Show Notes, Episode 29: Culture with Brad Coleman

About this show:

Culture. What is it? How do we shape it? Why is it so critical? You could fill an entire library with books related to culture and how leaders influence it. Or you could listen to this episode of The Assistant Principal Podcast with our special guest, Brad Coleman.

Notable Quotes

Brad Coleman:

“it’s okay to complain and be frustrated, but you need to come with some solutions as well”

“I tell our teachers, I tell our students, school is hard now, we have to find the good and celebrate it”

“I don’t care who you are, everyone likes to be acknowledged positively”

“When I take over a school, I flood it with acknowledgements and thank you’s… That’s how you change culture, with just little things like that”

“Our teachers, if you would ask them here, we treat them well. We take care of them, not just on teacher appreciation week… we take care of them every day. And if we do that for our teachers, we expect them to do the same thing for the students, and they do.”

“If the student struggles in reading, we know what to do; we have all of the data and all of the tools to teach the student how to read better. The behavior is the same, you have to re-teach those behaviors… we know consequences don’t change behavior. Relationships do, trust does, and that’s what we try to do”

3 things to build culture: “community, consistency, and positive acknowledgment”

“Leadership is in the details. I know we have to be really really big picture in the jobs that we do, but just like we ask our teachers to find the good in the classrooms and acknowledge the good, we’ve got to be very in tune to the details, because we can miss things very easily”

“Culture is hard to build it, but its easy to lose it if you don’t pay attention to the signs”

Frederick: 

“I’ve heard teachers so many times say ‘well I am not going to reward the kids for doing what they should do.’ Which is the complete opposite message of what you’re sending, which is ‘We definitely want to reward people for what they’re doing because that is how we reinforce that behavior and motivate people to keep going, especially when it gets hard”

“Sometimes teachers talk about discipline, but what they really want is retribution because they are angry and hurt”

“If we are going to remove a student from class, then we’re going to hold them accountable, but we are also going to be accountable for making the effort to make it right and get them back on track”

Links:

Brad’s email: [email protected]

My email: [email protected] 

The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html 

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Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

Blog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)