The Assistant Principal Podcast

Do you work too many hours? Do you feel like there is never enough time? Do you ever missyour family and friends? Today, my guest, Danny Bauer and myself will explore some keys to amindshift that will help you rethink how you approach your work and, more importantly, yourown health.

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of February 27-March 3, 2023.

Leadership is a journey and although I talk about it being a journey of five stages, we never truly arrive, and this is a great thing! A never-ending leadership journey is good news because it means we are never done growing, and we can always be getting better. Every day I have an opportunity to do better, to be better, and so do you – how cool is that!?! Register for the webinar: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/the-journey.html The Assistant Principal Podcast Homepage for episodes and resources: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html

For about three weeks we had a tight focus on mentoring. I hope you embraced the three core messages:Spend more time with and show more appreciation for your mentorIf you don’t have a mentor, find oneBe intentional about mentoring othersBeginning this week we pivoted to our next big theme: traveling the five stages from being an urgent leader to a strategic one.This week’s big idea: You can’t move forward by staying where you are.

Part two of our incredible interview with Dr. Jan Osborn. This week we learn more life lessons and hear more good stories from Jan!

One of the beauties of life is that over time we collect special ideas from cherished people. Through deep connections with friends, colleagues, and mentors, we become better people. Some of us even become referred to as wise. Wisdom is not something mysterious. Wisdom does not come from contemplating life on a mountaintop. Real wisdom comes from a unique combination of thievery and sharing. Wise people are like Robin Hood – they steal ideas from people who are rich in great ideas, and then they share those riches with others. Today we are talking with Dr. Jan Osborn – the person in my life who I have stolen the most from, and who has taught me to give it away.

In my junior year of college Dr. Bob Kelly said to me, “I predict that someday you will earn your doctorate.” His statement planted the seed of an idea that had not been there before. In 1994 I enrolled in a Special Education course at the University of Findlay. That course was taught by Dr. Jan Osborn, who not only pushed me to get that doctorate, but supported me every step of the way, and continues to mentor me to this day. Dr. Jacque Jacobs hired me at Western Carolina University and helped me grow into a servant leader by being one herself, and by intentionally nurturing the best I had to offer others. And Dr. Rob Knoeppel took me under his wing when I was my most broken and damaged, and taught me that it is okay to not be our best, that it is okay to take the space to heal. These four people were mentors to me and to countless others. Today we will dig into what it means to be a mentor and how you dear colleague, can grow your ability to mentor others.

None of this week’s messages were earth shattering or focused on big changes, but that is the whole point. It is the small changes that matter. Making one or two small changes today lets us invest an extra minute or two in supporting someone who needs it – and that is where the big change happens. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of February 6-10, 2023.

Show Notes, Episode 97: Every building, every class, every day!About this show:Unless you are a first-time listener, you have heard me talk about the flywheel – the core set ofinstructional practices that drive continual teacher growth. But what does this flywheel look likein practice, in a real school? We explore the answer today with a special principal who has areputation for supporting and growing teachers.Notable QuotesEleanor:We're putting systems here in place at Fairview that will long outlast individuals, and Ithink some of the problem is that we rely on certain people and we're trying to create asystem so that it doesn't matter who the principal is, it doesn't matter who the assistantprincipal is, because the systems will be in place. So, when that leadership changes andour teachers change, that system is still going to work and that's our goal.The goal is to get through every building, every class, every day.I do feel like the game changer is that accountability piece, and that intentional planning,and really breaking down those standards so they know exactly what they're teaching.There's no questions. And then the coaches do a great job not only planning with thembut pushing into their classrooms. So, they're in their classrooms seeing how it works. Itcould be a Co teaching lesson, it could be you know, just a concern with that group ofkids. And so, they have really fostered such positive relationships because it's nonevaluative. They're their support and so they're coming in to support.It's not a one-person show.Sometimes I think that we get so caught up in having to do all this work that we forget totake a deep breath and take that time to enjoy the adults around you and the kids aroundyou.Frederick:Faculty meetings, I think, are one of those things that exist almost universally that wethink they're important, but they're really not because there are so many other ways thatwe can get that information out to people.Improving life and leadership of assistant principalshttps://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html 2You're building the systems and supports and I think one of the pieces that I wantlisteners to really take away, is that you have to protect that time, but you can protectthat time. But it is a conscious choice, right. You are thinking you know the interruptionswill occur if you don't do something. So, you look at your resources and build thesystems in place so that that time is protected.I think we sometimes underappreciate how complex the observation process is and thedifferent ways that we can do it in order to achieve different ends and support people indifferent ways.Frederick’s Links:Email: [email protected]: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/strategicleadershipconsultingDaily Email subscribe: https://adept-experimenter-3588.ck.page/ff61713840

Five for Friday Show NotesTeaser:This week was all about leadership as a concept. What is leadership? Beyond what leadership is, we looked out how leaders gain power, and the ability they have to build – or destroy. In today’s episode I will deviate significantly from the short messages of the week and expand on these important themes.This week’s big idea: Real leadership is about peopleHello colleagues and welcome to The Assistant Principal Podcast, I’m your host Dr. Frederick Buskey. I’ve been growing leaders and future leaders for over 30 years. Through my own experiences, and through working with hundreds of other leaders, I’ve learned that school leadership is a journey that occurs in three phases:Urgent leaders spend their time completing tasks, but…Intentional leaders invest their time building systems. However…Strategic leaders create time by growing people.In 2018 I founded Strategic Leadership Consulting to help make this journey more enjoyable for leaders like you. Through my daily email, monthly micro-journal, online community, my upcoming book, and, of course, this podcast, I keep you company on this journey and provide you with actionable ideas and tools to live and lead better today and tomorrow.Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of January 30-February 2, 2023. Can you believe we are through January already? I’m just now getting used to saying 2023. Monday:“Being in the left lane of a superhighway with a string of cars behind you does not make you a leader. It may just mean you’re slow and too stupid to get out of the way.”-Dr. Jacque Jacobs, Mentor, Professor Emeritus, and so much moreSo if having people behind doesn’t define leadership, what does?Some quotes from scholars (none of these appeared in the weekly emails):“Leadership is not a person or a position. It is a complex moral relationship between people, based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good.” – Joanne Ciulla, philosopher and director of The Institute for Ethical Leadership“Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.” – John Maxwell If you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. If you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them.” – Attributed to Lao Tzu“Intentional use of power to influence a person or people to achieve a specific outcome.” – Frederick BuskeyFrom here Wednesday and Thursday talked about power, specifically three forms:LegitimateExpertReferentHierarchical v. non-hierarchicalMain point: cultivating your expert and referent power helps you be able to mentor othersI wrapped up the week trying to drive this point home by asking you to think about the mentor’s you have had in your life, and then work to emulate some of what made them have such a profound influence. One of the missed opportunities in my career was realizing too late the influence I had on my colleagues. It has only been in the past five years that I have consciously begun mentoring people, but in reflecting I realize I have been unconsciously doing it for almost 20 years. If I had been more intentional, I could have had a bigger impact. So that is my invitation to you. Think about the power you hold. Legitimate power yes, but much more importantly think about the expert and referent power you hold. Embrace it. Use it. Be intentional about mentoring others and helping them grow.Before we close: Dr. Ryan Donlan was our guest this past Tuesday and we discussed coaching up down and around as an assistant principal. It is a great show for anyone wanting to be more intentional about mentoring – and leading – others.And… in Friday’s email I invited people to share with me the stories about their mentors. If you have someone who has had a profound positive impact on you, consider doing this:Record a 1-3 minute tribute and email it to me at [email protected]. I will do my best to work your tribute into an upcoming show so you can publicly acknowledge someone important. Share a quick story or a list of qualities, or just say thank you. I’ll do my best to get your tribute on the show. That is this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show, please forward it. I’ll give a shoutout to my new LinkedIn friend, a school head in Kuala Lumpur who found the podcast because someone shared it with him and said, you should listen.” If you are finding value in the show, please forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this.”Thank you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at

Show Notes, Episode 95: All Other Duties as Assigned with Dr. Ryan DonlanAbout this show: There are a couple of closely related questions I am frequently asked:As an AP, what’s my role in helping to support the principal’s vision?How do I lead if my principal and I have different leadership styles?How do I practice instructional and/or visionary leadership if I’m stuck doing butts, buses, and books?This gets at an essential challenge in developing principals. The job of the assistant principalship is very different from the job of the principalship, and it can be hard to prepare to be a principal when you are busy being an assistant principal.These are questions focused on assistant principals, but the answers will be relevant to principals and other school and district leaders, so I hope you will stay with us as we unpack what to means to be number 2 (#2).Notable QuotesRyanI got an opportunity very early on in my career to become an assistant principal. It came with another position: the Alternative Education Director. So you can imagine it came with championing kids. What I found out very quickly, Frederick, is that it also came with championing adults.I'm celebrating a daily opportunity to be only as good as my next day's best work.Whether it's an informal visit, quick walkthrough or formalized evaluation, it seems the scripting, logging and scribing with tablet or clipboard in hand is more the rule than the exception. I suggest something completely different that may be even more important - a visit just because.How number twos in leadership have influence and roles in all directions continuously teaching up, teaching down and teaching around.FrederickI think that's one of the challenges when we say we're going to go into classrooms and do an observation, like, what does that mean? What are we supposed to do? And then what are the teachers actually expecting from us?...And so I call this performative observation where it's like I'm an audience member. And I'm going into your classroom and you're giving a performance. So the benefit is for me, I'm just there to enjoy and to appreciate your performance. So it's you're not going to get any feedback from me because I'm there for me for my own growth and for my own benefit.But if I'm being authentic and I work at my authenticity and I work to prioritize the things that are in line with what I value, and to behave in the ways that reflect my own values when I can be authentic and I am just being. Then I think I'm naturally going to be having more of an impact, right, because I'm going to be true and people are going to recognize that there is that kind of sincerity or that authenticity to me. If I'm willing to share with you what I'm working on and ask for some accountability, then that means that we're building that culture where that's your expectation and you can do that too. So I think as school leaders, we need to be really transparent about what we're trying to grow at, what we're trying to get better at and consistently share that with our teachers and ask for their support and ask for their help, which then makes it, I think, a lot more appealing when we're pushing into classrooms and we're asking them to grow or we're asking them how they want to grow right now there's an equity in that situation that I think is really positive.Ryan Donlan Links:Email: [email protected]: www.ryandonlan.comTwitter: www.twitter.com/ryandonlan, or @RyanDonlanAll Other Duties As Assigned, Quick Reads (Blog)https://allotherdutiesasassigned.blogspot.comMinds Unleashed Book Websitehttps://www.mindsunleashed.netSolution Tree Website: All Other Duties As Assignedhttps://www.solutiontree.com/all-other-duties-as-assigned.htmlAmazon Author Page for All My Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ryan-Donlan/Frederick Buskey Links:My email: [email protected] The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://adept-experimenter-3588.ck.page/ff61713840 Website: www.frederickbuskey.comBlog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Five for Friday Show NotesTeaser: Outside of Monday, the theme running through this week’s emails is care. We look at care from a couple of different perspectives that include increasing attention, decreasing attention, and giving some love to the second principle of leverage – working A-B.Hello colleagues and welcome to The Assistant Principal Podcast, I’m your host Dr. Frederick Buskey. I’ve been growing leaders and future leaders for over 30 years. Through my own experiences, and through working with hundreds of other leaders, I’ve learned that school leadership is a journey that occurs in three phases:Urgent leaders spend their time completing tasks, but…Intentional leaders invest their time building systems. However…Strategic leaders create time by growing people.In 2018 I founded Strategic Leadership Consulting to help make this journey more enjoyable for leaders like you. Through my daily email, monthly micro-journal, online community, my upcoming book, and, of course, this podcast, I keep you company on this journey and provide you with actionable ideas and tools to live and lead better today and tomorrow.Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of January 23-27, 2023. Monday: Just because I like to do something doesn’t mean I should be doing it!Tuesday: Putting people first fulfills both or own and their needs and leads to intrinsic motivation.Wednesday: Providing extra care to people before a big challenge is critical.Thursday: Less is more – decrease the number of change initiatives you are implementing.Friday: Less is more part 2: People can implement change better when the demands are smaller.That is this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. Before we go, I encourage you to make an intentional choice to take something you’ve heard today and to reflect more deeply or to act on it. If you already have a clear idea of what to do, that’s wonderful. If not, let me offer three possibilities:Look for ways to lighten people’s packs. The job of teaching is overwhelming, so simplifying the demands of external initiatives can be a huge gift. Teachers will appreciate it more than jeans day!Forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this, I want us to talk about it”Identify the one big takeaway or question from this episode and share it with me. You can share a written, audio, or video message with me by emailing me at [email protected] you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at my website, frederickbuskey.com.I look forward to seeing you again next Tuesday for Episode 95 with Dr. Ryan Donlan. This will be a wonderful episode as Ryan and I discuss specific strategies of how APs can influence others. This podcast will kick off our February focus on mentoring and influencing others. It also gets us ever-closer to episode 100, an interview with my career-long mentor who shares incredible wisdom and kindness.I’m Frederick Buskey and thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Assistant Principal Podcast. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Cheers!

Show Notes, Episode 93: Cultivating Motivation with Mike AndersonAbout this show: There once was an old man who didn’t like baseball. He likes quiet and solitude. But every day all summer long, the neighborhood kids would gather at the empty field next to the man’s house and play ball all day long, yelling, screaming, and sometimes crying. The man put up with the noisy kids for years, until finally, he came up with an awful, evil, dastardly plan. And if you want to hear what that plan was, stay tuned because today we are taking on the complex issue of motivation!Notable QuotesMike:We are programmed to seek out enjoyment and fun. And so, the key to all of these six motivators (autonomy, competence, belonging, purpose, curiosity, and fun,) is that the learning itself should tap into these. It's not the something that we dangle as the carrot… that if you finish your regular work then you can choose an activity to do. Or if you do what I want you to, then we'll have an ice cream party. It's the fun itself, the autonomy itself, the belonging itself needs to be woven into the fabric of the learning.The way we offer the feedback is so important as the administrator. You go in and say, “I really loved how you were keeping your direct teachings short”. The energy is coming back to you without meaning to. Probably you are making this about your approval, which can actually feel like an extrinsic motivator. It takes a little bit of the power away from the teacher. So instead, you might say “Your goal was to keep your lesson short. I observed you kept your direct teaching to 7 minutes. That's totally in line with your goal congratulations”.We need to build relationships outside of feedback, but not give feedback in terms of relationship.I think about the first principle that I ever had, Cherry Jones in East Lyme, Connecticut. The nameplate on her office door did not say “Cherry Jones, Principal”. It said “Cherry Jones, Chief Learner” since she viewed herself as the lead learner of the building and that made such an impression on me as a young teacher. And she did try lots of things. She was always experimenting and learning and growing and making mistakes and it was open and sometimes raw and public and it was awesome, and it was such a great example of somebody who was truly a lead learner.Part of what you got to do if you're going to help lead adult learning is you have to feel the same joy in working with adults that you did in working with kids and recognize that everybody's going to be in different places and some days are going to be hard. But you need to see the people you're working with as learners and you're there to support their learning and get this sort of joy and satisfaction from watching them grow and learn.FrederickWell, and when people have choice, they're going to choose the things that are valuable to them. And then when we serve them. And support them. We're decreasing that effort and creating a little bit more safety so that they can push the envelope and take risks because they know we have their back.I think one of the challenges is that a lot of us have this mindset. Of professional development is something we do to our teachers. And so, the planning and everything is coming from the top. And that's one of the things I'm trying to breakthrough, and it seems hard. I think we need to really flip that on the head, and we need to be serving our teachers and our teachers need to be pushing and saying here's what I need, here's where I need to grow.So, one of my big new points of emphasis is that it's people before purpose and I used to be a purpose driven, you know why? Type person. But it's people before purpose and that's exactly what you just said. I have to invest in you as a person and when I build that relationship because I care about you, and I value you. In that process, you're going to tell me what you need, you're going to tell me what you want, and then I can serve you.Links:Mike Anderson Links: Website: https://leadinggreatlearning.com/Online Courses: https://courses.leadinggreatlearning.com/Frederick Links:My email: [email protected] The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition Website: www.frederickbuskey.comBlog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Five for Friday Show NotesTeaser: Today’s Five for Friday will be a bit different. Leading off we will talk about the best pot to use for cooking oatmeal. I bet you didn’t see that coming! After the brief cooking lesson, we’ll invest the rest of our time exploring a question I received from a reader last week.This week’s big idea: Strategies for coaching upHello colleagues and welcome to The Assistant Principal Podcast, I’m your host Dr. Frederick Buskey. I’ve been growing leaders and future leaders for over 30 years. Through my own experiences, and through working with hundreds of other leaders, I’ve learned that school leadership is a journey that occurs in three phases:Urgent leaders spend their time completing tasks, but…Intentional leaders invest their time building systems. However…Strategic leaders create time by growing people.In 2018 I founded Strategic Leadership Consulting to help make this journey more enjoyable for leaders like you. Through my daily email, monthly micro-journal, online community, my upcoming book, and, of course, this podcast, I keep you company on this journey and provide you with actionable ideas and tools to live and lead better today and tomorrow.Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of January 16-20, 2023. Monday: Don’t waste time fixating on decisions that don’t matter (a story of oatmeal)Two things:We sometimes try and force people to grow in the direction we want them to grow, instead of the direction they want to grow. In the big picture, the direction of the growth is irrelevant. The fact that they are growing is enough. So let them decide what size the pot needs to be, or to lead their own growth.I am guilty of fixating on decisions over things that, in the big picture, don’t matter. It is a waste of time and attention, our two most precious resources.Tuesday-Friday: Question of the weekI occasionally receive powerful questions from listeners and one of my intentions in 2023 is to do more with these questions by sharing more widely. Here is my first attempt.“I would love to know your thoughts about how you try to lead an organization strategically when your superiors are not leading with the same mindset. I'm currently struggling to get my manager to see the need to train and listen to feedback from our employees instead of just harping on them for ‘not doing their job.’”Ryan Donlan, an upcoming podcast guest, talks about the idea of leading “up, down, and around.”Leadership is not a hierarchical activity; leadership is a human activity! Way back in episode 20, Dr. Gabby Grant discussed restorative practices and when I asked her about how to begin implementing those practices she said “Change starts from within.” Before we can change others, we need to change ourselves. In the process of changing ourselves, we may create the space for others, including those above, to also engage in changing themselves.You can’t make your leaders change. You can provide them opportunities to reflect and help them grow in ways they determine, but only if they make that choice themselves. Although I didn’t point this out in the daily emails, I realize now that the only way to get leaders to grow is to invite them into that space and the easiest way to do that is to bring them along on our own journey – if they are willing to walk with us.Three strategies for coaching up:Providing third-party examples of good leadership can facilitate leadership growth within an organization.PodcastsArticlesBooks (caution)My daily emails!Working on a leadership skill and then processing our growth, or lack thereof, with other leaders provides learning opportunities for everyone involved.Set a leadership growth goal, then share it (and ask for help).Invest some time in your own growth by creating space to reflect with other leaders.Takeaway: You can’t force someone to grow. You can only provide space and an invitation and the best way to do that is to start by changing yourself. Invest in your own growth, make it public, ask for help, and invite others to come along with you.That is this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. Before we go, I encourage you to make an intentional choice to take something you’ve heard today and to reflect more deeply or to act on it. If you already have a clear idea of what to do, that’s wonderful. If not, let me offer three possibilities:Begin sitting in with your leader at the end of the week and focus on learning about them and from them. Use this time to change yourself, and you will open the door for your leader to do the same.Do you know someone else who withes they could “coach up”? Forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this, I want us to talk about it” And yes, that is one of the strategies we discussed today and if you listen closely it is included as part of our new outro in every episode!Identify the one big takeaway or question from this episode and s

Show Notes, Episode 91: Meet the New Principal with Dr. Sam Sircey Part 2About this show: I’m working with three new principals this year. They are all first-year principals in new schools, two of them in a new district. Going to a new school is never easy, not for a new principal, not for a new assistant principal. However, most of you listening have either gone through that experience or will go through that experience or both. Today, we have an experienced principal with us who is also in a new school this year, and she is going to help us think about leading in a new school.Notable QuotesDr. SirceyBeing mindful and present and being on the journey with them not in front of them, not behind them, just with them.I think the best advice is to be very honest with the new administration and if something doesn't feel good, or look good, feels like you're crossing a line, be professional and bring that to the table in a setting and establish that relationship.Principals are teachers at heart and we love growing other people to take our jobs and that's what I hope I do with my.Don't lose sight of your passion and why you do this job every day. It's heavy at times. But the outcome is important. And you're not alone.FrederickI always think of the principles as a lighthouse… But that's not enough either, because you also have to be helping people, really helping the situation really get better, and supporting people. Because if you're just a lighthouse, then you're rah rah.If you have a principal that's in there Friday afternoon if you have that opportunity that's the time because your principal is not been able to process all of this stuff all week long and now the quiet comes and now there's that moment and if you can be in there, if you're an assistant principal and you're wanting to grow and you can be in there. Just to listen, a lot of times you're going to learn so much and the relationship that you can form becomes really special.Links:My email: [email protected] The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition Website: www.frederickbuskey.comBlog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Five for Friday Show NotesTeaser: This week’s big idea: We are here to support people, and the first step in supporting is listening. Hello colleagues and welcome to The Assistant Principal Podcast, I’m your host Dr. Frederick Buskey. I’ve been growing leaders and future leaders for over 30 years. Through my own experiences, and through working with hundreds of other leaders, I’ve learned that school leadership is a journey that occurs in three phases:Urgent leaders spend their time completing tasks, but…Intentional leaders invest their time building systems. However…Strategic leaders create time by growing people.In 2018 I founded Strategic Leadership Consulting to help make this journey more enjoyable for leaders like you. Through my daily email, monthly micro-journal, online community, my upcoming book, and, of course, this podcast, I keep you company on this journey and provide you with actionable ideas and tools to live and lead better today and tomorrow.Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of January 9-13, 2023. Monday: It’s not about your vision, it is about the collective vision of the people who do the work.Tuesday Leaders listen, and new leaders begin by listening.“The first thing I did was listen… until you sit with an individual and ask them important questions and to say what is on their minds, you will never get to the meat of what’s going on.”-Dr. Sam SirceyWednesday Put people firstThursday If we care and trust, we let people take the lead in their own growth.In his incredible 1971 treatise, On Caring, Milton Mayeroff said that if we really care about someone, we help them grow in the ways in which they determine. We take their lead in the process, in contrast to us trying to remake them in our image or turn them into what we want them to be.Friday We can use a single word to help us maintain focus on our growth.TakeawayWe are here to support people, and the first step in supporting is listening.One word can be more powerful than many words. My word is coherence, what’s yours? Question of the week: That is this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. Before we go, I encourage you to make an intentional choice to take something you’ve heard today and to reflect more deeply or to act on it. If you already have a clear idea of what to do, that’s wonderful. If not, let me offer three possibilities:Figure out your one word!Forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this, I want us to talk about it”Identify the one big takeaway or question from this episode and share it with me. You can share a written, audio, or video message with me by emailing me at [email protected] you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at my website, frederickbuskey.com.I look forward to seeing you again next Tuesday when we continue with part 2 of our interview with Dr. Sam Sircey.I’m Frederick Buskey and thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Assistant Principal Podcast. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Cheers!

OutlineGuest: Sam SirceyPreferred name/title?Relax and laughWill be video recording and may use small or big piecesSmall things won’t be editedIf there is a gaff – long pauseIntro-interview-outroQuestions for me?FB hit recordShow Description:I’m working with three new principals this year. They are all first-year principals in new schools, two of them in a new district. Going to a new school is never easy, not for a new principal, not for a new assistant principal. However, most of you listening have either gone through that experience or will go through that experience or both. Today, we have an experienced principal with us who is also in a new school this year, and she is going to help us think about leading in a new school.Show IntroHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This podcast compliments APEx Community, the Assistant Principal Exceleration program, but you certainly don’t need to be an APEx member to find value in the podcast.Guest IntroToday I’m joined by Dr. Sam Sircey, the principal at Owen High School in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Sam is here with us today to unpack moving to a new school.Hello Sam! I am so glad to have you on the show. We have been walking our leadership journeys together for a while and it is great to be able to be on this podcast path with you.QuestionsSam, can you tell us briefly how you got to where you are today?And we always like to start with a celebration. What are you celebrating today?Let’s begin in the present moment. You came to Owen X months ago. From the perspective of being the Principal in a new schoolWhat were the three wisest things you did? We want people to learn from your experience, so please do not be modest – share what has worked!What have been the two biggest surprises?What is one thing that you would have done differently?[Astute listeners: 5 mc]Briefly talk about the APs role in onboarding a new principalI know you are a strategic leader – you focus on purpose, problems, progress and people, but there is always a struggle and there are always things trying to suck you into the urgency mindset. How do you stay grounded? How do you continuously focus on people before tasks?Maybe talk about growing teachers, but we will probably run out of time.SummarizingAs we wrap up, I have three questions for you.First, what part of your own leadership are you still trying to get better at?If listeners could take just one thing away from today’s podcast, what would it be?Is there anything else that you’d like to share with our listeners?Guest Outro[fname], this has been great, thank you so much for taking time to share today. Show OutroWell Colleagues, this brings us to the point in the episode where it is your turn to participate by making an intentional choice. If you do nothing with what you have just heard, then you have spent the last 30 or so minutes being entertained. But if you choose to do something with what you’ve heard, then you will have made an investment in your own leadership. If you already have a clear idea of how you can apply Sam’s wisdom, that’s wonderful. If not, let me offer three possibilities:The big takeaway in this episode is that we need to listen to people and give them ownership – and responsibility – for their own challenges. Instead of thinking “Let me tell you what to do…”, think about asking “What’s the problem? And What outcome do you want?” Then listen. If you can work with people to identify the course of action that help them get to their desired outcome, you have helped them to be fully invested.Forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this, I want us to talk about it”Identify the one big takeaway or question from this episode and share it with me. You can share a written, audio, or video message with me by emailing me at [email protected] you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at my website, frederickbuskey.com.I look forward to seeing you again on Friday when we recap this week’s daily emails.I’m Frederick Buskey and thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Assistant Principal Podcast. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Cheers!

Five for Friday OutlineHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of December 31-January 6, 2022 and 2023. Happy New Year!From December 26-January 6 are the twelve days of Christmas (in some traditions) and we are celebrating each day with a fun leadership lyric and brief lesson.Two bonus emails this week!Dedication to Mr. LandDay 6Subject: On the 6th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Six thoughts a straying,Being strategic is about being intentional. Again, simple but difficult. Ignore those disparate thoughts – they are distractions. Be intentional, purposeful, and present. Day 7Subject: On the 7th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Seven souls a singing,Leaders shouldn’t create the vision. Leaders create the space and provide the support to develop a shared vision that represents the aspirations of the people who power the organization. Like a choir director, the leader then helps bring those voices together to create a remarkable sound. Day 8Subject: On the 8th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Eight monkeys making,Monkeys are the tasks that others try and “give” to you. Monkeys make work for you and, worse they make a distraction. Monkeys may be important to the monkey owner, but not to you. You don’t need to accept every “gift.” Acknowledge the monkey, but let it stay with its true owner. Day 9Subject: On the 9th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Nine deeds demanding,The one most essential thing! Demanding equals urgent, but urgent does not equal important! In this new year, I wish for you to be purposeful in all you do. People before deeds, and purpose before demands. Day 10Subject: On the 10th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Ten fingers typing,Do not confuse productivity for progress or action for improvement. Strategic leaders do not focus on action, they focus on incremental progress. In doing so, they consistently make things better with fewer words. Day 11Subject: On the 11th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…‘Leven people asking,Being strategic means that we are intentional, and because we are intentional we ask before we act. Asking questions lets us identify problems so we avoid wasting time treating symptoms. When we include all stakeholders in questioning process, we usually have a better outcome. Day 12Subject: On the 12th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Twelve leaders laughing,Oh, but we take ourselves so seriously! And yet, the trees don’t care, the fish don’t care, and the world moves on with or without you. Be passionate about what you do. Recognize the value you bring to others. But always remember to laugh, for what kind of a leader can we be if we cannot laugh? TakeawayWe work hard and we have to be able to have fun and laugh at ourselves.This wraps up this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe and rate this podcast. Rating the podcast really does help other people to find it.I’m always trying to improve the show, so if you have feedback please email me at [email protected]. If you’d like to find out more about what I’m doing to support assistant principals, you can head over to my website at frederickbuskey.com/theassistantprincipal.I’m Frederick Buskey and I hope you’ll join me next time for the Assistant Principal Podcast.

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Five for Friday OutlineHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of December 26-30. Imagine setting a leadership intention at the beginning of each day. That’s what many readers of the daily email do. For some, it has become a ritual: Pour a cup of coffee, open your email, read the Strategic Leader Daily, and set one intention to be aware of or execute for the day. The daily email is a powerful leadership practice so if you aren’t already a subscriber, I hope you’ll consider joining the list. It’s just one more way to include me on your leadership journey, and that would bring me joy. You can find a link on my homepage at https://www.frederickbuskey.com/ From December 26-January 6 are the twelve days of Christmas (in some traditions) and we are celebrating each day with a fun leadership lyric and brief lesson. Original lyrics are hereDay 1Subject: On the 1st day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…A process for proximity,The most special gift is presence (proximity), but giving it consistently requires intention. Reflect on the flow of your day and build in a time and habit (process) for being present with people.Day 2Subject: On the 2nd day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Two gentle shoves,When we do everything ourselves, we deprive others the opportunity to grow as leaders. Sometimes we need to give people a gentle nudge to take on something that will stretch them. We just need to stay close to support them.Day 3Subject: On the 3rd day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Three good friends,Leadership can be lonely. Identify three people who are special: A mentor, a peer, and a future leader. Invest in those relationships. It is like Christmas past, present, and future, but without the ghosts and humbugs!Day 4Subject: On the 4th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Four magic words,Strategic leadership is simple. Difficult, but simple. It comes down to four words: people, purpose, problems, and progress.Day 5Subject: On the 5th day of Christmas, Frederick gave to me…Five-minute coaching,You had to see that one coming, right? Five-minute coaching is golden. Five minutes, three questions, many outcomes. You can download my five-minute coaching guide here. [will need to create a link and use the pdf of Q2 issue 0]This wraps up this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe and rate this podcast. I’m always trying to improve the show, so if you have feedback please email me at [email protected]. I’m Frederick Buskey and I hope you’ll join me next time for the Assistant Principal Podcast.

Show Notes, Episode 51: Who are you? With Craig MartinAbout this show:Last spring several of the assistant principals in our APEx group asked if we could work on howAPs can influence school culture without over-stepping their boundaries. One AP noted thatthis could be especially problematic if you and your principal had very different styles. Backthen I approached this as a culture question, but today I’m looking at it differently. Today, I’mthinking about this through two lenses. The first is authenticity: how do I do a job whereeveryone is watching me all the time, and make sure that I am true to myself? The second lensis sociological.If we were in a room together and someone introduced me as “a leader” you would not besurprised because I look the part. I’m a 6-2 white male in my late 50’s, I have a good speakingvoice and I know how to engage with people. And yes, I coached football. In other words, Imeet the societal expectations of what leaders look and sound like in our culture.But what about everyone else? What does it mean to be a leader in schools when you don’tlook like me? How do you maintain your authenticity when the expectations of who can leadand how they should lead are still relatively narrow and rigid?Notable QuotesCraig Martin“To be authentic, in my opinion, means that you recognize in the spaces where you walk, youbreathe, you lead, that you allow the pulses of the young people who are moving about, theteachers who are working with the young people, the custodians, the food service community,the parents, the community partners, you allow those pulses help you center on what you feelled to that important.”“People want to know you’re human, they want to know you care”“Being authentic is about, in my Opinion, being open to sharing parts of who you are in yourhuman experience that connect and resonate with others”“Not all acts of vulnerability are created equal. There is a ladder within yourself that is uniqueto you.”“Sometimes the smallest moments are the actually the most meaningful for people when wetalk about vulnerability”“Our kids know us”Assistant Principal Excelerationhttps://www.frederickbuskey.com/apex-members-page.html“In your ability as a leader, you have the ability to transcend what is most important. You havethe ability to send signals to people on ‘this is what i believe in, this is what i am about.’ andpeople will find harbor with you, they will look to you for council and coaching anddevelopment. they will want to take those walks because they want to be in spaces where theyfeel safe, they feel affirmed, they feel seen, and they know they will be supported and loved.”“Be okay with not being okay, but consistently love on yourself. and thats a thing I have to keepdoing. I have to keep reminding myself “I am loved, I am thriving, I am safe” but I need to keepfilling myself with those kinds of messages and affirmations”Frederick“Authenticity is not about you, it is about how you relate to all of these other people, andauthenticity involves serving, connecting, and supporting other people”“Our authenticity should remind other people of the best parts of us and the best parts ofothers”Links:Craig’s Twitter: @CraigCMartin12Craig’s Website: https://www.craigcmartinleads.comMy email: [email protected] Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.htmlSign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialeditionWebsite: www.frederickbuskey.comBlog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Five for Friday OutlineHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of December 19-23, 2022. Imagine setting a leadership intention at the beginning of each day. That’s what many readers of the daily email do. For some, it has become a ritual: Pour a cup of coffee, open your email, read the Strategic Leader Daily, and set one intention to be aware of or execute for the day. The daily email is a powerful leadership practice so if you aren’t already a subscriber, I hope you’ll consider joining the list. It’s just one more way to include me on your leadership journey, and that would bring me joy. You can find a link on my homepage at https://www.frederickbuskey.com/ Recap…Monday: : Traditions have origins, and traditions change.Three pictures:My mom’s Christmas treePam and I’s Christmas treeMara’s (my daughter) Christmas treeThere are lots of similarities because things like Christmas trees are heavily influenced by traditions. Not just the traditions of the family members who preceded us, but also the traditions of our friends, neighbors, and the broader society.There are also some differences between the trees. Traditions are not replicated, they are renewed, and in the process of renewal, some things change.Education example??? Teacher break room? Cigarettes and negativity?Today’s intention: Be aware of what you do during this season and why you do it.Tuesday: Productive FailureIt doesn’t take courage to fail.It does take courage to publicly acknowledge it, and to turn it into something different. Productive failure.This is a re-release of episode 26 that aired way back in May 2022. This episode is one of my top three favorites, so I hope you listen and grow from it as much as I have. Today’s intention: Think about a recent failure, big or small. Is or was there a way to publicly dissect it and learn from it so that others would see how failure can be productive?Wednesday Developing people requires a systems approach.We generally hold athletic coaches in high regard. Unless they lose to their rivals like my Buckeyes did last month 😖What do we expect from them?Winning of course, but we expect coaches to excel at player development. The essential part of a coach’s job is to help players become better by improving their skills and physical attributes.In fact, the better the athlete, the more important coaching becomes!!So why does it seem like developing teachers, salespeople, medical technicians, or anyone else is optional?I reflect on my experiences as a teacher. I earned National Board Certification and was regarded by (most) of my students and their families as an excellent teacher. But I know so much more now than I did back then and I can identify so many missed opportunities and small tweaks that would have helped me be so much better.Why is intensive development optional, for leaders and for those they serve?Today’s intention: Step back and think about your organization and the systems it has in place that support consistent development of your people. What’s working? What’s not? Are there any simple tweaks to make coaching or supporting growth a tiny bit easier?Thursday origin of A-BTalked about this two weeks ago because we actually made a switch!In case you missed it:At the end of the 2012-13 college football Season, The Ohio State University football team’s defense gave up 576 yards to Clemson University, losing 35-40 to the tigers in the Orange Bowl. This capped a season in which the defense ranked 48th overall and 110th in pass defense (out of 130 teams). Defenders were consistently out of place and slow to react. Following the season, new defensive coordinator Chris Ash began a defensive overhaul epitomized by the phrase: “4-6, A-B.” He asked for players to go from point A to point B with relentless effort for 4-6 seconds. The focus is on moving from one point to the next point in the sequence by closing the shortest distance in the shortest time. Working A-B helps us stay focused and make immediate improvements. And if the situation doesn’t improve, maybe because we misdiagnosed the problem, we haven’t wasted a huge amount of time or effort.Friday We choose whether or not a day is special.The days – each one – are what we make of them.Christmas is special, if you celebrate it, because you make it so.You can make today special, tomorrow special, the day after, and the day after that.What makes a day special?You do.Merry Christmas and happy holidays.TakeawayIts about what we make of things:Embrace or revolve our traditionsWe can turn failure into successChoose to prioritize coaching othersFocus on A-BMake each day specialHere’s our holiday schedule in The Assistant Principal universe:The next two weeks of emails will feature a strategic leader’s rendition of the 12 da

Show Notes, Episode 26: Courage with Mary HemphillAbout this show:Are you living your leadership journey courageously? Before Dr. Mary Hemphill became theDirector of Academic Standards for the North Carolina Department of education she was apassionate and innovative principal. Before that, she was an assistant principal with thecourage to stand up for her convictions. The assistant principalship is loaded with valuesconflicts. How do you stay true to your values amidst complex power dynamics and competinginterests? Mary helps us figure it all out in this week’s episode.Notable QuotesDr. Mary Hemphill“Being blessed enough to serve low-socioeconomic communities, affluent communities, ruralcommunities, and urban communities has been amazing”“I am absolutely celebrating the evolution of education, and not the revolution, because, youknow, at the end of a revolution, you lose people... so I am absolutely celebrating evolutionright now and that fact that there are some fantastic educational leaders who are ready to leadthe charge”“Whenever you put a good person in a bad system, the system will always win”“When you are an Assistant Principal and particularly when you become a Principal, you have todecide before you sign your contract, you have to decide before you interview, what hill you doyou want to die on, what do you want to fight for, because when you are in a the moment witha parent, or a board member, or a superintendent, that is not the time to make thosedecisions”“Every great educator knows that moment when they just have to ask yourself ‘am in a positionto just adopt a child?’ today is the day I need to make that decision”“My values for me were that I will always be a voice for the voiceless, which means I will notallow another human being to be taken advantage of if there is access and resources that I canbring in to help that human being”“Those are the tough days that you don’t have a methods course on, and you don’t have anevaluative course on, and you really have to dig inside yourself and say ‘what matters rightnow, in this situation, with this little person’”Assistant Principal Excelerationhttps://www.frederickbuskey.com/apex-members-page.html“For me, this wasn’t about a choice of whether or not to write that child up, for me, this was aculture choice. I was not brought into that school to be a disciplinarian, I was not brought in todo busses, and I was not brought in to do books. I was brought in to help with the culture, andthe only way to turn the culture around is when the adults are emulating and modeling forstudents the type of behavior we want to see, from amazing local and global citizens.”“If I show you disrespect, then I get upset with you for showing me the skill that you haveimparted onto me, that is coercive power there”“Is sacrificing this one conversation with this one adult going to save 80 children and the rest ofthe staff? Because if that is the case, then I am willing to go to bat for that, because I have mydata in order, I have good exemplars, but I also have a solution that is going to help the schooloverall”“Checklists will never grow teachers; it is conversations that grow teachers. And the other pieceof that is really understanding and trying to figure out how to leverage those conversations in away that removes excuses, because angry, hurt educators are always going to try to find andexcuse for why they are the way they are”“We talk with leaders a lot of times about how to literally sit in the silence or sit in the spacewhere the student ‘doesn’t know’. That requires you to not live and take up residence in youroffice. Because when that child says ‘I don’t know’ that is your greatest opportunity to say ‘letme tell you something, I want to celebrate you” ... So, it’s not that I don’t know, maybe youhaven’t been celebrated in this area.”“When we model productive failure, we reposition adults and we reposition students to seetheir reality in terms of the ways they contribute to the community. That is what students areseeking. They’re seeking their place, they’re seeking their tribe, they’re seeking their group,they’re seeking those people who are like-minded to them, and adults are the same way.”“Being courageous means asking the questions in a productive way”“They are modeling what they are seeing, and if they are seeing it at home, that is one thing,but the only things we can control are what is happening in terms of the interactions in thisbuilding, so let’s make sure we shore that up before we say it is a student issue”“You have to put in the protocol if you are going to protect peoples’ time and you have to showthem what that looks like and sounds like so that they can respond accordingly.”Assistant Principal Excelerationhttps://www.frederickbuskey.com/apex-members-page.htmlI never had a parent who argued with ‘the principal or the teacher is where the children are andworking on making things better for children’. I have never had a parent buck me on that, butyou have to

Five for Friday OutlineHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of December 12-16, 2022. Imagine setting a leadership intention at the beginning of each day. That’s what many readers of the daily email do. For some, it has become a ritual: Pour a cup of coffee, open your email, read the Strategic Leader Daily, and set one intention to be aware of or execute for the day. The daily email is a powerful leadership practice so if you aren’t already a subscriber, I hope you’ll consider joining the list. It’s just one more way to include me on your leadership journey, and that would bring me joy. You can find a link on my homepage at https://www.frederickbuskey.com/ Recap…Monday: If you can’t do the whole project, just do the A-B step.This week I was banished.Writing my book has been the quadrant 2 (important, not urgent) task that I have been putting off for two (three? 🤔) years.So, colleague, consider:What important quadrant 2 project have you been putting off for far too long?Is there someone who can help keep you accountable?Is there an A-B step (not the whole manuscript) that you can find a few hours to focus on?Is there a safe place you can go where nobody can interrupt you?Tuesday Listening to others describe their journeys from urgent to strategic leadership is a good investment of your time.Maria shares lots of practical advice, but what stands out most is that she has consistently invested in and prioritized her own growth! Being a strategic leader is simple, but it is also hard.If you can’t invest in yourself, you can’t be a strategic leader.Today’s intention: Reflect on your journey. Are you stuck in the black hole of urgency? Are you a strategic leader? Or are you somewhere in between?Wednesday Accountability partnersI am passionate about writing a book. The entire thing is outlined. I had 1/3 of it written two years ago. I want to write this book. I have already sold 400 copies!And yet, it keeps getting pushed aside.I can’t explain it.What I can explain is that accountability works. I’m in a cabin writing because I have the best accountability partner in the world! Thank you, Dr. Pam Buskey!I have two challenges for you to today. Choose one.Option A: Think about someone who needs support and offer to be their accountability partner.Option B: Identify an A-B step of a priority that keeps getting pushed off. Identify someone who can help hold you accountable. Ask them and set a follow up time to meet with them. If you want to do this but have nobody, you can choose me, and I will be your accountability partner. Seriously, I will. If more than one of you tags me, we can meet as a group. It just will have to be after New Year’s. I am serious though. Email me.Today’s intention: Choose option A or B and execute!Thursday three stages to becoming a strategic leaderI hope you had a chance to listen to Maria Werner talk about her leadership journey on Tuesday’s podcast (link).She described three stages, and between each stage was a mindset shift.Stage one is being caught in the blackhole of urgency.Then there is a mindset shift.Stage two is becoming strategically reactive, which helps you find precious minutes to begin investing.Then there is a shift.Stage three is being strategic and routinely focusing on quadrants 1 and 2, which allows you to develop the people that power your organization.Which of these stages are you in?Or are you in the midst of a shift?Today’s intention: Be mindful of your actions today. Are you spending time or investing it? What stops you from being in quadrant 2? Do you see a path forward?Friday Share your goals to add public accountability.I worked with a principal who wanted to implement 5-minute coaching (link).She told her staff that her goal was to improve her ability to support them by doing 5-minute coaching each morning.Over the course of a week, her staff began inviting her and asking her to do a session with them!One way to have accountability for your goals is to have an accountability partner.There is another way is to make our goals public.TakeawayAccountability comes in multiple forms:SelfMentors, coaches, peersThe public we serveIf you are struggling to finish something important, identify the level of accountability you need and take the A-B step of talking with someone.“When we model productive failure, we reposition adults and we reposition students to see their reality in terms of the ways they contribute to the community. That is what students are seeking. They’re seeking their place, they’re seeking their tribe, they’re seeking their group, they’re seeking those people who are like-minded to them, and adults are the same way.”So says the incomparable Dr. Mary Hemphill on next week’s episode of The Assistant Principal Podcast. This

Show Notes, Episode 83: The APs Journey with Maria WernerAbout this show:Are you stuck in the gravitational pull of the black hole of urgency? Or maybe, you are figuring out some ways to escape that force and move towards being a more strategic leader. Or, perhaps, you have already figured it out. Depending on where you are in the journey, today's show will offer you a chance to see a path forward or to reflect on how far you have come. Or maybe both! We will do this by reliving our guest’s journey from a new AP to a third-year veteran.Notable QuotesMaria:This idea around the cycle of moving out of an urgent leader and into a strategic one.But I'll have a much greater awareness of why I was brought into the role I was brought into. And how important it is that I stick to my role and utilize my role to still meet the needs of my teachers. But in a way that I'm doing to my greatest potential too.I think that it's also easy to fall into that urgency when you are in the stage of learning the school. I was in a new school building with a very different demographic from the school that I came from in the class teaching and understanding the culture that was there and the areas of strength, areas of opportunities for growth. Because I wasn't aware of those things yetFrederick:It's almost like you landing in the forest and and you just keep running into tree after tree after tree and and you start to make that transition of oh, here's a map that shows me where I'm where I'm at and where I need to go. So it's being able to see the whole forest as opposed to just being caught in every tree.Being strategically reactive is the way to get things under control and then you can move to being proactive.Links:Maria’s email: [email protected]’s website: https://sites.google.com/greenvilleschools.us/mwerner/about-mrs-wernerMy email: [email protected] The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition Website: www.frederickbuskey.comBlog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of December 5-9, 2022.

Assistant Principal Podcast Content Episode OutlineShow title and release date: What’s your problem? December 6, 2022Show Description:What do (a) too many discipline referrals, (b) a poor teacher, and (c) an overflowing car line have in common? The answer is not that they are all problems. In fact, they are all symptoms. And they are all things that plenty of people will have stock answers for. Put them in ISS, put them on an action plan, redo your parking lot. And if we are stuck in urgent mode, we might be tempted to jump at these stock answers because acting is better than doing nothing and because it seems like the answers will fix the issue. Unfortunately, the answers only address the symptom, and, in each case (discipline, teaching, car lines) if we don’t invest in identifying the problem, our actions may be wasted.Show IntroHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This is a content-focused episode. The content will stand on its own, but we take deeper dives into podcast topics in our micro-journal, Quadrant2. Members of our APEx Community can expect to get support on implementing the ideas we are looking at and adapting them to your unique context. You can learn more about APEx and Quadrant2 at frederickbuskey.com/theassistantprincipal.Celebrations:Being out in schools with teachers, instructional coaches, principals and, of course, assistant principals.The Big IdeaStrategic leadership four principles: problemsSaw this conversation:MS Discipline strugglesThe office is a revolving door of behaviors. Some are major… others are minor issues that staff struggle to address on their own. I’m looking for help to increase student positive behavior and staff capacity with dealing with tricky students. Myriad of suggestions (114 comments):provided our staff with a list of teacher managed behaviors as compared to office manages behaviorsIdentify teachers who are effective at handling behaviors. Reach out to them to see if they are interested in conducting Pd. invite those who are effective into a think tank where you all discuss what makes them effective and devise a long range plan to shift the culture.We had grade level behavior coordinatorsStaff needs to be empowered. Form a group of staff to start to look at referral data and develop a plan of action together.All good ideas, but people are offering suggestions without knowing what the problem is.Too many referrals is a symptom. What’s the problem?Why we treat symptomsUrgent zoneUrgent Algorithm: pain point, history, quickly or bigly (examples: PBIS, staff development, hammer the kids)Pain is a symptom, not the problemHow to stop treating symptomsAsk why. Stop and ask why. Ask yourself, ask others.Why is this a problem (maybe it isn’t)Why is this happening?Why is this happening now?Why is the student acting this way?Why is the teacher acting this way?Why are YOU behaving this way?Stop reacting and become intentionalHow to uncover problemsThree processes:Informal: Run through options in my head (minor or simple; )Semi-formal: Run through options with someone else/write down the optionsFormal: Strategic action cycle, stakeholders, focused attention (complex and critical): Strategic action cycleInformal: minor things (why is third lunch moving through the food line more slowly than the other lunches?Semi-formal: Increase in student absencesFormal: We are swamped with disciplinePrepCollect and examine your dataThink about the 6 dimensions and issues of misalignmentRemember that M=V/EMay be more than one problem!StakeholdersWhySunburst [head, paper, poster]: why, why, why (don’t sensor)Interrogate each why [why, I wonder, yes but, aha]Integrate [connections, themes, areas of promise, loops]Simple: whyComplex: Sunburst, interrogate, integrateDiscipline: (each one may have a different why) 100 referralsA student (10)A particular group of students (15)A teacher (25)A group of teachersA hallway and lack of oversight during transition (10)Too many students in the bathroom (15)Others… (25)SAC: apply leverage: 0>1, A-B, MVP, M=V/EI’m not sure how this will play on a podcast – would love to get some feedback from you – too deep, more like this – please help me make this show better.Do think it is better with visual, so Q2 subscribers will get pieces to support the process as well as a link to a video where I break down an example. APEx members we can do this together in a group coaching session. To subscribe to Q2, go to https://www.frederickbuskey.com/quadrant2. To join APEx go to https://www.frederickbuskey.com/apexlaunchlive.html, or if you would like a special offer, email me and ask about joining APEx as a founding member.Show OutroThat wraps up today’s episode. We’ll be back next week with Maria Werner. Maria is a third-year assistant principal and APEx member and we are going to unpack her journey from being stuck

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of November 28-December 2, 2022.

Assistant Principal Exceleration Show Notes, Episode 79: Just be visible About this show: “Can Every School Succeed?” That’s a big question and I’m not sure about the answer. I do know that every school can get better. Is that enough? Again, I don’t know. But I do know someone who does and he is our guest on the show today! Notable Quotes David: You know, great teachers, equal happy teachers. I've worked with some teachers that were struggling to find their place. And they had bogged down in a lot of negativity. And when we were able to break through that, kind of see the forest through the trees a little bit, you just saw everything change within their instruction and you just saw everything in their classroom change. But I want everyone to learn from my successes and also my mistakes. As well because again, I made every mistake in the book multiple times. thinking about positive school cultures, you have to be in a position where it's OK to fail in front of everybody. Because if you can't do that, like there there's a culture issue. But I I went back many times to my different stakeholders. Say I got that wrong. This is what happened. And but we were OK because my heart was in the right place. I was trying to better something and we took the wrong path. But hey, let's course correct. And then the next time we did it. You know I'd be so much of a better parent if my kid came with a manual but they didn't. And so being able to kind of work through that and have that culture transparency but also be able to to to not just. Talk the talk, but walk the walk. Be able to get into classrooms. Be able to be an instructional leader. https://www.frederickbuskey.com/apex-members-page.html Assistant Principal Exceleration I used to block it on my calendar. It's a classroom observations and I told my office staff do not book any appointments during those times and it would be like a two hour chunk every day. And the other thing I said was because, you know, administrators care around radios. Well, walkie-talkie I said. I'm going to turn off my radio when I'm on my classroom observations. If there is an emergency like the school is on fire, or I have a or there's a serious injury or like a true emergency, text me. The first year I did this, I had some parents who I found out were a little upset with me because I came down to the school and you know, I was told he wasn't available. I had to work through that, but then they learned. Call ahead and don't just show up, call ahead. And that time is sacred to me. My staff knew that too, so we worked around it. So again, we were educating parents at the same time and and I wanted them to know, hey, being in classrooms is something super important for me. And I want the best education for your kids and for me to ensure that for me to provide feedback and to be there for my teachers, I need to be in classrooms. And my office staff, they they took some hits too. I would buy them coffee every time that happened and we worked through it. the other tangible thing to do once you're in the classroom is you leave, a positive posted. Behind I don't care if it was the worst classroom observation you've ever done. Like you find the one thing. You have some nice work in the classroom, work on the walls, bang, post a note on. You know, you never leave something negative, always positive. And that again helps to bring that fear down from teachers who are not used to you doing this. And they're going to be scared about that posting of the first time. Like what did he put on there? Like what did I do wrong? Oh, he liked, you know, the discussion I was leading. Teachers then talk about that in the lunchroom and that spreads. That's that positive culture that you want to spread. We want to be clinical, not critical. But as far as culture goes, get out there, you know, get out of your office. https://www.frederickbuskey.com/apex-members-page.html Assistant Principal Exceleration When you walk on a school campus, you can feel the culture. You can sense it from the moment you step on campus. No one has to say anything to you. You can just feel it. And I always look around and people are happy. Are they smiling there, greeting each other, saying hello. I would say keeping up with the current instructional practices that keep changing our world keeps changing because kids keep changing. And so when I'm recommending a strategy, I want to make sure that the research states that these are the best strategies. be present, be visible, you know, be out there. You do not want to be the Invisible assistant principal. Being an administrator can be a very, very lonely job because there are things you cannot talk to the general staff with confidential and different things. So have that support system and that's again. Going back to the principal's desk Facebook group, I have folks post in there anonymously all the time, and then all of a sudden, you know, I check it like an hour later, 50 responses on how to de

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of November 21-25, 2022. Imagine setting a leadership intention at the beginning of each day. That’s what many readers of the daily email do. For some, it has become a ritual: Pour a cup of coffee, open your email, read the Strategic Leader Daily, and set one intention to be aware of or execute for the day. The daily email is a powerful leadership practice so if you aren’t already a subscriber, I hope you’ll consider joining the list. It’s just one more way to include me on your leadership journey, and that would bring me joy. You can find a link on my homepage at https://www.frederickbuskey.com/

Assistant Principal Podcast Content Episode OutlineShow title and release date: November 22, 2022Show Description:Last episode we looked at the flywheel through the lens of normative, or group, professional development. Remember, the flywheel refers to a set of practices that, when executed over and over again, build positive momentum that improves the organization and leads to fulfillment of the purpose. In a school, this translates to supporting teacher growth by providing professional development, following up with targeted observations that gather data about the implementation of the practices from the PD, and then using the data to drive the next PD session. Today we will look at how the flywheel changes when we focus on a specific teacher’s growth as opposed to developing a group of teachers.Show IntroHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This is a content-focused episode. The content will stand on its own, but we will take a deeper dive into the topic in an upcoming issue of Quadrant2. Members of our APEx Community can expect to get support on implementing the ideas we are looking at and adapting them to their unique contexts. You can learn more about APEx and Quadrant2 at frederickbuskey.com/theassistantprincipal.Celebrations:Last week’s facilitationThe Big IdeaIn last week’s flywheel example we supported a group of ECTs in implementing a beginning of class procedure. We taught the teachers the components of a good procedure and how to teach and reinforce it with their students. We collected normative data on:3 steps of the procedureNumber and quality of reinforcement statementsType of prompts used to redirect studentsNotes about the writing promptWe aggregated that data noticed that the writing prompts were a weak spot. In talking with the teachers we learned there was a lack of clarity on what a good prompt looked like and how to write it, so that would be the next round of PD. This was all a normative process – for a group.But what about the flywheel used for an individual teacher?Example of Mr. Gale, weakness in store step and reinforcement (6/118). This leads us into a formative coaching cycle.Other things to think about:Flywheel depends on infrastructure:Scheduled ILTStructured agenda focused on teacher developmentTracking teacher progress and focus areas (ep 14)Normative, formativeConsistent feedbackPD planningScheduled observationsSkills:Adapting/creating targeted observation instrumentsRecording data accuratelyLeading conversations around data with teachersTrust your teachers to use the data and lead the processGroup or individualThe vision: Everyone is growing all the timeOne is better than none, a few are better than noneIf you aren’t there, begin with ECTsReflection:Where are you in this journey?What’s holding you back?How can your school get better if you don’t have a system for consistently growing your teachers?Show OutroThat wraps up today’s content focused episode. We’ll be back next week with Dr. David Franklin who founded and oversees a wonderful FaceBook community for school leaders. I’m not a huge fan of FB, but David has provided a nice space for leaders to interact. That group is The Principal’s Desk. You’ll need to request access and if you decide to do that, please mention that you heard about the group on the podcast – that would be encouraging to both of us.If you enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe and rate this podcast.You can ask questions, make requests and give us feedback at [email protected]. We will be relaeasing an upcoming issue of our micro-journal, Quadrant2 focused on the Flywheel, so if you aren’t already subscribed you can go to frederickbuskey.com/quadrant2.That wraps up today’s show! I’m Frederick Buskey and I hope you’ll join me next time for the Assistant Principal Podcast.

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of November 14-18, 2022. Imagine setting a leadership intention at the beginning of each day. That’s what many readers of the daily email do. For some, it has become a ritual: Pour a cup of coffee, open your email, read the Strategic Leader Daily, and set one intention to be aware of or execute for the day. The daily email is a powerful leadership practice so if you aren’t already a subscriber, I hope you’ll consider joining the list. It’s just one more way to include me on your leadership journey, and that would bring me joy. You can find a link on my homepage at

2022-11-15_75_The Flywheel Part 1_FINAL audio 00:12 : Leadership really is a journey. Oftentimes, we begin that journey by being sucked into the black hole of urgency. And then we're able to start to break away from that pole of that urgent gravity by implementing some strategically reactive processes. And eventually those processes give us the time and the ability to move into that phase of strategic leadership. That's that journey is actually the topic of this week's daily emails. So if you're subscribing to our daily email, then you'll know what I'm talking about. And if you're not subscribing, I guess you can either go and subscribe, you can go to my website and check out the blog, or you can wait for five for Friday this week, in which we'll recap that. 01:05 : But why are we starting this podcast episode talking about the journey? Because this episode is going to be a deep dive into what's possible. When you get to that third stage of the journey, when you become a strategic leader. This is what's going to be possible. Hello colleagues, and welcome to the Assistant Principal podcast. I'm your host, Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve life and leadership for assistant principals. And I guess the secret might be out that other school leaders can benefit from the show as well. 01:45 : This is a content focused episode and this content stands on its own, but we'll also be taking a deeper dive into this top into today's topics in an upcoming issue of Quadrant 2, our bimonthly micro journal. Also, members of our apex community can expect to get some support on implementing some of these ideas that we're looking at today and then adapting them to their own unique contexts. 02:10 : You can learn more about Apex and Quadrant 2 at frederickbuskey.com backslash the assistant principal. Remember that there are four principles of strategic leadership. Strategic leaders. Place purpose above urgency. They focused on identifying problems rather than treating symptoms. They make sure that they're making progress and not just taking action. And then finally and most most importantly is that they focus on developing people, not checking off tasks. Those first three principles of strategic leadership, purpose problems, and progress are really only important because they're the things that help us get to that fourth, principle which is developing people. 03:10 : And today's show is all about developing people. We're going to take some concepts that you've heard me talk about. And weave them together and show you what the complete package can look like. The first concept that you'll hear me talk about is the four patterns of observation, which we covered back in episode 65 We'll touch a little bit on last week's episode on Professional Development, in which I talked about the idea that teachers really should be the drivers of their own professional development. 03:47 : And we'll hit on what I think is the most important of all the concepts, which is the flywheel. And we've never really fully broken down the flywheel. We did some conversation with Doctor Melissa Burns way back in Episode 32 which aired in June. But this episode will be the first time that it really. Break down the flywheel with specific examples and walk you through that process. And this is what I'm most passionate about, so I'm really excited for this episode. Ok, so let's dive in. We'll begin with a scenario. I'm in a middle school middle school assistant principal. It's mid November and we're noticing an uptick in student referrals, specifically for students talking and not being in their seats. 04:41 : We begin to take a little bit deeper dive into the data and what we find is that the increases are happening in specific classrooms and three of these classrooms are staffed with early career teachers. In our weekly instructional leadership team meeting. Which, by the way, we broke down in episode 49 the ILT, back in August. In our instructional leadership team meeting. We decide that we need to we need to observe and see what's going on in these classrooms, so we commit to doing a series of performative observations. During transition times in the classrooms of those early career teachers. 05:28 : Now remember, performative observations are for our benefit. So we're not gathering any hard data. We're not trying to improve teaching. We just want more information. We want to find out what's happening. This is for our benefit. Thus, it's a performative observation, and we can communicate that clearly to teachers so they know that we're not going in there to judge or criticize them. So we do our performative observations and in our next regularly scheduled ILT meeting, which focuses specifically on instruction and for which we have a structured agenda, which was also part of Episode 49 the ILT. 06:13 : We have a structured agenda and as part of that agenda we talk about what we saw overall with these three teachers that are struggl

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of November 7-11.

Assistant Principal Podcast Content Episode OutlineShow title and release date:Show Description:"Those sessions do nothing for me" This was a quote from a teacher about some PD and it was shared by an admin seeking feedback on a social media site. More specifically, the teacher was commenting on a mandatory PD session. The situation and large amount of often conflicting advice got me to thinking. Are there a couple of core principles that should drive professional development? Show IntroHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This is a content-focused episode in which we take on the issue of professional development. Today’s content will stand on its own, but we will take a deeper dive into the topic in an upcoming issue of Quadrant2. Quadrant2 is our free bi-monthly micro-journal. Each issue focuses on one specific topic and provides the nuts and bolts for applying that idea in your school. You can find a link to subscribe to Quadrant2 at my website at frederickbuskey.com/quadrant2.Celebrations:As I began thinking about what celebration to share, my first though was that it has been a grueling six weeks and I’ve been sick the past 10 days. In terms of achievements, I don’t feel like there is a lot to cheer about. But I do control my own attitude and that alone is worth celebrating. If you listened to last week’s Five for Friday you heard me talk about my friend Steve and what he said about attitude: Bird quoteSo that’s what I’m celebrating, the power we have to choose. And that is enough to get me out of my little puddle and celebrate something else – that we are together! It’s a privilege to be able to share with you and to have an opportunity to help you live and lead better.The Big IdeaI’m going to talk about all PD today, and by all I mean about 90% of it. There will always (90% of the time) be exceptions, so please don’t get hung up on them. I’m using all because it flows and sounds better than most. So here are my guiding principles for all PD for teachers:All PD should help teachers to overcome specific challenges they are facingTeachers should determine the focus of their own PDAll PD should provide immediate valueThe role of the IC, P, and AP are to help each teacher meet that teacher’s PD goalsBefore going deeper, let’s define teacher professional development: Teacher PD consists of an intentional effort to develop or increase knowledge, skills, and/or dispositions to improve student outcomes. PD comes in five basic forms:Internal group led by a school or district employeeExternal group led by a consultant or other external agentMentoring and peer networksCoaching and support from instructional leadersSelf-reflection and individual initiativeAll of these are valid forms of professional development.Okay, let’s break this down.All PD should help teachers to overcome specific challenges they are facingTeaching is incredibly complex, and teachers will always have many things to improve onThe three most precious resources in school are: people, time, and attention.When there is so much to learn and so little time and attention, why would we ever waste professional development opportunities? By waste I mean not making them applicable to a teacher’s specific situation and need.Teachers should determine the focus of their own PD (Dr. P story)We aren’t good at determining what’s most importantTeacher choice leads to teacher commitmentEstablishes the partnership relationshipSuccess begets successAll PD should provide immediate valuePD that helps a teacher experience immediate improvement in an area that is important to them is golden.Instant wins lead to more wins, and to engaging in more and more meaningful PDThe role of the IC, P, and AP are to help each teacher meet that teacher’s PD goalsEssentially, we are partners in teacher growth. When we follow the other principles, we become trusted partnersAs trusted partners we can provide critical feedback and ask powerful questions that help teachers transformSummarizing (The big takeaway)The approach to PD that I have laid out has implications for how we structure our school, especially our instructional leadership team. We can’t meet the needs of individual teachers without aligning our work to that end.This all feeds into the flywheel concept:Provide meaningful PD to teachersFollow up PD with targeted observations to determine fidelity of implementationUse observation data to work with the teachers to plan the next PD stepsDo this over and over againThis is my passion; this is what I would love to help you do – set up a flywheel in your school. Yes, there are lots of barriers and challenges, but there are also simple things we can do to get started. The flywheel can be built on a small scale, step-by-step, with a minimal initial investment of time and energy.For example, the first step is to set a specific ti

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of October 31-Nov. 4, 2022. If you already get my daily leadership emails, then I hope you’ll find some added value here and if you don’t already subscribe you can find a link on my home page at frederickbuskey.com. Many readers like to begin their mornings by reading the email and setting a leadership intention for the day, but please don’t feel any pressure to subscribe. You are already doing more to grow yourself than many others out there, simply by listening to the podcast.

Show Notes, Episode 71: Restorative Practices with Josh StamperAbout this show: Change starts from within. That was the title of episode 20, in which we talked with Doctor Gabby Grant about introducing restorative practices into your school. Before taking external action, we need to take internal action and examine and reform our own attitudes and perspectives about things like discipline, punishment and justice. Today, we'll dig into what that journey might look like and where it might lead. Notable QuotesJosh Stamper“Behavior is a language. We just have to decode what that behavior is saying in regards to the students needs” 11:04“We just assume ‘you know not to do that. So don't do it again.’ That's not the case, right? So then we go back and we do that teach piece with the student now they're still getting consequences. I think that's the misconception is that restorative practices is Kumbaya, we're holding hands in a circle and then it's just going to magically go away. And that's not the case.” 23:00“This is not going to happen in a week, this is not going to happen just in a month as you said it took. Just years of continuously building upon this to get it to a structure that we felt comfortable and it wasn't even perfect at that point” 28:20“Classroom management is probably one of the most important things for our teachers because if you don't have a class that is behaving or paying attention, there's no way for them to gain that content” 31:30“I think communication is, as far as a leader, is the number one priority or should be for anyone because you work with so many different people” 37:20“The best way to get knowledge to the brain is through the heart. And I think that is the biggest thing, as far as an administrator, is I wanted to make sure that I was touching the lives of our students through. The emotional intelligence piece versus curriculum.” 38:50Frederick“Raising my children is not the same as raising somebody else's children and so we need this trauma informed care” 9:56“Lay the foundation, get the procedures in place and make it as easy a lift as possible. So start your teachers out doing the easy stuff that they're going to have success with and leave the harder stuff to you and then build it” 24:30Links:Josh Stamper’s Website: https://joshstamper.comJosh Stamper’s Book: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/aspire-to-lead-joshua-stamper/1140037170 Josh Stamper’s Podcast: Aspire to Lead https://joshstamper.com/start/ Teach Better: https://www.teachbetter.com My email: [email protected] The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition Website: www.frederickbuskey.comBlog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Assistant Principal Podcast Five for Friday TemplateHello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host this week, Mara Buskey and if you don’t already know me, I am the Inclusion Strategist with Strategic Leadership Consulting, as well as Frederick’s daughter. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of October 24th-28th, 2022. If you already get our daily leadership emails, then I hope you’ll find some added value here and if you don’t already subscribe you can find a link on our homepage at frederickbuskey.com. Many readers like to begin their mornings by reading the email and setting a leadership intention for the day, but please don’t feel any pressure to subscribe. You are already doing more to grow yourself than many others out there, simply by listening to the podcast.So let’s recap. As you may know, Frederick (or my dad) has been with my mom in Kenya for the last two weeks so I had the opportunity to fill in for a week and write all the daily emails. I started off every email this week reminding our readers that these come from the perspective of me, a 23-year-old who is still very much working on her own leadership. I also ask them: What can you learn about empowering young people after reading this week’s messages? Monday: On Monday I wrote about my experience with Julia Cameron’s 12-week course, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. The MVP to this was “Five minutes can alter the direction of your day.” The book really changed the ways in which I talk to myself and helped engrain some positive habits. One of those habits is morning pages. Essentially, before doing anything else after waking up (except making coffee of course) you write three pages. You can write whatever you want, but the idea is to get all of your thoughts and worries out of your head so you can be less disrupted by them later. I challenged our readers for the remainder of the week to try writing morning pages. If 3 pages sounds scary, set your timer for five minutes. Write what you are feeling, what you’re dreading, or maybe what you need to do that day. Get out all your worries or thoughts that take up your space and energy. And after you do it, ask yourself if you feel any different? Is your mind quieter? Is your jaw less clenched or your breathing a little deeper?Though I know writing down your stressors or spiraling thoughts first thing in the morning won’t make them disappear, spending any amount of time with them means they exist somewhere other than inside your mind. Maybe they are a little less powerful now. TuesdayTuesday was all about saying “yes” to what’s right inside you. Have you ever recognized how you were feeling and intellectualized it or explained away the emotions? Have you ever said to yourself, “I shouldn’t feel this way because …”?When we dismiss our feelings, we invalidate ourselves. We lie to ourselves and we send the message that our emotions aren’t important. Rather than dismissing or making excuses, just say “yes.” Say yes to the anger, the sadness, the overwhelm, guilt and grief, to fatigue, to resentment… Say yes to joy, to love, to gratitude and pride. Say yes to not wanting to feel it. Say yes to feeling uncomfortable.Acceptance is harder than we give credit for. Accepting your feelings is accepting yourself. Accepting yourself leads to a better and truer you. And a better you means you can support and lead your people with empathy and honesty. WednesdayOkay, to slightly lighten things up, Wednesday I wrote about a joke I initially made. I was having a hard time and I said to my partner, “nothing’s wrong but it sure ain’t right.” I laughed and then sat for a second and realized how true that statement felt. Startup company:Great vision that could make real change in our communities… but it just doesn’t feel right. Gave myself 6 monthsSo what do I do? I’m trusting myself. I’m diving inward, reflecting on what I’m feeling, and trusting those emotions and feelings. When you notice something is off, do you ignore it or trust your intuition?Thursday I talk about the stories we tell ourselves. Oftentimes, the stories are how we think things “should be.”For example: The last few months I’ve been talking quite negatively to myself because I didn’t go to grad school right away. My thought process is that Because I haven't gone to graduate school yet, I’m lazy. Laziness is wrong. I’m wrong. The truth is, going to grad school doesn't dictate if I’m wrong, lazy, or ultimately worthy. But the other truth to this is if I didn’t address these stories or take time to notice they are even there, how will I know they aren’t true?What are the stories you tell yourself? Do they actually help you? Just because you think or feel something doesn't mean it’s true. Friday I discussed my desire for 6 months now to bake a cake after moving

Assistant Principal Podcast Content Episode Outline Show title and release date: October 25, 2022 Show Description:Every teacher should have a procedure for beginning class. Most opening class procedures share some common elements:· What to do with materials· How or when to sit down· Getting started on bell work or an activator I’ve been teaching procedures for about twenty years, but this summer I made one small tweak in my format that promises to pay big dividends. Show Intro Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode focuses on the importance of identifying clear goals for our procedures, but before we go any further, I want to remind you about our free micro-journal, Quadrant2. Issues of Quadrant2 come out once every 3-4 weeks. The five-page issues take a deeper look at topics that we address on the podcast. For example, last week we released Issue 2 which focused on how to implement the four patterns of observation in your school. Each issue includes nuts and bolts of implementation, discussion questions for your team, and even a section on how to apply the techniques if you are working in isolation. You can find a subscription link on my website at https://www.frederickbuskey.com/quadrant2.html As a bonus, if you subscribe this week you’ll be able to download the first two issues of Quadrant2 so you won’t have missed any opportunities to learn and grow. Celebrations:My recent trip to Kenya. My biggest takeaway is how similar we all are. Our struggles are the same – raising families, pursuing our dreams, and contributing to our communities. We may look and sound different, and our families, dreams, and communities my take different forms, but we all want the same thing. In a time of divisiveness, in the world and here at home, it is worth remembering that people are people, and therefore deserving of respect. We need to treat each other based on our commonalities, not on how our political and social “leaders” tell us we should treat people from different parties, or states, or countries. The Big Idea· We know the reasons why each procedure we teach is important, but by being more thoughtful – and explicit – about the goals we want to achieve, we can make small but powerful tweaks to our procedures. The Why· My passion for procedures:o OSU experienceo Teaching experienceo Coordinating entry-year teacher programso How poor procedural classroom prevent leaders from growing teachers· Good procedures decrease discipline referrals. Even a one referral decrease in a week yields and average of five minutes per day that you can invest in growing teachers. That’s enough time to make a difference with a new, struggling, or even veteran teacher. The what (MVP version) For years I have taught that a good procedure has five components:1. Title or name (may be an acronym)2. Steps (1-5)3. Key words for each step4. Acronym for the steps5. Graphic (necessity varies with age) In prepping for a workshop with a middle school teaching staff in August, I realized that I should be better about emphasizing the why – the goals of a procedure. I began by looking at a sample routine for entering class. The procedure had four parts – Sit, Arrange your stuff, write based on a prompt, and stand when finished. I called it SAWS:· Sit· Arrange· Write· Stand The goals of a beginning class procedure are obvious: it saves time. If we can get started in 60 seconds instead of 180 seconds, we can save 300+ minutes over the course of a school year. That’s over a week of class time! But as I began writing down this goal, others naturally appeared. Before I go further, I’m going to give you ten seconds of silence to think about the goals of a good beginning class routine. Besides saving time, what else should the procedure achieve? Here’s what I came up with:· Connect with teacher· Maximize learning time· Minimize distractions and misbehaviors· Empower students to be responsible for their own learning· Focus students on learning· Begin anticipatory set (optional) What I was most excited about was that first goal – connecting with the teacher. Sure, the teacher can check in with the students, but what if a part of the procedure directed the students to check in with the teacher? What if every class began with every student making some kind of contact with the teacher? How cool would that be? How humanizing could it be? Most teachers have one or more students that need that connection, and for whom the teacher should know the student’s emotional state. Making a small tweak to an opening class procedure creates an opportunity for that. And so, I added a step to my sample procedure. The first thing students do is to say hello to the teacher. What hello looks like will vary with the teacher and the students, but here are some options:· Actually say hello· Give a fist bump· Or a thumb’s up·

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of October 22-28, 2022. If you already get my daily leadership emails, then I hope you’ll find some added value here and if you don’t already subscribe you can find a link on my home page at frederickbuskey.com. Many readers like to begin their mornings by reading the email and setting a leadership intention for the day, but please don’t feel any pressure to subscribe. You are already doing more to grow yourself than many others out there, simply by listening to the podcast.

Show Notes, Episode 67: Blooming Where You Are Planted with Robyn JackonAbout this show: “As an assistant principal, you must learn to bloom where you are planted. If you do, you will open up huge opportunities to make a meaningful difference right now in your career and build the skills you need to make an even greater difference once you become a principal.”These aren’t my wise words. They were first spoken by Dr. Robyn Jackson, addressing a common concern of assistant principals: How do you grow your own leadership in the shadow, or at least presence, of another leader?Notable QuotesRobyn Jackson“But when you're a builder, nobody has to move because you can build wherever you are. And so I think that's kind of one of the main differences between leadership and builderdership that creates space for other people.” 2:40“Because then you build the muscles of of of truly being the person who is the builder in the building, that you know the builder in chief in your school building. And those skills transfer over to the principal ship when most of the other skills we learned as an AP don't transfer” 10:45“He said something that just stopped me in my tracks and I couldn't stop thinking about, which is he said bosses say go and leaders say let's go. And I've heard that before. That's, you know, that's a great distinction. But then he said builders. Say come and and in that one simple sentence, I'd started to to to see the answer to some of the problems that I've been frustrated about in education” 14:20“And how do you get your people committed to that compelling purpose? And therefore things you're going to do, feedback, support, accountability and culture. That's the only four things you can do to positively influence your teacher's behaviors.” 16:27“Then your conversations, whether they're formal or informal, become more about teacher growth and serving students than they do about fulfilling the requirements of the evaluation cycle. And so you don't have to straddle 2 worlds anymore. You turn the thing that you have to do into the thing that you want to do anyway, so that you're always every conversation helping teachers grow” 24:27“ You have to sell things to the district, the idea about why we're going to do something or not doing, or you have to sell the idea to parents or to your community. We need to get good at selling our ideas, and the assistant principal is the assistant principal. Ship is a great way to practice that, you know, how do you see something that needs work in the school, and how do you, how do you present that idea to a principal in a way that the principal sees not only the merit and the idea, but is willing to take the risk of implementing your idea” 30:50“If you can take yourself out of the hero spot, let them be the hero, and you put yourself in the guide position. You will always, always be able to get your story across in the way, or get your advice or your ideas across in a way that people can welcome them.” 35:54“You owe it to yourself. You owe it to us. You owe it to the students and the families you serve. To instead of trying to be some cookie cutter version of of what somebody else's idea of an administrator is. To be yourself, but not just yourself, your best self, that's that's the, that's the ultimate role” 39:30“Focus on being your best self, because if you can do that, you can really step into that the role will be the right role will be waiting for you” 41:00“it's not just grow where you're planted, bloom where your planet. It does two things. First of all, it makes your work so much more fulfilling and rewarding right now. Secondly, it does change people's lives for the better. But thirdly, this is almost counterintuitive. By blooming where you're planted, you get more recognition than if you try to conform into what the district wants you to be anyway, because there's only one of you.” 42:54Frederick“One of the best principles I know. Doesn't respond email You know, there are a few, but if you want to get in touch with him, emails not the way, because he doesn't do email, because he's out in classrooms working with teachers. So it's interesting that people, I think. If you're doing it right and executing on that vision and making a case for that, there's, I think we get more latitude than than what we think we can get.” 29:47“We make a lot of assumptions about the systems we're in and what the systems want from us. And I think in your story what you show us is a lot of times our assumptions aren't correct” 47:43Links:School Leadership Reimagined: https://schoolleadershipreimagined.comBuildership University: https://buildershipuniversity.com/My email: [email protected] The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition Website: www.frederickbuskey.comBlog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

2022-10-21_68_Five for Friday Final Audio Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast I'm your host, Frederick Busky. The goal of this podcast is to improve life and leadership for assistant principals. Today's episode of five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of October seventeenth through twenty first. With a caveat. Although we did indeed publish these emails this week, they are actually repeats from our list of greatest hits. This week as well as next week, I am in Kenya and so we just thought that this would be a fun way to kind of cover our bases, but also still continue to provide you some value while I'm away playing and learning and being in schools in Kenya. So I hope you enjoy this recap. The topic of Monday's message was leadership, isolation, and I hope you're subscribing to the daily list because one of my all time favorite photographs was included as part of this daily email and it is a black and white photo of somebody standing in a puddle with a box over their head. When I first saw this photo, it just made me think of the isolation and the loneliness that can come with leadership. I didn't really go into anything in the email that talked about how to break that, break that isolation down, but I just asked readers to come sit with that and think about their own feelings. Think about how you can take care of yourself. And break down some of that isolation. You see things and you say why, but I dream things that never were, and I say why not? That quotes from George Bernard Shaw in 1949 and the topic of Tuesday's email is vision. I thought this was a nice juxtaposition from Monday's email of a leader with a box over their head. I have to admit that I have a love hate relationship with vision. I used to believe very strongly and passionately that it was a leader's job to provide vision. And then I had a leader that came into my organization and completely trashed it. In my mind he trashed it and he had his own vision. And despite there being lots of people that had invested many years in the organization, he came in from the outside and just imposed his vision over everything. And that constituted a lot of destruction of programs and really damaging people. So I've become. Kind of very skeptical about the idea that leaders come in and impose a vision from outside. I think what we need to be focusing more on is the development of shared vision. And when we talk about visionary leadership, I think what we really should be talking about is the expectation that leaders can come in and create space for people to talk about their own dreams and goals and aspirations, and that leaders can facilitate a group of people sharing that and finding the commonality and developing a vision that is common to the participants. The people within the organization and that then the leader can really give voice to that and help keep people focused on that vision. Speaking of vision, Wednesday's email was about the difference between Mission, vision and goals, and I told the story of a trip that Pam and I took in the summer of 20. 21 So Pam is my wife, the other doctor Buskey. And in the summer of 2021 we jumped in an SUV and drove across country visiting all kinds of parks and things. And so I used that trip to talk about the mission, which the mission was to reconnect with family and friends and to have memorable experiences in nature. That's what we were going out to do. Vision is about the outcome resulting from enacting or fulfilling your mission. So our goal was to reconnect with family that were, excuse me, our mission was to reconnect with family and have memorable experiences. The vision was that we would drive home renewed in multiple ways, with a new set of memories and a great appreciation for our country, its people, and its beauty. Now, goals are the achievements that will help you fulfill your mission. So for our trip, some of our goals were backpack in the Badlands Backpacking Glacier Park, visit my friend Nat and Klamath Falls, spend time with my mom in San Francisco, and visit other family on the way home. Now, as it turned out, we did not meet all those goals. Yet we still achieved the mission and we still fulfilled our vision. So remember, the goals were places we would visit and things we would do. The mission was to reconnect with family and have memorable experiences, and the vision was that those experiences would leave us renewed and connected when we got home. So how could we achieve the mission and the vision if we didn't achieve the goals? Well, what happened was the summer of 2021 there was a massive heat wave across the northwest. And so some of the things that we wanted to do we just, we got cooked out of and so we had to change our plans. So we wound up not backpacking in the Badlands and we didn't backpack in Glacier Park. But that's OK, because one of the things that we sometimes do is we get so focused on goals that we forget why we

Have you ever popped into a classroom, just to see what’s going on, and have the teacher stop the lesson and begin explaining to you what they are doing? Or have them continue teaching but give that look of, “what are you doing in my classroom?” Or, after one of these pop-ins, had the teacher run to you after class and want to know if you thought they did okay? None of these things is helpful, and they stem from a common problem – the inadequate language of classroom observations.

Today's episode of five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of October 3rd through seventh twenty, twenty two. If you already get my daily leadership emails, then I hope you'll find some added value here. And if you don't already subscribe, you can find a link on my homepage at frederickbuskey.com Many readers like to begin their mornings by reading the email and setting a leadership intention for the day.

Show Notes, Episode 63: Productive Disruption with Dr. Mary HemphillAbout this show: Ship is sinking (may 26, 2022, Ep 28)The teacher shortage is not going awayThe academic setbacks from COVID will ripple through our schools for ten yearsContinued trauma has exacerbated already challenging mental health issues among our students, their families, and even our teachers.Politics – enough said.The only thing that’s constant is change. Organizations have this strange property in which they are always changing and yet always resisting change. The past two school years have created stress, loss, and incredible turmoil. They have also created an opportunity. Let’s be real:The new normal is abnormal and our old systems aren’t working anymore. Instead of mourning and lamenting, what if we embraced this moment? What if we continued the work of dismantling and then rebuilding what school looks like? The last big wave of educational reform was the standards movement of the 1980’s. Like so many reforms, the promises have not been kept. So, what’s possible? What’s next? What can we do?Notable QuotesGuestInstead of lamenting and mourning what we've lost, I'm wondering, can we embrace this moment?over 54 % of today's professionals over the past two years have heightened anxiety, heightened burnout, heightened isolation and heightened lonelinesswe're incubating great human beings and bringing resources that we've never thought about before into the school building. It's assessing our mental health resources. It's asking questions about support instead of asking teachers. Hey, are you OK? Saying, have you taken time to rest and recenter todayAre you scheduling yourself? And they're like, what do you mean by that? I said, well, you put your board meetings on there, you put your back to school meetings, your open houses. You put all of those things on there. Are you scheduling you?So when you explore your inner territory as a leader, yes, you're going to uncover things. No, it's not always going to be in a nice, pretty package, but maybe what you uncover, whether it's in your research, whether it's in your reflection. Whether you simply do a staycation and, you know, tell your family, hey, listen, I have to invest in myself. But if you don't invest in yourself in the beginning, you can't reap the reward later. I talk a lot about nomenclature and the way that we call out certain things. So for instance, self-care has absolutely, positively become a buzzword.Self-awareness is literally asking the questions to say, OK, what kind of leader do I want to be in my personal and professional life? And then taking time to answer that question.I'm a human being and not a human doing.You are the leader. You're not the assistant follower. You're the assistant principal. I always tell leaders that 60 % of what we do moving forward should be people centered, 40 % business center. And I think that that percentage is going to allow us to bring our students, bring our teachers, bring our community with us rather than leave them at the precipice of what's happening in education imagine. We're big people, inspiring little people to be able to do life well. Life looks different, so we have to employ different resources and different strategies.We need to come together more in the school community than we are polarizing one another.When we talk about disruption, we have to remember that this is not going to look the way that it used to.Have the courage to take time to spend with yourself. Put yourself on your calendar.This is not about twenty-first century leadership. This is about the impact that your leadership in the twenty first century is going to make in the twenty second century.FrederickPeople are realizing that the old ways are absolutely not going to fit into the boxes. Let's just take the box out for recycling. The box is goneI'm still hearing about driving new curricula and introducing new, new teaching things. And just bringing all this stuff onto teachers who are just trying to survive. And I think we do need to really move from what we think our teachers need to, building those relationships, focusing on those relationships and through that understanding, having our teachers tell us what they need.There's a really consistent theme, and that theme is that change begins within ourselves. we have to shift from being task focused to people focused Coming into this school and me seeing who you are before I see what you are. And again going back to that task focus when we're task focused. And when we're prioritizing time, we're focused on what you are. Because understanding who you are. That that takes a different, you know, I've got to be present for that. I can't be worried about those other things. My priority has to be you.the common thread that works through all those leaders that we've talked to that have inspired us. Is an they know who they are. And they're authentic about who they are.Having the courage to take care of yourself. I

2022-09-27_62_Five for Friday_FINAL AUDIO 00:01 Hello colleagues, and welcome to the Assistant Principal podcast. I'm your host, Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to improve life and leadership for assistant principals. Today's episode of five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of September twenty sixth through thirtieth twenty twenty two. If you already get my daily emails, then I hope you'll find some added value here. And if you don't already subscribe, you can find a link on my homepage at Frederick Buskey com. 00:32 Many readers like to begin their mornings by reading the email and setting a leadership intention for the day, but please don't feel any pressure to subscribe. You're already doing more to grow yourself than many others out there simply by listening to the podcast. For the next two weeks. We're writing about the same theme each day, and that theme is why people don't do what we want them to do. I began the week on Monday by telling a story that's adopted from real life about a state that is requiring all elementary teachers to be trained in an intensive science based that's is that air quotes science based reading technique and structure their lessons in a specific format defined by the program. 01:26 We'll be really creative and we'll call it letters. Letters So the training requires teachers to spend 2 to 3 hours a week outside of the school day. As compensation, the state is providing a monthly stipend of 200$ and while some teachers are embracing the program predictably, many are not. I closed Monday by talking about. The incredible formula of m - V divided by East, which is motivation equals value divided by effort. What I love about this formula is that it suggests that there is no such thing as laziness, and there's no such thing as somebody being unmotivated or not caring. Motivation is simply an outcome of the formula, the value divided by the effort. 02:30 So the higher the value and the lower the effort, the more motivated I'm going to be. The lower the value, and the higher the effort, the less motivated I'll be. I love this formula because it stops us from judging people, and it gets us to put on problem solver hats instead of blame hats. So just keep this in mind as we work through the next, I guess, eight nine days M equals V divided by E What's the value that somebody's seeing, and what's the effort it's requiring? Two stays, really a cautionary tale, and I told a story of a new principle that I had been working with a couple years ago, and I kept emailing them and didn't get anything, didn't get anything. 03:22 I had met them just briefly at the beginning of the year. Finally I talked to one of the other principals and said, hey, will you have them contact me? They emailed me and said, oh, I'm sorry I wasn't getting your emails, they were going to my spam. So we set up a time for a coaching call. And they couldn't make it and they couldn't make the next one, and they couldn't make the next one. And I was trying to figure this out and I made U this whole narrative to myself about the principle not valuing me and not wanting my coaching services and yeah, that's fine, that's fine. 04:01 But I had this whole narrative put together. Finally we got together and the principal came up to me and grabbed my hand and said, ah, I'm so thankful that we finally got together. I've heard so many great things about you and I have been wanting to work with you all year. And I just had to sit back and think about. In the absence of the information about why they really were so busy, I just made-up a story. And that story really was based on my own insecurities and my own experiences and sometimes neighbors negative perspectives. 04:41 And to the point of Tuesday's message is to help us remember that in the absence of information, a lot of times we just make stuff up and we make stuff up based on our prior experiences and our own insecurities. So that's something that we need to be really cautious of. So the first real reason that we cover about why people don't do the things we want them to do, and I guess I should have said this doesn't just have to be some big change mandate that's coming from above. This can be something like implementing a teaching strategy or following through on turning in grades in a timely manner. There are all kinds of places that this could apply. 05:27 So the first real reason that we look at is that. As a person that's been asked to do something, our past experiences colors our predictions for the future. If I've already been through training on a science based reading program. And it was a horrible experience. I may assume that letters is also going to be a horrible experience. And because of that negative. History I'm going to dodge out of doing it because the effort, the emotional angst and what I perceive to be the difficulty level is going to be so high that there's no way that it's worth the value. The next reason we

Show Description:How did your to-do list go today?How about yesterday?How will it go tomorrow?If you missed last week’s webinar on escaping the black hole of urgency, you may still be focused on the to-do list. I won’t recap the entire webinar here, but I will pull a couple of highlights. Show Intro Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This is another content-focused episode. I know it has been a few weeks since our last interview, but if you can hold on for one more week, you’ll be able to tune in to my discussion with the incomparable Dr. Mary Hemphill. Celebrations: That we all have opportunities to reflect and refocus. Just because we are struggling doesn’t mean we have to stay there, and so often our struggles as leaders are more about our own self-doubt or the flawed perspectives, we have adopted than about the actual work itself. So, I am celebrating that I have been able to reflect and refocus and I breathing a bit easier. I hope you also find the opportunity to this if it is something you need right now. Body We can’t escape the black hole of urgency by using time management because time is not the problem. I’m not going to lay out everything that spells out what the real problem is, that’s why I did the webinar. However, I will share the three epiphanies that have helped me reshape the way I work and what I focus on. Two responsibilities of administrators:· Keep everyone safe· Grow your teachers Story with the principal The three epiphanies Emphasize priorities and values Examples:· PPT over coaching· Adding clipart to a newsletter · Car line v. new teacher Think about what you are doing v not doing and ask:· Are the things I value most getting done?· Are the most important things getting done?· How do what’s important and my own values as a leader intersect? Summarizing (The big takeaway)Repeat the three epiphanies These aren’t about time management, but by keeping them close. Maybe you can focus more of your time doing what’s most important. I mentioned the webinar. It was a fun time I participants walked away with a better understanding of the real problem, a change in perspective, five tips for being strategically reactive, and three strategies for being proactive that could be enacted in five minutes or less. The replay is available as a courtesy to APEx Community members. APEx stand for … My goals in developing APEx Community were two-fold:· Improve mental and emotional health of APs and other school leaders by building a community that decreases isolation, develops a network of support, and provides a place for colleagues to collaborate and share in solving real-world problems.· Create a place to provide community-driven professional development to help leaders excel at the jobs they have now while also preparing for the jobs they may want or have later.· If you are interested in joining our APEx Community, you can learn more at frederickbuskey.com/APExlaunchlive· For podcast listeners I am running a five-day special. If you use the code “3epiphanies” on check out you will receive two months for the price of one. You can sign up here.This special expires Saturday at midnight, so if you’ve been interested in joining APEx Community but not quite sure, this is the perfect time. You’ll be able to connect with colleagues from different states and different types of schools, and if you join by Thursday you’ll be able to sign up for our group coaching session on Thursday, Sept 29 at 3:30 EDT. I would love for you to join our community, but this offer expires Saturday night.https://www.frederickbuskey.com/apexlaunchlive.html, hit the join now link, use 3 epiphanies when you check out. It’s $49/month but you will get a two months for that proce, immediate access to the community, group coaching, and the webinar replay. Show Outro That wraps up today’s content focused episode. We’ll be back next week with [guest] in an episode titled [title]. If you enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe and rate this podcast.You can ask questions, make requests, and give us feedback at [email protected]. If you’d like more content tailored towards the needs of assistant principals, you can head over to my website at frederickbuskey.com/theassistantprincipal. That wraps up today’s show! I’m Frederick Buskey and I hope you’ll join me next time for the Assistant Principal Podcast. Cheers!

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of September 19-23, 2022. If you already get my daily leadership emails, then I hope you’ll find some added value here and if you don’t already subscribe you can find a link on my home page at frederickbuskey.com. Many readers like to begin their mornings by reading the email and setting a leadership intention for the day, but please don’t feel any pressure to subscribe. You are already doing more to grow yourself than many others out there, simply by listening to the podcast. This weeks theme revolves around a single quote uttered by a friend at a party we had a couple weeks ago. It was later in the evening and most people had gone home and my friend said, “Everyone who’s not here has left.” Of course, my head went to leadership, and to thinking about the people who had left. Monday:I began the week by telling the story and simply asked readers to sit with the statement and to think about it. In your organization, what does it mean when we state, “Everyone who’s not here has left.” TuesdayIf people have left, think about where they have gone?· If they aren’t with you, are they with someone else?· Are they next door (with another organization) or far away (different profession)?· Are they gone for the moment, or forever? WednesdayAre the absent people missing good stuff, or bad stuff?This could go two ways. They could be missing the good stuff:· Your presence,· Growth opportunities· Opportunities to develop their own leadership skills· To serve othersOR· Loneliness when leaders are too busy to be present· Being told what to learn without any help to learn it· Being overwhelmed by inits that will be gone in 12-24 mionths· Always fighting a system that makes it harder to do the good work Conclusion: leadership matters ThursdayThere is a magic bullet for leadershipThe second most important question for us to ask about those who have left is this: Why did they leave?· Missing good stuff v missing bad stuff Art teacher story…Because she worked for a principal who cared for her. When the teacher had broken her ankle while coaching softball, the principal had been there for her. But just as importantly, that principal was there helping the teacher grow and get better at her craft. And she impowered this young teacher to practice her leadership. There are many reasons why people leave, but there is one overriding factor in why they stay – YOU! You can be a leader who people walk away from, or you can be a leader who people make sacrifices to remain with. Being the second one is hard work, but it is also simple work!● Be present● Care and build relationships.● Help people get better at what they do! This is the magic bullet. FridayThe most important question we can ask about those who aren’t here is “how do we call them back?”· Physically gone but also mentally and emotionallyThe secret?● Be present● Care and build relationships.● Help people get better at what they do! Be present, even if it feels like they don’t want you there. Care. Truly care. How tragic is it that somebody is working for or with you and they hate their job? What a lost opportunity to shuffle in every day, just waiting until you can leave again. Build the relationship by learning the stories the person has. Who were they? How did they become who they are now? What dreams did they have? What dreams do they still hold? Help them grow! Reflect:● Are you too busy to invest time in growing your people?● Were you too busy to attend Thursday’s webinar on how to not be so busy?● Will it ever change? Takeaway· Leadership matters· People stay because of you, because they know you value them and you help them grow.· Distill leadership into one magic bullet:Be presentCare and build relationships.Help people get better at what they do! This wraps up this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe and rate this podcast. Rating the podcast really does help other people to find it. I’m always trying to improve the show, so if you have feedback please email me at [email protected]. If you’d like to find out more about what I’m doing to support assistant principals, you can head over to my website at frederickbuskey.com/theassistantprincipal. I’m Frederick Buskey and I hope you’ll join me next time for the Assistant Principal Podcast.

Assistant Principal Podcast Content Episode Outline Show title and release date: 9/20/22 Show Description:Everything has a cost. That cost can be easily measured in time, money, and attention. But the larger and more important cost is opportunity cost. Opportunity cost reflects what we could have done with the time, money, and attention that we spent on doing whatever we did. Because our schools have unlimited needs, everything we do displaces something else that we could have done. The key to being a strategic leader is to be intentional in our efforts, not by asking “can we do this?” but instead asking “what else could we do with this time, this money, and this attention?” Show Intro Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This is a content-focused episode. Actually, it might be a soapbox focused episode because today I am going to interrogate our propensity for mandates. Celebrations:· I’ve begun writing my book again, which, as a quadrant 2 activity, have been pushed off multiple times. It feels good.· The FREE webinar – I hope you will join meo Thursday Sept 22, 2022, 7-8:30 EDTo Time is not the problem – the real problemo Shift your perspective and the way you look at your dayo Five tips for being strategically reactiveo Three practices for being proactive.o Reg ends tonight. If you don’t have time, then this is definitely for you!o Listening to the pod is like living in the same neighborhood. We pass each other on Tuesdays and Fridays and wave hello. Attending the webinar will be like hanging out on my front porch, a safe place where we can get to know each other a bit better.o Web link The Big Idea· Opportunity cost The Why· Inspired by recent conversations with school leaderso New curriculumo New math programso New testing support programso NC LETRS roll out of ELA program. The what (MVP version)Here’s why I struggle with this:1. We are coming off two years of a pandemic – as optimistic as we are about this year, we are also exhausted.2. I am a foundationalist, and the foundation of classrooms is solid procedures and great teacher-student relationships. In my view, everything else is secondary. The problem is that the majority of classrooms like one or both of these, and early career teachers need extra support.3. The opportunity cost of every initiative is individualized teacher support4. Teachers should be in charge of their own growth goals, with few exceptions. Initiatives remove teacher agency and prevent us from being there to support them. Checking your own pulseThese are my observations and takeaways from the research and my own and other leaders’ experiences. It doesn’t matter how good a new program is if:· It cannot be implemented with fidelity· It cannot be followed up with adequate school support· It cannot be sustained over time I have seen nothing to convince me that today’s big push or flavor of the month will be done with any of those things. What do you think?· What have I said that you agree with?· What have I said that you disagree with, and why does it not ring true for you?· In reflecting on the initiatives you have been a part of, how many of them had a lasting impact?· What could your school look like if all the time, money, and attention spent on these initiatives over the past five years had instead been invested into personalized support of early career teachers? I think there are alternatives. Leading v. bleeding Four simple thoughts:1. Slow play, stall, drag your feet, ignore if possible (lack of follow up)2. Pick one thing that fits with what you are already doing and implement that one thing with fidelity!Collect the implementation data and brag to everyone about what a great job you’ve done.3. Negotiate. If there are multiple initiatives, talk with your DO. They want what’s best so work with them to identify priorities based on the needs and capacity of your staff and students4. Present a coherent PD plan of what you will be doing that addresses the building and district priorities. Back the plan up with data. Leaders don’t just lead those they are responsible for, they also need to lead up and help grow the people who are serving them. District and state ed jobs can be a grind and filled with pressure and conflict. Everyone is doing the best they can, and as leaders we need to have the discussions that help us to stay grounded and pull our heads out of the weeds long enough to see the forest. I think I’m mixing metaphors, but you get what I mean. The final takeaway:Don’t just jump through the hoops. Consider the opportunity cost of every investment. Make decisions with your teachers that will meet their most important growth needs. Show Outro That wraps up today’s content focused episode. We’ll be back next week with the amazing Dr. Mary Hemphill in an episode in which we will be playing with the idea of productive disr

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