lip service? And that is what I call the struggling students test. And it's simply this, look at what happens to your struggling students when nobody thinks you're watching. That's it.

That's your measure. And today we're going to talk about how to use this struggling students test, and more importantly, what to do if the test tells you that you don't have true alignment around your 100% vision. So here's the thing about the struggling student test and why I think it is so powerful. Because your struggling students are truly a mirror of what your staff actually believes. Not what they say they believe, not what they write in their growth plans. It's what they do with struggling students that tells you whether or not they truly believe in 100%. Because if we truly believe in 100%, we can't afford to write off any kid. So let me give you two examples.

So in School A, they have a 100% vision, and that vision has genuinely taken root. So when struggling students, when a teacher sees a student struggling, the. All the adults lean in, right? They. It starts when a teacher notices that something is off. And oftentimes that happens before the data even catches it. And the teacher says something right away. They talk to their colleagues, they.

They try a different approach, they implement interventions. 

And when they bring that student to you, they come to you not with a problem, but with, here's what I've tried, here's what I think this kid needs, here's why I need support. They own the kid. And even when they ask for help, they still own that kid. Right? Now, in a school where the staff is going through the motions, you could have the exact same vision, the same 100% vision, and your teachers listen. They could be perfectly nice, hardworking, well meaning teachers, but the struggling student isn't something that they own. The struggling student becomes a process, right?

So they start out, they identify it, they fill out the paperwork, they document it, they refer, and then they wait and it's the child goes from being their child to being the child that belongs now to the intervention system. The intervention system now has the child and the teacher did their job and they documented everything and they passed on the child. And now the child belongs to the intervention center. And, you know, nobody's doing anything wrong technically, but the child has moved from being our responsibility to being paperwork. And the difference between these schools, same vision, same 100% vision. So they both have drawn a line in the sand, which most leaders never do, right? So they've drawn a line in the sand. We are going to focus on 100%.

But how they deal with struggling students tells you whether or not they really mean it. I'm going to argue that this is not an issue of teacher attitude. This is not an issue of teacher skill even. It's an issue of what your teachers really believe about 100% and about whether or not all your kids can actually get to 100%. Because if you truly believed in 100% and it wasn't just a slogan, you know, it's a real conviction that your staff has where they truly own that 100% vision. You don't hand a struggling kid off and move on. You stay with it until every child is successful. So the question is, what does it look like in your building right now?

Do your teachers really believe in 100% or is it something nice to do? Okay, so here's the thing, right, everybody. I mean, when you say 100%, I just don't know too many people who are going to argue with you, right? Who's gonna be the one to sit in a staff meeting and be like, I don't believe that all kids can learn. Actually, I've seen that happen. So I can't argue that you might not have somebody like it. But for the most part, when you say 100%, we are conditioned as educators to say, well, of course. I mean, how many people are walking around right now saying all means all and failing kids every single day, Right?

So you can't just rely on what people say. And that's why I love the struggling student test, because they. That's the real test of your 100% vision. You can have everybody talking about, oh, 100% all you want. You could give people T shirts and people are wearing the T shirts. People can have the signs. People can say, oh, because I believe in 100%. But look at what happens to your struggling kids.

That's the real. That's the real tell. Now, I want to get practical because a lot of times I can talk about ideas and, you know, everybody's kind of nodding along. You're absolutely right. But how do you tell? So I'm going to give you four ways that you can tell whether or not. And this is the struggling student test. That's what I'm calling it.

Right? There are four things that you need to look for. And those things are going to tell you whether your staff truly believes in 100% or whether or not it's just a slogan. Okay? So the first thing is pay attention to who identifies the struggling student. This is important, right? Because if a teacher is proactive about identifying the struggling student, that tells you that that teacher may believe, really not. May does believe in the 100%. And if a teacher is more kind of reactive, that tells you something different. 

So who identifies the student? 

Did the teacher come to you proactively and say, hey, I'm worried about this kid. I've been watching them for a few weeks. Here's what I'm noticing. Or is the first time we recognized that a student was struggling was when we were sitting in a data meeting three weeks after the fact. So does a teacher identify the struggling student, or did the data identify the struggling student? Or worse, do you have to bring the struggling student to the teacher?

Do you have to bring the teacher's attention to the struggling student? Proactive identification is one of the clearest signals of genuine commitment. It means the teacher is paying attention even when nobody is requiring it. And if your school and your teachers truly believe in 100%, your teachers are always scanning and checking and making sure that every kid is moving forward. And they are the best and often most reliable first responders, if the teachers are noticing even before it surfaces in the data, then you know you've got a staff that is truly committed to 100%. If we're waiting for the data to tell us who's struggling, if we're waiting for a data meeting for teachers to recognize the kids in their class are struggling, that tells you that that 100% vision is a nice to have, but it is not central to how we are operating and dealing with our kids. Second thing is, once you have identified, hey, this kid is struggling, who owns the problem? Okay, now this is a big one, but it's subtle, right?

Once a student, once we see that a student is struggling, are we immediately referring that student out to somebody else? Is it somebody else's problem, the interventionalist, the support team, somebody else? Or does the classroom teacher take ownership of that kid right away? Now, listen, I know that there are times when we need to bring in other professionals, but are we bringing those other professionals in so that we can problem solve together, or are we looking at those other professionals and we're handing the kid off to them? That difference tells me whether or not teachers really believe in 100%. Because even if I don't have the expertise that I need to deal with a particular kid and I need to bring in other professionals, that that's still my kid. And I am asking questions and I'm learning and I want to know what's happening with that kid when they, you know, somebody else, even if that kid has to, you know, you know, somebody has to pull them out for a little while, I want to know, what are you trying, how are they doing? What are they responding to?

So when I have the kid again, I can get better at supporting that kid. I am coordinating with him. I am a part of that child's team. And even when that child isn't in my classroom, because if I really believe in 100%, I'm going to make sure that all of my kids, all of my kids get it. Even if my kids are working with other professionals, but if I really don't believe in 100%, then once I do the handoff, that kid is no longer my problem. All right? Third, not only do you need to pay attention to who identifies the kid, not only do you need to pay attention to kind of who owns the problem after the referral, you need to listen to how teachers are talking about struggling students. So in your team meetings, when you're talking one on one, when teachers are talking about kids kind of casually in the Staff lounge.

When you hear teachers having conversations about kids who are falling behind, does the teacher talk about the child or do they immediately go to the resources? Again, this one's subtle, but hear me out, okay? Now they both matter. Let me be clear about that. But what comes first? Are we talking about the child and what the child needs, or are we talking about the problems the child has created? Are we talking about the resources that we need to get to the child? Is the child.

Is the child central? Or are the problems the child is causing central? This is really important because 100% isn't some random number. It's not a statistic. It's not a data point. 100% represents every kid. And a lot of times when we are moving towards helping every kid achieve, we get distracted.

It's more about the data.

It's more about the tools, about the resources. It's more about the problems it's creating. And we lose sight of the kid in front of us. If your teachers truly believe in 100%, they're going to center on the kid. Because 100% isn't a data point. 100% is Johnny and Susie and Tiara and Marco and all of the kids in my classroom. And when we look at data and we're looking at, okay, we have 99% of our kids are proficient, you know, a school that doesn't believe in 100%, they're celebrating the 99% and saying, Yay, we're better than we, you know, the other schools and where we are. Last year, a school who believes in 100% is celebrating the progress.

But they're saying, okay, so who are the kids? Who is the other 1% we haven't gotten to yet. And what do we need to do about that? And that's really important. I was talking to a builder last week. I love this builder, because when he talks about. I mean, he's done some incredible things in his school. You know, he just got.

He just got to 99% of his kids earning all their credits. In his high school, 99% of the kids are earning all of their credits. But he talks about that. We celebrate it. But then the next step is he's saying, and I know the. I don't know how many kids, 32 kids or whatever it is who didn't make it. And I know who they are. I know their story.

I know what we're going to do about it. That's our plan. That's the difference between a school that really believes in 100% and one that likes to say it because it's a slogan and it sounds nice to say. So listen to how your teachers are talking about kids. Are they leading with the kids first or are they leading with the data first? Are they leading with a kid first? Are they leading with the problem first? Remember, 100% is always about the children.

So if we are not centering on the children, then we don't really believe in 100%. Hey, builders, real quick, before we get on with the rest of the episode, I want to talk to you about the 100% collective. If you are interested in becoming a builder and developing that 100% mindset, then the 100% collective is for you. Not only do we have monthly masterclasses, live masterclasses, where I show you how to take some work that you are already doing, but do it like a builder. Do it in a way that is more effective, more efficient, in a way that takes the work and stops it from being drudgery and makes it actually something that feels meaningful, that moves you forward. We also have done for you toolboxes with all the tools you need to be able to implement. And we have step by step playbooks that lay out the entire process for you so you don't have to even think about it. You just take the playbook and you can implement it right away in your schools. And we have a supportive community.

So this is a safe place where you can bring your challenges. 

And there are other people, other builders just like you who are encouraging you, who are applauding you when you win, and who are giving you their experiences as well so that you can learn from each other. If you are tired of just kind of going through and doing the work the way you've always been doing it, and you're ready to stop being a leader and to start building something amazing, the 100% collective is where you need to be. Join us@bearerhipuniversity.com community now back with the program. And then the last way that you can apply the struggling student test to your school is to look at what happens when the first strategy doesn't work. I remember when I was an administrator and was sitting with seventh grade team and there was a student on the team who was struggling. He was struggling in all of his classes, but the team leader was his social studies teacher.

And so we were having the conversation and she said, you know, I want to bring up this, you know, this kid, because I know he's all been struggling. And everybody's like, yes, we're exhausted. We don't know what else to do. And we're talking about the kid. And I'll be honest, you know, back then, I wasn't completely a builder, and so I had that leadership training in my head. So she said, he just failed his social studies test, the last social studies test. So my administrator brain goes, okay, we're going to have to get this help. Maybe we should start doing a special ed referral.

Maybe we should do this. I'm going to call his parents. I'm doing all the administrative stuff. And the team leader goes, not so fast. She said, I got curious about why he failed, and so I kept him in after the test. We have an intervention period. And so she said, I had him in, and I gave him the test again, but this time I asked him to talk me through how he was answering the questions. And I noticed that he really got stuck on the map test.

And so I took a piece of paper and I covered up another part of the map and just had him focus on this part of the map. And he started getting the answers right. And we said, huh? And then the conversation went from, oh, let's get a referral. We gotta do this. We'll date a call to parents, all the things. The conversation shifted from that to, what does that tell us about how we can better reach this child? And we came up with a plan, and we still went on ahead and did some things where we bought in, you know, the special educators and, you know, had, you know, had them looked at and got them some other supports we needed.

But we didn't go to the special educators and the interventionists with a problem. Here's a kid, we don't know what to do with it. You take them instead. What we did is we went to them and we said, here are the things we tried that haven't worked. Here's something we tried that we do think works, and here's what we think it tells us about the kid. And now we can have a plan for that kid that's an informed plan, not just with data, but because we have gone through and kept working at that kid. It was a very important lesson for me that I learned that changed the way that I dealt with struggling kids from now on, that I realized that I was going straight to the process and forgot the person involved.

And we can't do that in this case.

We have to focus on the kid and what they need and not just jump straight to, all right, what's next in the process? Let's document it. Let's get this. You Know all the things. So when the first strategy doesn't work, does a teacher come back to you with a new idea, with something they've learned, a new observation, something else they want to try? Or do they wait to be told what to do next? You see teachers who are genuinely invested in 100%. They treat a failed strategy as information.

Okay, that didn't work. So what did we learn from this, and what can I try next? But teachers who are just kind of paying lip service to your vision, they treat. They try something and it doesn't work, and they see it as the end of their responsibility. So let's go back over the four things. First thing, who identifies the student, who first recognizes that a kid is struggling? Is it your teacher doing that, or is it your data doing that? And then once you realize that the kid is struggling, who owns the problem?

Does your teacher kind of say, up, nothing else I can do. Pass the kid on? Or does your teacher truly stay invested and involved even when other people get involved? Third, how are your teachers talking about struggling students? Are you centering on the kid, or are you centering on the problem and the data? And then fourth, what happens when a teacher tries a strategy with a struggling student and the strategy doesn't work? Does the teacher use that as information to try again? Or does the teacher feel, like, I tried something, it didn't work.

So that's the end of my responsibility. 

Now, I want to challenge you to do this audit in your school this week. Now, I'm not telling you to walk around with a clipboard checking. And, you know, it's not a formal thing. I just want you to start noticing because those answers are going to tell you more about how convicted your teachers really are, around 100% than almost anything else. Now, I'm guessing that when you do this, you're gonna have some surprises. There are gonna be some teachers you thought were committed, and you realize maybe not so much. There's gonna be some areas of misalignment that you may not have noticed before.

But I don't want you to get discouraged because we're, you know, this is a weird time in the school year, right? We're at the point in the school year where the kids who are going to struggle have been struggling for a while. And the gap is real. It's getting bigger. It's visible. Everybody can see it. And how your kids are showing up for those kids right now is really important information. And you might not like what you see.

And I don't want to try to Alarm you? I'm just. I'm just going to. But it's important that you see it now while the window is still open, right? Because there's still enough weeks left in the school year to make a difference for a lot of the kids that are struggling right now. I mean, I'm talking about a real, meaningful, measurable difference, but only, and this is important only if you start now, and only if the adults are genuinely invested and not just technically responsible, but you gotta start now. And the problem is that at this point in the school year, everybody's tired, right? The new year momentum is worn off.

Testing season is doing weird things, the things that testing season always does. And it's this weird kind of tension right? Where the finish line feels close. You know, we only got so many weeks until the end of the school year, but it still feels like it's so far away. And spring break is not here yet. And everybody's just trying to hold on until spring break. And a lot of times this is the part of the year where the inspiration runs out.

Everybody's tried everything and some stuff hasn't worked.

And so now we're just. I'm just not sure we're going to get there this year, right? This is the time of the year where the pep talks stop working, right? The teachers who are nodding along in August, this point, they're coasting, right? And so that means that your strategy for keeping staff committed to struggling student has to be a genuine strategy. If it's just based on how motivated everybody is feeling, you are going to lose ground now. And you probably already feel that, right? And so before, in today's episode, I just want to challenge something that I think a lot of people have been taught, and it's a lie that we've been taught and many of us believe, and I believed it too, for a long time.

And that lie is that when we see teachers who are not showing up for struggling students the way that they should, you know, you do that audit and you're like, oh, you know, they're really not doing what I need them to do. I don't feel like they're convicted. Our first instinct is to treat it like an individual problem. So we see teachers who are not doing what they should be doing for struggling kids. So we try to inspire them at the individual level. We go to the person and try to inspire them. We have the conversation with the individual. We try to find the right words for that individual.

We try to find the right story for that individual. We think maybe they See the data. So we try to find the right data point for that individual that's going to make it click. And sometimes it works for a second until the next hard stretch, until the next tough kid, until the next time you try something and it doesn't work with a kid. And then we're right back to doing it all over again. And it's exhausting. And many of you feel that exhaustion right now because you are going to each individual and trying to get, you know, this teacher on board and this teacher on board. And then you thought you had that one on board and they were on board last month, but now they're tired and they're not on board again.

And we think that in order to get teachers aligned, we have to go to each individual. But real alignment isn't something that you can achieve person by person. Real alignment is something that you build into your systems. Think about it, right? We want every teacher taking attendance every day. And so what do we do? Do we rely on teachers to feel individually motivated to take attendance? You know, do we wait until every teacher feels like taking attendance?

No, we have a system in place. And so attendance gets taken. Whether a teacher's energized or the teacher's exhausted, whether they love taking attendance or they find it tedious, the system does the work so that attendance gets taken every day. Think about fires, right? So you could give an inspiring speech on fire safety every October and hope that that speech is going to be enough so that everybody remembers what to do in case of a fire. But if you did that, you'd be very irresponsible. What do we do? We don't rely on people to remember the inspiring fire safety speech we gave.

We do fire drills, right? 

Because we have a protocol for what happens in case of a fire. We practice because we don't want to leave something that important up to people's individual's memories or their individual motivation. That's too important. So we put a system in place so that in case of a fire, everybody can get out safely. Well, why don't we do that for our struggling students? You see, when you have a genuine school wide support system with clear protocols for what happens, defined roles, something that's proactive, so you're catching kids early, something that as soon as you catch it, see a kid struggling, there's an immediate response so that the right thing happens for kids. Whether a teacher on any given day is having a terrible day or a great day, whether that teacher is motivated or unmotivated, whether that teacher is so Called a great teacher or a so called terrible teacher.

Whether that teacher is a true believer or that teacher's just kind of phoning it in. If you have a system in place, the system ensures that kids, the struggling students get what they need. And it doesn't depend on how a teacher's feeling on a particular day. And so the goal for struggling students is not to get every teacher to care enough. And I know that's hard to hear. So many principals come to me and say, I just wish teachers would care. But if you are relying on every teacher to care every day in order to make sure that your students are going to be successful, that's a really uneven, unreliable thing to hold onto, right? So the goal is not to get teachers to care enough.

The goal is to build a system that works whether your teachers care or not. Because people are human. Even all of us, you know, we've all had that day where we just go in and we just. I just, I'm tired. I don't care today, right? We're not bad people. We had a bad day. And if your system is relying and only works when everybody's having a good day, if your system only works when everybody feels like it, your system is going to fail.

So you need a system that's going to work when people are people, when they're human. 

Because people are always going to be human. They're always going to get tired, they're going to get overwhelmed, they're going to have weeks that, you know, they just are struggling or they're going to have hard seasons. These are not character flaws. This is just humanity and February. And if your struggling students outcomes depend on everybody being their best all the time, then your kids are not gonna get what they need. But here's the thing I love about systems. The system works even when the motivation isn't there.

And they keep working when you're out the building. They keep working when it's the third week of testing season and everybody's tired and exhausted. They keep working. When the crazy stuff is going on inside of your school or the district comes in and says he oh yeah, on top of everything else, we want you to do this other new thing. The system works regardless of how people feel. And that's the difference between chasing alignment and chasing buy in and building alignment. Right? When you, when you chase alignment and you're trying to get everybody to buy in, it means you're running around all the time, always motivating people, always reminding them of what to do, always following up and the System falls on your back, but the moment you stop, everything slips.

But when you build alignment, when you have a system in place with built in alignment, it means that you create structures where the right work happens by design and your job stops being chasing, checking and correcting everybody and starts being building and maintaining the right systems. So I want to leave you with a different question than the one that most principals are probably asking themselves right now. But you're builders, right? So you always ask better questions. So instead of asking how do I get my teachers reinvested in my struggling students, which is what most principals are probably asking right now, I want you to ask yourself this. What kind of system do I need for struggling students to get what they need regardless of where any individual teacher is on any given day? It's a completely different problem, but it's a much more solvable problem. So here's what I want you to take away from today.

You're struggling students are more than just struggling students. They're more than a data point. Your struggling students. They will show you honestly and clearly and without question exactly where your 100% vision lives in the building. Is it just words on a wall or is it living, breathing and alive in the work in every single classroom? So go look this week not at the data and the numbers, but look at the people around your students. Who's leaning in and supporting and really owning your struggling students, who's handing them off and moving on. Who is proactive about your struggling students and who's sitting back and waiting to be told.

And then, and this is the most important part, I want you to resist the urge to solve it by trying to change how individual teachers feel. Instead, I want you to start thinking what systems do you need to build so that doing right by struggling students is. It's just what happens here by design, consistently, regardless of what month it is. Because that's what 100% school really looks like. It's not a school where everybody's perfect and perfectly motivated all the time that they that's unrealistic. It's a school where the systems make the right thing happen, no matter how the adults feel on any given day. And so do this struggling student audit in your school.

Ask those four questions and then if you don't get the answers that you want, that's good because now you still have time to fix it before the end of the year.

And you're not going to fix it by trying to rally your teachers and get them to care about kids. Yes, we'd love for that. To happen probably is true, but not all the time. So instead of trying to rally your teachers and get them, you know, individual by individual by individual, to try to hope that you're going to get alignment by just touching enough individuals, you're going to put a system in place that makes alignment all automatic because it's the right system. And you focused on building a system that ensures that every struggling student gets what they need, no matter how the adults feel, because you put that system in place like a builder. I'll talk to you next time. Hey, builders. Before we finalize today's episode, if it got you thinking about your struggling students, don't Forget I have 10 implementation kits specifically designed to help you get a proactive Tier one system in place and get it in place in the next month.

These are ready to use. Tools and everything. Is there exactly the kind of thing to help you put a system in place? It's everything you need to install that system in your school. You don't have to build it from scratch. It's already done for you. So there's a link in the show notes or you can go to buildershipuniversity.com Implementation kits. 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.