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:

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