The Assistant Principal Podcast

Show Notes, Episode 21: Meeting the Needs of New Teachers

About this show:

In today’s episode, guest host Mara Buskey leads us through a discussion with two relatively new teachers about what they need from their assistant principals, how they view leadership, and what kind of feedback and style of coaching best meets their needs. This is an inspiring episode that may yield some surprising but valuable insights.

Notable Quotes

Mara Buskey

“I can very much remember being a student and the intense feeling that would occur when an administrator would walk in the room. It was like immediately everything was on edge”

Frederick Buskey

“I think our default is collaborative; as educators we want to help people grow and we want that dialogue. I think that we need to be more directive more often, especially with newer teachers. And I don’t mean directive in a way of ‘you have to do this’ but directive in a way that ‘oh, I see that you’re struggling with this. Here, here are some things that can help you. Let me help you with this.”

“your generation is fundamentally different in that you view feedback as something that is there to help you grow”

“we can give feedback in different ways: just saying ‘oh you’re doing a great job’ doesn’t really tell me much… the most powerful feedback is very specific”

“whether we are an administrator or a teacher, when someone makes a suggestion or has an idea, the first step is really to consider the perspective and to not say ‘oh no, that won’t work based on my perspective’ but to seek out the other perspectives”

Kemberly Merritt

“for teachers that come in, if they can have the support of someone that is going to give them a step by step guidance, it would give them a more secure feeling”

“It is more resourceful to me if you come in and express to me ‘this is what you need to do, this is how this needs to be done, this is what you can use to do better’ versus telling me at a later time or at the end of the year… if you tell me now, I can correct it now.”

 “this year when [my AP] came in… he would come in and he wouldn’t even worry about me. He would talk to the students, he would sit at the table with the students… he would sit there and work with the students on what they were doing to make the students be more comfortable with him being in the classroom, and I didn’t see someone sitting in the back with a pen and paper writing, I saw someone that was engaging in the lessons with the students which made it a lot easier for me”

“you have to have a relationship with your students to have a good year. That’s one of the things that I have expounded on. I start off my first week of school building a relationship with my students and then everything else follows”

“I think all teachers are leaders because you are leading the students in your classrooms. They are looking at us as leaders, so I would say anyone that is teaching or guiding anybody I would consider them to be a leader.”

“Leadership comes in all shapes, forms, sizes, and personalities, but the leadership that is given has to be accepted so that you can grow.”

Leah Downing

“tell me the things that I’m doing great, and then the things I need to work on and I can do better on, and then finish up with another way that I’m awesome”

“one area I want to grow is looking at curriculum more big picture. What I mean by that is that I know my third grade standards, the things I need to teach them, and where they need to be at the end of the year. But I really have no clue what they do in 4th grade or what they do in 3nd grade… I know that if I have that big understanding of their math curriculum and their reading curriculum, I would be so much better able to support my students because I would better be able to pinpoint exactly where they’re learning the things that they have gaps in”

“one important thing about leadership, particularly with classroom teachers or people who aren’t necessarily in a leadership position at a school, sometimes it can just be seen that there is a need and being the person to fill it or being willing to fill it”

“its all about relationships. At the end of the day, all of us in a school building are working to build contributing members of society and relationships are at the heart of that.”

Links:

Frederick email: [email protected] 

Mara 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 20: Change Starts from Within

About this show:

The topic of this show is restorative practices, but the show title is the key to implementing such practices: Change starts from within. In this episode we take a detour from the common one-two-three approaches to kicking off a restorative justice program in your school. Instead, we focus on you. Or more accurately, we focus on getting you to focus on you? If the discipline approaches you are relying on aren’t working, then this podcast is for you. Just don’t expect a magic bullet or paint-by-numbers approach. The change will start from within.

Notable Quotes

Gabby Grant

“Restorative practices in schools really focus on relationship building, a sense of community, while centering on accountability while repairing wrongdoing and harm. Versus a punitive punishment-based system that really focuses on individualized behavior that is rooted in punishment around shame and judgement that isn’t really focused on future behavior.”

“One of the biggest pieces of a school that is implementing restorative practices is that there is a culture of trust and value that everyone present is a valued member of that community and school, therefore everyone has a voice in what happens to them in the discipline process”

“The first step in understanding and implementing restorative practices is understanding how you handle conflict yourself”

“If you want students to have open conversations, you need to be able to have them amongst yourselves first”

“It isn’t authentic if the transformation doesn’t start from within and then spread out, it isn’t going to be sustainable”

“This type of work transforms all facets of your life”

“Change starts from within”

Frederick

“If punishment worked, you wouldn’t be inundated with referrals”

“The system is really designed to extract student compliance”

“The change will begin with you, Assistant Principals” 

“If you’re not willing to follow up on it, or don’t have the capacity to follow up on whatever you’re doing, don’t do it… If you can’t follow up on it and help them, all you did was put pressure on them”

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 X: Title

About this show:

Serving exceptional students can be one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of school leadership. In this episode Elizabeth Schumpert, Director of Student Support Services for Saluda County Schools, helps us gain some insights into supporting exceptional students and their families, and working with the variety of support services and personnel that make up part of the team that cares for exceptional students.

Notable Quotes

Elizabeth Schumpert

“When the conversation turns tough, a lot of times the administrator should be the one to step in and help guide back towards smoother waters”

“The more we support our special education teachers, the more effective they can be in the classroom”

“Always keep in the forefront, that the student is first a general education student who just happens to qualify for specialized instruction”

“Nobody wants to get that phone call that their child has a discipline referral, but a lot of times you just have to listen. And you’re going to hear that parent take a deep breath. And when they take that deep breath, now they’re ready to have that conversation”

“You’re going to hear me use this word a lot, because it’s all about Relationships”

“Its your job to represent what is best for that student and as long as that is in the forefront of any conversation, you can’t go wrong”

“Remember that children with disabilities may have one or two disabilities, but they have hundreds of abilities, so focus on the abilities”

Frederick

“If we could get our APs to embrace the idea that we get into the meeting, and before we start the official stuff, let’s say something really positive about that kid and about the relationship we have with the kid. I think that would go a long way.”

“Use the behavior intervention plan to get to the problem, instead of just the symptom”

“Once we figure out the triggers, then we’re pretty close to figuring out what the root problem is and then we can start doing things”

“It’s only punishment if it decreases the behavior”

“Every IEP doesn’t have to end with a signed document. There can be good reasons and healthy reasons even to say, ‘you know what, we need more information, or we need to think more about this, lets come back and revisit this.’”

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 18: The Math of Leverage

About this show:

The four principles of leverage, described last week in episode 17, can guide us to creating progress in our organizations. A key to progress is focusing on incremental progress as opposed to big changes to fix things. In today’s episode, we will apply leverage to a real school situation.

Notable Quotes

Frederick

“If you invest 5 minutes a day in one of these teachers, over the course of a week we can probably make a difference”

“One of the reasons that students are tardy to class is because class doesn’t start on time. Or you check into class and there’s nothing going on, so why hurry up to be there? So starting work at the beginning of class gives students more reason to get to class”

“in the course of a day, if you get one less referral, that’s another 20-45 minutes that you get back… now imagine what we can do to support those teachers”

“I would challenge you to go around and look at the classrooms that you get the most referrals from. I am going to bet that in most cases, 70-80% of those cases, those teachers do not teach bell to bell. That’s when problems are happening, during the beginning of class and end of class.”

“We can’t necessarily make a teacher love kids and we can’t turn a teacher into a charismatic kid magnet, but we can give them very simple, concrete strategies to start building rapport with their kids”

“Don’t go after it unless you’re willing to invest the time to follow up”

“I want things to be immediately better for me, which means I get more time to invest in teachers”

“There are problems all over our schools, there are teachers that need to get better, there are opportunities for growth, but our time is so limited. There are so many tasks facing you, just focus on one teacher and just focus on one thing for that teacher. Just make it a little bit better, and then once you’ve got that, then figure out where the next place is to go”

“One teacher, one change”

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 X: Title

About this show:

Ever wonder why we are always driving change in our schools? Ever wonder why change initiatives rarely seem to produce the promised results? What if there was a better way? What if, instead of making sweeping changes, we just made tomorrow a little bit better today? If the concept of incremental yet immediate change appeals to you, then listen to todays show on the four principles of leverage

Notable Quotes

Frederick

The work of leadership is really the work to align organizations because when the people, resources, and structures are all in alignment with the purpose, then you have an effective organization that is making progress and that people feel good about working in.

Leadership is inherently connected with change

Usually what happens with big change is we don’t conclude it, it just kind of fades away and we get to abandonment, so we never get to the evaluation phase

Instead of looking at all kinds of changes and being sophisticated, lets be as simple as possible.

Motivation = Value / Effort

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 Intro

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This podcast compliments APEx, the Assistant Principal Exceleration program, but you certainly don’t need to be an APEx member to find value in the podcast.

It’s just me today talking about the transition to being driven by the important, instead of the urgent. The beginning of today’s show will recap a couple of the frameworks of strategic leaderships. We will then dive into five strategies for being strategically reactive.

Before we do that, I want to celebrate. The first episode of this podcast released in August 2021, with six additional episodes released sporadically prior to the new year. Beginning in mid-January we have released a new episode every Thursday and last week the show topped 1000 total downloads! We have listeners in 41 states and nine countries, so thanks to everyone for becoming a part of this community. 

I also need to give a big shoutout to the podcast team, which is a family affair. Editing each episode, uploading it and then working on the website is a lot of work and I could not produce a weekly podcast without Lance Buskey, who assumed all of those duties at the beginning of this year. Lance, your help not only makes this show possible, but the quality of your work brings something else – peace of mind.

If you found this show via the daily email, Instagram, or LinkedIn, then you have Mara Buskey to thank. Mara has been instrumental in helping to spread the word. She brings a creativity and energy to our social media posts that I cannot match. And if you subscribe to our daily leadership email, you can thank Mara for that as well. She is also coordinating a special episode of this podcast that will feature a panel of first-year teachers discussing what they need from their APs, so you’ll get to hear her voice soon.

Okay, to today’s topic.

Back in episode 1 we talked about the Six Dimensions of organizations:

Purpose

People, structures, resources

External forces

Internal forces (culture)

The degree of alignment within the organization determines how successful the organization is in fulfilling its purpose.

The work of leaders is to increase organizational alignment. Increasing alignment leads to achieving purpose. It also improves internal forces, or culture.

A fundamental challenge to doing the purposeful work of alignment is the way urgency drives our actions. In episode 14 we talked about the Eisenhower Matrix, which divides tasks into four quadrants:

When we are driven by urgency, we focus on quadrants 1 and 3, at the expense of quadrant 2, which is the work of aligning systems and supporting teacher growth.

This brings us to the two most important responsibilities of school administrators:

1.     Keep everyone safe

2.     Improve outcomes for students by helping teachers grow

And since growth activities are primarily q2, in order for APs to become strategic leaders, they need to be able to escape the treadmill of the urgent.

There are four keys to getting off the treadmill. The first of those is to act with intention on a daily basis. At the end of today’s podcast, I’ll encourage you to sign up for my daily leadership email, specifically because it helps you to set a leadership intention each day. But I digress.

Ideally being intentional means being proactive, but even when we are reacting, we can become intentional by applying five strategies to become strategically reactive.

Strategic reaction, applied consistently, will help us to slowly recapture some time to devote to quadrant two. More importantly, applying the five strategies conditions us to be intentional. 

When forced to react to a situation, you have five options for action. The actions are arranged hierarchically. Think of them as a sorting method. Try to apply the first action. If you can’t, move to the second option and so on. 

1.     Give it up. Ask yourself whether this is a necessary task. You may be surprised how many tasks are not important (quadrant 3). If it is not important, let it go. Items in this category include lots of email, especially the FYI types, some meetings, and paperwork. This is also an effective strategy for dealing with requests the appear mundane or capricious. 

2.     Give it back. Some issues are important to others but not to you or the organization. These shouldn’t be ignored as they can impact the invested party’s motivation. Think of these issues as monkeys. When someone tries to give you their monkey, give it back to them! You don’t need to care for other people’s monkeys. You can give monkeys back by:

a.     Acknowledging the concern and emotions of the monkey owner

b.     Rephrasing the concern as you understand it

c.     Providing them with a task as a next step. This task could include:

                                               i.     Further reflection on the root problem

                                             ii.     Developing a list of options

                                            iii.     Talking with others

                                            iv.     Doing some research

                                              v.     Scheduling a future meeting

These steps help assure the person that you have heard them and validated their concern, but they also put the onus on the person to solve their own problem, or care for their own monkey. 

Some people will never bring that monkey back to you again. That’s good, because if they aren’t willing to work for their own monkey, why should you? Others may spend some energy in the task you asked them to do and come back. That’s a sign that they are invested in taking care of their own monkey and you can respond appropriately.

3.     Give it away. Ideally, you should spend most of your time doing what only you can do. That may mean do...

Show Notes, Episode X: Title

About this show:

Dr. Melissa Burns is the principal at Sara Collins Elementary School in Greenville, South Carolina. Melissa is a remarkable principal and leader who balances wisdom and practicality. One of Melissa’s many superpowers is developing other people’s leadership. In the first half of this episode, we discuss the importance of developing teacher-leaders and how to do it. In the second half of the episode, Melissa provides some practical advice for how busy assistant principals can hone their instructional leadership skills.

Notable Quotes

Dr. Melissa Burns

“Teachers really listen to other teachers”

“It is important to take the characteristics of particular teachers and help push them with their strengths”

“day to day, we are provided so many opportunities and challenges that we just don’t know of and we can’t anticipate, but being calm and focused in the moment is important”

3 ways to stay calm under pressure: “I try to take deep breathes and stay calm myself, I try to involve others around me… and lastly, just know what you know and then what you need to figure out and learn”

“Be in the classroom”

“There are some things, at times, that I have to do that only I can do, and [I need to] let other people grow their leadership around me”

“Put students first. That’s why we are here in schools. If you love your focus of the students being first and foremost for your priorities, then you might need to look at doing something else for your career or intentions”

Frederick

“Having Assistant Principals actually talk through with teachers what they’re thinking and their thinking process is so that they are making that leadership behavior and leadership decision making that more transparent to teachers and in turn help them understand leadership”

“we tend to think sometimes that leaders have to be able to do it all, but especially when we’re talking about teacher leadership, they don’t have to do it all. So that idea that somebody can be a niche leader and can be really good at one thing… that doesn’t mean they can’t lead in the area they’re good at.”

“teachers coming into classrooms now are coming into very different situations. The classrooms are more complex, they’re more diverse, but also there are social issues that they are being impacted with that we didn’t have to face when we were beginning teachers”

“Melissa, you’ve been talking about other people and how you rely on other people. And when there is a tough situation, you don’t try to handle it all yourself, one of your first responses is “Who else do I need to involve in this?” and that’s why you’re a great principal. Because you nurture people so that they can step in and support those situations.”

“Develop other people’s leadership and then when you are in a tough situation, make sure that one of your top strategies is getting help from other people. Its not designed so that you do it alone”

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)

The Assistant Principal Podcast

Episode X: Tracking Teacher Development

Why does it always feel like improving teacher quality is an uphill battle? One big reason is that our schools are not structured to facilitate consistent teacher growth. Focusing on helping teachers to grow requires us to focus on the structures that can support growth first. In this episode we look at on important structure, the teacher tracking document. The teacher tracking document helps us to develop and document a coherent and consistent approach to helping individual and groups of teachers grow.

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today, I will walk us through how to use a teacher tracking document as part of a systems approach to teacher development.

After listening to this podcast, you might want to head over to my website, frederickbuskey.com/appodcast, to watch the video. There are several key graphics that go along with today’s show that should help you. I will also include images in the show notes.

Back in episode one I talked about the six dimensions of organizations. If we think about a three-sided pyramid representing an organization, the pinnacle is the organizational purpose. The three points along the pyramid’s base are people, structures, and resources. In the perfect organization, which doesn’t exist, the people, structures, and resources are perfectly aligned with the organization’s purpose.

In the simplest terms, the work of leadership is improving alignment between the purpose, the people, the structures and the resources.

Structures include buildings, the arrangement of space within those buildings, but also the rules, policies, expectations, and practices that shape our actions. A block schedule is a structure that is fundamentally different than an 8-period day. They exist for different purposes and if we try and teach during a block the way we did when we had 8 periods, it doesn’t work. 

Our skills need to align with our structures, and both need to be aligned to our purpose. When we ask people to work towards a specific purpose, yet we have structures that aren’t aligned with that purpose, it creates a situation in which people feel like they are constantly swimming up stream. Teachers experience this misalignment often:

• Teachers are expected to plan rich and powerful lessons, yet they have 30-minutes a day to plan.
• Teachers are expected to use formative assessments to inform their focus, yet we have pacing guides and benchmark tests.
• Teachers are expected to become masters of pedagogy, yet they work under pressure and expectations that make risk-taking difficult and reflection almost impossible.

This misalignment makes it harder for teachers to excel at their core job and it increases pressure and frustration.

As assistant principals, you are experiencing a congruent set of circumstances.

The purpose of schools is to help young people develop agency over their lives and to become responsible democratic citizens. Or something like that.

The roles of the principal and assistant principal are integral structures. School administrators have tow primary functions that are core to the purpose of the school: 

1. Keep everyone safe
2. Create better outcomes for kids

However, we don’t teach kids and the #1 Influence on student achievement is the classroom teacher. So, the formula is simple:

Better teachers = better student learning.

Logically then, once we make sure that everyone is safe, our next priority is to focus on teacher development. If better teachers = better student learning then, outside of safety, the most important things we do are the things that help our teacher to continually grow.

The challenge is that there is all kinds of stuff that gets in the way.

Why does this happen? Because our structures are not aligned to our purpose.

What has happened in many schools, is that while the stated purpose of the assistant principal is to contribute to the quality of instruction in the building, the unstated purpose has become to deal with all the issues that come up in day-to-day operations. Our school structures have followed suit:

• We communicate via email, which demands our constant attention.
• We carry walkie talkies so we can always be reached.
• We accept that interrupting what we are working on is part of the job.
• We use a narrow set of observation practices that are more aligned to accountability than to teacher development.

The cumulative impact of these mis-aligned structures and purpose has a profound impact on how we lead:

• We mistake urgency for purpose in our day-to-day behaviors, so the important purposeful work of teacher development gets displaced by urgent tasks. There are tasks that are both urgent and important- especially those dealing with safety. However, there are many urgent tasks that are less-important or not important. For example, the parent newsletter, school social media posts, or the report to the school board. I can hear you saying “wait, these things are important!” Yes and no. None of these things will improve student learning as much as helping a teacher to get better.
• The problem is that all these things are urgent, so they feel important, even though – compared to safety and teacher growth, they are not.

• The tool that has helped me with this concept is the Eisenhower Matrix. The EM as I affectionately call it has four quadrants. The two upper quadrants are important, and the two lower quadrants are un-important, or less important. The two left quadrants are urgent, and the two right quadrants are not urgent.
• What tends to happen is that school leaders focus on the two left quadrants – the urgent work, instead of the two upper quadrants – the important work.
• Teacher development is quadrant 2 work. Quadrant 2 is important but not urgent.
• This focus on urgency ...

Show Notes, Episode 13: What Makes a Great AP

Today I’m joined by Brenda Byrd, an Assistant Superintendent for School Leadership (and a former South Carolina Elementary Principal of the Year and a National Distinguished Principal). Brenda works for Greenville County School District in Greenville South Carolina. Brenda is here with us to talk about what makes an AP great.

Notable Quotes

Brenda Byrd

“Gone are the days where you are mandating new initiatives across the board. It needs to be few and far between when we take that approach. We really need to start looking for those teacher leaders, those early adopters, who may be interested in doing work like that, and let them help you work out the kinks and look for those success opportunities.”

“You do have to have effective practices with operational and management to be able to transition more into that instructional leadership.”

“I think time management is one of the most important skill sets that effective leaders need to have, and that is so true for assistant principals”

“You really have to manage your time well because if you don’t, then you are just in response mode all the time, you are just being reactive. You have to plan proactively to schedule your responsibilities. Start by scheduling the most important tasks because if you don’t, if those are left as an afterthought, like classroom observations, they’re not going to happen consistently”

“Good intentions are just the beginning… you’ve gotta have develop systems to plan and execute your responsibilities”

“A good portion of our job as administrators is responding to whatever the immediate needs are and we have to realize that those aren’t interruptions, that’s part of our job… and we have to be able to adapt and respond to those needs when appropriate.”

“We need school leaders who model their own desire for professional learning”

“Children who are willing to invest in them. Adults need people who genuinely care about them and who take the time to develop relationships.”

“I was a principal at a large school, and I wanted to be sure that at some point during the year that at some point during the year that all of my staff members got a handwritten note. They didn’t know it, but I kept a little checklist of that just so I could keep up with that and make sure that I had shared some love and appreciation with each person through a handwritten note.”

“Assistant principals need to ask for what they need”

“You cannot underestimate the power of the relationship… if we don’t have relationships with students and the adults we serve, we can’t do the work”

Frederick

“When we think about our pipelines and our gap between assistant principals and principals, it’s that managing change and instructional leadership are two of the biggest pieces”

“One of the things I see from assistant principals is that they are so eager to help everybody, that they overcommit and then they can’t follow through”

“Lots of people have good ideas. But who is willing to do the work?”

“Positivity is “it’s going great” when it’s not, optimism is “We’re going to get through this””

“the message to all assistant principals out there is: you’re interviewing everyday.”

“The best people in our business are still working on their craft and still trying to get better and they are taking risks to get better… every AP and principal out there should be willing to take some risks to continue to grow and improve their craft”

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 X: Title

About this show:

Today I’m joined by Becca Silver the founder and lead consultant at The Whole Educator. Becca has been posting some great stuff on LinkedIn, which is where we met. Becca is here to help us explore the AP – Instructional coach relationship.

Notable Quotes

Becca Silvers

“Teachers are diverse learners, just like their students, we should not be giving out blanket coaching strategies”

“Don’t treat people the way you would want to be treated, treat people the way they want to be treated. And that takes skill! It takes skill to understand how people want to be treated, right, listening skills, an ability to read people, emotional intelligence”

“Some coaches don’t see themselves as leaders”

“[instructional coaches] are not formal observers and evaluators, they are the champions of teachers, standing for teachers to be at their highest potential”

“we need coaches to be able to work with people that aren’t necessarily like them”

“during the pandemic and especially this year, you are seeing instructional coaches being pulled all over the place, they are covering classes, any catch all jobs that need get done… and it’s a total misuse of talent in the building.”

“Brown’s definition of leadership: ‘A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes and who has the courage to develop that potential.’ And I see the coaches’ role being that.”

“I think that coaches job is to help[ teachers reflect, be a partner in reflection, and there can be vulnerability in that… be the safe space for teachers to be vulnerable, to make mistakes, its safe to take risks here, and there is no formal evaluation at all”

“how wonderful would it be for an AP to say “hey look, I am your thought partner here and when we are helping to grow teachers, we do this together, and I am here to support you and you are here to support me right? We are different parts of the body that surrounds and supports teachers”

“Adults also operate on a growth and fixed mindset. A lot of the times when we have a teacher that is stuck. many times it is because they are operating under a fixed mindset”

“Part of building trust is being transparent about our intentions, motive, and agendas”

“Underlying all human behaviors are peoples’ mindsets and motivations, and we want to be sure that we are being trained ourselves to address people’s underlying mindsets and motivations when we want teachers’ behaviors to change”

Frederick

“One of the things that I am trying to help administrators come to the place on is that their role is to support teachers. As a principal or assistant principal, you have two jobs: keep everyone safe and improve student learning”

“This is the problem right? That we can’t easily access models. We can talk about coaching models, teaching models, but when it comes to what should this relationship look like, it gets harder because there isn’t that stuff out there.”

“Teach your teachers that you are there to support them”

“people were promoted and put in these roles (instructional coaches) and not only did we not do a great job at telling the coaches what their job is, but we didn’t tell the administrators how to use them either, so there is this big disconnect”

“the essential problem is that we don’t take a systems approach to growing teachers”

“Traditional coaching is about doing, transformational coaching is about seeing”

Links:

Becca Silver at The Whole Educator: https://www.thewholeeducator.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)