Educational Leadership with Principal JL
Principal JL is an educational leader who explores various topics facing educational leaders today! The Mission of this podcast is to inform and inspire other Educational Leaders on how to be their best for their Schools by honing their skills and talents so they may impact their teachers, staff members, students, parents/guardians, and community members positively for their School District! Come with a Growth Mindset as we journey through Educational Leadership!
Educational Leadership with Principal JL
Episode 9: Coach'EM Up Leadership Series: Bridging Coaching and Educational Leadership
Discover the intriguing connections between coaching and educational leadership as we navigate a journey that began on the football field and led to the halls of education. Inspired by a transformative conversation with my wife's grandfather and drawing from a rich military background, I share my personal evolution from sports coaching to becoming an educational leader. Together, we'll bridge the gap in leadership training and explore setting a powerful vision for schools, translating big ideas into actionable steps, and collaborating with staff for impactful school improvement.
As we venture into the core elements of effective educational leadership, instructional leadership takes the spotlight. Hear insights on fostering a growth mindset among staff, encouraging reflective practices, and staying ahead with educational trends like APL, Marzano, NEE, and Danielson. We delve into the art of communication, emphasizing the value of building a strong school community, engaging with parents, and using social media to rewrite narratives from challenges to opportunities. Learn about resource management, district processes, and the power of data-driven decisions in crafting policies that bring about positive change.
In the final segment, we shift focus to coaching models that revolutionize educational leadership. Explore the application of models like GROW, the five C's, and CLEAR, which have been pivotal in tackling issues like school attendance. Transformational and situational leadership styles underscore the importance of a vision, relationship-building, and adaptive support for staff. As we launch the "Coach them Up" series, your feedback will be instrumental. Together, let’s aim for continual improvement, nurturing a community of strong, impactful educational leaders, striving each day to be 1% better.
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Email: the.principal.jl@gmail.com
Welcome educational leaders. I am so glad to have you here today. Today we're going to begin to focus on the role of an educational leader and then kind of look at some parallels between coaching and educational leadership. So those are a couple of different things that we're going to talk about today. So, if you guys don't know my story, I started an education to be a coach. I was not anywhere thinking about becoming an educational leader. I'm thinking, you know what? I got an education because coaching was my calling, and that's kind of where, where I was at.
Principal JL:Yes, my heart is in coaching. I love it. I love how you can take a, take players, help them develop their skills and see them go out either on the field In my case I coach football, wrestling and track but either they were on the field or on the mat or they were on the track or field event succeeding because of the things you taught them. Those are things that I really, really enjoyed about coaching. Then I started putting this connection together. Enjoyed about coaching. Then I started putting this connection together. Hey, you know, if I do a good job coaching, I should be a pretty darn good teacher. And so I got the same satisfaction when a kid got something right on a math test that I did, when someone did really well in the football game or the wrestling match that they competed in all because I helped them achieve a goal that they were aiming for, and so that's kind of where my passion is.
Principal JL:I don't look at myself as an educational leader and really I never thought about becoming an educational leader until my wife's grandpa sat me down and he said, jeff, you're more than a football coach, you're more than a teacher, you need to be a leader. And that really like stuck with me because I never thought like, oh, become a principal. And that's when I decided, you know what, maybe down the road someday, when the opportunity arrives, I can become that educational leader. But he saw something in me that I didn't even see in myself, and so I have this passion of how to connect what I do as a leader and how I coach kids or athletes and this setting as an educational leader. My people that I'm coaching up are my teachers and my staff, because there is a correlation to when you help your teachers and your staff become the best they can be at their job. It's going to directly affect those students and their achievement. So my job is to really coach them up, and I do that in a lot of different ways. And so before we really get going in this, you know I wanted to kind of tell you that story, kind of how you know, over the years I've really honed in on different coaching strategies and different things that I learned as a coach and then how I'm applying them to as a leader.
Principal JL:Now I also have some other background. I think helps me as an educational leader is I was in the military for eight years. I was in the Army Reserves and I spent eight years and I actually left as a sergeant. I was a non-commissioned officer and in the military they have you do leadership training and do all that kind of work to make you a better leader. And I get into the field of education. There's not a lot of training. There's a lot of schooling. You go to school, you get the degree, but there's not a lot of training, not a lot of help out there for educational leaders. And so that's kind of the overall goal of this podcast is to help educational leaders become better leaders, and if I can help you in any way, I will do that, and so I'm going to utilize my experiences and I'll probably use other people's experiences that I have seen or witnessed throughout my time as an educational leader, because I think these stories are important, connecting with people on a level to where you know we can help each other and create a community of leaders so we can become strong together.
Principal JL:So let's, let's kind of get into this here. So, what is an educational leader? Okay, an educational leader I mean they basically are the people that are in charge of the school. They're managing all the things, the things, and they're making sure things are staying where they need to go. Now there are six things we're going to talk about that an educational leader or the role of an education leader has, and it's not just disciplining students, it's not just, you know, making sure people are compliant with what you do, but there's things that educational leaders have to think about as well, and so some of these things is vision.
Principal JL:The educational leader sets the vision for their school. They set the vision for their school district. If they're a superintendent, whatever role that educational leader is in they set the vision for what they are in charge of, and so they are leaders. They plan, they dream, they want to balance these big ideas but at the same time you've got to have actionable steps that create meaning and foster a learning environment. You can't just have an idea and just hope it comes up. You actually need to work with your staff and your teachers and collaborate with those ideas. And so a big piece of being an educational leader you've got to be a lot of vision.
Principal JL:What do you envision your school to be when I become an educational leader? At first I didn't know what my vision was, and it took me a while, you know, coming into the position I am now. You know I was a small town rule principal for four years and now I'm in more of a like suburban um style or urban suburban um school district now, which it's much bigger um, they have a lot more things going on, systems and things that are in place, and so it took me a while to figure out what is the vision for that school. So I did a lot of my first year sitting back watching see how things go, working, with the staff collaborating, and we made a lot of strides and so we set out a vision. But my vision is actually for the school runs through my school improvement team, because we go school runs through my school improvement team because we go, hey, what problem do we want to solve? And then we solve it, and then we work together to do that. And that is really, really important to do when you have those visions, because you got to have people that will support the vision that you are having. So vision setting is a huge, huge thing that you do as a principal. So vision setting is a huge, huge thing that you do as a principal.
Principal JL:Really big thing that some people don't think about is instructional leadership. As a principal, you have to be able to help your staff become better at their jobs and you have to be an instructional leader. So one of the things I did, knowing that someday I'll be a principal, I got a curriculum and instruction masters to where I can help grow my teachers. Now I want my teachers to have a growth mindset. I have a growth mindset, you know, and not everybody has one, but I want them to understand as long as you're trying to get better, that's all I can ask for. And so having a growth mindset as an instructional leader is super important because you can really have those honest conversations with staff when they are the hard conversations. Hey, you know you do things really well, but here's some things we can do better. But at the same time you want them to kind of own what they can do better. So I do a lot of reflection with my staff. I go, hey, what are some things you feel like you can get better at? And for me I like to do that because I like to hear what they have to say and a lot of times what I'm thinking. They're saying it because they know what they got to do to get better. My job is to support and help them get better within that set. So instructional leadership is really, really important. You have to stay on top of the trends. You got to stay on top of the different practices that are out there. You can name a lot of different models. There is the APL model, the Marzano, the Danielson, you know the Network for Educator Effectiveness. Those are all different models or instructional models, but they all basically do the same thing they help teachers get better at teaching, because good teaching is good teaching and you know it when you see it as an educational leader.
Principal JL:Another thing that we do is build communities or community building. So we don't want to just lead and be authoritative, we actually want to build people. We want to build our staff so they can build the students, but we also want to bridge the gap between community members, with parents having really good communication with those people branching out into the community, having good communication with them and then help them share into the vision of the school. When I got to the school I'm at, there was a lot of negativity about the school I was at, and so one of the things we wanted to do is put out a positive image, and so we utilize our social media platform to show all the awesome things that our school is doing, and that's really helped change the narrative in the last two and a half years at our school, because they aren't just, you know, thinking, oh, that's a big school, they have all these problems. They're like, oh, they're a big school and they have all these opportunities. That's a big difference, going from we have all these issues to we have all these opportunities, and that's basically because we have some dedicated people that are going to put out the positive things about our, about our school and show it in a positive light, because you hear all the negative stuff on on tv and so you want to make sure people understand what you do is a positive thing and it matters and and the kids enjoy being at school and all the great opportunities they have when they're here. So building community is super, super important.
Principal JL:As an educational leader, also learning how to manage your resources. So some things. There is you have to understand how your budget works. You got to understand, hey, what is the process your district has when something breaks down. Who do you go? What are the contacts, who are the people? Depending on what's going on, depending on who you talk to.
Principal JL:I work with a district office cabinet. Each one of them has a specialized area and so, depending on the situation, if I need some support, I will go to whoever that director is and help them, or have them help me. Get know, hey, the custodial staff got what they need. Rooms are clean, you know when something breaks. You got to figure out who. You know where it needs to go. You got to put it a work order.
Principal JL:I mean, there's so much going on in a given day. That's why I love being an educational leader, because when I go to work, every day is an adventure, because you think you're going to have a normal day. You don't. You have something that hits you every day. It could be a student issue, it could be a staff issue, it could be something's breaking down. I mean, you're doing triage throughout the time that you're in the building being a principal, so you have to understand how to manage those things and really help people help themselves, find some solutions, because you don't have time to think for everybody all the time. But at the same time, you want to also learn how to empower your teachers so they can do the things and find solutions as well, because you want to help them, but you also want to empower them as well. So, being able to manage those things and making sure you are providing the support for your staff and your students.
Principal JL:Now data-driven decisions. This one's huge, all right. So when it comes down to data-driven decisions, you need to support the systems and the things you have in place at your school with data, because the data is going to help drive the change in your school and you've got to be able to go hey, if this is the data I need, that's the marker, that's the measure you're going to have when you want to measure whatever that initiative is or whatever that school improvement or policy change is. So one example I can give you right now our attendance policy is brand new. We had some other things implemented before that. But I look at daily average attendance rates and chronic apteism rates. Those are my markers on how well the attendance policy is doing or how effective it is. So I look at those things, you know, every two, three weeks so I can figure out okay, are we trending in the right direction? I am happy to report almost done with the first semester are trending in the right direction, and I also talked about our attendance policy and apteism in my last episode, or in episode eight, producing chronic apteism. So if you haven't checked that out, go ahead and check that out so you can hear more about that story.
Principal JL:So, making data-driven decisions and what I have done is I utilize my school improvement team to do that. I have almost at least one representative from every department in the school and they help drive the change in the school because they're the ones at the forefront. They're going hey, these are the issues, these are things we want to solve. And we go look at the data. Okay, yep, we're something there. How are we going to do it? We look around, we research, we find other people that are doing different things. We bring it together, we collaborate and then we solve the issue. And so that's been one of the my, I guess, more proudest things as a principal here is being able to collaborate with those teachers. And be able to do those things has been really, really awesome.
Principal JL:And the last thing really you have to think about as your role as an educational leader is human connection. You've got to be able to connect with your staff. You've got to be able to connect with your students. You've got to be able to connect with the people in the community. You can't well, I'm just going to be honest you can't be a hermit and sit in your office, because you can't lead sitting behind a closed door. It just doesn't work very well. So you have to be visible, you have to get out, you have to communicate, you have to be present with your teachers, with your staff, with your students and with community members. Because guess what? You guys are a team. You work together to create the environment you want and to create the outcomes you want, and you cannot do this job as an educational leader without those people, because if you think you're just going to come in and tell people what to do. They're going to show you the door. I mean, that's just the bottom line. So you have to learn to work and collaborate and work that buy-in of when those things need to come. So that's kind of the six things that you kind of need to know when you're an educational leader. If you can just look at those six items, which is vision setting, instructional leadership, community building, understanding how to manage your resource, data-driven decisions and human connection, you start working on those things.
Principal JL:You're going to start being a more effective educational leader, and it's something I had to learn over time. I wasn't taught it. I had to learn by mistakes. But's not I didn't, I wasn't taught it. I had to learn by mistakes. But learning by watching and growing and watching other people do the job as well, and so my biggest takeaway is, as an educational leader, is watching other people do it and understand what to do and what not to do, and that's how I learned.
Principal JL:But as an educational leader now what I want to do is give back and start coaching people up. I want to coach the next generation of educational leaders so they don't have to struggle, so they can be empowered and ready to go. I want to coach the next generation of awesome teachers. I want to help those teachers become so good that when it doesn't matter which teacher sits in that classroom with that student, they know they're getting a high-quality teacher. And that's kind of what drives me is I want to coach those teachers up because when they're good, they're going to teach those kids and those kids are going to get a lot of good results because you have dynamic teachers. And so you only do that if you take an approach where you're taking more of a coaching approach instead of a dictatorship or authoritarian coach. A lot of people will call it a transformational leadership, and that's kind of going to lead us into the next set of things we're going to talk about.
Principal JL:The next thing we're going to talk about is some parallels between coaching and educational leadership, and so there are coaching models. Okay, they're out there. I mean, some of you might've heard some of these coaching models, um, so these coaching models are basically leadership models that coaches have used to help individualize um skill sets, to help their athletes um become better at whatever skill they're trying to get better at, so they can become a more cohesive team and meet the goals that they want to do. Now I'm telling you, when I was a coach, my goal was to be the best coaches. I want to be, but you wanted to win. I mean you just flat out wanted to win and you wanted to make sure you equipped your athletes with everything they needed to go out there and perform and win. And so that's kind of your goal. I mean you want to help those kids be successful and in sports it's about winning. Yes, you build character, you do all these other things and all those things are important. But at the same time, when you're an educational leader, how are you going to support so your teachers can win? They could win in the classroom, they could win when those kids are there and they can make sure they're learning the things they need to learn, so those students could win.
Principal JL:Winning looks different at an educational leadership thing. Coaching, you don't have games and scores, you have test results. You have, you know, in Nebraska we have A-Quest. You got to look at that and know how things work. But there's different ways to be measured. As a school and as an educational leader, you want to win at those things and way to win is to coach up your teachers and your staff. That's so important.
Principal JL:So let's talk about some of these coaching models. One of these coaching models you might have heard of them is the GROW model. Okay, it's goal setting for G, reality check for R, option exploration for O and will to act for W. Well, it kind of sounds like you know. A lot of these growth models or these coaching models are very similar. There's going to be a goal setting piece. There's going to be hey, we got to get real with what we're doing. We have to have options, we got to be able to know how to accomplish that goal and then we got to act on that. I mean, that's one model. Another model is the five C's so you might have heard of this one as well where you have to bring clarity to the issue.
Principal JL:What is the context? What are you figuring out? What are the choices to help with that situation? What is your commitment? You know you have to commit to doing something. And then what's the challenge? So I can go back to our attendance policy. We knew there was an issue with our attendance because our daily average attendance rate and our chronic apathy, ism, showed it. I mean, our our rates were not as good as we like them. We ended the year at 85% daily average attendance and around 40, 40, 44 percent I have more like 44 percent chronic apathy ism in our school last year. Now that was the problem.
Principal JL:Now, how did we fix it? We collaborated. We actually worked with another school district that was going through some of the same issues and so my assistant principals worked really closely with their assistant principals. And then we took the information to our school improvement team. We looked at it together, refined it, we made it ours, we took what somebody else was doing, we made it ours, we, we had a template, we had something to kind of go off of. But then we had to take that information and go, okay, this is what we're going to get tied on, this is what we're going to do. And then from there I had to take it up to the cabinet or superintendent at our district office and say, hey, we'd like to meet with you guys, we want to show you what we've been working on with the school improvement team. We sat them down, we showed them our new attendance policy. How is it going to work? You know what's the goal, what's the purpose. We went through all that. The superintendent or cabinet was like, wow, we really like this this thing with us will work. So we take it to the school board, we present it to them. The school board goes hey, we will support you. So we were able to create this new policy, taking all these steps. I couldn't have done that by myself. It took a team of people and a lot of people working together to get that accomplished.
Principal JL:Now let's fast forward to almost the end of this semester. We are up 3.39% our daily average attendance from this time last year. Like we're already up, you know a pretty good amount. We actually decreased chronic aptitude 8.4%. So that is in one semester. We had some gains. So we're really, really excited to see how it's going to end when we get done with school at the end of this year.
Principal JL:So I don't know, you have to stay tuned. I might give you guys a report on that later, but these growth models are things. That's kind of an example of how you can utilize these growth models within a leadership team or a school improvement team. One of the other growth models is a clear model. Know the cycle of contract contracting, listening, exploring, action and reviewing, and so there's always a continuous improvement model, and so these coaching models are things you can actually apply into your educational leadership, and so I want to see you could kind of see how the coaching models and the different things you do as a coach, you can do them as an educational leader. You just do it in a different way. Instead of having athletes, you're going to have teachers and you're going to have staff members, because what they do is they're going to impact your students and there's actually research that shows that that is how you impact student achievement. As a principal is to make sure your teachers are up to being the best they can be and having that growth mindset. So those are really important.
Principal JL:So, when it comes to leadership models, the best leadership models to use while you are coaching up your leaders is being a transformational leader. All right, you want these transformational leaders. They have a vision. Right, these transformational leaders, they have a vision. Okay, these transformational leaders, they build relationships, they're motivated. These transitional leaders are the type of people you want in place to be able to do the educational leadership role effectively. So becoming a transformational leader is super important.
Principal JL:Now I would like to spin off on that, because, as great as being a transformational leader is, you also have to understand situational leadership, because you got to understand how your staff works. You got to understand how they think, you got to understand how you can help them. And so every situation may not be dealt with or worked through the exact same way, but the more you work through with situations with your staff, you're going to understand for the next time. Hey, I remember when this person went through this and this is how we support them and this is how we got them through and how we helped them get better. Oh, I have another teacher having the same type of issue so I could run that same process with them. And that takes time. Okay, it takes time for you to learn your staff know how they are and help, know how you can help them.
Principal JL:But that's only if you actually get out, build relationships and you know your staff very, very well. And kind of the funny thing is, my staff knows me pretty well and I like to dress in. You know suit jackets and you know look good. You know it's kind of what I've been doing this year is trying to wear a suit jacket every day. So I actually had a staff member over the weekend sending me pictures of Christmas suits. Well, I thought it was hilarious, because my wife actually bought me one of the suits that my staff member was showing me. So I was like, hey, I love how you think you guys know me really well, and so you know, I don't know if that happens for every principal out there, but that's what happens when you build those relationships with your staff, is they get to know you not just as a professional but on a personal note as well. So that's really, really important.
Principal JL:But you also have to understand, you have to maintain your professionalism, because as a leader, you are the one people look to when there is a situation that has to be handled. And you can't be everybody's friend. You can be friendly, but you have to be able to do your job. And sometimes the job sucks. Sometimes there's things at the job you just don't like to do. And the one thing I hate doing the most is reprimanding the teacher. I hate it. I absolutely hate it, because I will feel like my teachers are adults but they need to be. You know they can handle themselves and things like that, but there's times you have to do that and that's the toughest part about this job is you have to make sure everybody's at their best every day and you want to help them along when they're not, so they can get better and be at the best they can be, and so that's kind of the you know the you know one side of the leadership that maybe I don't like as much, but what I love doing is I love coaching them, I love seeing them get better and how they help their students get better and succeed.
Principal JL:So let's kind of wrap this up here, all right. So, key ingredients for success All right, let's kind of go through that a little bit. So the six things we talked about as an educational leader is your vision setter. You set the vision. You are instructional leadership. You build the community. You have to understand and manage your resource and your data-driven decisions and you want that human connection. Well, the parallels between coaching and educational leadership are well. Coaches they have a clear vision, they're strong, communicative, they're consistent, supportive. A lot of times we like to use humor, so that's something that you can utilize as a way to foster engagement and relationships, but you have to make sure it's the right kind of humor. You don't want to get too crazy with that.
Principal JL:So when you build relationships, that is the foundation for growth and trust. Your teachers won't trust you and won't grow if you don't build that relationship. I think, no, I don't think. I believe the number one thing you have to do when you become an administrator or you become an educational leader or principal or whatever later leader, you are in your role. You have to build the relationships with your staff because they won't follow you if they don't know you follow you. If they don't know you. They're not going to follow you if you can't have a relationship, at least a professional one, to where they understand where you're at, you understand where they're at and how to meet each other in the middle, so you guys can get to the goals that you want to do for your school and then continuously reflect and adapt to sustain improvement.
Principal JL:So I think that's the last big key we want to talk about. You want to be able to help people learn and grow, but you got to always be continuously reflecting on that. There's not a day that goes by that I don't reflect on the day. What could I have done better? Now we have a mantra at our school and it's kind of something we started last year, but it's how are you being one percent better every day? That's actually said every day over the, over the intercom during announcements is the last thing that is said be one percent better, and that is what I want people to try to do every day when they're in our building. How are you going to be 1% better today? Because when you're 1% better, you're getting better for yourself, but you're also getting better for the people around you, and so that's really, really important because that shows that you're continually to reflect, you're continually to adapt and you're continually to grow, and that's where the growth mindset comes in, and so that's super, super important, well, when you want to be able to coach up your leaders and coach up your teachers. So, with that said, I really, really enjoyed the conversation today. Um, you know, understanding what the role of an educational leader is, understanding the parallels between coaching and educational leadership. You kind of got a little bit more of my backstory on kind of how this has evolved as an educational leader, and I really really am excited for taking this journey with you guys.
Principal JL:Before we leave, I wanted to put this challenge out there for you guys. I want you to really look at what kind of leadership style you have. You can actually really just Google like leadership style, like assessments, and you can like take one and kind of figure out what kind of leader you are, because that understanding what kind of leader you are was actually going to help you know how to impact your staff. I look at leadership as being a coach OK, and so that's kind of one way to look at it, and being a coach a lot of it's transformation and situational leadership. So there's two different styles within that, one type of leadership that you can have, and so I want to challenge you guys to do that.
Principal JL:I also would like to challenge you guys to do that. I also would like to challenge you guys to provide feedback. Was this information useful? I would like to know, because I can't read your mind, so I don't know if this is something that you're enjoying, if it's something that is beneficial for you, because with this Coach them Up series, I'm going to be covering a lot of topics and I'm really excited to help people learn and grow. So if you enjoy series, I'm going to be covering a lot of topics and I'm really excited to help people learn and grow. So if you enjoy it, I would love to hear from you. What things did you take away from this episode and then what can maybe give me some ideas for future episodes. I'd love to hear you guys. So, with that said, I'm going to go ahead and let you guys go. It's been really great to start off this series. I'm really glad you're on the journey and until next time, always look to be 1% better.
