This week we continue our focus on leading reading in your school, chatting through the common missteps Karen and Christy have both taken while focusing on implementing a reading initiative. Ever so often, our goal to strengthen one of the five pillars of reading and writing instruction causes the pendulum to swing and weakens another area. Covered in this pod is how to make sure balanced literacy stays balanced, guiding teachers on implementing reading strategies and reading standards and even the best ways to guide your teams through drafting a balanced assessment calendar. Listen in! Be sure to check out Just Right Reader for all your decodable text needs, too!

In this mini-pod, Karen and Christy walk you through the benefits of Just Right Reader! Check them out for all of your decodeable text, phonics continuum, and building-and-district-level needs! www.justrightreader.com - Tell them The Modern Principal sent you! 

In this four-part series, Karen and Christy will walk you through our instructional leadership mistakes in reading! This episode begins with a story of a classic mistake of putting the resource before the research which causes a disconnect between leaders, staff, and, ultimately, students. Listen in! 

What do you do when someone screenshots and sends you a post on social media that is complaining about your school or staff? What do you do when it feels so personal? This week, on the podcast, we discuss this very scenario. Step one is to be proactive with your social media post. If you aren't telling the story of your school, someone else will! We discuss various systems to help with that, as well as, how to be strategic with the content. We also discuss how to react when a post has made false claims about your school or staff. You'll have to tune in to hear about that and the tips we have to not take it personally.

As a building leader, we often think we need to prioritize our instructional leadership roles above all else. But without a strong organizational systems in place for your school, time will slowly get away from you and you may feel like you are doing nothing right! This week on the pod, Christy and Karen talk through the various ways they manage the day-to-day, more like week-to-week, tasks so that the priorities of the school can be balanced. We talk through calendar tools, structuring the day, and even ways to get paperwork done at school! Hope you'll listen in!

In this episode, Christy & Karen take on a scenario from a building title reading/instructional coach who is assigned a new-to-her building and finding she is putting out fires and subbing in classrooms instead of the job she felt she was hired to do. We work through how to create connectedness to a new team and a new role--even when the work you find yourself doing isn't what you signed up to do! We also talk through how to build systems in order to preserve some of the priority tasks you need to accomplish even if the 'grenades' get thrown to you mid-day! Join us as we dive into this topic and look through the lens of scholar, systems and soul!

You work hard as the administrator and building leader to set the tone for a positive and supportive staff culture. But what about when one or two teachers consistently don't buy in and push back against the work of your team? Join Christy and Karen this week as we tackle two separate topics in this giant topic--first we briefly chat through bringing change to a culture and what it means to set the tone. Then we jump in and provide strategies and supports on how to examine a teacher who isn't buying in, the motivations behind their actions, as well as, how to have the critical conversations to move the building and your teachers forward. Join us!

Things pop up every day at work and sometimes you just need the advice of someone else...but who? Where do you turn and how can you be sure who to trust?! This week on the pod, Karen and Christy deep dive different mindsets to take into building collegial relationships with those in your same role! We cover tips to consider when developing trust with colleagues, boundaries to establish, avoiding self-comparison and even being sure you don't lose yourself in the advice of others. Be sure to tune in and rate us on iTunes!

Year 3 of the pandemic and going strong...wait a minute. Not so fast. We are tired. Teachers are tired and fatigue is setting in. It's a hard place to be at the start of a school year. On the pod this week, Karen and Christy tackle the burnout our teachers and school staff are facing while working harder than ever in a pandemic. We discuss ways to filter the new demands being added to teachers' plates while matching more resources to meet those demands! We also talk through how to be real and vulnerable about the struggles you're facing and being sure to keep people in the forefront of all you do! Tune in!

Isn't it the worst? You are just starting to find your confidence as a leader or in your skill and then BAM...a failure hits or someone doubts your abilities and it all comes crumbling down in your head. Good thing is, you aren't alone. And that is actually comforting to know! This week on the pod, Karen and Christy take a shot at vulnerability and lay it all out there about how we've struggled with this in the past (AND currently), as well as what some of the scholars recommend you do about it! Tune in!