Transformative Principal

Justin Baeder, of the Principal Center

• As instructional leaders there is no better way to lead than to be in classrooms.

• It is tough to find time and make it into classrooms.

• Being in classrooms that much sounds ridiculous and impossible.

• Start small.

• Just show up.

* #everyclassroom challenge, be in every classroom within a 5-day period. * Build up the practice over a period of cycles. * Just keep track of the order you visit people in, and visit them * Systems to keep track of visits. * Write the date you visit on their note card. * Repertoire - app for keeping track of visits. * The way we schedule to get into our classrooms is important. * The way of doing it must fit your style. * Buy the Book: Now We’re Talking

Special Interview about writing a book. Get the interview here * How long it took. * What to get clear on. * How to determine what belongs in this book and doesn’t. * How to sell your idea to the readers and publishers.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Prevailing, Not Relishing with Rebecca Coda and Rick Jetter Transformative Principal 195

Proactive paranoia is good paranoia Call people to the carpet in a professional way.

Rebecca Coda and Rick Jetter are the authors of Escaping the School Leaders Dunk Tank: How to Prevail When Others Want To See You Drown.

• How to prevail instead of getting bummed out.
• Depersonalize the situation.
• Some reason they have ego, fear, jealousy, etc.
• Didn’t start with you, started with someone or something else.
• Alignments - aligning to different people.
• How people gather allies.
• If you’ve got an army behind you.
• Moving on
• How to deal with politicking.
• Nonviolent communication
• Call people to the carpet in a professional way.
• 4 step process for nonviolent conversation.
• Script, rehearse, prepared for curveball reactions
• Said with care and patience.
• Don’t want to be alone without a witness.
• You’re not effective if you’re feeling this way.
• Teacher Bullies
• How to be a transformative principal? It comes down to being willing to do what is right.
• How to be a transformative principal? You’ve gotta try!

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Join my group coaching program

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Proactive paranoia is good paranoia.

Rebecca Coda and Rick Jetter are the authors of Escaping the School Leaders Dunk Tank: How to Prevail When Others Want To See You Drown.

• How to tell if you are being sabotaged.
• Proactive paranoia - inner voice where you know it is not right, but you
• It comes down to relationships.
• You notice the behavior changes.
• Exclusion.
• Emotional triggers that lead to tactics.
• Emotional driving forces - jealousy, skepticism, holding accountable.
• Leaving out information or leaving people out.
• What do we do when to handle it?
• Explicitly confront or leave it alone?

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Join my group coaching program

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

I have always felt so uninspired by the term “College and Career Ready!”

It seems so empty

George Martinez - chief of staff for anchorage mayor spoke at the African American Student Leadership conference

The term he used was Path to Passion.

That is much more inspiring.

Why passion?

Because we all need something more than a JOB!

We need our own personal mission statements.

Much of what I believe comes from my spiritual approach

I am a child of god. If I believe that I am a child of God, that must mean that I believe others are children of God as well. It makes it so much easier to be kind and nice to people.

It also makes it easier to have high expectations of people. Because they truly are more than they can ever believe.

I Discovered my passion at about 16 years old.

I learned that I had skills in teaching others, and leading others.

I could have chosen many other professions besides teaching and education, but because of my not-so-great educational experiences, I knew I could impact kids in a powerful way.

So, that’s what I do.

I inspire teachers and leaders to be their best. That’s why I do this podcast. Because I am living out my purpose for my life.

This is more than just me sitting in front of a microphone in my basement!

The mastermind is more than just me hanging out with some really cool leaders.

The TLS is more than just a Leadership Summit.

These are extensions of me fulfilling a purpose.

An educator could not have told me at sixteen that I would be doing this now.

But a visionary man helped me understand way back when I was 16, that right now, I am exactly where I need to be and that I am doing exactly what I need to be doing!

The real challenging part of understanding our passion is that it is admittedly pretty frufru as someone recently said.

I don’t think you’ll be able to find a guru that says “Find a deadend job, and stick with it until you retire, when you can finally do what you want.”

I think about some of the recent college grads that I know that are basically doing anything because they need money. I understand that, I’ve been there, but I was very much aware that that was not going to be my future.

They’re using the time after college to figure out what they love. How tragic for them.

In this day and age, with technology, I have a hard time believing that someone cannot make money from living their passion.

A career is something old people talk about. To the younger generation, it is just life.

But again, it is challenging, especially for educators, to inspire kids with an unknown. We like clear, specific answers. We don’t know what to do when we can’t predict the future. Which is funny, because we can’t.

So, how do we reconcile this? We understand that we can’t possibly know what the future holds for kids, and inspire them to find what they can do all day and love for their whole lives.

Some might say they love playing call of duty all day, but most of them don’t. Most of them prefer that to boring drudgery of getting college and career ready.

Let’s inspire them to something more noble than a JOB and help them find a fulfilled life by finding their purpose for being here.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Naphtali Hoff is an executive coach, organizational consultant, trainer, writer & speaker.

• How to come back from making a mistake.
• Think big picture.
• If you don’t create the right foundation, then you will spend far less time helping kids than
• When elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled. - Rick Lavoie
• Where you can support the vision
• Everything flows from the foundation.
• We make decisions based on the emotional connection.
• Trust shields you from other problems.
• How to be a transformative principal? Continue to invest in yourself. You can’t give what you don’t have.
• email: [email protected] becomingthenewboss.com 212-4706139

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Join my group coaching program

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Naphtali Hoff is an executive coach, organizational consultant, trainer, writer & speaker.

• Teacher and school leader.
• Support principals in a way that he had been supported.
• Get his book, “Becoming the New Boss”
• Leadership vs. Management
• You need to manage processes. Leadership is another dimension.
• What is your priority and what is your main focus?
• You can delegate management.
• Leadership is getting people moving in a direction
• Leadership belongs to everyone in the building.
• Be a good listener, especially at the beginning.
• Good leaders are listeners.
• Demonstrate a willingness to listen and accept a culture.
• Find ways to make low-stakes, high-success wins.
• Rick Lavoie, earning chips.
• Need to go through change strategically.
• Consensus vs. agreement
• Data should drive the process.
• Initiating the process is good, but don’t go down the path if you’re not going to make the actual change.

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Join my group coaching program

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Part time curriculum director in a rural school district and part time consultant.

• How to stay on top of so many content areas.
• Framework for quality curriculum
• Instructional priorities.
• Looking at research and finding what’s current.
• Best practices
• Nearly all PD was sit and get.
• Spiraling themes of professional development.
• Able to provide effective supports
• Gradual release of responsibility.
• I do, we do, y’all do, you do.
• Practice feedback reflection
• That’s what we’ve always done.
• Peer observation isn’t always received very well.
• Timeline of job-embedded PD.
• August 1/2 day with 60 teachers as a pilot on classroom questioning
• Cohorts of 4-6 teachers in each cohort - meet for 1/2 day with that cohort. Host teacher presents lesson. Facilitator asks questions.
• Review of data points that people collected after observing a lesson.
• Scripting - What did the teacher say, what did the kids say?
• Share data, review host teacher’s goals and visit a new one each month.
• Don’t invite administrators to take part in the process
• Walkthroughs at the end of the year. Leadership team looks for strengths and growths for that teacher.
• Need to make sure your professional development is making it to the classroom.
• Effective to have a coach position be able to support the group.
• Give principals patterns in aggregated data.
• Principals engage in final conversation in the year.
• How to be a transformative principal? Be intentional about supporting teacher’s growth.

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Join my group coaching program

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

I asked a bunch of awesome leaders one simple question: 

What did you wish you knew when you first became a principal? 

Here are their answers! 

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Don’t Assume Anything

Nicholas A. Fischer is a school-management consultant and coach. He was the superintendent of the New London, Conn., school district from 2009 to 2014. Previously, he was the superintendent of schools in Fall River, Mass., and the Christina School District in Newark, Del.; the assistant superintendent in Fairfax County, Va.; and the associate commissioner for finance and accountability in the Massachusetts Department of Education.

• Leading a District Can Be Controversial, Embrace it

• Be clear to yourself about what your values are.

• Working in public schools is very important.

• Started working Florida as a principal when corporal punishment was still allowed.

• Telling kids what we wanted them to do instead of what we don’t want them to do.

• Problems in American Public education: Our expectations are too low.

• All of us have special abilities

• Every child can be expected to be out a maximum effort.

• What we expect in engagement is different than what kids are taught growing up.

• What are the ramifications of doing the right thing?

• What are the right questions to ask a supervisor?

• Are you mobile enough to find the right places to work?

• Know what you believe, and talk to your supervisor, let your spouse know the ups and downs you will face.

• That’s one way of doing it, but here’s a better way.

• You have to know what the stakes are going in, and be willing to live with them.

• Average tenure of Superintendent is 2-3 years. Average tenure of principals is a little longer.

• Reasons for moving vary.

• In some situations, leaving a situation can be a badge of honor.

• Why are you staying if you’re struggling?

• Get candid feedback about how you’re portraying yourself.

• Much better off being honest with those we are talking with.

• Don’t use the statement, “Don’t take this personally.”

• I’d like to hear your version of what you see yourself doing.

• Set up an active listening conversation.

• We too often end a statement with “You know what I mean?”

• Distinguish between what a person is doing and what you would like to see them doing.

• Tell me what you think I’m asking you to do.

• Sit down a couple weeks later and talking about what they have changed.

• I don’t assume anything.

• How to be a transformative principal? Transformative to do what? If you were to describe what you are trying to accomplish, define what is happening right now in your school. Think through how you frame things. Define what you perceive happening. Start to talk about what the difference is between what people are doing what you want them to do.

• If you’re going to have a safe school, everyone needs to be involved.

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

Join my group coaching program

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In education, we often hear from teachers who think that without us, these kids and families would not know what to do!

One time, I had a teacher talk to me about students with disabilities, and she basically said that students with disabilities only get help or have structure. She didn't realize that my daughter has Down syndrome and she was lumping my daughter in with this group of kids that would be lost if not for her and other educators like her. That rubbed me the wrong way.

In another instance, as I've talked about Home Visits, people have said, "Oh, you want to visit their home so you can see how awful their life is and have more empathy?" NO! I want to visit their homes so they know that we care enough to leave our ivory tower and go to them and tell them that we care.

Here are three tips on how to overcome it:

1. Don't judge parents. Just stop it. Seriously.

2. Have positive intentions. H/T to Melinda Miller. Assume the best. Don't make up their story for them. Learn from them, and ask them what they are doing! Don't just assume we know what is going on.

3. Recognize the good that people are doing the best they can. The numbers of parents who are actively hurting their kids is remarkably small! Are parents struggling because they don't have the skills, abilities, time, resources, etc. to be better? YES! I sure am! I am a well-educated, successful white dude and I still struggle to be as good a dad as I can be! That's just the truth. The truth is, our parents are awesome, and they are doing the best they can.

Expectations and Mindsets are powerful, and if we believe parents are doing the best they can, we will see evidence of that.

Let's make sure the self-fulfilling prophecy and storyline that we have is that parents are amazing and doing great things!  

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.