The Aerodynamics of Exceptional Schools

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I'm going to introduce our keynote speaker that is ending our day here at the Little Wins Workshop. Um, who I have here today is maybe familiar to a

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lot of you or maybe new to some. Um, but Jen Gonzalez is the founder and host of Cult Pedagogy, a national board certified teacher and one of education's

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most trusted voices on teaching practice and school culture. Since launching the site in 2013, she has built Cult

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Pedagogy into a go-to hub for teachers and school leaders, spanning a widely read blog, a popular podcast, and

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practical courses on everything from school classroom management to instructional strategy. Her work reaches educators around the world who turn to

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her for honest, useful guidance and a sense of community in the profession.

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And with that, I'm going to mute. I'm going to pin Jen and she'll take it from here. Thank you so much for being here today.

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Thank you. Um, first of all, I just want to sort of recognize, well, I want to thank Alpaca for partnering with me for

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so long. I'm still so happy that I found you uh the day that I was at a conference and I wandered over to your table and I was like, what is this that

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you're doing? And I thought it was so cool and we've sort of been in each other's lives since then. So, that's how I ended up here today. Um, and also I

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just wanted to recognize everybody who's attending today and who sort of volunteered and paid to be here just to

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improve your practice. That's just a fantastic thing to be able to do. It speaks highly of you and um hopefully in

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the next 45 minutes I'll give you one more couple of morsels that you can take with you. So uh let me share my screen

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and we'll get us started. Okay. Sharing sounds.

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Okay. So, I've been giving this talk for a couple of years and I was thinking about it this morning and about how some

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of my some of my attitudes about certain things have shifted a little bit. And so, I'm going to be editorializing a

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little bit as I'm talking because my feelings have evolved quite a bit on some things. And so, I'll start it the

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way I've always started it, but whenever I go off script, I'll let you know. So you're getting an updated version of this. So I would like to start with a story that I call me and the groupers.

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So this story is about my fourth year of teaching. I taught for three years in

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one state and then I got a new job in a different state. So I was, you know, couple of years in. I was really really

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excited because I thought I'm not a new teacher anymore. I've I've I understand what to do here. I um I'm not going to

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have all these sort of newbie mistakes and so I'm going to really be able to hit the ground running in this new school. And so, you know, like all other

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schools, my new school had its share of challenges. You know, we had students with a wide spectrum of needs and there

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were budgeting issues and we never really had enough time as always. But what I started to notice was that my colleagues were going to be a problem in

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a way that they hadn't been at my last school. I was noticing that there were times when I would get really excited

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about an idea. I would come into the teachers lounge or whatever and I would say, "Oh, I just learned this new technique or this cool thing just happened." And it seemed like my enthusiasm bothered them.

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It seemed like it just compelled them to want to put a damper on almost anything I was excited about. And it wasn't

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necessarily me. It was just kind of any new idea. They just wanted to stifle

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everything. And I was really confused by it at first. So I went to uh a friend of

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mine in the building, somebody who I had, you know, connected with. And you know, I mentioned it to her. I said, you

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know, I would when I go to the staff lounge, like I'll mention an idea and everybody's like, "Oh, sure. That'll work." Or I will talk about something

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positive about maybe a new initiative that was happening at the school and they would say, "Oh, just wait. Pendulum is going to swing back in a few years."

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Or even if I, you know, said, you know, I'm going to try this new strategy in my class. And they would say, no talking shop at lunch. So, it was just after a while I just thought, what is going on?

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and she said, "Oh, they're being groupers.

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They sit there with those big frowns on their faces and that's how they are in PD and that's how they are in the meetings and that's what they're like for everything." And she said, "It's

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just that's just what they're what they're like." So, I got used to this after a while

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and I kind of just stopped. like every time I had a new idea, I decided not to tell them and not to share it. And after

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a while, I just sort of stopped sharing ideas altogether. And this is one of my big regrets um from my teaching years is

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that I had a lot of great ideas that I wanted to try or that I had learned about and I really just stopped sharing them. I started to just close my door and keep things to myself.

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And since I've been in this position at Cult of Pedagogy where I'm kind of doing the same things and this is why I started cult of pedagogy to create a

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place where excited people could share teaching ideas but I still see that same grouper type of an attitude. Like here's

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an example. This is um a post that I shared a couple years ago from Edtopia.

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This is just a program that they were launching where um the higher need students, the students had not who had

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not responded to behavioral or academic interventions, they paired them with an adult and they just did a check-in in

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the morning and a check-in in the afternoon and it got tons and tons of likes and got lots and lots of likes and lots of positive comments. But then

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there were also what I would call the groupers who would make comments like this.

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So then does the responsibility still fall on the teachers? Am I hearing that teachers have to do check-ins but just not their own students? So this person

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who basically saw that and just saw more work.

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Other comments sounded like this. We tried this already. It didn't work. This is the been there done that kind of a comment.

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And then people who were saying you know I remember a time when school didn't have to raise their children. This is should be the parents job. This is the

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not my job type of a comment and also the I miss the old days type of a comment.

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These objections show up all the time.

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They show up everywhere and they have the power to really stomp out great ideas until the people who have them

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just stop sharing them altogether, get really discouraged.

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But here's the thing about these objections.

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Most of them come from a legitimate place. Most of them are legitimate concerns. And these things that I have

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up here on the screen right now, these are not the only things that are on teachers minds.

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So many teachers are really frustrated with their salaries or their contracts.

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Uh you know, they have frustrations with their working conditions. Uh there are teachers who lack confidence, who feel

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like they don't measure up. And then there are teachers whose attention is focused on other things, things that

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they think are way more important than, you know, some new initiative like keeping their jobs in the face of

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threats from the community or keeping everyone in the building alive, which is a morbid thing to say and yet it has

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become a big concern uh in this day and age.

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So there's a lot of stuff that gets in the way of

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progress and change. So when I was thinking about this problem, and it's a problem that I thought about as a

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teacher and as somebody who tries to put out good teaching content, uh I tried to come up with a metaphor

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for all of this. And so this is what I came up with was the aerodynamics of exceptional schools. And this comes from

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an airplane which I don't really know much about airplanes but I did a little bit of studying and this is what I came up with. So what we are imagining

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in this next sort of 35 minutes is that you as a school leader uh are on a

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plane. You're piloting this plane and you are trying to get to this place that we're going to just call progress. And in this place called progress, it's a

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place where your students are successful and healthy, your faculty is fulfilled, uh, and every day you sort of feel like

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you're making a difference in your community, and you're all together.

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You're raising up this really great next generation.

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When we attend events like the one that you are just finishing up today, you end up filling up on all these ideas

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and all these great things that you want to try at your school and you head back to your school and you say, "Here we

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go." And then a lot of times the things just don't end up happening. You sort of stall out and you have trouble even getting that plane off the ground.

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And so I was thinking about the mechanics of flight of the the factors that contribute to an airplane being

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able to move. And I realized that a lot of it lined up with the stuff that helps us get our schools to a better place.

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And so what we're going to talk about are those four factors and how we can leverage some of them to try to get our

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schools to where we want them to go. So there are four factors that uh influence

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a plane's flight. So the first force is lift. This is what moves the plane up and it's affected by how the wings are

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made. Depending on how the wings are designed, the wings will push the plane higher up in the sky. It's one of the

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things that an engineer or a designer can actually control.

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So putting this into a school context, I'm thinking that Lyft is things like the methodology that we use in our

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classrooms, the design of the classrooms, the materials that we choose, and even sort of the systems and procedures that we put into place. This

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is all stuff that we actually can control. Working opposite to that is weight. Weight is the force of gravity.

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It is just how heavy the plane is.

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Even though you can design planes with somewhat lighter material, sometimes you just it's as heavy as it is and there's some things that you cannot make

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lighter. You really can't change these things. So in school, I'm thinking of these as things like poverty, just the

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socioeconomics of our student populations and our community. Things like budget constraints that we really

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can't do much about. uh however ready our students are when they come to us to advance to whatever the next level is,

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you know, grade-wise, academic wise. And then way bigger things like pandemics that just happen to hit us when we're

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not ready and we just have to deal with them. We can't engineer our way around them. So those are two forces and then we have two other forces.

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Drag is the friction that slows the plane down. So when we're talking about trying to make positive change in

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schools, I think of that drag or that friction as presenting itself in things like the push back that we get from

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other teachers, but also from students, from parents, community members, administrators. Uh it can come from a

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lot of different places. But just sort of that push back that people give when they I don't like that idea. I don't think it's going to work. That type of

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thing. also flaws and missteps that you make when you're trying something new.

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Almost nothing goes as well as you want it to when you first start. And those little hiccups and mistakes can create

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that feeling of drag like maybe we shouldn't be doing this. It's friction.

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Another can be the self-doubt that is often accompanying those flaws and missteps.

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And then finally, fatigue. Everybody in education is overworked and tired and that can really create a lot of friction

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when somebody wants to introduce something new and different that's going to maybe be more work.

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So that's drag. And then the fourth force is thrust, which is what works against drag to move the plane forward.

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And this is produced entirely by the engine.

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And when we are working toward any kind of progress in our schools, that thrust, that energy to move things forward comes from you. It comes from people.

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So a lot of times when we talk about change in schools, when we go to conferences,

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we spend a lot of time talking about Lyft, about new strategies, new tech, new systems. So we're going to set that

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aside for right now. Um, and also in our school meetings, in our local governments, we talk a lot about reducing the weight. So, we're going to

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take that off the table and we're only going to concentrate in this next little bit of time on how to increase thrust and how to reduce drag.

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So, when I thought about this and I thought about what really makes a difference on these two factors, I came up with these nine things, which I'm

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going to go through one at a time. And I'm also going to give you a link to a handout that's going to have them all listed out and I can even send that to the program coordinators of this day so

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that in case you don't manage to grab it then you'll be able to get it. Each one of these are things that I have either

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observed in my own practice or from talking to teachers or have learned from people that write about change management in organizations. These are

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all things that can make a difference in terms of helping change to happen in a more positive way and helping to get

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more people on board excited and and bought into it. So, the first piece of

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advice is to take a breath. And I'm going to actually grab a real quick sip of coffee to take a breath.

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So, I know that me personally, when I hear about a good idea or a new program that sounds great, historically, I have

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gotten just super excited and I want to get everybody on board and I want everybody to be just as excited as me.

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And usually that does not get the results I want. Uh people have not been on the same journey with me. They're not they don't have all the information yet.

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And so what usually works better is to just pause before I start coming at

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people with a half-baked idea and way too much enthusiasm. And so if that sounds familiar to you, here are some

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ways that you can just pause before you start trying to get other people on board. Ask yourself a couple of

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questions. The first one is, what problem will this new thing solve? Have I actually identified a problem that

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other people will agree is also a problem?

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What are the obstacles? Let me think about those obstacles ahead of time so that when somebody else points them out to me, I will already have thought of

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them and it won't be this new thing that I think actually I didn't even think about that. Really think of what could get in the way of this.

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Do I have any proof that this idea will work? Have I seen it work in another school? Is there some sort of data

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behind this? Has has any expert written about it? Can I see that it's worked in another setting? Any proof that this

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thing will actually do what I think it's going to do? Can I find a guide? Can I find someone else who has already tried

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to implement this idea who can sort of come alongside me and offer me some, you know, some tips, some dos and don'ts, and somebody that I can use as a

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sounding board. And finally, what is my long-term vision? A lot of times we see new ideas and it just looks like this is

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great, let's try it without really thinking of how it fits into a bigger picture. So just pausing to ask yourself

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those questions is a really good first step toward getting a change uh to actually go through with fewer bumps.

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The second tip that I have for you is to find allies. So introducing a new idea is hard to do when you're by yourself.

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But if you're on a small team, even if you're on a team of two, a lot of times you're going to have a lot more success in getting that idea to start gaining

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some momentum. Giving yourself a couple of allies or finding them, they can multiply your enthusiasm for one thing.

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So if you're excited and they're excited, that's more thrust. That's going to make it even more give you more energy for it. It can help you to

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clarify your vision. If you talk this through with somebody who's excited about it, too. It It will help you get a little bit more realistic about it, what

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it could look like. It will help you to solve problems. This other person can bounce around with with your ideas about what obstacles, what could cause

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problems. You can sort of do some dry runs with this person. It can help you cope with the negativity and self-doubt that creates that friction. And if you

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have another person who is also feeling a little bit anxious about it, then you can share that stress together. And

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finally, it can make your idea seem less crazy. And so I want to show you a video that illustrates this idea in a way that I think is just really stick. So we'll

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put that on and then I'll come right back.

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If you've learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let's watch a movement happen start to finish in under three minutes and dissect some

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lessons. First, of course, a leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he's doing is so simple, it's almost instructional. This

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is key. You must be easy to follow. Now, here comes the first follower with a crucial role. He publicly shows everyone else how to follow. Notice how the

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leader embraces him as an equal. So, it's not about the leader anymore. It's about them, plural. Notice how he's calling to his friends to join in. So, it takes guts to be a first follower.

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You stand out and you brave ridicule yourself. Being a first follower is an underappreciated form of leadership. The

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first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark

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that really makes the fire. Now, here's the second follower. This is a turning point. It's proof the first has done well. Now it's not a lone nut and it's

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not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news. A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more

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than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers because new followers emulate followers, not the leader. Now here come two more people, then three

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more immediately. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point and now we have a movement. As more people

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jump in, it's no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there's no reason not to join in now. They won't

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stand out. They won't be ridiculed, and they will be part of the in crowd if they hurry. And over the next minute, you'll see the rest who prefer to stay

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part of the crowd because eventually they'd be ridiculed for not joining. And ladies and gentlemen, that is how a movement is made. So, let's recap what

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we've learned. If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy all alone, remember the importance of nurturing

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your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you. Be public. Be easy to

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follow. But the biggest lesson here, did you catch it? Leadership is over glorified. Yes, it started with the

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shirtless guy, and he'll get all the credit. But you saw what really happened. It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

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There's no movement without the first follower. See, we're told that we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective. The best way to make

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a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow. When you find a lone nut

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doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

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All right, I'm going to put that on pause. So, there's a lot of lessons from this one, but it's really showing the momentum that you can get if you get a

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few people on board with an idea to begin with. Having been, and this is where I'm going to editorialize a little bit, having been one of the positive

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teachers on the staffs that I was a part of as a teacher, I think there's also a

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risk for administrators in particular of building sort of like a tight almost

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clickish group of your yes people in a school who teachers who will try things for you. and I was at

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one time put on sort of like a a group that was going to try a new initiative and it did not go over that well with the rest of the staff. So, I think there

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is a way of doing this that can bring other people along and then there's a way of doing it where it's like here I'm going to gather around my favorites and

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then everybody else is sort of in the out group. So, that's just a little side note to this video that I think is is um

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just a word of caution to be a little bit careful about not uh feeling like you're you're showing favoritism to the

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people that are um on board with your new idea. Um I'm going actually get into that a little bit more in another

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segment of this. We're going to move on to number three. So, number three is to set goals. This one seems like a pretty

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obvious one because you know if you want to try something new or make something better, you're going to be setting goals. However,

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when I think about past history that I have observed and also been part of when we want to try something new, sometimes

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there's really a a stark lack of actual goal setting. So, what I see a lot more times are sort of like dreams. So,

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here's some examples. People are sort of talking about how, oh yeah, we'd like to start self-paced learning or implement restorative justice, change our grading

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practices, do genius hour, but a lot of times these things don't end up actually happening. It's just sort of dreams.

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And so a lot of times what we need to do is actually start setting more specific goals. So these were the pro um

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questions that I said you should ask yourself when you have an idea. The one that I want to point out more carefully here is this last one. What is my

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long-term vision? One way of doing this, and this is probably something you're all already familiar with, is to set smart goals that are specific,

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measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. So, I'm just going to show you an example of what that could look like.

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If you've got a dream like do genius hour, one way of making it actually happen is to turn that into a smart

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goal. So, I'm going to take my first draft of it here and then we'll improve it. Here's a here's a more specific

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goal. By December 1st, imagining we're putting this goal out in the summer. In five teachers classrooms, at least one

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class of 20 to 30 students will give genius hour presentations. So, when I say one class, I'm imagining we're talking about sort of like a middle

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school where we a teacher has several classes a day.

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Okay. So we're going to choose just five teachers in the building to sort of pilot this out. Pick one class per

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teacher. Okay? And then by December 1st, the goal is that they have given those presentations. A genius hour presentation is given at the end of a

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genius hour cycle. So that's the end goal.

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This goal as it is has most of the elements of a smart goal. It is timely. We've got a date that we've set for it.

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Um, it is specific because what we're looking for are these genius hour presentations.

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Um, it is relevant. It's genius hour. I always forget what these are. Okay. And then the A I think it might be achievable.

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That's I should have remembered what the A was. Hang on a second. I've got it down. Yes, it's achievable. We're not talking about the entire school doing

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genius hour all in one fell swoop. We're talking about just five classes worth of students just doing one cycle of it. So,

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it's achievable. The only thing that's really missing right now is measurable.

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So, I'm going to add at least 80% of the students will score a three or a four on the presentation rubric developed by the participating teachers. Now, we have a measurable goal.

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So this if you can set a goal that looks like this for whatever the thing is that you're trying to implement, it's a lot

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more tangible and we can actually start working toward this. But I wouldn't stop here. We've got this end goal now in

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mind. Okay, we've got these presentations on December 1st that all these kids are going to be giving after they finish the Genius Hour cycle. Now I

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need to work backwards from that. So let me go back to the summer. We're in August. Let's say by August 1st, we need to get a commitment from those five

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teachers and we need to pick out some sort of training material so that they know how to do Genius Hour. Are they going to take a course? Are they read a

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book? How are they going to learn the basics of doing a Genius Hour program?

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Then by August 15th, let's make sure that they have consumed those materials that they're trained. And then by

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September 15th, they've developed the presentation rubric. they've decided what will it look like when the students have actually achieved these goals.

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Let's put that on a rubric. Then by around October 1st, the students have made their pitches of what they want to

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study for Genius Hour. By November 10th, they've made drafts of their presentations and that should get us to December 1st where we have actually maybe achieved our goal.

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That is more of a plan.

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And so this is going to get you where you want to go much more than just having a bunch of random dreams like

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genius hour and all these other ones. So that is number three. Set more specific goals than maybe you have set before.

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And by the way, all of these nine things, you might already be doing many of them. My hope is that you're going to come away with at least one thing that you hadn't really noticed or thought

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about before. Okay, so number four is to expect bumps. So remember that nice plan

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that we just laid out a few seconds ago right here. Beautiful. It's probably not going to go like that though because

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stuff happens. People drop off. Special events move things around. There are weather problems. Tech glitches.

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Students change their minds. People leave their positions. Things never end up going exactly as you planned. Uh I

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found this graphic. I could not figure out who made it, so I can't give them credit, but it was it's not mine. So, this is how we often hope that things

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will go when we have a plan that we've got a a path and we've got an end goal and what ends up actually happening looks more like this.

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This is not news. There are other graphics that are kind of like this. I think the problem even though we recognize that this is the reality is

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that mentally a lot of times we still hope that the top graphic is what happens. So if when we're getting ready

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to start a new initiative we can expect more bumps things will be better and they'll we will be less surprised and

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we'll be prepared. So this is what I mean when I say expect bumps. What does that actually look like in practice? One thing would be to build in buffer time

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into your plan. So don't always don't schedule things so tightly that there's no room for mistakes or problems. Put

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some space in there where nothing happens. Also make it a practice anytime you hit a hiccup to stop and ask yourselves what can we learn from this

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instead of this isn't going well just what can we learn from this so that we can do better.

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Celebrate small successes as they happen. If you This took me a while to notice this, but when you look at this second picture, I'm going to use my

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mouse. It took me a while to notice, but there's a flag here. There's a flag here, here, and here. This one just has one flag. But instead of getting through

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these obstacles and just kind of going, "H, okay, this is really hard. Maybe we should turn back." They said, "No, we got through that one." And they planted

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a flag and celebrated. So that's another way of approaching the hurdles and the mistakes. Instead of seeing them as a

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sign that this is not going well and we should stop, maybe start looking at them as, okay, we beat that obstacle. Let's keep going because we're committed to to

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giving this a real try. So those are some ways that you can actually plan for the bumps and expect them instead of being surprised by them.

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The fifth piece of advice is to ask instead of telling. So, one mistake a lot of times, particularly school

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leaders, make when we're trying to implement change is too much telling and not enough asking. And when we're trying to actually get people on board for

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things, it goes better usually if we ask instead of tell. So, let me show you some examples. So, here's an example of

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telling versus asking. If you say to somebody the way that you're teaching this, for example, you're doing it wrong or some nicer way of saying that, but

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you're still saying it that they're not doing it the right way. Instead, we could ask a question like this. Have all

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of your students been successful with that approach and and put it put it on them to examine and and consider the

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question? Or instead of saying, "Do it this way. change your practice to do it this way. You could offer it like what

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if you tried this. So these are sort of conversational ways of asking versus just telling.

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Also, instead of saying we've all got to get on board with this, this is the training. Here's what you've got to do.

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It's going to just go like this. We could offer choices like learning menus is another way of asking instead of telling. Let's suppose your school is

31:22

really trying to implement more restorative practices. Instead of doing the the same training for everyone, you could offer choices where maybe you give

31:31

them six different resources or opportunities and have them choose three that fit best for them.

31:39

A third way of asking instead of telling is through something called voluntary piloting. So let's say you have a new initiative that you really want to

31:47

introduce at your school and you would love to get everybody on board, but it's not a have to. So voluntary piloting is instead of making everyone do it, you

31:56

introduce the idea and see who would like to try it and those people are your pilot group. As they try this thing and

32:04

they get better at it and they enjoy it and they start spreading the word, you can solicit more volunteers so that you start to get more people on board

32:12

organically as opposed to kind of forcing it on everybody all at one time.

32:18

And maybe it's the kind of thing that everybody never has to implement, but it's only something that people have the

32:25

the professional option to choose for themselves. And I think sometimes we don't necessarily realize that there are maybe are more things that would fit

32:33

into this kind of a model than we realize. Uh so that's another way of asking instead of telling.

32:41

Number six is validate. So at some point in the process of you trying to do this new thing, someone will respond to your

32:50

great idea with criticism. How you react to that criticism is what is really going to make a huge difference. You can

32:57

turn that into a positive moment or it could become something very negative and hostile and confrontational. So what I

33:06

mean by validation is the act of recognizing and affirming the feelings or perspective of another person.

33:13

validation is not the same thing as agreeing. And so I'm going to show you an example in just

33:20

a minute, but I'm going to talk about uh why validation is a simple thing.

33:26

It's not that hard to understand, but it is a lot harder to do than it is to understand. Because when we are faced with criticism or someone else's

33:34

negativity, our ego often gets involved and we get defensive. And so I think the

33:41

thing that will help when you are talking with somebody who is being negative about something is to realize

33:51

that they are not necessarily trying to come after you. It helps to try to shift and see their point of view in a much more generous way.

34:01

I found this quote that for me really helps with that because I've dealt with a lot of cynical, negative people in my career. Also, this quote I thought

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really is the kind of thing that can push your thinking in another direction.

34:14

Behind every cynic is someone whose heart has been broken.

34:19

I really think that when it comes to making progress in our schools, most people want to believe that things can get better, but they don't want to be

34:28

disappointed. And for a lot of people, that disappointment is a very real possibility.

34:34

There are a lot of very legitimate concerns behind these objections that we've already looked at. These are people that a lot of times maybe they

34:42

were the kind of people that got excited in the past, but they have seen new initiatives come and go. They've seen things fail and they just don't want to see that happen again.

34:53

Or maybe their concerns don't even have anything to do with your ideas. It might just, you know, be something that is bothering them that you can't even

35:01

figure out. Either way, ignoring the feelings that they have does not make them go away. So, we have to find a way

35:10

to actually face other people's negativity in a way that gives it credit and uh respects the people that have

35:19

those negative feelings and maybe not even labeling them as negative at all, but recognizing that their concerns are

35:27

a factor in this and they may actually be right. And so using uh this communication technique, validation can

35:34

really help. So, like I said before, it is not the same as agreeing. It is really just as simple as reflecting the content of what they're saying,

35:42

acknowledging the emotion, and then communicating some acceptance of that emotion. I'll show you an a typical example of this type of thing happening.

35:52

So, let's say I'm in a professional development with my colleague Joan and they are talking about starting to try

36:00

blended learning in our classrooms. And under her breath, Joan says, "Kind of impossible when we have 10 working Chromebooks for the whole school." Now,

36:08

I know that we have more than 10 Chromebooks. She's not correct there.

36:13

Uh, however, if I correct her, I'm ignoring the fact that actually we don't have enough devices for every

36:20

student and it probably would be a problem in some way. I also sound like an ignorant cheerleader if I'm just

36:28

like, "No, it'll be fine or whatever." So this is not going to actually solve the problem. What I can say to validate

36:36

her is something like this. It is hard to picture it working without more devices. I have not agreed that it's

36:45

impossible, but I have acknowledged that there is some truth to what she's saying. And so I'm facing it. she now feels heard and

36:54

she feels like, okay, I'm not crazy for noting that we do have a device issue in our school.

37:01

And so now she doesn't feel like it's an us versus them anymore. Now she feels like, okay, somebody has heard my concern. Maybe this is a problem that

37:09

can be solved as opposed to me just sitting here thinking nobody is listening to me. And that's the frustrating thing is when you have a criticism and you feel like no one is

37:17

hearing you, you're just going to want to keep beating that drum. So, if you have people on your staff that seem to keep complaining about the same thing,

37:26

try to see what you can validate about that concern. And I think that most times that will at least ease the

37:33

tension and allow for more productive conversations um about this thing that you want to try.

37:42

Tip number seven is be transparent. I got this one from talking to a lot of people who had implemented some pretty big changes in their school. And so I

37:51

said, you know, what do you think made a big difference? And I was surprised how often this came up. They said, I talked about it to a lot of people. I talked

37:58

about it in staff meetings. I told people about it. And they said, especially about my failures. They told me that being transparent about this

38:06

process of what they were doing, it made what they were trying to do less of a mystery to other people. it wasn't this sequestered thing that this secret thing

38:14

that they were doing in a special committee and also it kept them accountable. So by trying this new thing

38:22

and sharing it with everybody it sort of got people interested and they kept checking in on them and so it kept them accountable for trying this new thing

38:30

and kind of gave that little extra bit of thrust. The ways that you can do this uh there could be like a blog about the

38:37

project. You could do little quick updates at faculty meetings. maybe something in a newsletter or on a bulletin board or even go higher tech

38:45

and do a video or a podcast about it to let people know what the progress is on this project.

38:53

Number eight is praise. So the old saying, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And so, you know, if you find that your path to

39:02

progress is getting stalled, maybe this is an opportunity to give some praise to people who could be instrumental in

39:10

making that change happen. So, I'm not talking about buttering people up or kissing up to them or being fake.

39:17

Nothing like that. This actually has to be legitimate, genuine praise to people recognizing their contributions, their

39:25

skills, or whatever. So, I'm going to go back to Joan. Okay. So, let's say my school has implemented voluntary piloting. She has not been forced to try to do blended learning. I'm doing it.

39:36

She's not. But what I've noticed in myself is that when I'm doing it, my classroom is a little chaotic. Classroom management's never been a big strength.

39:45

Joan runs a tight ship, though. So, I go to her and I say, "Can you please help me set up better procedures with my blended learning?"

39:54

when she gets this question because I say to her, "Your class is so well organized." And I mean it. I'm not buttering her up. I actually mean it.

40:02

This makes Joan feel more valued.

40:05

Somebody has recognized that, you know, she actually has a skill. She feels valuable. It nurtures collegiality

40:13

between us. And it also gives her access to this new thing that I'm doing. So, it might help her to take a little bit of

40:21

the negativity away from it. It also shows vulnerability in me and it builds that bridge. I talked earlier about

40:28

being part of that principal sort of special committee and it really created a division in our staff and I think if we had been a little bit

40:36

more aware of trying to bring in more of the people who he thought weren't going to be very positive about this and use

40:44

their skill sets to help us and show show our own vulnerability of like I'm not really sure if I'm doing this right.

40:51

that creates so much less animosity and much less of an us versus them mentality between staff members. So doing things

40:59

like this where we are recognizing everybody's skill sets whatever they are it can help create more of a feeling of

41:07

an us within the staff and not um not this division between the people who are willing to do things and the people who are not.

41:16

So, my ninth tip is to dig deep. Uh, and so I'm going to talk about CrossFit for just a second. I've been doing CrossFit

41:24

for almost 11 years now. And in case you don't have somebody in your life that talks incessantly about it, I'll give you a super quick introduction. So, it is a fitness program where we do a lot

41:33

of hard things. We throw heavy objects over our heads and we jump on these high boxes. We push things around parking

41:40

lots. We do handstand push-ups. And it's it's a lot. It's a lot and it's difficult and pretty much every day it's

41:47

hard and we have to push past um difficult moments basically a lot of discomfort. The person who I've seen who

41:55

is the best at this is my coach Steven who in his normal life is an uncle and he's a butcher and he's this nice guy.

42:03

But the first time I saw him doing one of the CrossFit workouts, I stopped and just stared at him because something came over him that I had never seen. It

42:12

was like he I don't know. It was almost like he Well, here's a picture. This is what

42:20

he's like during a workout. And the thing that I loved was that he did not care who saw him like this. He really became almost sort of like this animal.

42:30

And seeing him do this, it got into my head. And he would say to us a lot of times during workouts when

42:36

when he could see that we were stuck, he would say, "Dig deep. this is the time to dig deep. He would say, "Go to another gear." And I found that I was

42:45

getting that into my head a lot of times that when things got really, really difficult, I needed to like find that other gear and dig deep. We talk this

42:52

way in sports all the time, we don't talk this way when it comes to education and and educating kids. Even though what

43:00

we are doing in schools has such bigger consequences than whether or not he could lift that barbell. And this this

43:09

quote I thought was really a perfect way of capturing that idea.

43:14

Find me someone who settles for average in teaching and I'll show you someone who doesn't understand the magnitude of the mission.

43:21

We are on a mission of incredible magnitude every single day. And so when

43:28

you face unbearable drag and when you are tired and you want to give up, maybe those are the times to start talking to

43:36

each other like athletes to talk about going deep and seeing if you can find something extraordinary in yourselves to

43:44

push past things when they get dis uh uncomfortable.

43:48

So my goal here today has been to just kind of give you a vocabulary for some of those difficulties that you might

43:55

encounter when you are trying to do something different or do something new in your school. Uh all nine of these are

44:03

in this handout which I will also send over to the team at Alpaca so that they can make that available in case you were

44:11

not able to grab this today. Um and I believe they're going to be doing a Q&A session after this. So, thank you all so

44:18

much for the day really and thank you to Alpaca for having me here just to wrap you all up for the end of it.