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 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

Webinar registration: https://event.webinarjam.com/register/2/532gpun

Show Notes, Episode 58: Supporting New Teachers with John SchembariAbout this show:We all know how critical it is to support new teachers, but do we actually know how to support them? Today we answer four questions:What do we mean when we say “new teacher?”How can APs build collaborative relationships with new teachers?What specific actions can we take to meet the personal and professional needs of early career teachers and How do we fit those actions into the crazy days of the assistant principalship?Between the podcast and our monthly micro-journal – Quadrant2, we’ve been investing a lot of time on new teacher support and for good reason. Today we will go another layer deeper with our special guest Dr. John Schembari.Notable QuotesJohn Schembari: “You don't need to be a friend but you do need to care and understand what the emotional needs of our students are”“”You really gotta know your students'' is what I am saying, and to know your students, you really have to have a relationship with them. You can’t stay behind your desk, so to speak, at a removed distance”“I get concerned when schools say “Oh, this new teacher can’t handle that yet””“I think administrators need to practice what they preach so teachers have models of the ways that they can develop these relationships with the various stakeholders”“How can we even expect our assistant principles to get into classrooms on a regular basis if the understanding for the need for that is not throughout the entire district administration”“New teachers, like all teachers, need support. And the number one way administrators can be showing support is to be present in classrooms beyond the formal evaluation”Frederick:“We really have to approach it in education that we are on the job training, that we are not bringing in finished products. and we always know that but i think we need to be doubled down on that and really be mindful about what is that 5-year process for nurturing and developing and helping our early career teachers”“New teachers, thankfully, don’t carry that attitude; they want administrators in the classroom, so the first way to build that relationship is just to be in the classroom, not to evaluate, not to correct, but to be there and be present. And you just investing that time, being in the classroom, shows that you care.”“When we observe, we’re collecting data. We’re collecting that data to support the teacher’s growth, that data is a tool for that teacher. So we can collect data and then go to the teacher and say “hey let's talk about what is happening. Here's what I am seeing, what are you seeing, what do you want to work on?””“I have never seen anybody leave a job in which they were growing, they were becoming more skilled, they saw themselves on a ladder developing and growing and had support around them to do that. People don’t leave jobs like that because those kinds of jobs are satisfying”Links:John Schembari’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnaschembariMy 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)

Monday:Relationships in the workplace take three basic forms:· Congenial: people share a social bond· Pragmatic: people share a professional bond· Collegial: people share professional and social bonds The problem with congenial relationships is that while they make people happy, they don’t help us achieve the organizational purpose. The problem with pragmatic relationships is that they only work well for some people. Collegial relationships thus have two elements – professional and social. The ratios of each will vary, but both are present. COVID laid bare the idea that work and life were separate, and if we don’t have a connection at both levels than we are missing something. TuesdayThe prerequisite is to actually care. We each have a story Three steps to caring:1. Recognize your own imperfections2. Appreciate diverse perspectives3. Learn the stories behind those perspectives Wednesday(Scott) The early steps of building a relationship are to be fully present, ask good questions, and listen. ThursdayBeing vulnerable isn’t safe, but here are a couple meaningful ways that you can share vulnerabilities:· Show that you are human but don’t complain· Ask for help that the listener can give· Share your dreams and what you are trying to get better at. FridayMy goal this week was not to educate you on relationships, but instead to give you some simple things that you can think about and act upon.· From this week, what is one thing you can act on?· Bonus: What have you done this week to build relationships with each of your ECTs?· What will you do next week? Takeaway· Building relationships should be intentional· Learn people’s stories by being present, asking, and listening· Be human, be vulnerable Two dangers:· Pragmatic (tasks over people)· Congenial (single dimensional) As leaders, we have an ethical obligation to serve our teachers, to help them grow, and to help them find joy in their work. We can do all those things better when we know their story and when they trust us. 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. If you have questions, ideas, or stories you’d like to share, 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. Cheers! On September 22, from 7-8:30 EDT, I will take you on a space trip that will lead us out of the black hole of urgency.In 90 minutes:· You will understand how the gravitational pull of gravity really works, which will allow you to use more effective strategies to escape it.· You will think differently, which will allow you to invest more energy into what you care about.· You will learn five strategies, which will help you achieve more by doing less.· You will learn one proactive practice, which will help you grow the people around you. This webinar is FREE to Quadrant2 subscribers and registration opens today! You can subscribe to Quadrant2 here.

Show Notes, Episode 55: The Black Hole of Urgency For many of us, our goals – our dreams – of leadership revolve around helping others:· By helping them gain skills,· By aligning systems so their work is easier and less frustrating, · By increasing opportunities, · And by building powerful collegial relationships. But those goals, dreams, intentions, slip away from us as we get sucked into the pull of the urgent. You are working harder trying to manage your time and be more efficient, but it's not working because time and efficiency are not the problem! Notables On September 22, from 7-8:30 EDT, I will take you on a space trip that will lead us out of the black hole of urgency.In 90 minutes:· You will understand how the gravitational pull of gravity really works, which will allow you to use more effective strategies to escape it.· You will think differently, which will allow you to invest more energy into what you care about.· You will learn five strategies, which will help you achieve more by doing less.· You will learn one proactive practice, which will help you grow the people around you. This webinar is FREE to Quadrant2 subscribers. You can subscribe to Quadrant2 here. We will send Q2 subscribers the webinar registration link on September 9, 2022. Links:My 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.com

Looking forward to episode 56: The Black Hole of Urgency!

Assistant Principal Podcast Five for Friday 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 August 29-September 2, 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. We have many new subscribers, so I want to take a minute to emphasize a few points about how to get the most value from the daily email:1. Don’t feel like you need to read them every day. Putting pressure on yourself to read every day leads to associating the email with negative emotions and that is counterproductive.2. If you are short on time, look at the MVP and think about it on your morning commute (if you aren’t listening to this podcast!)3. The ideal way to use the emails:a. Make your coffee or drink. b. When you first open your email, find the daily message.c. Give yourself five minutes. d. Read the message. e. Reflect on it. f. Most importantly, think about how you can apply the message to your leadership during the day.4. I try to write the daily message so that there is something you can use each day.5. Bonus: If something really resonates, and you have a few extra moments, hit reply and share with me. The hardest thing about the email is not getting feedback, so if you appreciate what I’m doing, consider connecting with me. If you are consuming this podcast on our YouTube channel, consider leaving a comment. Recap… Stories that drove this weeks emails… Monday:Good leadership matters. Your leadership matters!Six dimensions (refer back to episode 1 of the podcast) TuesdayMVP: Support new people by building a strong relationship.What new teachers needBegin with relationships WednesdayMVP: “When a good person is in a bad system, the system will always win.”· Don’t stay· Aply somewhere else· Insulate yourself and unit ThursdayMVP: Leadership feeling complicated? The essential things are being purpose driven and building relationships. FridayLet’s reflect:· If you strip everything away, what are the essential elements of your leadership?· Do you have a concrete strategy for getting better at any of them?· Are you being intentional about growing other leaders? Takeaway· Leadership matters and leadership at every level of the organization matters.· Leadership is really hard.· But it is also simple: relationships and purpose. Everything else follows from that. This wraps up this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. Next week we are going to dig into this idea of building relationships, so I hope you’ll join me each day by reading the email or at least listening to this podcast summary. If you enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe and rate this podcast. If you have feedback email me at [email protected]. If you want to learn 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. Cheers!

Show Notes, Episode 53: Supporting New Teachers, August 30, 2022 About this show:In my teacher education program at The Ohio State University, I had two professors who literally wrote the book on managing students and spaces in physical education. Some of our student teaching lessons were taped, and the video was analyzed in six-second increments. Time was coded based on what a specific student was doing and the codes, as I remember them, were: Listening to content, listening to instructions, waiting, off task, and active learning time, or ALT. The goal was to have close to 80% of ALT time. In other words, students would be actively engaged in performing a task for 32 minutes during a 40-minute lesson. This required us as teachers to run highly managed spaces using concrete procedures. Notable Quotes and Content“The holy grail was ALT, active learning time. The goal was to run very tight lessons and have an extremely well-managed classroom with strong and effective procedures in order to maximize active learning time. This was my teacher ed preparation program.” “The problem is that very, very few beginning teachers went through a program like I did. The Big Idea: Three big rocks:· Classroom management· Curriculum management· Building relationships with school leadersBased on our collective experiences and in the literature The WhyGreat teachers = great schoolsCan’t have great teachers if you can’t keep them and can’t develop themEthical obligation to support and grow the people we serve ***Almost universally, teachers wanted more contact with their administrators*** “With your lowest performing teachers, the place to start might be making sure that they are putting the time into planning.” Challenges· Not having time is a false excuse (deal with them on front end or back end)· Having a clear game plan o What do you want to do?o Management, curriculum, relationships and presence· Taking a team approach Checking your own pulseWe are 1-3 weeks into the school year· Could you categorize your early career teachers?· More importantly, can you define what puts them into those categories and determine what they need most from you?· Are you supporting them and being directive, or are you making suggestions that are lost on overwhelmed 22-year-olds?· Do you have a team approach that is prioritizing ECT support? Next steps1. Build a relationship with your ECTs2. Have the courage to be more directive in supporting them3. Drive conversations with your ILT Summarizing (The big takeaway)· YOU need to support ECT, don’t put it all on your mentors· ECTs want you to be present and direct· Investing time is not an option – front or back Some help:· 10 Ways in 10 Days is a set of ten 10-minute activities to use with your new teachers in the first two weeks of school. If you aren’t sure of where to start with your new teachers, you can use these activities to start building relationships and providing procedural and curricular support. Even if you are a few weeks into the year, you can easily adapt these activities. In about the time it will take you to process three discipline referrals, you can help a new teacher get off to a much better start! Get a copy at https://mailchi.mp/9af27e09bca4/10waysin10days. Downloading will also sign you up for Qudrant2, our free bi-monthly micro-journal. Links:My 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)

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 August 22-26, 202. 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. Recap… Monday:· Backpacking story· What do we mean when we say we can’t do something?o Don’t want too It is physically impossibleo It is not a priority· I’m going to monitor my “I can’t” statements, I hope you will as well. TuesdayInterview of Craig Martin Executive Director of the Bridge Boston Charter School in Roxbury (Boston) Massachusetts. The one takeaway - Play quote We put our heads down – need to reflect on who we are and to be kind to ourselves even when our actions don’t produce out intentions. WednesdayWater tanks capture excess capacity to use when needed. How do we do that in leadership?· Building the leadership capacity of others adds extra capacity to the system.· Creating standard operating processes allows us to do more accurately in high demand times.· Investing time in identifying root problems allows us to focus our energies more efficiently. ThursdayAnother podcast quote from Leigh Ann Alford-Keith who leads in Charlotte-Mecklenburg system her in NC. “It is a both-and, not either-or. You don’t have to think of engaging families or supporting your teachers. You can think of ‘how will engaging families support my teachers.’” Opposition is a sign of mis-alignment FridayBeautiful hike into the Blue Ridge Mountains, foggy hike out· I knew the view even though I couldn’t see· I trusted that I knew the path· But as leaders, how do we navigate? TakeawayThe tensions of leadership:· How do we build, increase, and then sustain our leadership capacity?· How do we know when to trust our knowledge and experience, and when to pause and be cautious?· How do we maintain clarity, not only of our own mission, but of the school’s mission, and the roles of all the people that make up our school community? While daunting, this week’s messages also offer us hope. The consistent message is that the power lies with us. We get to choose, and when we understand ourselves, we are better able to make choices that sustain not only our schools, but ourselves as well. 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.

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 how APs can influence school culture without over-stepping their boundaries. One AP noted that this could be especially problematic if you and your principal had very different styles. Back then I approached this as a culture question, but today I’m looking at it differently. Today, I’m thinking about this through two lenses. The first is authenticity: how do I do a job where everyone is watching me all the time, and make sure that I am true to myself? The second lens is sociological. If we were in a room together and someone introduced me as “a leader” you would not be surprised because I look the part. I’m a 6-2 white male in my late 50’s, I have a good speaking voice and I know how to engage with people. And yes, I coached football. In other words, I meet 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’t look like me? How do you maintain your authenticity when the expectations of who can lead and 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, you breathe, you lead, that you allow the pulses of the young people who are moving about, the teachers 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 feel led 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 your human experience that connect and resonate with others”“Not all acts of vulnerability are created equal. There is a ladder within yourself that is unique to you.”“Sometimes the smallest moments are the actually the most meaningful for people when we talk about vulnerability”“Our kids know us”“In your ability as a leader, you have the ability to transcend what is most important. You have the ability to send signals to people on ‘this is what i believe in, this is what i am about.’ and people will find harbor with you, they will look to you for council and coaching and development. they will want to take those walks because they want to be in spaces where they feel 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 keep doing. I have to keep reminding myself “I am loved, I am thriving, I am safe” but I need to keep filling 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, and authenticity involves serving, connecting, and supporting other people”“Our authenticity should remind other people of the best parts of us and the best parts of others”Links:Craig’s Twitter: @CraigCMartin12Craig’s Website: https://www.craigcmartinleads.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)

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of August 15-19, 202. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of August 15-19, 202. We also celebrate out 50th episode by listening to five of our favorite outtakes from the pod. 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. Recap… E20 Change Starts from Within w. Dr. Gabby Grant MVP: Want to change your organization? Change yourself first.Dr. Grant is an authority on implementing restorative practices. When we asked her what the first step was in implementing restorative practices in a school, this was her answer:“The first step in understanding and implementing restorative practices is understanding how you handle conflict yourself… It isn’t authentic if the transformation doesn’t start from within and then spread out, it isn’t going to be sustainable…Change starts from within”This is a universal truth. The first step to changing our organization is to change ourselves. Implementation and application will always lag behind and remain inconsistent until we have made the change from within ourselves. Until we change, organizational changes will be surface and incomplete. E 21 Meeting the needs of new teachers with Mara Buskey, Leah Dowling and Kemberly Merritt MVP: Be more direct in giving feedback and helping people grow their skills. We asked first year teachers Leah Dowling and Kemberly Merritt about what kind of support they needed from their assistant principals: “The assistant principal, he held my hand and walked me step-by-step, this is how you do this… he cheered me on... and held my hand to make sure I got it. If teachers that came in could have that kind of support of someone that is going to give them that step-by-step guidance, it would give them a more secure feeling.” (Kemberly) “When they see us struggling in an area, they need to say, ‘here’s some resources, here’s some strategies’… there were times this school year that I didn’t realize I could have been doing better until February or March, wishing that I had known that earlier.” (Leah) We often get confused and think that directive coaching is only for low performers, but that isn’t the case. People want feedback! They want critical feedback! More importantly, they want that feedback to be followed up with robust and detailed support and training. Directive coaching is good coaching. Being directive can be reassuring, especially when everything is new. E26 Courage with Dr. Mary Hemphill MVP: Know your ethical line in the sand before ethical situations arise, not during. Dr. Hemphill is the Chief Academic Officer for the North Carolina Department of Education. We talked about being courageous as a leader and acting on your values. “When you are an Assistant Principal, and particularly when you become a Principal, you have to decide before you sign your contract, you have to decide before you interview, what hill you do you want to die on, what do you want to fight for, because when you are in a moment with a parent, or a board member, or a superintendent, that is not the time to make those decisions.” We think about critical ethical decisions being made in the face of a challenging situation, but Mary rightly reminds us that we usually make our ethical choices before the actual events ever unfold. I council people to be themselves in interviews and to put their values on display. Being authentic in an interview makes it much easier to be authentic in the job. On the other hand, if you are willing to bury your values in the interview, you will most certainly bury them in the job. E38 Just put the key in the door with Dr. Maddie Jurek MVP: To overcome leadership fears, just take the first step into the space.Dr. Jurek is an assistant middle school principal in South Carolina. We were talking aboutthe challenges of observing teachers who have more experience or teach in a discipline that you don’t understand when Maddie said:“The hardest part for me whenever I went in to observe those lessons, truly, was putting the key in the door and turning the knob to walk into the room. After I walked into the room I realized, I don’t have to focus on content here... I am here to focus on instruction, and there is a difference between instruction and content.” There are two great lessons here. The first step to leadership is often overcoming our own fears. We can spend too much time thinking about the negatives and how we aren’t qualified or don’t know enough but shutting down that negative thinking begins with stepping

Show Notes, Episode 49: The Instructional Leadership TeamAbout this show:This episode is titled THE Instructional Leadership Team. Why “THE Instructional Leadership Team” ? Why not the instructional leadership team? The fun reason is because I’m an Ohio State grad, and The Ohio State University sounds way cooler than Ohio State. But the real reason is because “THE Instructional Leadership Team” is the fundamental building block of school improvement. Most schools have instructional leadership teams, but fewer schools have “THE Instructional Leadership Team.” What’s the difference you ask? The answer is coming…Notable QuotesFrederick“In schools, the flywheel looks like this:We do professional development with teachers.We follow up on that professional development with targeted observations.We take the data from those observations and evaluate them in order to give us feedback in what our next professional development steps should be.When we do that over and over and over again, we create a flywheel that is focused on driving teacher development and continual teacher improvement”“School leaders have 2 jobs: Keep everybody safe, help teachers get better”“Teacher development is the primary path to school improvement and the foundation of teacher development is the instructional leadership team”“Things that define THE ILT:Sacred meeting timeAgenda focused on teacher developmentRole clarity of team membersMutual accountability”“Instructional leadership isn’t an add-on, it isn't a luxury, it isn’t optional. If you can’t find a way to have a functioning ILT that is laser focused on teacher growth, then you are hamstringing your efforts to improve your school”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)

Episode 38, Dr. Maddie JurekQuadrant2 micro-journal subscribe link here

Show Notes, Episode 47: From first year AP to AP of the Year with Dr. Tia Jones Pt. 2About this show:What does it mean to be an assistant principal? What is your job? What are the essential skills? One of the reasons being an AP is so challenging is because there aren’t really clear answers to these questions. Outside of busses, books, and butts, there isn’t a strong consensus for what makes a great AP. This is one of my motivations in starting this podcast – it sometimes feels like the assistant principalship is this ever changing role of mixed-up expectations, and that doesn’t seem fair. I hope through this podcast we can bring some clarity to the role and to the essential elements of being a great AP. Today, we have a wonderful guest who can help us do that.Notable QuotesTia Jones“You want to make sure that you build that capacity with your teachers, so that they can build it with their students, and not only with the students, but with the parents. The parents, that's the key.”“People won’t know what you need or what you’re interested in unless you say something”“One of the biggest things that has helped me personally and professionally is journaling”“Many of us, when we get up in the morning, we might look at the phone and some of us are on social media first thing. If you replace going to Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, if you replace that moment in time to write a sentence about how you want your day to go, that is one change that you can make that can be positive for you in the long run”Frederick“We need to remember as assistant principals, most teacher ed programs don’t have parts where they have their intern teachers sit down and make phone calls to parents. They’re not taught that”“When you are at the district level and you have an AP comes to you and says ‘hey, I want to grow in this area, I want some help’, that person is now on your radar, because that is the kind of person you can grow”Links:Tia’s Foundation: https://www.empoweringjustice.org Tia’s Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/tiajonesed1Tia’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-tia-s-jones-2ba62b29 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)

Show Notes, Episode 46: From first year AP to AP of the Year with Dr. Tia Jones Pt. 1About this show:What does it mean to be an assistant principal? What is your job? What are the essential skills? One of the reasons being an AP is so challenging is because there aren’t really clear answers to these questions. Outside of busses, books, and butts, there isn’t a strong consensus for what makes a great AP. This is one of my motivations in starting this podcast – it sometimes feels like the assistant principalship is this ever changing role of mixed-up expectations, and that doesn’t seem fair. I hope through this podcast we can bring some clarity to the role and to the essential elements of being a great AP. Today, we have a wonderful guest who can help us do that.Notable QuotesTia Jones“I always tell my students that my role is to make sure that you are safe, and that you are learning. Those two things are going to happen, and it is my job to make sure that happens. And i doing that, you are not only supporting the students, but you are also supporting the teachers”“Over the years I have learned that it is always about those relationships… what it comes down to is the relationships you build with your students, your teachers, as well as with your teachers. What I have learned is that a lot of things take care of themselves when you build those relationships”“One of the things I definitely try to do each and every time I talk with a student is making sure that I connect with the parent prior to the child getting home”“When we talk about the relationship piece, it doesn’t have to be just work. I want my teachers to know that I care about them at school, but that I care about them as a person. I want the best for them for home, as well as for what they do for our students at school.”“I would like for them to take away the intentionality. Being intentional about anything that you do, but when it comes to working with the teachers for the benefit of our students, being intentional with your time, being intentional with your actions, and being intentional with your relationships”Frederick“I think that one of the big transition points from being a new leader to gaining that experience and taking that step to being a great leader is realizing: I’m not managing my time, I’m managing my priorities. Which is a really cool thing because when you are trying to manage your time, your time is really running you, but when you can make that shift to: I am going to manage my priorities, now you are in the drivers seat”“Email can’t build the relationship, but you and I sitting here together talking, that builds the connection”Links:Tia’s Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/tiajonesed1Tia’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-tia-s-jones-2ba62b29 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)

Summary of the daily leadership emails from the week of August 1-5.

Show Notes, Episode 44: The Story That Drives MeAbout this show:Many of us have a story that drives what we do. We had a special teacher, or a great mentor, or even a horrible experience. Whichever it might have been, there is a story that is so deeply rooted in our psyche, that it drives what we do and how we do it. Today… my story.Notable QuotesFrederick“The problem is, what we focus on is the urgency more than the importance”“The first principle is focusing on purpose, or what is important.The second principle is focusing on problems, not symptoms.The third principle is focusing on progress, instead of big change.And the fourth principle is focusing on people instead of tasks”“It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to be fighting discipline all the time, you don’t have to be buried in the urgent stuff all the time”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)

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of July 25-29, 2022.

Show Notes, Episode 42: The Curmudgeon with Nat EllisAbout this show:When we talk about teachers resisting change, we often conjure up images of the curmudgeon – the 30-year veteran teacher who hasn’t changed and refuses to “get with the program.” However, often times there are good reasons to resist change. Just as importantly, our veteran teachers can be great allies in building and improving school culture. Today, we learn from Nat Ellis, my favorite curmudgeon and a teacher whose passion and wisdom should inspire you.Notable QuotesNat Ellis:“Everything we did, we sat back and thought “is this what is best for the kids?” and that was our bottom line.” “How can I have the most impact with what I have?” “I had a principle that sat in his office sent emails. I never saw him.” “When I look at the principles that have a presence in the hallways, they have a better understanding of their building. So walk the classrooms, know the kids… its crazy how a 10-minute appearance makes a difference” Frederick:“There are a lot of things we need to change. There are a lot of ways we can improve and get better, but I think what we don’t realize sometimes is that every time we decide to do something, that means there is something else we can’t do.” “If we just go in a backroom as an administrative team and make decisions, we’re missing a lot of information” “My choices reflect my values. And the challenge for us is that when we are in that urgent zone just running around trying to get everything done, we aren’t intentional about the choices. We’re not going to get it all done, so stop and be intentional about where you invest that time.” 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)

“Every day I do what I’m best at, and every day I do my best. Some days my best is better than others.” Paraphrase from BB King

Show Notes, Episode 40: Team Coaching with John WillisAbout this show:Today, I am joined by John Willis, the founder of the Teaming Edge. John is here with us today to explore Team Coaching.Notable QuotesJohn Willis“We’re not trying to fix anybody, because nobody is broken” “Team coaching is a team leader who has the expertise of the best practices in coaching to help a team meet their goal” “Once you are sitting down in front of the team, you are not coaching individuals, you are coaching an entity called the team” “Start by co-creating with the team, some powerful team agreements… I use the term team agreements or working agreements that help support not just how the team meets, but psychological safety and team learning” “The next thing I would do is co-create a shared purpose with the team” “If we have team members in a room and there is a team member who doesn’t have a role, we can pretend like they are a part of the team, but the reality is they are not included and they are a not a part of that team.” “When we ask ourselves ‘what do we need to learn?’ that gives us an opportunity to be curious and investigate what is going on right now in our industry that could help support us in this particular area” “Collective teacher efficacy has a tremendous impact on student achievement. So, just having a group of educators that believe that they have the resources, they have the knowledge, the skills, to come together to make a difference, they are more likely to make a difference. Now why is that? Because they are more likely to implement the things that will make a difference.” “When you believe you can make a difference, you are more likely to engage in the actions that leaders and teachers need to take in order to make a difference.” “If our teachers do not feel safe when we come together to meet, then we are not going to meet our outcomes” Frederick:“Especially now, we need to know what is happening in peoples’ lives, and we need to acknowledge that, so we need to get know our teachers.” Links:John’s websites: Theteamingedge.com or Johnwilliscoaching.comMy 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)

If relationships, with others, but also with ourself, is really what it is all about, how should we be living? This weekend, and into next week, please be intentional about one thing: being fully present with others. Focus, ask questions, listen to the answers, look, smile, and laugh. Give 100% of yourself when you are with another person. Try it. It isn’t easy, but it is oh so rewarding.

Show Notes, Episode 38: Just Put the Key in the Door with Maddie JurekAbout this show:Yay! You finally found time to get into a classroom and do a big observation! You sit down, congratulating yourself for prioritizing, and the teacher and students dive into a lesson on quantum physics. Wait! What? Of course, this is an exaggeration, but most of us have found ourselves tasked with observing a teacher whose content we did not fully understand. We dive into this topic today with our guest, Dr. Maddie Jurek. Notable QuotesDr. Maddie Jurek:“The hardest part for me whenever I went in to observe those lessons, truly, was putting the key in the door and turning the knob to walk into the room. After I walked into the room I realized, I don’t have to focus on content here… I am here to focus on instruction, and there is a difference between instruction and content.” “Good teaching is good teaching, no matter the content of the classroom” “One of the most important attributes for an education leader is an attitude of being self-aware” “So often we get tunnel vision of what is going on right here in our schools and I might not be seeing what they are doing in another school that may be something effective that I can do AS n administrator in my building” “We can’t make excuses for their past experiences, but we can do our best with what we have now” “I really am not afraid to say ‘I don’t know’ when I don’t know to a teacher” “Don’t be quick to make a decision on something if there is doubt creeping in your mind” “Go in with the confidence that you have something to offer. You were hired for a reason” “I always encourage our APs here just to ask questions of their teachers and develop a more conversational rapport” “You have to take the plunge. You have to let yourself be uncomfortable” “Put the key in the door and step in the classroom, because so many times there are so many things that will prevent us from doing that” Frederick:“One of the switches that I advocate that we flip as administrators is understanding that our role is to grow great teachers. That’s how we improve our schools, that’s how we support our kids. And to do that, we need to support our teachers every step of the way” “We are asking you to do something important. And how do we know it is important? Because we are investing resources in creating the time for you” “We don’t have to do a flywheel for everybody. We can choose a grade level or we can choose a subject area” “Teachers can be feedback junkies, just like students can want stickers on their papers when you hand them back” “The most common practice that I see is that we do Professional Development and then we don’t follow up specifically on that PD” “To hear people from buildings that are different than yours, from districts that are different than yours, to hear the perspectives they bring can be really valuable, not because you need to change yours, but you may understand why you do what you do a little bit better” “If you never feel imposter syndrome, you’re not pushing your edge” 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)

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the week’s daily leadership emails for the week of July 4-8, 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 36: Parent Partnerships with Dr. Leigh Ann Alford-Keith About this show:“We talk a lot about social emotional learning and the whole child, but the whole child includes the family.” These aren’t my words. They came from today’s guest when she appeared on the show back on episode 25. We went on to discuss what a partnership is, and how teachers’ thinking needed to change. We concluded by noting that the first step in building better partnerships was to view parents as equal partners, not adversaries. It was a rich episode, but we only scratched the surface of parent partnerships. Today, we get below that surface with our very special guest, Dr. Leigh Ann Alford—Keith. Notable QuotesDr. Alford-Keith:“We talk a lot about social-emotional learning and the whole child, but the whole child includes the family” “If we tend to think of only events as opportunities for family engagement or strictly the conferences as opportunities for family engagement, then that is also a structure that is creating barriers, because truthfully, any day is an opportunity for family engagement.” “We have to be doing our diversity, equity, and inclusion beliefs work. That has to be a necessary component if you want to work on family engagement work, because you need to be able to have those reflections about what privileges you may have, your positionality, and what biases you may be having” “Many of us have been in meetings where the family’s input was not really solicited, and questions were not really asked, and the family was expected to agree passively with the educators at the table.” “We need to yield to families because there are things that they know that we don’t know. And I think of that most with culturally sustaining pedagogy” “It is a both-and, not an either-or. You don’t have to think of engaging families or supporting your teachers. You can think of ‘how will engaging families support my teachers’” “The community can lend knowledge that the educators don’t have” “You will have to prove that you seriously want their input” “Families don’t leave your school if they feel like a part of it. They leave your school because they feel like you’re not part of it” “Journal for Research on Leadership Education: Stanley and Gilzene, Listening, Engaging, Advocating, and Partnering (LEAP) A Model for Responsible Community Engagement for Educational Leaders” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/19427751221076409?journalCode=jrla “What structures in my school need to change so that we can partner with families?” “The parent is not mad at you. They are mad at you and you are a representative of the system” “As a school leader, you the person in the position to make adjustments to those systems in order to create a partnership orientation” “It is not about doing more, it is about doing it differently” Frederick:“The 6 dimensions of organizations is a really simplified model of organizations, that, if you think about a pyramid, the top of the pyramid is purpose and that is what should drive our organizations” “The work of leadership then is actually using change processes to create better alignment in your organization. If you really step back, that’s why we do change, that’s why we do leadership. It is all about the idea of creating an organization where our people, structures, and resources are all aligned with what we’re trying to do.” “I have heard a number of my special education friends talk about how much better their IEP meetings were the last couple years when they were having them remotely because parents felt much safer, because parents were in their home, they were much more comfortable, it was much less physically intimidating, and they were much stronger participants. And that’s a great example of something that we can do that is very simple” “The kids that are the most vulnerable are the ones that most need their families involved” “Every family has a history of interaction with the school system” “I need to invest in the community before I ask them to invest in me” 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)

A recap of the week's five Strategic Leader emails. This week featured a sequence around the theme of "five things you can do now for a more productive fall." A bonus at the end is how I turned some negative thinking around to rewrite my own (flawed) story.

Show Notes, Episode 34: Persistent Growth with Emily Parks About this show: We are all teachers here, right? So, I can be honest, Right? We love all children equally and we have no favorites. That said, there are always those students who give us energy. They bring a passion for learning that inspires us to be at our best. I had those kinds of learners when I was a middle school teacher, when I was a professor at Clemson University, and I have them now as I work with APs in the APEx program. In fact, today’s guest is one of those special “students” because she is passionate about her learning, always brings her A game, and inspires me to be better.Notable QuotesEmily Parks:“If I want my teachers to grow and learn and be better, and I want my students to learn and grow and be better, then I have to learn and grow and be better” “Professional learning has to be a priority” “[5 minute coaching] gets them to be reflective without me trying to push them into being reflective” “One thing that I really liked about my APEx experience is that it exposed me to areas of leadership that I may have not realized on my own that I did need” “Keep on learning and keep on growing… the world is changing and education is growing and if we aren’t changing, we are going to get left behind” Frederick:“It isn’t about fixing stuff, it isn’t about making the world perfect, it’s just about making things a little bit better” “One of the things we can do better is to make our own learning and our own growth goals more transparent to teachers” “We can’t manage time; we have to manage priorities” “5 minute coaching:Start with a positive affirmation3 questions and then BE QUIET and that is the hardest part1. What else is going well?2. Were there any surprises?3. Would you do anything differently?” “APEx is a community without professional development, not professional development with a community” Links:John Maxwell: https://www.johnmaxwell.com/start-your-journey/Brian Mendler:https://www.tlc-sems.com/Brian-Mendler/ 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)

Link to the daily email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition

Show Notes, Episode 32: The Flywheel with Dr. Melissa Burns About this show:In Jim Collins’ Iconic book, “Good to Great”, he describes the flywheel. An organization’s flywheel consists of some core practices that, when executed consistently, drive organizational excellence. If you’ve been listening for a while, you ‘ve heard me reference the flywheel, but we’ve never done a deep dive. The basic flywheel for schools goes like this: provide professional development for teachers, follow up with targeted observations, use the observation data to inform the next round of PD. When we execute this cycle repeatedly, we grow great teachers, and great teachers equals great schools. Let’s be real, and let’s be clear – the flywheel is going to look different in different schools. This fall in APEx we will be focusing on building each part of the flywheel, so I thought it would be a good time to bring back Melissa Burns, one of our most popular guests, to talk about their instructional team and what that flywheel concept looks like in her school.Notable QuotesDr. Melissa Burns:“Use collaboration when working with others in your instructional leadership team. We have some fabulous, amazing leaders, teacher leaders, specialists, and administrators. Collaborate. It is the work of many that makes the difference.” Frederick:“Peer observation is one of the most powerful forms of professional development there is” “There are legitimate reasons why people are resistant to change. If they are resistant, that is telling us that either we haven’t helped them see what the real value is, or it is too much effort for the given value” 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)

Show Notes, Episode 31: Prioritizing Your Own Leadership Development with Maria Werner About this show:Dealing with discipline, being the test coordinator, and taking care of a million things for everyone else. Somehow you find the time. But do you find – or make – that time for yourself? What are your strategies for nurturing your own growth? Today, Maria Werner talks with us about how she juggles school, kids, and even dogs, and manages to still prioritize her own growth. We also discuss how Maria has grown her leadership through APEx and some of her key takeaways. Notable QuotesMaria Werner:“I think that the beauty of education is that there is always opportunity to grow” “Stay in the now. I think that’s been a big piece of the puzzle” “My drive time is my reflection time… If I didn’t have it, I would feel like there was something missing… A lot of my management comes just that thought process” “First year is not meant to make waves, just ripples” “I have found that the way to gain buy in is, instead of delivering the message, it is engulfing them in it, making it interactive, so that they can see, first-hand, that it works” “Collaboration and mentorship are two of my biggest things that I rank the highest in my professional values and APEx covers both of those” “I don’t have an opportunity to collaborate or talk with other people that are serving in the same role that I am, so that collaborative piece is a big part of my love for APEx” “The one-on-one coaching that you have been able to provide me, I can’t put a dollar amount on that. You take me for who I am, and you know what I bring to the table, highlighting strengths and then pointing out where I could focus my improvement” “The figures and visual representations that you provide are directly what works for me. They are small, incremental things that I can see in my mind in the times that I am reflecting” “Delegate, delegate, delegate.” “Find those people in your building that are aspiring leaders and don’t be afraid to delegate those out.” “Any experience was one of value to me.” “Motivation equals value over effort is something in every instructional work team meeting, I brought up because in this COVID time and state of education as a whole, teacher motivation was lacking. “What do we value as educators? What does each teacher value in their role? And how can I as the leader minimize the effort it takes for them to accomplish that goal?... and then that motivation just… you can see it.” “That formula is something that I took back immediately and is actionable in all entities in our operations of our school building.” “Honing in on how a 5-minute experience with a teacher can have such a big impact and it only takes 5 minutes.” “I knew about APEx, I knew it was directly for assistant principals. So I went to the website, gathered as much as I could of giving that overview of what I would get from the experience and shared that with my principal who then requested the funds for the use of being part of the APEx program.” “Who do you collaborate with regularly and if you feel like you don’t have those people that pop into your mind immediately, try to build that because the collaboration piece has been some of the best professional growth that I have received.” “We are your mentors? If you just think your principal, start broadening who else you could be reaching out to and who else would be willing to mentor you. And then who do you mentor? Because it’s a pipeline.” Frederick: “That growth mindset starts with us, it starts with administrators” “If we are going, going, going, and we never create that space [for reflection], then that stuff is just flying around our brains all the time” ”We don’t manage time, we manage priorities” “A lot of people say ‘I want to be more balanced in my life’. There was one time when I really had achieved balance between family, and profession, and social life, And you know what, I was mediocre at everything” “I have moved from the model of balance to juggling, because when you’re juggling you get one thing up in the air, then you forget about it for a minute while you go to the next thing, and you are 100% focused on that one thing. And I think that is more the path to happiness and satisfaction because none of us want to be mediocre all the time” “Get away from the idea of balancing time, get away from the idea of managing time, manage your priorities and then juggle so that you are 100% focused in the moment” “This fall in APEx we are really going to double down on the instructional leadership piece” “We don’t have enough time, we don’t have enough money, but the other thing we don’t get enough of is attention. That’s what that 5-minute coaching does. It 100% of our presence as leaders with the people that we are serving.” Summary of Peer coaching (from 30-minute mark):· SC requires a mid-year SLO (teacher evaluation component) conference.· Admin provided opportunity for teachers to do peer observations as part of

Show Notes, Episode 30: Six Ways to Eliminate InterruptionsAbout this show:In a noisy world, is it possible to find the quiet necessary to do work that moves us forward? In this episode, we cover six suggestions for creating a saner and more productive leadership life Notable QuotesFrederick: “I have been out of higher ed for three years now, and I had just forgotten how disruptive and really how grueling it is to be faced with those constant interruptions, and not just the notifications and things, but being pulled from one task to another” “Turn off all email notifications on every single device that you have. Just turn it off, and never ever ever ever turn your email notifications on again. There is absolutely no reason.” “Never use email as a synchronous form of communication… it is not designed to be used that way and if you don’t use it for synchronous communication then you don’t need to have your notifications on.” “Identify 3-5 people and make sure their calls will always ring through, and then turn your phone on do not disturb” “When everybody can get ahold of you, you can’t get ahold of your work.” “When I create pockets of time where I can concentrate fully and not be distracted, I am going to be so much more efficient” Six ways to eliminate interruptions:1. Turn off all email notifications2. Never use email for synchronous conversations 3. Create a google doc to share FYI information4. Identify 3-5 people who have to be able to get ahold of you, program them in your phone to always be able to ring through, and then turn your phone on do not disturb5. For every minute of the school day, have one individual that is on call and rotate who that individual is6. Educate all stakeholders as to what you’re doing 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)

Show Notes, Episode 29: Culture with Brad ColemanAbout this show:Culture. What is it? How do we shape it? Why is it so critical? You could fill an entire library with books related to culture and how leaders influence it. Or you could listen to this episode of The Assistant Principal Podcast with our special guest, Brad Coleman.Notable QuotesBrad Coleman:“it’s okay to complain and be frustrated, but you need to come with some solutions as well”“I tell our teachers, I tell our students, school is hard now, we have to find the good and celebrate it”“I don’t care who you are, everyone likes to be acknowledged positively”“When I take over a school, I flood it with acknowledgements and thank you’s… That’s how you change culture, with just little things like that”“Our teachers, if you would ask them here, we treat them well. We take care of them, not just on teacher appreciation week… we take care of them every day. And if we do that for our teachers, we expect them to do the same thing for the students, and they do.”“If the student struggles in reading, we know what to do; we have all of the data and all of the tools to teach the student how to read better. The behavior is the same, you have to re-teach those behaviors… we know consequences don’t change behavior. Relationships do, trust does, and that’s what we try to do”3 things to build culture: “community, consistency, and positive acknowledgment”“Leadership is in the details. I know we have to be really really big picture in the jobs that we do, but just like we ask our teachers to find the good in the classrooms and acknowledge the good, we’ve got to be very in tune to the details, because we can miss things very easily”“Culture is hard to build it, but its easy to lose it if you don’t pay attention to the signs”Frederick: “I’ve heard teachers so many times say ‘well I am not going to reward the kids for doing what they should do.’ Which is the complete opposite message of what you’re sending, which is ‘We definitely want to reward people for what they’re doing because that is how we reinforce that behavior and motivate people to keep going, especially when it gets hard”“Sometimes teachers talk about discipline, but what they really want is retribution because they are angry and hurt”“If we are going to remove a student from class, then we’re going to hold them accountable, but we are also going to be accountable for making the effort to make it right and get them back on track”Links:Brad’s email: [email protected] 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)

Show Notes, Episode 28: The Ship is SinkingAbout this show:Imagine you’re on a nice little boat, floating along a gentle river or out on a calm lake. Everything is fine until you hear a gurgling sound. You look down and are astounded to see water pouring in from a how in the bottom of the boat. You grab your red Solo cup and begin scooping out water, but it isn’t enough. You look around for something to patch the hole with – nothing. As you look around despondently, you notice a faded plastic bucket floating your way. You manage to get ahold of it and redouble your efforts. Aided by the size of the bucket you begin to get the boat emptied and over the next few hours you alternate between bailing and rowing. The shore is getting closer. You may make it. Notable QuotesFrederick: “The way a lot of states are responding to the teacher shortage is to lower the requirements for being a teacher. That is going to open it up to more people, but those people are going to come in facing increased challenges with even less preparation. So, we have to assume at this point that teachers coming to us are underprepared.” “We have three holes: we’re losing teachers, kids are coming to us with incredible challenges, and the teachers we do have coming into the profession are underprepared.” “Right now, we don’t do anything differently for early career teachers as we do for all of our other teachers. We don’t have anything set as a system that lets us really focus in and tactically and strategically work with those folks, and we can’t do that anymore. We need to structure things in our building to allow us as instructional leaders to really focus and lift up our early career teachers” “I think it is time for us to think about [classroom] procedures as being something that is school-wide” “Five aspects to this ‘plastic bucket’ that we need to pull out of the water:1. Stop doing what we’ve always been doing2. Change the structures in our building to help our instructional leadership team focus specifically on supporting early career teachers3. Streamline procedures so that everyone is using the same ones4. Be more directive in our coaching with early career teachers5. Move from the idea of just supporting first to third year teachers to supporting them in their whole early career, 3-5 years out” 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)

Show Notes, Episode 2: Why is Instructional Leadership so Hard?About this show:Have you noticed how many first-year teachers have trouble managing their classrooms? And if they never receive really good support, they become 5 and 10-year teachers who can’t manage their classrooms. And then they leave the profession. But guess what? We have a similar problem in the principalship. Most (not all) principals are not fully prepared to meet the challenges of instructional leadership. And if they never get really good support, their trajectories can mirror that f the teachers I just mentioned. This issue is the reason I started this podcast, the reason I do a daily leadership email, it is the focus of my trainings and courses, and it is at the heart of my APEx program. If you’ve been listening for a while, you know that instructional leadership is a common focus. Today, we are going to look at the problem of developing instructional leaders and some things I think we can do about it.Notable QuotesFrederick: “In a perfect organization, which does not exist, the people, the structures, and the resources are all aligned to the purpose, and to each other. And a perfectly aligned organization is a great place to work. Unfortunately, it is the nature of organizations to be in disalignment rather than alignment” “You have two basic responsibilities… Your primary job is to keep everybody safe. Number two is to improve student learning and outcomes for students. Now, you don’t teach students, so the way that you do that is by growing your teachers. In other words, you have two responsibilities: keep everybody safe and help your teachers get better.” “We can’t manage time, time is finite, there is only so much of it, there is nothing to manage. What we have to manage is priorities” “Really good instructional leadership is also about systems alignment” 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)

Are you living your leadership journey courageously? Before Dr. Mary Hemphill became the Director of Academic Standards for the North Carolina Department of education she was a passionate and innovative principal. Before that, she was an assistant principal with the courage to stand up for her convictions. The assistant principalship is loaded with values conflicts. How do you stay true to your values amidst complex power dynamics and competing interests? Mary helps us figure it all out in this week’s episode.

Show Notes, Episode 25: Parents and Community About this show:“We need to increase family engagement.” I hear this all the time. We know what we want from families, but do we know what families want from us? Today’s episode will take us beyond reading rallies and pizza nights and even beyond my favorite parent event - donuts for dads. Today we focus on what teachers can do to build stronger parent partnerships and how school leaders can support those partnerships. Notable QuotesDr. Leigh Ann Alford-Keith“We need to be addressing power dynamics that are present in the ways that our schools are set up. When we focus on events and when we focus on what we can do for families instead of what families can do for us, we are perpetuating the typical power dynamics in a school and that excludes a lot of our diverse families” “we want to provide culturally relevant instruction, but we don’t necessarily know about their cultures. And their families do know about their cultures, so if we engage their families as partners and there is information available to us, information that the family has about the way that their children learn or what is culturally important to them, that is not information we are able to have on our own” “If we aren’t seeing families as partners, we are missing out on really important information that could help us better educate their children” “We talk a lot about social emotional learning and the whole child, but the whole child includes the family” “Research tells us that effective family engagement increases teachers’ efficacy and they feel that they are better able to do their jobs” “Sometimes the parents come to us in a combative way because of their past experiences. Because they did not have the best experience in school, because they experienced being ostracized” “Even teachers who would never say ‘those kids’ will say ‘those families’. In fact, there are interesting studies that indicate that teachers’ perceptions of families become more negative in their first year of teaching because it is something that we indoctrinate each other into.” “There is a lack of trust between schools and families” “We want our schools to be community centers, and that’s why it hurts us when nobody comes to our events… if our events were surrounded around something related to a community goal… those events are well attended because they relate to community goals and what is important to the community” “Families know who respects them, who is coming from a place of genuine inquiry, who views them as a partner and who doesn’t.” Frederick“When we think about events, we are thinking about tasks. Partnerships are first and foremost about working with people in ways that grow all of the participants” “When parents come in and they are combative, they are advocating for their kid, and they are doing what they think they should be doing as parents... If we can see those actions as advocacy, then we are flipping the script from “this is an angry, uneducated parent” to “this is a parent who really cares about their kid”” “Looking at the school as a part of the community more than just the community being a part of the school is so important and is just a mind-shift” “Change begins inside and how we look at these things. And I think that is a message we don’t really like to hear because it feels kind of squishy… but that inner work is doing something, and sometimes that is the hardest work. And if you can’t flip your inner narrative about how you view families, then all of the other stuff, won’t be wasted, but it won’t have the impact” “Teachers have to be willing to be vulnerable. We have to be willing to say ‘I don’t have all of the answers’” Links:Leigh Ann's resources link: https://bit.ly/efe_docsMy 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)

I’m asking for your help. I’ve put together an MVP (minimally viable product) training video and am looking for a few people to pilot it. In exchange for access to this mini-PD, you would be committing to the following: • Watching the video (about 45 minutes, but can be chunked into six parts) • Completing the feedback form (5-15 minutes) • Providing your email address knowing that I will not spam you but will provide you with updates on the project and updated materials The pilot will run from May 3-17, so you would have two weeks to watch the video and complete the feedback form. If you want to make this commitment, please email me ([email protected]). You will then receive an invitation to join my website as a member of the 4-patterns pilot group and will have access to the video. PLEASE – if you don’t have time to follow through, save both of us stress and pass on this opportunity. There will be others.