The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast | The #1 Downloaded School Leadership Show

She studies why anti-racist professional development in schools so often fails to change how teachers actually treat students — and what works instead. Dr Abby C. Emerson is an assistant professor of Childhood Education at Hunter College, CUNY, where her research spans anti-racist and abolitionist teacher education, restorative justice, and the critique of whiteness in educational spaces.

She's been named National Association for Multicultural Education's Critical Teacher of the Year, and this fall she releases her book, From Anti-Racism to Professional Learning for Liberating Schools, with Harvard Education Press.

Most schools running anti-racist professional development hit the same wall: teachers learn the theory, reflect on their own bias, update a unit — and the discipline data doesn't move. Dr. Abby C. Emerson studied schools across New York City to find out why, and she found the fix isn't another workshop. It's handing the mic to students.

📚 What You'll Learn

• Why the three most common anti-racist PD strategies rarely change discipline outcomes
• How one high school's student-led equity committee exposed teacher bias that surveys never could
• Why "call-out culture" undermines anti-racist work faster than it builds it
• How to communicate proactively with parents before backlash starts
• Why breaking curriculum change into small, sequenced steps outperforms sweeping overhauls

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🧠 Key Insight #1: Why Anti-Racist Professional Development Doesn't Change Discipline Data

• What's broken: Schools run PD on structural racism, individual reflection, and curriculum revision, then assume the culture has shifted.
• The shift: Track whether discipline outcomes actually move — not whether teachers can articulate the theory.
• Impact: Educators reported updating their curriculum while the same students kept getting pulled out of class for the same behavior, because the PD never reached school-wide policy.

🧠 Key Insight #2: The Student Voice Committee That Exposed Teacher Bias

• What's broken: Adult-only equity committees rely on surveys and self-report — data teachers can rationalize away.
• The shift: One high school trained students on its equity committee to collect, analyze, and present discipline data directly to staff, with no teacher in the room.
• Impact: Teachers only reversed their denial when white students said out loud that Black classmates were being punished for the exact same behavior they weren't.

🧠 Key Insight #3: Why Call-Out Culture Kills Anti-Racist Progress

• What's broken: PD that turns into "gotcha" policing — correcting language, catching mistakes in real time — makes people defensive and shuts the conversation down.
• The shift: Build the relationship first: one-on-one conversations, patience, and space for staff to say when they don't feel great about the PD.
• Impact: Principals who built trust before pushing change kept staff in the work, instead of losing them to resistance or resignation.

🗣️ DR. ABBY C. EMERSON QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Racism is not just about a couple bad apples, but that racism is a systemic structural piece that impacts all of us."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

"Education and teaching can be used as a tool to really challenge inequality in all its forms."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

"That relationship piece is more important than calling people out."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

"That sort of policing of each other was ultimately really detrimental."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

"I really tried to get ahead of the conversation so families knew it was coming home."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

🧗‍♂️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Schedule one 15-minute conversation with a teacher who's pushed back on equity work, and just listen before you respond.
• This Month: Pull last semester's discipline data broken out by race and share it with your leadership team before your next PD session.
• This Semester: Launch a student equity or student voice committee that collects and presents its own data directly to staff.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Cold open: the data that shocked teachers
• 02:47 - Introducing Dr. C. Abby Emerson
• 04:04 - The PD disaster that sparked her research
• 06:24 - Why teacher time is too precious to waste
• 09:35 - Three patterns in anti-racist PD across NYC schools
• 12:11 - How teachers respond to learning structural racism
• 16:31 - Why call-out culture backfires in PD
• 18:08 - Facing political backlash after 2020
• 23:37 - The hardest work: individual self-reflection
• 26:25 - Curriculum revision, one unit at a time
• 29:47 - Two critiques: discipline gaps and individualized PD
• 37:55 - How a student voice committee changed a school
• 42:47 - Rapid-fire: marquee message and dream school principles

🤝 Connect With Dr. Abby C. Emerson

👩🏻‍💻 Website: https://www.abbyemerson.com/

🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/abby-emerson-edd-4a387a55

📕 Book: (From Antiracism to Abolition: Professional Learning for Liberating Schools - https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9798895571170/from-antiracism-to-abolition/ )

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners

Most kids "think about" their future. They take a quiz, grab a brochure, and name three careers they saw on TV. That's not a plan. Orchard helps every student build a real, personalized career action plan, with an AI buddy named Orchie guiding the way. Explore careers. Compare paths. Take the next step this week. 🔎 Show your students what's possible → https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

ODP Business Solutions has been a trusted partner for schools for 30 years, handling everything from pencils to projectors so your team stops scrambling for supplies every August. They'll help you turn a tired computer lab into a STEAM innovation center, keep multiple campuses stocked and stocked sustainably, or upgrade from whiteboards to interactive displays — all through one supplier with access to cooperative contracts that simplify ordering and keep budgets compliant. 🔎 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to learn more.

IXL helps over 1 million teachers differentiate instruction in 20 minutes or less using real-time, data-informed insight — and gives Ruckus Makers a dashboard to track student progress and growth at every level, with reports you can customize to what matters most to your school. It's how data-informed decisions actually get made at scale, not just talked about. 🔎 Get started at ixl.com/leaders

Kids First Education was founded by career educators and partners with Pre-K through 12 districts and schools to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on collaboration and reflective planning. Whether you lead a single building or an entire district, they meet your team where they are with a relentless focus on what's best for kids. 🔎 Learn more at kidsfirst.llc

Building AI tools that replace one-size-fits-all personality tests with real career plans is what got Corey Kossack into K12 education. He's the founder and CEO of Orchard, an AI-powered career counseling platform for schools, and Aspireship, an employee upskilling platform — work born from watching his own father cycle in and out of a job he hated for years.

Kossack has spent his career helping people who want to help themselves climb toward ambitious goals, and Orchard is the result: an AI career counselor named Orchie, paired with real interviews from working professionals across hundreds of occupations. For Ruckus Makers wrestling with overworked counselors and an outdated career-readiness playbook, that's the credential that matters.

Most schools still run career readiness on a conveyor belt: next grade, next test, college, then hope for the best. Corey Kossack argues that model was built for a workforce AI has already started dismantling — and he's built a system for what comes after it. This is the episode for any Ruckus Maker rethinking what career readiness actually means right now.

🧐 What You'll Learn

• Why the "conveyor belt" model of career prep breaks down the moment AI starts reshaping entire job categories
• The four stages of school transformation — conveyor belt, simulation, mentor, and venture mode — and what each looks like in practice
• Why personality tests give students false certainty instead of real career readiness
• How AI tools like Orchard's Orchie can support overworked counselors instead of replacing them
• What it actually takes to build career connections into daily instruction instead of treating it as an extra

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 📚 Key Insight #1: The Conveyor Belt Career Readiness Model Is Broken

• What's broken: Schools push students through a fixed path — next grade, next test, college, career — built for a stable workforce that no longer exists.
• The shift: Replace single-path thinking with a system built on exploration, mentorship, and venture (real-world doing) woven into the curriculum instead of bolted onto it.
• Impact: Students leave school with an actual plan and multiple explored pathways, instead of a deterministic label like "you're an engineer."

📚 Key Insight #2: Personality Tests Give False Certainty, Not Career Readiness

• What's broken: Traditional interest inventories are deterministic — one survey tells a student exactly what they'll be, and it's often wrong.
• The shift: AI-driven exploration lets students search by criteria — "an innovative tech career for creative people" — instead of getting boxed into a single job title.
• Impact: Students can compare pay, pathways, and requirements across a dozen careers at once instead of fixating on one narrow "good job."

🚀 Key Insight #3: AI Career Coaching Should Back Up Counselors, Not Replace Them

• What's broken: School counselors are overworked and can't possibly know the full breadth of occupations that exist today, especially as AI reshapes the job market in real time.
• The shift: Tools like Orchard's Orchie generate a personalized student action plan in under 20 seconds, freeing counselors to focus on relationship and guidance instead of research.
• Impact: Counselors gain a resource that scales their impact instead of one more task piled onto an already impossible list.

✍️ COREY KOSSACK QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"If you're using the conveyor belt method at your school to prepare kids for the future, you are failing your students."

— Corey Kossack

"That conveyor belt method was built to produce a stable workforce. A workforce that's now gone."

— Corey Kossack

"Your students don't need to take a personality test telling them what they will one day be."

— Corey Kossack

"Don't fall into your future. Climb to it."

— Corey Kossack

"Why do we put it all on counselors? Why does it all have to be on counselors?"

— Corey Kossack

"How would you possibly expect a counselor to know all of these things?"

— Corey Kossack

"College is not the destination. It is a step in the journey."

— Corey Kossack

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Pull up the episode's example of an overlooked career — like clinical operations for pharma trials — and share it with one counselor or teacher today.
• This Month: Sit down with your counseling team and map where your current career-advising process relies on a single deterministic test instead of open-ended exploration.
• This Semester: Build at least one explicit career connection into a core academic course, so students see how the subject maps to real occupations as part of the curriculum, not an add-on.

⌚️Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - The conveyor belt method is failing students
• 03:26 - Corey's origin story: why his dad hated his job
• 06:15 - Why AI urgency is reshaping career readiness now
• 08:51 - A marketing team goes from five reports to zero
• 09:58 - Trades, GTM engineers, and chasing "the one thing"
• 12:27 - Why no one fully understands real career options
• 15:35 - The problem with deterministic personality tests
• 18:10 - Conveyor belt, simulation, mentor, and venture mode
• 28:54 - Inside Orchard: meeting Orchie, the AI career counselor
• 33:24 - Comparing pay and pathways across a dozen careers
• 35:58 - Building a personalized action plan in under 20 seconds
• 42:46 - Why this supports counselors instead of replacing them
• 44:29 - Corey's marquee message and dream campus principles

🎧 Connect With Corey Kossack

• Website: https://[email protected]/, aspireship.com
• Follow on social: linkedin.com/in/coreykossack

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

🤝 Today's RuckusCast Partners

Most kids "think about" their future. They take a quiz, grab a brochure, and name three careers they saw on TV. That's not a plan.

Orchard helps every student build a real, personalized career action plan, with an AI buddy named Orchie guiding the way. Explore careers. Compare paths. Take the next step this week.

🔎 Show your students what's possible → https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years helping school districts build learning environments students actually want to be in. They helped Belago Academy replace disengaged classrooms with collaborative spaces, tech integration, and flexible furniture that changed how kids learn — not just where they sit. You get it all from one supplier, which means simpler ordering, easier budgeting, and access to cooperative contracts that keep you compliant. 🔎 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can build for your campus.

IXL's universal screener identifies which students need intervention in 20 minutes or less — no guesswork, no wasted class time. Its adaptive learning platform, used by more than 1 million teachers, automatically adjusts to each student's exact level, so differentiation stops being a heavy lift. 🔎 Get started at IXL.com/leaders

Kids First Education was founded by career educators who partner with Pre-K through 12 schools and districts to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on real classroom experience. Their approach runs on collaboration, reflective planning, and shared problem-solving — all pointed at one outcome: better decisions for kids. Whether you lead one building or an entire district, they meet your team where it is. 🔎 Learn more at kidsfirst.llc

Phil Brown trains educators to build the kind of learning moments a curriculum can't schedule. As an experiential and adventure education trainer at High 5 Adventure Learning Center, he's guided everyone from Iraqi high schoolers working through conflict resolution to NHL players from the Boston Bruins and Calgary Flames through experiences designed to stretch — not break — them.

He also serves on the board of the Association for Experiential Education and hosts the podcast Vertical Playpen, where he digs deeper into the theory and practice behind this work.

Most principals have sat through a lesson that went exactly as planned and taught nobody anything. Phil Brown has the opposite story: a day where nothing went as planned, and it became the most important teaching moment of his career. This episode is about what happened in between — and why experiential education, not another curriculum map, might be the fix your campus actually needs.

🫶 What You'll Learn

• Why following student curiosity can outperform even the best-designed lesson plan
• How the comfort zone, stretch zone, and panic zone model applies to staff and students alike
• Why "connection before content" isn't a soft skill — it's the fastest path to real learning
• What Kolb's experiential learning cycle looks like in a real classroom
• Why experiential education has a marketing problem, not a results problem

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules ✅ Key Insight #1: Why Rigid Lesson Plans Kill Real Learning

• What's broken: Principals and teachers design lessons with locked agendas, tight timelines, and predetermined outcomes — then treat any deviation as a distraction.
• The shift: Follow the student's natural curiosity, even when it means abandoning the plan entirely.
• Impact: Phil scrapped an entire day's ropes-course curriculum to follow a student's question about a pine cone — and it became the most connective, most talked-about day of the entire program.

📚 Key Insight #2: Why Connection Before Content Changes Classroom Outcomes

• What's broken: Educators rush into curriculum before earning trust, assuming content delivery is the job and connection is a nice-to-have.
• The shift: Build genuine connection first. Content moves faster once trust exists.
• Impact: Groups who bond before instruction absorb content faster and take more risks, because they trust the adult guiding them enough to be honest when something's too much.

🚀 Key Insight #3: The Comfort Zone, Stretch Zone, and Panic Zone Every Leader Should Know

• What's broken: Educators assume "pushing kids out of their comfort zone" is automatically good — and push straight into panic without realizing it.
• The shift: Real growth happens in the stretch zone, not the panic zone. The goal is productive struggle, not overwhelm.
• Impact: Students who trust their leader will self-advocate the moment they're nearing panic — instead of shutting down or disengaging silently.

🗣️ PHIL BROWN QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Find the pine cone. That just really means to be open to students' natural curiosity and follow it."

— Phil Brown

"Connection before content."

— Phil Brown

"It's the same thing with that supervisor who says, my door is always open — you know full well that door is not open."

— Phil Brown

"When in doubt, give them your heart."

— Phil Brown

"The only thing that you learn when you panic is, hell no, I don't want to do it again."

— Phil Brown

"Your aim is not to be childish, but be childlike."

— Phil Brown

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: The next time a student or teacher asks an off-topic question, stop and follow it for five minutes instead of redirecting back to your agenda.
• This Month: Build one intentional "connection before content" activity into your next staff meeting, before any agenda item gets introduced.
• This Semester: Pick one entrenched schedule block — a 42-minute period, a PD day — and redesign it around Kolb's cycle: experience, reflect, apply, act, instead of a fixed lesson plan.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why rigid lesson plans block real learning
• 05:01 - Bringing Sunni and Shiite teens to Vermont
• 07:25 - Planning ropes courses the students didn't need
• 08:49 - The pine cone question that changed everything
• 12:20 - Using Ubuntu cards to build connection
• 14:20 - Why connection must come before content
• 15:23 - Kolb's experiential learning cycle explained
• 20:13 - The three components that make it adventure
• 26:37 - Comfort zone stretch zone and panic zone
• 29:34 - Why trust determines how far students stretch
• 35:59 - Why schools were built for the industrial age
• 38:11 - Selling experiential education to administrators
• 44:38 - Phil's message for every school marquee
• 47:47 - Find the pine cone the final takeaway

🔗 Connect With Phil Brown

👩🏻‍💻 Website: https://high5adventure.org/ , https://www.aee.org/

👉 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/phil-brown-high5

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

Today's RuckusCast Partners

Still scrambling for supplies like it's 1999? ODP Business Solutions has been the trusted supply partner for schools for 30 years — from restocking eight campuses with sustainable, scalable solutions to redesigning a tired computer lab into a full STEAM innovation center. Everything comes from one supplier, which means simpler ordering, streamlined budgeting, and easy access to cooperative contracts.

🔎 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can build for your district.

IXL isn't just a teacher tool — it's a leadership dashboard. Ruckus Makers use IXL to put a finger on the pulse of student performance, drilling down to individual growth and customizing reports around what matters most to their goals.

🔎 Get started at ixl.com/leaders

Kids First Education was founded by career educators who partner with Pre-K through 12 schools and districts to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on collaboration and real classroom data — not theory. Whether you lead a single building or an entire system, they meet your team where it is.

🔎 Learn more at kidsfirst.llc

META DESCRIPTION: Experiential education beats lesson plans. Learn how connection-before-content and stretch zones drive real student engagement.

Jenny Curtin partners with schools and districts across New England on behalf of the Barr Foundation, where she helps build and scale Transformative Learning Experiences — rigorous, project-based units developed with partner Springpoint that pull students out of the classroom and into courtrooms, communities, and real business ventures.

Her work runs on a philanthropic value most funders don't practice: taking the long view, and staying with schools through the slow, unglamorous work of actual change.

A student named Buddha dropped out of high school after years of disconnected, irrelevant coursework — and became his graduation class speaker after enrolling somewhere that taught differently. Jenny Curtin of the Barr Foundation joins the show to explain the model behind that turnaround, and why most school transformation efforts stall before they ever reach a kid like him.

🫶 What You'll Learn

• Why "taking the long view" beats chasing the next quick fix in school reform
• How to design school changes around your most marginalized students first
• What a Transformative Learning Experience unit actually looks like in practice
• Why community with other school leaders is what sustains multi-year change efforts

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🧠 Key Insight #1: Why School Transformation Requires Slowing Down First

• What's broken: Schools chase quick fixes and bolt-on programs instead of questioning their actual purpose and vision.
• The shift: Leaders take the long view — slowing down to investigate vision, gather empathy interviews, and study other school models before acting.
• Impact: Change becomes sustainable enough to survive leadership turnover instead of collapsing the moment its champion leaves.

🧠 Key Insight #2: Why Centering Marginalized Students Redesigns the Whole School

• What's broken: Most school redesign starts from the average student and treats the most marginalized students as an afterthought.
• The shift: Design at the margins first — build for the students least served by the current system, then let that design benefit everyone.
• Impact: A school that centred a disconnected, disengaged dropout re-enrolled him — and he graduated as class speaker.

🧠 Key Insight #3: Why Project-Based Learning Beats Traditional Coursework

• What's broken: Traditional coursework asks students to check a box for a diploma without connecting it to their real lives.
• The shift: Transformative Learning Experiences put students in real courtrooms for moot trials, real neighbourhoods for gentrification photography projects, and real business plans built with math skills.
• Impact: Students report a deeper sense of their own potential, and even early-adopter teachers say the model shifted what they believe is possible for kids.

🎧 JENNY CURTIN QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"The silver bullets that are always coming on the scene for education are a trap." — Jenny Curtin

"We're not interested in people just adding more decorations onto an existing cake." — Jenny Curtin

"If we aren't ever designing at those margins of who isn't being served well, we're never going to get to those young people." — Jenny Curtin

"There's like many different, beautiful high school models that can exist that do not have to look all the same." — Jenny Curtin

"We're not interested in making marginal changes to make things marginally better for young people." — Jenny Curtin

✍️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Pull up your school's current improvement plan and circle every initiative that's a bolt-on program rather than a rebuilt foundation.
• This Month: Shadow three students who are least served by your current model and document what they actually need.
• This Semester: Pilot one project-based, community-connected unit — like a moot court trial or a local-issue investigation — with a single grade or department.

🚀 Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why there are no quick fixes in education
• 03:28 - Buddha's story: from dropout to class speaker
• 08:18 - Why the system wasn't built to serve every student
• 10:38 - Centering the most marginalized students first
• 12:10 - The cake analogy: stop decorating, start re-baking
• 14:35 - What taking the long view actually means
• 19:33 - Why school leaders need community, not isolation
• 26:09 - Inside Transformative Learning Experiences: Students in the Law
• 28:31 - Taking learning beyond the school walls
• 30:40 - How project-based learning shifts staff mindset
• 33:26 - How high-impact leaders sustain change over years
• 37:23 - Jenny's marquee message and three principles for a dream school

💌 Connect With Jenny Curtin

Website: https://www.barrfoundation.org/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jennycurtin

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners

ODP Business Solutions has been the behind-the-scenes partner for schools for three decades — not just competitive pricing, but negotiated cooperative contracts that stretch every dollar. They helped Baldwin School District overhaul its entire campus without blowing the budget, combining smart design with smarter purchasing. From essential supplies to cutting-edge tech to flexible furniture, it's one supplier instead of ten separate headaches. Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can do for your district.

Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens Report makes one thing clear: retention, not just hiring, is what determines staffing stability. Districts running structured, automated professional growth software report easier hiring nearly half the time — compared to just 30% of districts without it. If you're building a campus where great educators actually want to stay, this report is your blueprint. Get it free at FrontlineEducation.com/leaders

IXL kills the guesswork in lesson planning — teachers get ready-made, standards-aligned lessons built for exactly what their textbooks already cover. Add daily insight into student performance and teachers can adjust instruction before a gap becomes a pattern. Your teachers get the tool, your students get the growth. Start at IXL.com/leaders

META DESCRIPTION: Barr Foundation's Jenny Curtin on why real high school transformation starts with slowing down, not adding another program.

A principal and coach based in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, this episode's guest flips the usual format and turns the mic on Danny Bauer instead of the other way around. He brings the same coaching lens to the conversation that he uses inside the Better Leaders Better Schools Mastermind, where he works alongside other school leaders on the exact challenges this episode covers.

His questions push Danny past the usual talking points and into the mechanics of building a leadership vision that doesn't depend on him.

Most principals think the answer to burnout is working harder. Danny Bauer argues the opposite — that in an AI-accelerated world, grinding is the least effective thing a school leader can do, and the real work is learning to fire yourself from the things you love most.

🧠 What You'll Learn

• Why treating leadership like a grind is now the least effective strategy in an AI-accelerated world
• How to test whether your storytelling actually lands — instead of assuming it does
• Why Danny deliberately fired himself from the mastermind he built
• The reason narrowing an AI tool's focus makes it more useful, not less
• How to think about your leadership across a 50-year or 200-year timeline

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules ✅ Key Insight #1: Why Most Principals Are Bad at Storytelling and Don't Know It

• What's broken: Principals assume they're strong communicators because staff nod, laugh, and lean in — but that's compliance to the boss, not honest feedback.
• The shift: Test the story on people with zero reason to fake interest — strangers or students — and if they don't smile and lean in, the story isn't working yet.
• Impact: Deliberately practiced storytelling turns abstract goals like "student engagement" into a moment staff actually remember, repeat, and act on.

💚 Key Insight #2: Sustainable School Leadership Means Firing Yourself From What You Love

• What's broken: Most leaders equate their own importance with holding onto every program, room, and decision they built.
• The shift: Danny intentionally handed away the mastermind he built to other coaches to run it, testing whether what he'd built was real or was always just about him.
• Impact: The mastermind got better and more sustainable once more people owned it — proof that a vision built to outlast its founder is stronger than one that depends on him.

✅ Key Insight #3: The Best Leadership Tools Get Narrower, Not Broader

• What's broken: Most AI tools, and most PD, try to be everything to everyone — trading depth for a wider audience.
• The shift: Danny narrowed Digital Danny's training down to his core frameworks — entry plans, automatic school tools, coaching conversations — instead of everything he's ever written.
• Impact: A narrower, specialist tool outperforms general-purpose AI for a principal working a specific problem, the same way a specialist coach outperforms a generalist consultant.

🎧 DANNY BAUER & DAN WATT QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"You might be the biggest bottleneck in your organization, not because you're incompetent, but because you're holding on to everything you're really good at."

— Danny Bauer

"What would happen if you disappeared tomorrow? Would your vision sustain, or would it collapse because it was always about you, not the system you built?"

— Danny Bauer

"Do you realize that most of what you're doing is all made up?"

— Danny Bauer

"If you don't like the game, change the rules, make up a new game."

— Danny Bauer

"The leader is the chief opportunity and bottleneck to every organization."

— Danny Bauer

"Tell it to strangers, and if they don't smile and lean in, you suck at storytelling."

— Danny Bauer

"Think of the context of a school leader that hopes their vision is a collective one and not solely theirs."

— Dan Watt

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Tell your best "leadership story" to someone with zero context — a stranger, a student, anyone with no reason to fake interest — and watch whether they actually lean in.
• This Month: Pick one responsibility you're gripping tightly and hand it fully to someone else on your team, then watch what happens without you in the loop.
• This Semester: Map out what your school, program, or team would need to survive and thrive if you left tomorrow — then start building toward that, on purpose, before you're forced to.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why grinding harder is now a dead model
• 04:40 - The sleeping teacher story that changed everything
• 09:40 - Why most leaders are garbage storytellers
• 14:02 - Inside the rebuilt Digital Danny and automatic school tools
• 18:50 - Why narrowing the niche beats ChatGPT and Claude
• 21:14 - Trading the grind for play and creative rediscovery
• 24:24 - The false belief that grinding is the only choice
• 25:44 - Reframing leadership as a game with rules you can change
• 30:42 - The empty cup metaphor for overflowing leaders
• 32:00 - How improv unlocks fearlessness in leadership
• 34:48 - Firing himself from the mastermind he built
• 38:17 - Building toward a 50-year or 200-year legacy

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners

ODP Business Solutions has been the behind-the-scenes partner for schools for three decades — not just competitive pricing, but negotiated cooperative contracts that stretch every dollar. They helped Baldwin School District overhaul its entire campus without blowing the budget, combining smart design with smarter purchasing. From essential supplies to cutting-edge tech to flexible furniture, it's one supplier instead of ten separate headaches. Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can do for your district.

Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens Report makes one thing clear: retention, not just hiring, is what determines staffing stability. Districts running structured, automated professional growth software report easier hiring nearly half the time — compared to just 30% of districts without it. If you're building a campus where great educators actually want to stay, this report is your blueprint. Get it free at FrontlineEducation.com/leaders

IXL kills the guesswork in lesson planning — teachers get ready-made, standards-aligned lessons built for exactly what their textbooks already cover. Add daily insight into student performance and teachers can adjust instruction before a gap becomes a pattern. Your teachers get the tool, your students get the growth. Start at IXL.com/leaders

META DESCRIPTION: Danny Bauer on why grinding harder fails school leaders, and how firing yourself from what you love builds a vision that outlasts you.

Zaretta Hammond has spent her career pushing school leaders past feel-good equity language and into the instructional core, where the real gaps live. Her latest book, Rebuilding Students' Learning Power: Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice, names a pattern she calls cognition redlining — the quiet, well-intentioned way schools underdevelop the thinking capacity of historically marginalized students.

She's the author behind Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, a text already sitting on most instructional coaches' shelves.

Districts have poured billions into equity work for three decades, and the outcomes for Black, brown, Indigenous, and linguistically diverse students haven't moved. Zaretta Hammond says that's not a funding problem or an effort problem — it's a cognition problem, and most principals have never been trained to see it.

🫶 What You'll Learn

• Why most equity initiatives never touch the instructional core
• The real difference between information processing and executive function — and why leaders confuse the two
• What cognition redlining looks like inside a compliance-driven classroom
• How to introduce a new instructional practice without teachers abandoning it in six weeks
• Why treating teachers as "personal trainers of cognition" changes everything about instructional leadership

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🎯 Key Insight #1: Cognition Redlining Is Blocking Your Equity Work

• What's broken: Schools chase equity through better relationships, high-quality materials, and effort — while the instructional core keeps underdeveloping students' actual thinking capacity.
• The shift: Treat teachers as the personal trainer of a student's cognition — coaching and assessing, not doing the thinking for them.
• Impact: Students move from being managed through lessons to actually building the learning power that raises achievement.

💥 Key Insight #2: Information Processing Is Not Executive Function

• What's broken: Leaders default to teaching study skills, binder organization, and time management, assuming that builds understanding — it doesn't.
• The shift: Explicitly teach students how to turn new, random information into meaning-laden, usable knowledge — a distinct skill from staying organized.
• Impact: Students stop being "dutiful" task-completers and start being able to close their own knowledge gaps without a teacher hovering every ten minutes.

🚀 Key Insight #3: Scaling Change Requires the First Pancake

• What's broken: Leaders launch new practices school-wide, all at once, out of urgency — then abandon them within weeks when they don't take.
• The shift: Start with a small band of willing teachers, let the first attempt be imperfect, make adjustments, and expand concentrically over time.
• Impact: Practices actually take hold instead of becoming one more initiative teachers quietly wait out.

🗣️ ZARETTA HAMMOND QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Getting students through the lesson doesn't build their learning power. That's the trap." — Zaretta Hammond

"The personal trainer doesn't do the push-ups for you. They assess you, design a program, and coach you through the obstacles." — Zaretta Hammond

"Be closer to hearing students talk about their understanding. Not their look-busyness." — Zaretta Hammond

"Information processing is not the same as executive function. An organized binder won't get you conceptual understanding." — Zaretta Hammond

"Change takes a dip before it levels off. That first pancake is bad, but you don't shut the kitchen down." — Zaretta Hammond

"You let go of one bar and hang in the air before you grab the other. If leaders can't hold that space, people go back to what wasn't working." — Zaretta Hammond

"Instructional leadership is not instructional management. A pacing guide is management — a personal trainer gives you skills for outside the hour." — Zaretta Hammond

"You have to set up a culture of errors before you ask students to struggle. Mistakes are data." — Zaretta Hammond

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

1. Tomorrow: Ask three students in one lesson to explain their thinking out loud instead of just showing you the answer.
2. This Month: Audit one schoolwide practice — like turn-and-talks or sentence starters — and ask whether it builds understanding or just looks busy.
3. This Semester: Pilot one new cognition-building practice with a small group of willing teachers before rolling it out to the whole building.

⏰ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why equity efforts keep missing the mark
• 05:05 - Naming cognition redlining in schools
• 07:25 - How equity work quietly lowers the bar
• 09:38 - What learning power actually means
• 13:46 - Measuring learning power instead of test scores
• 16:28 - Why compliance is baked into school DNA
• 20:17 - What true cognitive independence requires
• 26:26 - The seductive shortcuts that derail real change
• 30:00 - The first pancake theory of scaling change
• 31:58 - The Costco lesson on how change spreads
• 34:31 - The liminal space leaders must hold
• 40:38 - The brain science behind real progress
• 42:08 - Instructional leadership vs instructional management
• 44:52 - Zaretta's message for every school marquee

🔗 Connect With Zaretta Hammond

Website: https://ready4rigor.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaretta-hammond-2b122ba/

🎙️ Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners

ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years helping schools move from whiteboards to smart boards. They don't just deliver supplies — they design dynamic, flexible learning spaces from a single supplier, so ordering and budgeting stay simple while you stay compliant with cooperative contracts. 🔎 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to see what's possible for your campus.

Staffing stability isn't about filling seats — it's about keeping great people from burning out. Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens report found that districts using structured, automated professional growth tools report meaningfully easier hiring than those that don't. 🔎 Download the full report at frontlineeducation.com/leaders

Over 1 million teachers already rely on IXL to stop guessing what their students know. Its diagnostic automatically flags each student's knowledge gaps and builds a personalized growth plan, adjusting difficulty in real time as they learn. 🔎 Get started today at IXL.com/leaders

META DESCRIPTION: Zaretta Hammond on cognition redlining, closing the learning power gap, and what real instructional equity looks like for principals.

Running an elementary school in rural British Columbia hasn't stopped this Ruckus Maker from building an indoor worm farm, growing hydroponic lettuce, and taking a self-funded year off to reset — proof that a principal's personality is not a distraction from the job.

Dan Watt is a Mastermind Coach inside the Ruckus Maker community and a recurring co-host of the Ruckuscast, known for turning "pay yourself first" into a leadership philosophy that's kept him energized four years into the role.

Joining him is Mitch Weathers, CEO and author of Executive Functions for Every Classroom, whose work on entry plans and executive functioning has become required reading for school leaders trying to build systems that actually stick. Find them both at betterleadersbetterschools.com.

Principal burnout doesn't start with too many emails — it starts the moment you decide the job requires you to leave your actual personality at the door. This episode is an Adorable Red Hats reunion where two veteran school leaders make the case that worm farms, hydroponics, and paying yourself first aren't distractions from leadership — they're the thing that makes it sustainable.

📚 What You'll Learn

• How bringing real hobbies into your building turns staff and students into willing "conspirators" instead of compliant bystanders.
• Why "pay yourself first" works as both a financial strategy and a burnout-prevention system for principals.
• What a self-funded sabbatical actually looks like, and how to plan one even without full district support.
• How the Harada Method turns a single big goal into a flexible daily practice instead of another thing to fail at.
• Why trying to please every stakeholder is the fastest way to lose the ones who matter most.

✍️ Breaking Down the Old Rules ☝ Key Insight #1: Why Bringing Your Personality to School Prevents Principal Burnout

• What's broken: Principals believe professionalism means suppressing personal interests to look serious and in control.
• The shift: Ruckus Makers build hobbies like worm farms and hydroponics directly into the school day and invite students, staff, and families in.
• Impact: A classroom of second graders now runs a full worm-composting system, a school secretary bought her own home worm bin after watching it happen, and a principal four years into the role reports feeling joyful instead of burned out.

☝️Key Insight #2: The "Pay Yourself First" Framework for Principal Wellness

• What's broken: School leaders wait for the district to hand them time off or wellness support, and it rarely comes on its own.
• The shift: Treat rest like a budget line — reduce your income by a set percentage for a few years to fund a planned sabbatical, the same way businesses run "Profit First."
• Impact: One principal banked a full year of paid leave after three years of reduced income, came back four years later still sustainable in the role, and never had to choose between burning out and quitting.

☝️Key Insight #3: Why the Harada Method Beats a Rigid Self-Care Routine

• What's broken: Traditional self-care plans demand daily perfection — miss one gym day and the whole system feels like it failed.
• The shift: The Harada Method sets one long-term "super goal" surrounded by a flexible menu of daily habit options instead of a mandatory checklist.
• Impact: Leaders report steady forward progress on wellness goals without the guilt spiral that kills most New Year's-style resolutions by February.

🫶 DANNY BAUER, DAN WATT & MITCH WEATHERS QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Most school leaders think professionalism means leaving their personality at the door."

— Danny Bauer

"The best schools aren't run by heroes. They're run by leaders who know how to enroll conspirators."

— Danny Bauer

"It becomes the work. It makes the work sustainable because folks are having fun showing up."

— Dan Watt

"It's a human system and it's prioritizing human well being."

— Dan Watt

"When I write those newsletters on Sunday, I try to write them with a smile on my face."

— Dan Watt

"Are we prepared to lessen the amount of content we teach in order to provide more meaningful learning experiences that have a greater chance of leading to deeper learning, increased storage and long term memory, and the acquisition of new skills?"

— Mitch Weathers

"If school leaders put into action the entry plan carefully outlined in this book, the stress they are used to carrying into the school year will vanish."

— Mitch Weathers

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Pick one personal hobby you've been keeping separate from work and find five minutes today to bring a piece of it into your building.
• This Month: Draft a "pay yourself first" plan — even a small one — mapping how many months of reduced spending would fund a real break from the job.
• This Semester: Build your own Harada-style template: one super goal, a ring of supporting pillars, and a flexible daily habit menu you check instead of chase perfection on.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why professionalism doesn't mean losing your personality
• 04:24 - The Adorable Red Hats reunion kicks off
• 05:36 - Dan Watt's self-funded year-long leave story
• 09:29 - Bringing hobbies back into the building
• 12:41 - Inside the classroom worm farm and compost system
• 17:33 - Enrolling conspirators instead of managing compliance
• 19:47 - Pay yourself first, financially and figuratively
• 24:55 - Figuring out what actually fills your cup
• 26:09 - The Harada Method and the Resilient Leader program
• 33:29 - Why trying to please everyone backfires
• 39:54 - Dan Watt on rediscovering his mojo
• 42:27 - Mitch Weathers on his new book and tour
• 48:02 - Closing takeaways on joyful leadership

🔗 Connect With Dan Watt & Mitch Weathers

👩🏻‍💻 Mitch Weathers

• Website: organizedbinder.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mitchweathers

👩🏻‍💻 Dan Watt:

• Website: https://www.danwattcoaching.ca/
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/danwatt57

🎙️ Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners

ODP Business Solutions has been the trusted supply partner for schools for 30 years — and they've moved way past pencils and paper. Want to turn a tired computer lab into a STEAM innovation center, or upgrade every classroom from whiteboards to interactive displays? Their team designs it, and you order it all from a single supplier with access to cooperative contracts that simplify budgeting and keep you compliant.

⚡️ Learn more at ODPbusiness.com/education

Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens report tracked how professional learning design connects to staffing stability across districts — and the findings are a wake-up call for anyone planning next year's PD calendar. Districts with structured, individually targeted professional growth report easier hiring; nearly half of districts using software to manage that growth say hiring has gotten easier, compared to just 30% of districts that don't.

⚡️ Download the full report at frontlineeducation.com/leaders

IXL is the adaptive platform teachers already trust to make differentiated instruction simple — and for Ruckus Makers, it does even more. Its dashboard gives school leaders a real-time pulse on student performance, drillable down to the individual student, with reports you can customize to whatever matters most to your building.

⚡️ Get started today at ixl.com/leaders

META DESCRIPTION: Why principal burnout starts with hiding your personality at work — and how pay yourself first and the Harada Method fix it.

Confidence as a principal isn't something you're born with — it's something you build. I've been asking new Mastermind members and Digital Danny users why they're signing up, and I keep hearing the same thing: they're working on their confidence. Most won't say it out loud. Most think their doubt means they're not cut out for this.

That's the pattern I'm noticing. Here are three concrete practices — starting with a 90-second daily routine — that transform how you show up next year. You'll stop questioning every decision. You'll start trusting your gut. You'll lead like you mean it.

THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Cold open: Building confidence with an unconventional story

01:57 - Why so many principals struggle with self-doubt

03:41 - Method 1: The EPS Journal for a 90-second daily boost

05:17 - How the EPS Journal builds your personal highlight reel

07:02 - Method 2: Watch the language that sabotages your confidence

08:47 - Common self-sabotaging phrases principals use

10:42 - Method 3: Stop leading in isolation

12:42 - Why doing leadership alone is holding you back

14:25 - Digital Danny: Your AI-powered principal coach

15:25 - The Mastermind: Weekly support and peer mentorship

16:19 - Options to build confidence this summer

CONNECT & CONTINUE

WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

1. Start chatting with Digital Danny: https://myprincipalcoach.com/
2. Apply to the mastermind: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/mastermind
3. Email to work 1-on-1 with Danny: [email protected]

Leading a 25-school network to a 96% graduation rate and 91% staff retention — with zero tenure protection — takes more than good policy. It takes a leader who has lived the exact inequity his schools now solve for. Pablo Villavicencio grew up in East LA, where his own neighborhood school graduated less than half its students, and only got a real shot at a quality education because his parents falsified an address to send him to a school 30 miles away.

He carried that lesson through Teach For America, a school closure in Harlem, and five years as a founding high school principal in the Bronx before landing back in the exact Los Angeles community he grew up in — this time as CEO of Alliance College-Ready Public Schools. Find Alliance's work at laalliance.org.

Teacher retention is the number every superintendent claims to be working on and almost none can move. Pablo Villavicencio's network sits at 91% retention across every employee group, without tenure, while running 25 schools and a 96% graduation rate in some of LA's highest-poverty neighborhoods — and in this episode, he breaks down exactly how belief, not policy, got him there.

✍️ What You'll Learn

• Why "all kids can learn" has to function as infrastructure, not a mission statement, before it changes anything
• How to build a wraparound services model that pairs academic teacher teams with therapists and social workers
• What actually drives teacher retention without tenure protection
• How to keep 25 schools aligned to one vision without creating a siloed bureaucracy
• Why redefining "college ready" to include community advocacy and wellness changed Alliance's outcomes

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🚀 Key Insight #1: Why School Culture Change Starts With a Belief System, Not a Policy

• What's broken: Most school systems write "all students can learn" on a banner and call it culture work, while the master schedule, staffing model, and discipline systems tell students something else entirely.
• The shift: Villavicencio treats the belief that every kid can learn as an operating system — it has to show up in the master schedule, the staffing model, and the wraparound services, or it isn't real.
• Impact: Alliance's 25 schools graduate 96% of students and get 89-93% to college-ready status, compared to roughly 49% graduation and 59% college-ready rates at neighboring LAUSD schools.

🚀 Key Insight #2: The Wraparound Services Model That Turns Around Low-Performing Schools

• What's broken: Teachers are left to diagnose whether a struggling student is "lazy" or dealing with something deeper, usually alone and without the information to know the difference.
• The shift: Villavicencio built "kid talk" teams that pair content teachers with therapists and social workers — partnering with outside organizations for family therapy — so root causes get surfaced instead of guessed at.
• Impact: At the high school Villavicencio founded in the Bronx for English language learners, the first graduating class hit 66% graduation from a starting point of 10% — climbing to an 88% six-year graduation rate.

🚀 Key Insight #3: How to Hit 91% Teacher Retention Without Tenure

• What's broken: Most systems either get good at attracting talent or good at retaining it — rarely both — because they never build a stable, consistent container people trust enough to stay in.
• The shift: Alliance runs focus groups across every school, shares the real narrative of what staff are facing, and refuses to place value judgments on how different generations of teachers experience the same problem.
• Impact: Alliance holds 91% retention across every employee group in a sector where turnover is the norm — with no tenure protections in place.

🎙️ PABLO VILLAVICENCIO QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"You have to believe, deeply believe, that all kids can learn."

— Pablo Villavicencio

"Equity to me is not about fairness. It's about making sure kids get what they need in order so that they're successful."

— Pablo Villavicencio

"We have 91% retention across all employee groups in Alliance. It is not common in the educational space."

— Pablo Villavicencio

"Large bureaucracies or large systems will never fully get the results that are needed for hyper community, like for local context, because those closest to the impact that you're hoping to have are not at the decision-making table."

— Pablo Villavicencio

"You have so much power, you have such a high locus of control."

— Pablo Villavicencio

"You have to be talking to your teachers and your kids on a regular basis. You have to be in relationship, you have to have a pulse on the ground."

— Pablo Villavicencio

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Ask three staff members the same open question Villavicencio uses in his focus groups — "Tell me what's good, then tell me what's bad" — and just listen.
• This Month: Run a "kid talk" style meeting where content teachers and support staff (counselors, social workers) sit down on the same struggling students and name the root cause together.
• This Semester: Pilot one structural change to protect planning time — Alliance is testing 8-12 additional hours a week at seven of its schools — and track whether it moves retention or instructional quality.

⏰ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why Pablo's parents falsified an address for school
• 03:53 - Immigrant roots and the path to UC Berkeley
• 05:18 - First teaching job in a Harlem sixth grade classroom
• 11:51 - Building a high school from a 10% to 66% graduation rate
• 13:55 - Joining Alliance and eventually becoming CEO
• 15:58 - Alliance's 96% graduation rate versus LAUSD's 49%
• 17:48 - College readiness numbers and a 3.5x persistence rate
• 21:19 - Keeping 25 schools aligned without going siloed
• 22:43 - The planning time experiment seven schools are running
• 25:28 - Leading five generations of teachers with shared values
• 35:18 - Hitting 91% retention with zero tenure protection
• 43:57 - Inside the wraparound services model built on kid talk
• 46:55 - Pablo's final message on locus of control and belonging

🔗 Connect With Pablo Villavicencio

• Website: https://laalliancefoundation.org/

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

🤝 Today's RuckusCast Partners

ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years equipping schools through negotiated cooperative contracts that stretch every budget dollar — from furniture and tech to sustainable cleaning solutions, all from a single supplier. They helped Baldwin School District transform its entire campus while staying under budget by pairing smart design with smarter purchasing.

🎙️ See how at ODPbusiness.com/education

Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens report digs into how districts connect professional growth to staffing stability — districts that automate professional growth report easier hiring nearly 50% of the time, compared to 30% of those that don't. If you're building a campus where great educators choose to stay.

🎙️ The full report is free at FrontlineEducation.com/leaders

IXL eliminates the guesswork in lesson planning with ready-made plans aligned directly to your textbooks and state standards, so teachers spend less time building and more time teaching. Daily performance insights let teachers adjust instruction before a small gap becomes a big one.

🎙️ Get started at ixl.com/leaders

META DESCRIPTION: How Alliance CEO Pablo Villavicencio hit 91% teacher retention and a 96% graduation rate — without tenure. A belief-driven leadership model.

Building a tutoring nonprofit that now serves 25,000 students a year — with a vision to reach millions — required someone who'd lived the exact gap she was trying to close. Aly Murray grew up a low-income student raised by a single immigrant mother, moved through a string of Title 1 schools, and felt firsthand what it's like to navigate homework and college applications without support at home.

She left a trading job at JP Morgan eight years ago to build Upchieve, a nonprofit offering free, 24/7 human tutoring and college counseling to every Title 1 middle and high school student in the country.

Her work is backed by a Gates Foundation-funded study comparing human and AI tutoring, and Upchieve now partners with schools, districts, and CMOs at a cost of about 50 cents per tutoring session.

Most school tutoring programs run from 3 to 5pm — and that single design choice quietly locks out the students who need help the most. Aly Murray, founder of the nonprofit Upchieve, built a 24/7 human tutoring program instead, and the data on why AI can't replace it yet might surprise you.

📚 What You'll Learn

• Why the standard after-school tutoring program design quietly excludes the students who need it most
• What a Brookings Institute report reveals about grades, identity, and college enrollment
• Why Upchieve's founder built a 24/7 human tutoring model instead of scaling with AI
• What a Gates Foundation-funded study found when students had access to both AI and human tutors
• How much it actually costs a school to close its tutoring gap

💥 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🚀 Key Insight #1: Why Your After-School Tutoring Program Is Built to Exclude Kids

• What's broken: Drop-in, after-school tutoring assumes every student has a ride home, free time, and no caregiving responsibilities.
• The shift: Upchieve makes human tutoring available 24/7, matching a student to a live tutor in about two minutes — so support meets students wherever and whenever they actually need it, including 3am calculus.
• Impact: Upchieve gets over a third of students at partner schools using the platform regularly, a usage rate most after-school tutoring programs never come close to.

🚀 Key Insight #2: The Data Says Tutor the Middle, Not Just the Bottom

• What's broken: Most tutoring programs target only the lowest-performing 10-20% of students who are actively failing.
• The shift: Brookings Institute research found that once you control for academic preparation, over 70% of the college enrollment gap between low-income and high-income students disappears — meaning the biggest leverage sits with the "middle majority" of B and C students, not just the students at risk of failing.
• Impact: Small, consistent tutoring shifts a student's grades and, more importantly, their identity as "a student who's good at school" — which is what actually predicts whether they enroll in college.

🚀 Key Insight #3: Human Tutoring Still Beats AI Tutoring — And the Research Proves It

• What's broken: Schools are defaulting to AI tutoring because it looks cheaper and easier to scale than finding enough human tutors.
• The shift: In a Gates Foundation and Microsoft Research-funded study, less than 20% of students with access to both a human and an AI tutor ever tried the AI tutor once, and more than 92% of all tutoring sessions in the study were human-only.
• Impact: Students overwhelmingly chose — and stuck with — human tutors, because the motivational effect of a real person saying "I'm rooting for you" is what actually drives learning outcomes.

📣 ALY MURRAY QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Tutoring is completely misunderstood and, in fact, undervalued as a tool that schools should be using to drive outcomes for their students."

— Aly Murray

"If you don't offer transportation after tutoring, you're going to lose all the kids who depend on the school bus to get home. I was one of those kids."

— Aly Murray

"There are enough humans to provide human tutoring to every student that needs it."

— Aly Murray

"When presented with a choice between an AI tutor and a human tutor, students overwhelmingly choose the human tutor."

— Aly Murray

"Anytime you have a one-on-one pairing of a student and a tutor and they get enough hours of tutoring, it works. It improves learning outcomes. It always works."

— Aly Murray

"Things can be not fun, but still worth doing."

— Aly Murray

"How can I, as a leader, claim to care about students' upward mobility if my staff are not making a living wage?"

— Aly Murray

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Pull your after-school tutoring attendance numbers and identify how many of your neediest students are missing simply because of the time slot.
• This Month: Calculate what a per-session cost like Upchieve's 50 cents would run your school and compare it against your current after-school tutoring spend.
• This Semester: Pilot a 24/7 or after-hours human tutoring option for your Title 1 students and track weekly usage against your current drop-in numbers.

⏰ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why after-school tutoring quietly fails students
• 04:01 - The student story that changed Aly's approach to tutoring
• 06:04 - Aly's own path through Title 1 schools as a low-income student
• 09:49 - The Brookings data linking grades to college enrollment
• 14:06 - Why Upchieve is built exclusively for Title 1 students
• 17:34 - How 24/7 human tutoring actually works behind the scenes
• 23:55 - Human tutoring versus AI tutoring head to head
• 26:57 - The Gates Foundation study on student tutor preference
• 34:08 - Reframing the story you tell about your campus
• 37:40 - How schools partner with Upchieve and what it costs
• 42:00 - The three principles of Aly's dream school
• 48:06 - The one thing every Ruckus Maker should remember

🫶 Connect With Aly Murray

🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alymurray

👩🏻‍💻 Website: upchieve.org

🎙️ Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners

ODP Business Solutions has been the trusted supply partner for schools for 30 years — and they've moved way past pencils and paper. Want to turn a tired computer lab into a STEAM innovation center, or upgrade every classroom from whiteboards to interactive displays? Their team designs it, and you order it all from a single supplier with access to cooperative contracts that simplify budgeting and keep you compliant.

⚡️ Learn more at ODPbusiness.com/education

Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens report tracked how professional learning design connects to staffing stability across districts — and the findings are a wake-up call for anyone planning next year's PD calendar. Districts with structured, individually targeted professional growth report easier hiring; nearly half of districts using software to manage that growth say hiring has gotten easier, compared to just 30% of districts that don't.

⚡️ Download the full report at frontlineeducation.com/leaders

IXL is the adaptive platform teachers already trust to make differentiated instruction simple — and for Ruckus Makers, it does even more. Its dashboard gives school leaders a real-time pulse on student performance, drillable down to the individual student, with reports you can customize to whatever matters most to your building.

⚡️ Get started today at ixl.com/leaders

META DESCRIPTION: Aly Murray of Upchieve on why after-school tutoring fails low-income students, and the research behind 24/7 human tutoring that works.