The Assistant Principal Podcast

Show Notes, Episode 40: Team Coaching with John Willis

About this show:

Today, I am joined by John Willis, the founder of the Teaming Edge. John is here with us today to explore Team Coaching.

Notable Quotes

John Willis

“We’re not trying to fix anybody, because nobody is broken”

“Team coaching is a team leader who has the expertise of the best practices in coaching to help a team meet their goal”

“Once you are sitting down in front of the team, you are not coaching individuals, you are coaching an entity called the team”

“Start by co-creating with the team, some powerful team agreements… I use the term team agreements or working agreements that help support not just how the team meets, but psychological safety and team learning” 

“The next thing I would do is co-create a shared purpose with the team”

“If we have team members in a room and there is a team member who doesn’t have a role, we can pretend like they are a part of the team, but the reality is they are not included and they are a not a part of that team.”

“When we ask ourselves ‘what do we need to learn?’ that gives us an opportunity to be curious and investigate what is going on right now in our industry that could help support us in this particular area”

“Collective teacher efficacy has a tremendous impact on student achievement. So, just having a group of educators that believe that they have the resources, they have the knowledge, the skills, to come together to make a difference, they are more likely to make a difference. Now why is that? Because they are more likely to implement the things that will make a difference.”

“When you believe you can make a difference, you are more likely to engage in the actions that leaders and teachers need to take in order to make a difference.”

“If our teachers do not feel safe when we come together to meet, then we are not going to meet our outcomes”

Frederick:

“Especially now, we need to know what is happening in peoples’ lives, and we need to acknowledge that, so we need to get know our teachers.”

Links:

John’s websites: Theteamingedge.com or Johnwilliscoaching.com

My email: [email protected] 

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

Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition 

Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

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

Show Notes, Episode 38: Just Put the Key in the Door with Maddie Jurek

About this show:

Yay! You finally found time to get into a classroom and do a big observation! You sit down, congratulating yourself for prioritizing, and the teacher and students dive into a lesson on quantum physics. Wait! What? Of course, this is an exaggeration, but most of us have found ourselves tasked with observing a teacher whose content we did not fully understand. We dive into this topic today with our guest, Dr. Maddie Jurek.

Notable Quotes

Dr. Maddie Jurek:

“The hardest part for me whenever I went in to observe those lessons, truly, was putting the key in the door and turning the knob to walk into the room. After I walked into the room I realized, I don’t have to focus on content here… I am here to focus on instruction, and there is a difference between instruction and content.”

“Good teaching is good teaching, no matter the content of the classroom”

“One of the most important attributes for an education leader is an attitude of being self-aware”

“So often we get tunnel vision of what is going on right here in our schools and I might not be seeing what they are doing in another school that may be something effective that I can do AS n administrator in my building”

“We can’t make excuses for their past experiences, but we can do our best with what we have now”

“I really am not afraid to say ‘I don’t know’ when I don’t know to a teacher”

“Don’t be quick to make a decision on something if there is doubt creeping in your mind”

“Go in with the confidence that you have something to offer. You were hired for a reason”

“I always encourage our APs here just to ask questions of their teachers and develop a more conversational rapport”

“You have to take the plunge. You have to let yourself be uncomfortable”

“Put the key in the door and step in the classroom, because so many times there are so many things that will prevent us from doing that”

Frederick:

“One of the switches that I advocate that we flip as administrators is understanding that our role is to grow great teachers. That’s how we improve our schools, that’s how we support our kids. And to do that, we need to support our teachers every step of the way”

“We are asking you to do something important. And how do we know it is important? Because we are investing resources in creating the time for you”

“We don’t have to do a flywheel for everybody. We can choose a grade level or we can choose a subject area”

“Teachers can be feedback junkies, just like students can want stickers on their papers when you hand them back”

“The most common practice that I see is that we do Professional Development and then we don’t follow up specifically on that PD”

“To hear people from buildings that are different than yours, from districts that are different than yours, to hear the perspectives they bring can be really valuable, not because you need to change yours, but you may understand why you do what you do a little bit better”

“If you never feel imposter syndrome, you’re not pushing your edge”

Links:

My email: [email protected] 

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

Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition 

Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

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

Show Notes, Episode 36: Parent Partnerships with Dr. Leigh Ann Alford-Keith

About this show:

“We talk a lot about social emotional learning and the whole child, but the whole child includes the family.” These aren’t my words. They came from today’s guest when she appeared on the show back on episode 25. We went on to discuss what a partnership is, and how teachers’ thinking needed to change. We concluded by noting that the first step in building better partnerships was to view parents as equal partners, not adversaries. It was a rich episode, but we only scratched the surface of parent partnerships. Today, we get below that surface with our very special guest, Dr. Leigh Ann Alford—Keith.

Notable Quotes

Dr. Alford-Keith:

“We talk a lot about social-emotional learning and the whole child, but the whole child includes the family”

“If we tend to think of only events as opportunities for family engagement or strictly the conferences as opportunities for family engagement, then that is also a structure that is creating barriers, because truthfully, any day is an opportunity for family engagement.”

“We have to be doing our diversity, equity, and inclusion beliefs work. That has to be a necessary component if you want to work on family engagement work, because you need to be able to have those reflections about what privileges you may have, your positionality, and what biases you may be having”

“Many of us have been in meetings where the family’s input was not really solicited, and questions were not really asked, and the family was expected to agree passively with the educators at the table.”

“We need to yield to families because there are things that they know that we don’t know. And I think of that most with culturally sustaining pedagogy”

“It is a both-and, not an either-or. You don’t have to think of engaging families or supporting your teachers. You can think of ‘how will engaging families support my teachers’”

“The community can lend knowledge that the educators don’t have”

“You will have to prove that you seriously want their input”

“Families don’t leave your school if they feel like a part of it. They leave your school because they feel like you’re not part of it”

“Journal for Research on Leadership Education: Stanley and Gilzene, Listening, Engaging, Advocating, and Partnering (LEAP) A Model for Responsible Community Engagement for Educational Leaders” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/19427751221076409?journalCode=jrla

“What structures in my school need to change so that we can partner with families?”

“The parent is not mad at you. They are mad at you and you are a representative of the system”

“As a school leader, you the person in the position to make adjustments to those systems in order to create a partnership orientation”

“It is not about doing more, it is about doing it differently”

Frederick:

“The 6 dimensions of organizations is a really simplified model of organizations, that, if you think about a pyramid, the top of the pyramid is purpose and that is what should drive our organizations”

“The work of leadership then is actually using change processes to create better alignment in your organization. If you really step back, that’s why we do change, that’s why we do leadership. It is all about the idea of creating an organization where our people, structures, and resources are all aligned with what we’re trying to do.”

“I have heard a number of my special education friends talk about how much better their IEP meetings were the last couple years when they were having them remotely because parents felt much safer, because parents were in their home, they were much more comfortable, it was much less physically intimidating, and they were much stronger participants. And that’s a great example of something that we can do that is very simple”

“The kids that are the most vulnerable are the ones that most need their families involved”

“Every family has a history of interaction with the school system”

“I need to invest in the community before I ask them to invest in me”

Links:

My email: [email protected] 

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

Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition 

Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

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

A recap of the week's five Strategic Leader emails. This week featured a sequence around the theme of "five things you can do now for a more productive fall." A bonus at the end is how I turned some negative thinking around to rewrite my own (flawed) story.

Show Notes, Episode 34: Persistent Growth with Emily Parks

About this show:

We are all teachers here, right? So, I can be honest, Right? We love all children equally and we have no favorites. That said, there are always those students who give us energy. They bring a passion for learning that inspires us to be at our best. I had those kinds of learners when I was a middle school teacher, when I was a professor at Clemson University, and I have them now as I work with APs in the APEx program. In fact, today’s guest is one of those special “students” because she is passionate about her learning, always brings her A game, and inspires me to be better.

Notable Quotes

Emily Parks:

“If I want my teachers to grow and learn and be better, and I want my students to learn and grow and be better, then I have to learn and grow and be better”

“Professional learning has to be a priority”

“[5 minute coaching] gets them to be reflective without me trying to push them into being reflective”

“One thing that I really liked about my APEx experience is that it exposed me to areas of leadership that I may have not realized on my own that I did need”

“Keep on learning and keep on growing… the world is changing and education is growing and if we aren’t changing, we are going to get left behind”

Frederick:

“It isn’t about fixing stuff, it isn’t about making the world perfect, it’s just about making things a little bit better”

“One of the things we can do better is to make our own learning and our own growth goals more transparent to teachers”

“We can’t manage time; we have to manage priorities”

“5 minute coaching:

Start with a positive affirmation

3 questions and then BE QUIET and that is the hardest part

1.     What else is going well?

2.     Were there any surprises?

3.     Would you do anything differently?”

“APEx is a community without professional development, not professional development with a community”

Links:

John Maxwell: https://www.johnmaxwell.com/start-your-journey/

Brian Mendler:https://www.tlc-sems.com/Brian-Mendler/ 

My email: [email protected] 

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

Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition 

Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

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

Link to the daily email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition 

Show Notes, Episode 32: The Flywheel with Dr. Melissa Burns

About this show:

In Jim Collins’ Iconic book, “Good to Great”, he describes the flywheel. An organization’s flywheel consists of some core practices that, when executed consistently, drive organizational excellence. If you’ve been listening for a while, you ‘ve heard me reference the flywheel, but we’ve never done a deep dive. The basic flywheel for schools goes like this: provide professional development for teachers, follow up with targeted observations, use the observation data to inform the next round of PD. When we execute this cycle repeatedly, we grow great teachers, and great teachers equals great schools. Let’s be real, and let’s be clear – the flywheel is going to look different in different schools. This fall in APEx we will be focusing on building each part of the flywheel, so I thought it would be a good time to bring back Melissa Burns, one of our most popular guests, to talk about their instructional team and what that flywheel concept looks like in her school.

Notable Quotes

Dr. Melissa Burns:

“Use collaboration when working with others in your instructional leadership team.  We have some fabulous, amazing leaders, teacher leaders, specialists, and administrators. Collaborate. It is the work of many that makes the difference.”

Frederick:

“Peer observation is one of the most powerful forms of professional development there is”

“There are legitimate reasons why people are resistant to change. If they are resistant, that is telling us that either we haven’t helped them see what the real value is, or it is too much effort for the given value”

Links:

My email: [email protected] 

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

Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition 

Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

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