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 15: Coach'EM Up Leadership Series: Motivating and Inspiring your Staff!
Discover the essentials of motivating and inspiring educators in our latest Coach"EM Up leadership series episode. What if unlocking the true potential of your teaching staff could be achieved through authenticity and vulnerability? We promise you’ll walk away with strategies to cultivate a positive school culture, from sharing personal stories to offering tangible rewards like food trucks and gift cards. We unravel the art of building trust and understanding with your staff, emphasizing the critical role of purposeful professional development. By creating an environment where teachers feel valued, we enhance their performance, which ultimately benefits our students.
Our conversation extends to fostering teacher growth and collaboration, with insights on granting autonomy, encouraging creativity, and the power of mentorship programs for new educators. Learn how AI and technology can streamline tasks, liberating educators to focus on effective teaching. We highlight the importance of consistent motivation, where social interactions and fun activities play a vital role in strengthening team cohesion. As we wrap up, we invite you to share your strategies for inspiring your teams, encouraging a culture of continuous improvement and aiming to be 1% better every day. Each chapter of our discussion is designed to equip you with actionable insights to elevate your educational environment.
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Email: the.principal.jl@gmail.com
Hey there, educational leaders, it's so great to be back as we continue the Coach EM Up leadership series. We kind of took a break last week and I was able to bring you guys an episode with Principal Mo, so if you haven't been able to take a listen to that episode, I would encourage you to go back to episode 14 and to listen to Principal Mo, because she has some really great insights about being a building principal, but also her journey into being a Princf luencer, as well as her next steps into helping principals utilize AI to help them become more efficient as a principal. So I'd go ahead and I would encourage you guys to listen to that episode. This episode we're really going to focus on motivating and inspiring teachers and staff members. This is one thing that we have to do really good at as building principals, because it's really important to help with the culture of your building and your school environment, because if your teachers feel good about coming to school and working, they're going to teach good, they're going to do everything well for you, which will, in fact, affect your students. So, as building leaders, we have a chance to build teacher capacity by inspiring them, by motivating them, and there's lots of different ways. So we're really going to look at the art and science of motivating, inspiring educators. We're going to dive into some practical strategies. I'm going to give you guys some examples that I have done. That I have done. Of course, there's so many different ways you can do this, so I want you to respond to any type of ways you motivate your teachers and staff to this episode. In the fan mail link. You can send me messages on how you guys do that as well. I would love to hear those things. The one thing we got to remember to do is we have to be intentional when it comes to uplifting teachers and building morale.
Principal JL:The first thing I'm going to really talk about is being authentic as a building leader. I am who I am All right. I'm not going to change myself or anybody. I love having fun, I love joking around, but yet when the rubber meets the road, I do my job and I do what I got to do in some of those tough circumstances. So for me, I got to be able to show that I'm a human just like they are, even though I'm the building principal. I'm the leader. They look up to me. They also have to see me be vulnerable. I'm going to make mistakes. I got to be able to admit them. When I do that, I'm going to not be perfect and I don't expect my teachers to be perfect, but if they see that I'm vulnerable, they'll be more vulnerable and then we could build that relation of trust. And then when I do do things to motivate and inspire them, it's coming from a good place and they know that.
Principal JL:And I think that's number one is to be vulnerable, be who you are, tell personal stories about yourself, let them in a little bit. Let them know you know your likes, your dislikes, you know. One of the things I'm able to speak to is I was 11 years in the math classroom, where I have a lot of experience being a teacher. So I really work hard to remember that as a principal because I was once in their shoe and I will tell stories about when I taught different things because I want to understand that I've been shoe. And I will tell stories about when I taught different things because I want to understand that I've been there and when I make decisions I want to be able to keep those type of things in the forefront. So when I make those decisions I know where they're at because I've been there, and so when you have to make those tough decisions, that's important, that you are very authentic with them.
Principal JL:The next thing is recognition. There's so many ways you can recognize your teachers. This is something that I like to do is I am recognizing my staff at certain times of the year. So things like I like to do is I like to get food trucks. So I will schedule a food truck for a professional development day once in the fall, once in the spring. Okay, I like to do that. I like to spoil them a little bit, buy them lunch, because they work extremely hard and that's a reward for them that I like to do. Another thing I like to do is around the holiday break Sometimes it's before the holiday break, sometimes it's after the holiday break I like to get them gift cards.
Principal JL:The last few years I've been at this building, I've been able to do those things and be able to show just tokens of appreciation. It's not a lot, but it's something that they appreciate and I want to show my appreciation in those ways. Now you don't have to go buy things to show your appreciation as well. Now you don't have to go buy things to show your appreciation as well. Other things that I do is I do words of affirmation. I like to let the teachers know how much I appreciate them because they work hard, and it could be as simple as I appreciate the things you do. It could be as simple as I'm glad to see you here. It could be as simple as hey, I really appreciate when you did this thing. Or I really appreciate you stepping up and taking a lead on this thing, letting them know that you appreciate them. One thing I do is I like to get around to my staff at the beginning and at the you know, throughout the year. Let them know hey, thank you for being here. I appreciate everything you do. Is there anything you need? Just checking in. So checking in with them is also another way to help motivate and inspire them to do a good job.
Principal JL:Now the next thing I want to talk about is professional development. As a building principal, I strongly believe that I do not want to waste my teacher's time on unnecessary professional development. The professional development that I will line up is going to have a purpose to it, and if it doesn't have a purpose for it, I don't do it. I don't want to have my teacher sitting in meetings for no reason. But there's times where there's got to be training, there's times that we've got to have these professional development things and I always want the professional development to be something tangible that they can use in the classroom or something that we are working towards as a building to lead the way to get us in the direction we need to go when it comes to that training. So I am very, very picky about my professional development and what I have my staff do, because I want it to be meaningful, something that will impact it, but something that they will be tangible for them to use. So being able to have good professional development can motivate and inspire them, but it's got to be professional development that is useful and something that's gearing towards your vision and goal of the school. So that's super important to remember when you are setting up those professional development opportunities as well.
Principal JL:Another professional development opportunity is when you allow your staff to go to workshops, when you allow them to go to state conferences, do those different things and be okay, because they're out there learning and growing and we want to. We want to encourage that, as building leaders is have your staff go, do these things and you want to support them on those things as much as possible, they will come to you and say, hey, I see this workshop, this is why I like to go, and a lot of times nine out of 10, I'm like, go on, go do it. It'd be awesome. I'm like, go on, go do it. It'd be awesome, because I want to know what you're learning, how you're going to apply that into the classroom and how that's making you better. So that's a really great conversation to have with your teachers and your staff when you have those professional development opportunities.
Principal JL:You also want to empower your teachers. You got to give them autonomy. I mean, just this past week, you know, I had to explain to somebody that I give my teachers autonomy to do their jobs. I'm not going to sit there and look over their shoulders because they're adults. There are people that can do their job and do it well. But there's times that I got to be able to step in there and I got to be able to guide them or redirect them, because maybe something they're struggling with or something going on. I have to let them know like, hey, this is our expectations, these are the things that we're tied on and I have to be able to do that. That's part of my job as well, but I also give my teachers the opportunity to be creative. I don't want them to be afraid to try new things. I always tell them don't be afraid of failure. If you fail, what did you learn from it so you can move on and do the next thing? Well, so give them the autonomy. Empower your staff, give them a voice. That's super important. Give them a voice so when you are working together, they understand that they've been a part of that process, in those decision-making opportunities. So that's another way you can empower your teachers as well.
Principal JL:Another thing that's big to help motivate and inspire staff is to have some sort of mentorship programming within your building. One thing that we do really well is we give every teacher that is new no matter if they're a brand new teacher or they taught for 10, 15, 20 years coming into our building. They get a guide teacher. They get somebody that they have a go-to when it comes to building procedures, how we operate, what are we about, how do we do things. That's super important. Of course, they can always come to me as a building principal or to the assistant principal for guidance as well, but we want to give them that connection to a staff member that's been there, done that. They know the ropes. They can help them with the ropes, especially when it comes down to the little things like how do you post grades, how do I update my weekly planner. You know what is the expectation when I you know for a classroom. What does the bell ringers look like? All these different things. Those teachers can collaborate and work together. No-transcript about to help motivate and inspire.
Principal JL:I'm always looking for ways to try to make my teacher's job easier, as well as my own job, and so this is where being able to integrate technology. So some things I'm really looking at as a building principal is how can we leverage tools that are AI, like AI-specific tools. How can we leverage that? There are some things that I'm looking at right now that do utilize AI, because guess what? It's not going nowhere. It's something that we can leverage. I know some of my teachers use AI technology, so it's really important to figure out. You know how to lead with this new technology that's coming out, but also how to inspire staff to use it. But also, you know, if they know how to utilize these things, could they free up time to be more creative and to be more inspirational with their teaching If some of the remedial tasks that they do can be simplified and something that they can do in a timely manner, to where they're spending less time doing the paperwork stuff but more time on the creativity side and helping those kids learn even more effectively.
Principal JL:The next thing is is I want to have my staff be growth mindset, so I want to encourage them to grow by setting goals and milestones. So these are things that I do with my teachers. When it comes to, you know, the evaluation time, I have them fill out the pre-evaluation form we talk about. Hey, what are your goals? What do you want to do? You know these are things that are really important because I want to be able to help them reach those goals, and these goals don't have to be classroom-specific goals. These can be career goals. Hey, how can I help you, as a principal, to get to the next step? Because what I want is I want my teachers to be happy where they're at. I want them to enjoy what they're doing. And if they're not enjoying what they're doing, and if I can help them to the next step, I want to do that Because I want to do that, because I want them to be happy personally and not just be there and not be happy. That's important to me is to make sure what are their goals, what can I do to help them reach those goals, and then how can I help them get there. So those are things that are important when it comes to motivating.
Principal JL:Inspiring your staff with the goal setting part. Collaboration guys this is something that's huge. When it comes to inspiring, inspiring your staff with the goal setting part. Collaboration guys this is something that's huge when it comes to inspiring, motivating your staff is being able to collaborate with them. Just the other day, I had a teacher with a situation. We were talking it through and then we were able to find a solution to that situation, and being able to collaborate with that teacher and talk things through was super important but great to do, because that also put that teacher at ease and made them feel better about okay, this is the situation, this is how we're going to solve it, and then we move forward, and so what I always like to do is I'll follow up with those later just to see how things are going, as well as when we collaborate. I like to bring in that school improvement team process, and that's super important because we've done a lot of things I've talked about in my previous episodes when it comes to school improvement and collaborating with those teams of teachers, because if you're not doing that, you ain't going to be doing this job very long, because you got to get them to buy in and have that voice and be a part of that team that we need to be successful as building leaders.
Principal JL:Another thing is, as a building principal, I want to be accessible. I also want to be visible. I want people to see that I am not just going to sit around and just do paperwork, push paper all day. That's not what I want to do. I want to be out. I want to be seeing what my teachers are doing. I want to come in the classroom. I don't want to be evaluation time the first time that they see me in their classroom. I want to be in there multiple times prior to that so they know that when I'm there, you know doing the evaluation. I'm there just at different capacity.
Principal JL:But this also goes back to when I was a teacher, when I became a first year teacher. Anytime I saw a principal come into my classroom something was not good Like. It was like something like hey, you had this person complain about this. It was always a negative interaction. So I work really hard to make sure I have a lot of positive interactions. So I have to go. Those negative interactions they're not so personal. They understand where I'm coming from. They understand because we built that relationship and it's not the first time I've been in their classroom. A lot of times I'll just go in and say I just want to see what's going on, look around Doing a great job, peace out, you know. And on to the next one.
Principal JL:But I also like to keep an open door policy. I say I'm always here for you guys and if you guys want to come into and have a conversation, I'm more than willing to do that. I'm here to help you and I want you to learn and grow and if I can help you in any way, just just come on in. My door's always open. Now I do have a couple of boundaries I set, you know, when it comes to this stuff. Like if my door's closed in my office, that means I have something super important I got to do and I can't be interrupted, but I keep it open when I'm not doing those like super important things. Um, so they know that they're, they're welcome just to walk on into my office.
Principal JL:So that's, that's just being accessible, being able to work with your staff in a capacity and be visible in a way that they see you more than just as a leader but as someone that they can go to when they need help. And, of course, all of these things that we talk about we have to lead by example about. We have to lead by example, just like we talked about in our last episode in 13 in our Coaching EM Up Leadership Series. If you haven't listened, go ahead and go back and listen to that one where I talk about leading by example, where we set the tone. Guys, as a building leader, we set the tone and the energy that you bring to the building, the energy that you put off, is what your energy, your staff and your students get and that also motivates and energizes them. So if you come in with a crappy attitude and bad energy, guess what? You're going to have staff with crappy attitudes and bad energy as well as students with crappy attitude and bad energy. But if you come in with a positive mindset and you come in every day going. You know what? We're going to have a great day. Even though yesterday was rough, we're going to have a great day. Setting that tone is super important, guys, and if you do that, in a way, you're going to give energy out to your staff and your students and they're going to be more positive and they're going to have energy that they feed off of you to get them through as well. And so those are really important things to remember when you guys are leading by example as well, and also be in growth mindset yourself, because if you're expecting your staff to be growth mindset, you better be out there being growth mindset and growing and learning as well, because they're going to see that and that's really super important to do. Another thing is is you want to reward risk-taking with your staff? If your staff are putting themselves out there and they're trying something new, support them, help them with that risk-taking opportunity and celebrate it when they're successful and, you know, and help them out when they're not, so if they can learn from those things. So being able to celebrate risk-taking is super important because we don't want our staff to be afraid to take those risks.
Principal JL:We talked about recognition. They do staff shout outs. I do those sometimes in our professional development meetings and when we do something really well, I like to go hey, these are some numbers that I have out here, some data. You guys are doing a really good job on these things. So data that I recently shared was our attendance data from the first semester, where we are up 3.79% our daily average attendance rate and we are down eight and a half percent on our chronic apatism. And guess what? That takes everybody in our building to do that. And so I, you know, appreciated all the hard work and I gave them a shout out, I told them good job, I appreciate it. And then I reward them with a gift card when they came back from their their holiday break, because I did appreciate all the hard work that they they did, and and those small little tokens of appreciation do matter, they build up and guess what? When you appreciate them, they appreciate you and it's all where you need to be as a builder and leader.
Principal JL:Another thing is incorporate fun. I always say when people come in it's a great day to be a tiger. You know I love. You know, welcome to the jungle. There's a lot of different sayings I have. So where you know, hey, be 1% better today. Different sayings I have to, where you know, hey, be 1% better today. And my newest one is when you're at Hastings High, you get to be Sigma. Yep, the kids love that one. That's a new one that I learned. They love it when I ask them if they're being Sigma today. So try that with some of your kids and see how it goes.
Principal JL:And then the last thing we're going to talk about is consistency.
Principal JL:I also look for ways to get our staff together to be social, because some of our staff need to be able to come together and be social because, with 135 people in my building, they don't always get to see each other.
Principal JL:So I create opportunities to be social and I do a lot of that in our professional development time, where I build in opportunities for our staff to get together and just relax and have fun together, tell stories, you know, just fellowship and that's super important. But being consistent is the last thing you got to do is be consistent when you are motivating and inspiring your staff. There you have it, everybody. That is my tips on how to motivate and inspire your staff. If you have some things that you do, I would love to hear from you on how you motivate your staff, because there's so many different ways you guys can motivate your staff to be the best they can be, and I would love to hear what those are. Well, this does it for this episode. I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode as much as I did, and I hope you guys are out there ready to motivate and inspire your staff to become the best they can be and, as we always like to say, always look to be 1% better.
