Episode 52: The Principal’s Playbook: Building Trust, Retaining Teachers, and Driving Change (Unfiltered)

Culture is not a poster on the wall, it’s the engine that determines whether any strategy, policy, or program actually works. We walk through a practical, field-tested playbook for principals who want to build trust, retain great teachers, and lead lasting change without burning out or micromanaging.

First, we break down a 60–90–30 transition plan that starts with a building-wide listening tour. You’ll hear how five-minute conversations with every staff member surfaced the real patterns, wandering halls, phone distractions, and inconsistent expectations; and how a representative school improvement team turned those insights into smart, co-created systems. Together we launched an e-hall pass, hall monitor duty, and a personal device policy that removed phones from instructional time and restored focus. Because teacher leaders owned the rollout, buy-in came from the ground up.

We also go inside the practices that kept momentum: PLCs that compare learning by target and swap strategies, daily emails that create clarity, and a simple mantra, Be 1% Better, that encourages responsible risk-taking. The impact was measurable and human: higher daily attendance, a sharp drop in chronic absenteeism, calmer hallways, safer classrooms, and teachers who feel seen, valued, and trusted. You’ll learn how tiered attendance supports engage deans, liaisons, diversion partners, and families to reframe accountability as care. Along the way, we share retention moves you can use tomorrow—protecting workdays from unnecessary meetings, honoring veteran expertise, and investing in appreciation that brings teams together.

If you lead a rural 7–12 or a thousand-student high school, the sequence scales: listen widely, co-create solutions, define purpose, communicate clearly, and let staff lead. Grab the free toolkit and templates, try the 60–90–30 day transition plan, and start one change that compounds. If this playbook helps, share it with a colleague, subscribe for more leadership episodes, and leave a quick review so others can find us. What’s the first system you’ll strengthen this week?

Principals' Playbook Toolbox:

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Chapters

• 0:00 Unfiltered Presentation Setup
• 4:38 Background And Leadership Context
• 8:18 Core Challenges In Schools
• 9:38 Trust As The Foundation
• 11:18 The 60-Day Listening Tour
• 13:23 Forming The School Improvement Team
• 15:54 Co-Creating Policy Changes
• 18:44 Culture Before Scores
• 20:34 PLCs And Professional Trust
• 22:44 Change With Clarity And Consistency
• 25:44 The 1% Better Mantra
• 28:04 Rural To Urban: What Still Works
• 31:55 PBIS That Teens Actually Value
• 33:25 Results From Policy Shifts
• 36:15 Tiered Attendance Strategy
• 40:35 Safety, Belonging, And Accountability
• 42:15 Retaining Teachers Through Shared Leadership

Transcript

Principal JL: 2:07

Welcome back, everybody, to another exciting episode of the Educational Leadership Podcast. Today I'm really excited. I'm gonna present to you guys my presentation that I gave at the Nebraska State Principals Conference. I just did it last Thursday, and so I was really excited to share it. And the title of this presentation is The Principal's Playbook: Building Trust, Retaining Teachers, and Driving Change. And so I think it's really important for us to understand how do we do those things. Now I'm not going to go through the whole presentation because there's a lot to it, but at the same time, I actually went through part of the presentation in two episodes ago in episode 50, where I talk about disillusionment. So you can go ahead and check that episode out as well. So I'm actually going to do something really different today. So I am going to do an unfiltered version of this podcast. I'm not going to go in and edit, I'm not going to go out and do all those things in this in this episode. So I'm going to try something different because I want to really hone in on this presentation and give you guys some really good information. Now, with this presentation, I'm actually going to put this episode with the presentation on YouTube. So you'll be able to access it and see the slides as I go through them in this episode as well. So if you need those visuals, that is great. So I'm going to go ahead and start the presentation. So basically, the first thing I want to do is just introduce myself. I'm Mr. Jeff Linden, AKA Principal JL. I am a husband, a father, a principal, and of course the host of the educational leadership podcast with Principal JL. Now, just so you guys know, I have been in small rural schools and I've also been in Omaha Metro schools as well. So I've been out in really small schools where I have been in towns of like 600 people and taught and coached there. I've been in towns of a thousand people. I've been in towns, you know, now I'm in a town of 24,000. I'm almost 25,000. I've been in Omaha. And so I've taught and I've coached and I've been a principal at those smaller districts and at the larger districts, like I am here at Hastings High in Nebraska. So I have 11 years of teaching. I've taught math, I've taught PE. I've also been a principal for four years at Southern Valley. That's a 7-12 building with about 165 students, about 24-25 staff. And now I'm at a high school 9-12 setting where I have a thousand students. I have about 120 staff on, you know, roughly, depending on where I'm at in my hiring cycle. So with that said, that's kind of the types of schools I've been around. So I've seen a lot of different types of schools: rural, metro, urban, suburban type schools. And so I could speak to a lot of different ways. And one thing I've learned is they're the same when it comes to building trust, collaborating with people, being able to get the job done in education at a small rural school is the same as a big the difference is there might be a little bit different uh ways of doing things, the systems might be a little different, but you're all there doing the same work, helping kids learn. So that's what I want to make sure is really important. I drive that home. So there's six focuses. I'm only gonna do five of these because the last one is the one that I've already done an episode on, but I am gonna talk about you know the evolving role of educators, how do you build trust and collaboration? I'm gonna go over my 60, 90, 30 day template that I have to develop for that. So, with that said, I'm gonna go ahead and talk about how do you empower and retain teachers, empowering those staff, navigate change, purpose with clarity, actionable steps strategically. And I also have a toolkit that I could share a Google Drive. I'll put that down in the show notes. So if you ever wanted to go into that toolkit, you can go into that Google Drive and access the information from that. So, with that said, leadership challenges. We face a lot of different challenges. We have diverse learning. So we have to understand how kids learn, but also what are ways we help them learn? What are ways, what are instructional strategies do we have as teachers to help the diversity of those learners? Because you have a lot of different learners in your classroom. You have high-ability learners, you have people that are like on the normal track, and then you have low-level learners. You have learners of all different types in your classroom. So you got to understand how do I teach all these different learners? Because they learn in different ways, but some may need more support than others, some may not. How do you have those kids collaborate and work with each other so they're learning together? Also, instructional skills. What do you have in your toolbox as a teacher to get things better? And as a principal, what do you give the teachers to put in their toolbox? What instructional strategies do you give them? What tier one strategies do you have? What tier two strategies do you have? You know, tier three strategies are basically kids on IEPs and 504s, but at the same time, what are the level one, tier one strategies that principals are giving their teachers to support them in the classroom? Now, teacher retention, there's a lot of different ways to do that, but I look at teacher retention on how do you take care of your staff? How do you make them feel when they come to work? Do they want to come step in that building and do the work that is so tough at times? So, how do you make those teachers feel on a day-to-day? How do you support them? And those things like that will help them, but also how do you collaborate with them? How do you include them into the decision-making process when it comes down to that? So these are all the different things, you know, diverse learning, instructional strategies, and then teacher attention. These are all things we're thinking about as leaders when it comes to those challenges. Now, when it comes to our focus, you know, how do you focus in on these challenges and how do you be able to attack them as a principal? So, trust and transparency is a good way to help understand your staff. So, how do you build trust? How do you empower those teachers? And so, as a build-in principal, when I came to Hastings High, I came up with a 60, 90, 30 day transition plan. Now, with that plan, the first 60 days, I basically was like, you know what? I'm gonna get to know people, I'm gonna get to understand the systems that are in place. What are the what are the issues that I keep hearing over and over again? So in that first 60 days, my focus was to sit down, have a conversation, no longer than about five minutes with each staff member. That's teachers, that's custodial staff, that's my administrative assistants, that's you know, paras, that's you know, anybody that works in that building. I wanted to get to know them as a person and try to try to learn something about them, you know, that is not teaching related. So it's really good to connect with those teachers and those staff members in your building. Because overall, as a building principal, you are in charge of everyone, and you got to make sure everybody's rowing the boat together and everybody's on the same page. And so, with that, with that first 60 days, I was doing that. I was having those conversations, getting to know the staff. They didn't know me. I was getting to know them. We were having really great conversations, and in those conversations, teachers were able to say, Mr. Linden, these are things that are frustrating, these are things we've been struggling with over the last few years. We need help, we need to fix these things. And so I started writing down things. I started trying to figure out okay, how do I attack some of these things that they are coming up with and they're saying, and the thing is, I started seeing common themes throughout these conversations. The same things keep popping up, and those things were kids were wandering the building, they weren't in class, they weren't able to learn, the cell forms were an issue. So those were some of the big things I were really struggling with with the you know, when I got in there, so that was really important for me to listen, understand, write things down, because then what I was able to do is I was able to empower the teachers by basically respecting them and understanding, like, hey, I hear you, I understand where you're at. And so I need to basically, you know, how do I get them involved? How do I empower them through different opportunities? So, what I did is I developed a leadership team, which is the leadership team was already there, but the leadership team was basically, you know, I'll talk about that a little bit later, but I really want to talk about the school improvement team. So, what I really needed to do is develop a school improvement team. They did have a school improvement team, you know, they're already intact. So basically, I had to get, I wanted to make sure I had a representative from each department, a representative of special education departments, specialists, and different things from all over the building. And that's about 15 people. I had my assistant principals are in on it, counselors are in on it, as well as teachers as well. So it was really good to have those people in there. And that's how we looked at navigating change. And what I did is I actually sent out an email and said, Hey, if you'd like to be on the school improvement team, I'd love to have you. You know, come on in. And not a lot of people, you know, jumped on board. I had some, but not all. But I was able to get the people I needed to start the school improvement team going again. And so with that, I was able to empower some teachers so we could help make change because we would have a process where we'd come together, go, okay, what's your issue? Okay, let's collect some information, let's go back out, talk to the staff members, bring that back. And so we would do that two, three, four times. And we actually did that in the 90-day time frame, not in the 60-day. I waited for 60 days before I brought in the school improvement team and started working on that stuff. And that's how we started navigating change because I was collaborating with my school improvement team. We were getting their input, they were getting input from the staff, and then we're able to move forward with some of the things. And the first few things that we tackled in that first year was creating an e-haul pass system, creating a hall monitor duty, which I was like, Are you sure you want to do this? And they're like, Yeah. So we create a hall duty duty, and then we have a personal device policy we implemented in year two from the work that we did in the first year. So we're really working on this stuff, getting board approval, and working through that. And the great thing actually went out, and they were the ones that presented that information to the staff. So that was a really great thing. And so I'll through that time, I'm building trust, we're collaborating. Trust is the foundation for school improvement. That's it. I don't look at school improvement by what did we get on our test scores? Yes, test scores are important, you know, your math test scores, your English test scores, your science, and all those things are important. How do we do on the ACT? I know, I understand that's important, but is it more important than building your culture first? I don't think so. I don't think you have academic success without the culture in place. Now you can scare people into getting good grades, but why do that? Why won't you want to build something that will be sustainable, something that will last a long time? And when you get those systems in place and you build a, you know, building trust and collaboration and working through each other, that's the best thing. Because when you build trust, you're actually bringing those people in and you're actually sharing the leadership. And that's another thing we need to talk about is how do you give those people responsibilities that they can do that you don't have to do it all as a principal? Don't you can't do it all yourself. If you're doing it on your own, good luck because it ain't gonna last very long. So that's where you got to build those trusts and get those people in, and then you want to honor their expertise. I have people in my building that have taught for 40 years, I have people in my building that taught for over 30, 20 years. I have people that have taught longer than I have. Okay, and I have to rely on their expertise, I have to rely on the knowledge that they have because that's how we're gonna get better. And then they feel seen, valued, and heard, which is very important for them to have that understanding. Like, hey, they have a building personal that's going to value them, they're gonna value their end. You have to leverage that to your advantage. Why not? They're in the building, you got to work together. Some of your best resources are the people in there, and so that's something you want to do. And then you have to establish feedback loops, you got to be able to communicate, you know, follow up, have constructive credit conversations. And so that's where we do, we'd meet as a school improvement team. They would go out, collect information, come back, and we'd have in those feedback loops so we can really nail down how we want to move forward. So we established in year two an e-haul pass system, a hall duty system, and then our electronic devices policy, which was really great. Which the policy basically, if you're thinking, hmm, what is it? Basically, you can't have your phone during instructional time. You can have a before school, after school, at lunch, transition periods, that's it. If it's out during instructional time, it's gone. The teachers have caddies, the expectation to put them in the caddy. If they don't put in a caddy and it's out, boom, it's gone, it's to the office. Number one strike, they have to serve an hour detention, they get their phone back. Second, they have to serve an hour detention, their parents have to come get it. Third, which I haven't gotten to, and I'm in my third year now and knock on some wood. Hopefully, I don't have to do this, but I will ask them not to bring their phone to school. I will say, you do not need your phone, it's a distraction, you cannot have it. So, you know, that's kind of where I haven't gotten to that. We've only gotten to the parent pickup. Usually by the time you get to a parent pickup, that pretty much helps solve that issue. And so the kids know that, like they get it. It's three years of, you know, they're in a third year right now with it, so they get it. They can actually recite that to you, which is really cool, by the way. So empowering and retaining staff, the way you do that is through shared leadership, guys. Like I was talking about how we develop that school improvement team and try to get people involved. If they don't feel valued, seen and heard, they ain't gonna stay. So you got to find out ways to empower them. And shared leadership is one of those ways. And our school improvement team is a very good way we do that. Professional learning communities, we are a PLC school. Every Wednesday we stop schooling at 2 45, our kids go home from three to four. We are in our similar response teams where our staff are getting together and they are checking students by target, student by target, and trying to figure out hey, what are we doing here? So let's look at this this target. I'll go with math. There's this math target. We're trying to go, hey, your kids got an 89% on this target. Your kids got my kids got a 69% on this. Hey, man, what are you doing over there? They can you help share how you're teaching that so I can maybe do a better job to help these kids learn that. So that's where that collaboration piece they they work together on that. And then what you do is you're building trust, you're building their professional judgment and you're led and will. Like I tell my my staff, like, you're professionals, you should be able to make those decisions. I'm here to support you if you need me, but at the same time, I'm not gonna micromanage you because you're an adult, you can do this job, but at the same time, I'm here to help and support you when you need that. So, you know, I want them to feel freedom to fail. I want them to have the freedom to fail because when they learn by failure, that is the best way. Because if they want to try a strategy, I say, do it. What's the worst thing that could happen, right? So figure that out. Maybe it's something that works really well, maybe it doesn't. Oh well, at least you're trying something. You're trying, you're not staying stagnant, you're actually having a growth mindset. So I think that's really, really important when you talk about those things. And then navigating change. But when we navigate change, we want to navigate it with clearly. Change sticks when it's co-created. That's why my school improvement team was so important when it came to those changes. So I had to have them be on board because guess what? They were excited, they would talk to their staff, didn't get them excited, and everybody was getting excited. But I also allowed my school improvement team to roll out those changes. They were the ones talking about the cell phone policy, they're the ones talking about the e-haul pass. It was really fun to watch that. And so you also gotta have clarity. What is the purpose for these changes? Why are we doing what we're doing? And why are we doing these things? So that's really important. Anytime you have change, you gotta have clarity. And we talk about being clear as kind. It's really important, not just for those hard conversations, but for everything. When you're talking to parents, when you're talking to students, when you're talking to community members, when you're talking to your district office, you must have clarity so people understand what their role is and what is important and how what they're doing is important. Then you have to be consistent with that communication. I do a daily email to my staff. I know they probably get annoyed with it, but I have important information in there for them that they need to have. And so I also have systems in that email that they can always go back to. Hey, how do I fill out a fill trip request form? A common question, but it's in their email. They can go back and look, you know, as that's just one example. But I want to be consistent with my communication with the parents, with the students, with the teachers. No matter who hears it, they hear the same consistent message. But we all do that as a collaborative group as well. And that's helped bring that transparency as well to navigate those challenges. And one thing that we do two years ago, when we rolled out these expectations, we I challenged my staff to become one percent better. Now, I was doing this before I read the James Clear book Atomic Habits. I didn't even know who James Clear was, but I would have been talking about being one percent better as a football coach, as a wrestling coach, as you know, just as a teacher. And I was bringing that into being one percent better with my staff. So this is not a new concept for me, but reading the Atomic Habits with James Clear is actually a really good book. And I would really, you know, encourage you to read that book. But it kind of talks about having incremental changes and how that allows to make big gains. And so, what are we doing as we show up? What am I doing as a principal to get better? What is my teachers doing to get better? What are my students doing to get better? What is everybody in my building doing that day to get 1% better? And the cool thing is, this has become our mantra because during the second year of me being the principal, the people that do the announcements started saying this at the end of each announcement every day. So you can go to my school right now and you come and listen to our morning announcement. The last thing they will say is be 1% better, go tigers. That's that's something that's said every day to our staff and to our kids. And it's something that we talk about. You know, how are you becoming 1% better? Hey, how are you getting better today? And we're always trying to move that needle. So that is a big, big thing that we do at our school as well. That helps give that clarity, but navigate that change as well and how we're working together. So, lessons from the field. I started talking about some things, right? These things also work at a small rural school. I was at Hastings, I'm at Hasting Tire right now, which some people will call. Like an urban suburban type of school. It's a bigger school in the state in Nebraska. It's not the biggest. I think we're probably about, oh, we're in the top, probably 40 in enrollment in high school. So we're probably out of 245 schools, we're probably in the top 40 for enrollment. So, you know, we are a bigger class. Class B in Nebraska is not the biggest, class A is, but we are like right on that border between A and B. But with that, I've I know this works well because I was at a 7-12 uh rural school in Nebraska called Southern Valley. And we were able to utilize a school improvement team, kind of the same process I did at Hershey or at Hastings High, I did at Southern Valley, where I asked people to be a part of the team because I said if you don't want to be a part of the solution, you can't complain. So I'm asking you guys for help and I'm asking you guys to be a part of this. We also created leadership teams as well at Southern Valley. We also implemented PBIS at Southern Valley, and people were like, well, PBIS in a high school. Yeah, it's something that it does work. You've got to utilize that. The kids do like those things. And I will tell you at Hastings High, we had to change our pride tickets because the kids were hoarding their pride tickets because they had something tangible, a positive thing, a positive affirmation. And they're supposed to take the pride ticket and put it in so they can win prizes, but they didn't want to do that. They were hoarding them in their lockers. So we changed it to where that we can cut off the pride ticket to where they get a piece that they get to keep, but then they have a second piece that they could put in the bucket to win the prizes. And that's been a lot better this year because we haven't had kids hoarding them like they have been the last few years. But I think that's really important. Those PBIS things, it does work. And I'm really thinking if you don't have it, I mean, implement it, it does help. And we do have a PBIS team that works through those things, and we talk about our tier one strategies and those things like that at Hastings High as well. And so that was something I really enjoyed because they already had PBIS established. So something that I believe in. I think it's really great for high schools to have. And if you don't have it at your high school, I would encourage you to look at it. So just to give you guys some information, in my first year or after my second year, we did a little survey and I presented this information at our school board with the new cell phone policy or personal device policy. I had about 90, 90.1% of teachers approved. And of course, this is you know, you know, 75 teachers, you know, in this in this study. Of course, that's how many I have. And then the e-Hall pass system, 97.5% approval, hall monitoring duty, 96.3% approval. Staff reported reduced classroom disruptions, increased accountability, and improved safety. Parents and students reported more accountability, increased learning, better grades, and less distractions in class. I had parents, I had students saying, Mr. Lyndon, I am getting better grades because I'm not worried about my darn phone. I'm not allowed to have it, so I'm focusing on the learning. That's what we wanted. That was the goal of that. And so I thought that was really amazing to hear those results. And so, with that, we started working on our attendance policy. And so we used a school improvement team, but we also involved our teachers our leadership team, and we created an attendance committee as well. So my leadership team is my assistant principals, my counselors, my school psych, my special education liaison, our community liaison. We also are our learning center um teacher that they're over at our alternative setting, they're involved in this process, as well as the, you know, here it's Adams County, but our county diversion program we call the STARS program here in Adams County and Nebraska. So getting all these people together, we run the attendance policy tiers of interventions through that team. But we also have an attendance committee that we meet before the leadership team because we really want to really look at the students. Hey, who's who's where where are they at, right? And so basically, our attendance policy is this we have, you know, we track kids by period, by student, and we're doing this with a thousand students. And my assistant principals do an amazing job of this. And so if you have four days, and before we get this, we have our dean of students involved. He's a part of that tennis comedian. Our dean of students, anytime you miss a day, we'll we'll greet you the next day. Hey, I meant we missed you, you know, why weren't you here? What can we do to help you? You know, is there something we can do to make sure you're not, you know, you're not missing school? And so that's like our tier one, right? As well as our tier one with our PBAS is basically how do we set up a warm and welcoming classroom environment? How do we set up a warm and welcoming building environment where people love to come to school or they want to be there? Because when I got here, they may have not always wanted to be here, and that was a struggle. And now with things set up, they want to be in school. We have more people in school because we set the environment, we set the tone. Instead of saying, Hey, where have you been? It's hey, we're glad you're here. You know, how can we help you? You know, hey, I understand you haven't been here. Let's get you caught up. You know, let's let's get going on these things. So I think that's really important to set those expectations of what that looks like as well. And so with that, if they hit four days, our community liaison reach outs to families, we work through those tiers of interventions. And then if they hit eight days, then they become our diversion person, will take them and start calling them and trying to figure it out. If they can't get through diversion, if that stars program doesn't work, then they get they get referred on to turn see. And because we have all these layers, our attorney county will file. And I talked to our diversion coordinator today, and they said, you know, we are really good at giving them the information they need so they can, you know, file turns on some parents and students that are not showing up to school. And those are things we don't want to do, we want to stay away from that, but it's there as a way to try to help people, and we help people the whole time, and that's our goal, that's our heart when it comes to that. So here's some data points. And right now we're right about the same data points this year as we were last year, but in one year's time, we had a daily average attendance rate improved by 3.97%. So about 40 more kids were showing up to school every day. That was a win. And then chronic absenteeism went down 8.9%. So we had 89 less kids that were chronically absent, which is if you are gone for 10% or more of your enrolled days, you're chronically absent. So that's where we get a really good reduction on that, all result of all the hard work of everybody involved with the policy. Now, if you get to eight days in this policy, you lose half credit, but we have an appeals process for you to gain it back, and so we do stick to how our state, you know, measures those things, but at the same time, we have ways to help families and kids get the credit back when they need it. So that's also an important thing. And we also have special circumstance clauses, we have all kinds of things in the policy, but those are like the basic nuts and bolts on how that works, and it's worked really, really well. And so with this, we have increased people in the classroom, they're learning more, the reduced hallway wandering. So you come to our school, like my first year before we sit put in the you know, the e-haul pass and you know, the cell phones, and you know, it felt like a zoo at times. Like we say, welcome to the jungle because it feels like a jungle, but at the same time, we felt like we were just chasing kids all day. We don't have that anymore. We're three and a half years in, the kids are where they need to be. Yes, we do have someone in a little bit. It happens, but we have more accountability with our e-haul passes. Our hall monitors are there, they're helping kids, getting kids where they need to be. You can walk up and down our hallways during the periods and they'll be in their classrooms learning. And so that's really good. But that's also meaning if they're in the classroom learning, they're they're they're more engaged, their attendance has improved, they have more of a sense of belonging. It's also increased our safety as well. And it's also we have clear expectations and accountability for our students and our staff, like it's something that we decided to work together on, and it's really important to have that piece. So, with all that said, that's that's the essence. How do you build the trust and collaboration and all those things? All these things, when teachers feel valued, seen and heard, they're gonna stay. That's my secret to retention. How do you involve them in those processes? How do you give them leadership opportunities so they can lead as well? And you're not doing all the work, your assistant principals aren't doing all the work, you're all working together for the same thing. But some things I want to talk about here. Remember to celebrate successes. Yes, celebrate successes because when you have those impacts, how are you celebrating as a team when you have a success? But this is part of that transition. We went from 60 days to 90 days. So the 60 days was all about building up that trust and getting to know people. And then the 90 days was how do we work together to solve these issues? And then we're celebrating along the way some wins and different things. But then the last 30 days is we're implementing the things that we just did in the last 90 days. So that is where the rollouts are happening. We're getting the information out to the community and the students and the teacher and the and the family members so they understand the expectations moving forward. But and we celebrate those things. So here's two ways that I show appreciation to my staff. And they are really simple. You might need to budget this if you need to budget it in. But two ways I do this is I like to get food trucks and have them come. Like I'll I'll have a food truck come and I'll say, Hey, whatever my staff needs, you get it, right? I'll give them the menu. The staff goes out, and they really like I do it on a professional development day or a work day. And with the work days, you know, we don't really do a lot of meetings, and I'll explain why in a little bit. But on the professional development days, we do. But this is their way of me thanking them. They don't have to buy lunch, but then they can go eat in the cafeteria, hang out with each other, and be social and be communical and be able to be together instead of in their silos or out in their departments. I want them to mingle with each other, and so that's part of why I do it. But at the same time, you know, I want to show them thank you for all the hard work. Here's a meal for you guys. I appreciate it. So I like to bring in food trucks. I do that once in the fall, once in the spring. And so I gotta start thinking about that. It's coming up soon. And then I also try to give work time back to my staff, right? I will not do meetings that are unnecessary and they don't need to have. I hate having meetings just for the sake of meetings. So we do have a meeting now every third Wednesday of the month. That's part of our PLC process. I'll go over the things that I need to go over with them. The district gives me an agenda, I go over that, I go over building level stuff, but I also do a daily email. So they hear a lot of stuff already. But I do the meetings because that's my expectation for my district. So I do that. But because I do that, when we get to work days, I give them the day to work in their off their office or in their classroom. I do not bother them with meetings, I do not bother them with those other things because they already know what they need to know, and I've already gone through the stuff and I kind of have a formula about how what information I roll out from one to the next and what they need to know. And I always have reminders of, hey, make sure we're staying tight on the things we say we are. And so I do that in our every month Wednesday meetings. I don't need to sit there and have more meetings on a workday. So what I do is I say, Hey, workday, you guys just you have eight hours in your classroom, grade papers, lesson plan, feel hang out with each other, to I don't care, just do some work, whatever. It's your time, do what you need to do. And so those are two ways that I do it. And so I have learned that teachers really love that classroom planning time and they really love to be fed. So those two things I like to do as well. And so if you have some things, I'd love to hear it. Give me a give me a shout, shoot me an email, shoot me a text. There's a little text box in the show notes that you can send me information or a question about what the presentation is about. I have this toolkit that I developed, and I actually put the link of the toolkit in the episode show notes so you have it. But here's some things with that toolkit. I have this 60, 90, 30-day transition plan that I've actually used. You can use it, you can copy it. I don't care. Take it, use it whatever you want to do. Create a leadership team if you don't have one. Create a leadership team if you don't have one. You don't have one, do it. You can do it at a small rural school. I did it. You guys can do it. I can you can do it. I can do it. You can do it. Create a school improvement team to affect the building level change. You're a school improvement team. Those teachers on that team will drive the change. They will let you know this is what we want to change. These sort of things we're working on. They'll drive the change, they'll help you out, man. Let them be a part of that. Don't make all the decisions. Lead with purpose and clarity. You got to be able to have purpose and clarity, and those old things come in and then network with other principles. I think that's really important. How do you network with people in your space? Guys, I'm a building principal. I have everybody under me, I'm responsible for it. There's times I feel lonely. I have a lot of people I get to work with, right? But I do get set on a silo sometimes. I feel like I cannot be friends, but I can be friendly with my people that I work with, but I can't like be their best friend. I can't go out and have a beer with them. I just can't do it. Because if I have to do the hard stuff, I gotta be able to do that. And I can't have those lines blurred. And that's just something I believe in. But at the same time, you can be friendly, like you be friendly, of course, but there's times where you feel lonely because you said they they may not understand some of the things that you're going through. And so they may do at a time, but not everything. So if you know other building principles in a similar situation, you are you need to network with them, you need to talk to them. You have to have people on speed dial that you could talk to that's outside your district that you can bounce ideas off and understand. But when you're doing that and you're learning from those people, that's awesome professional development for yourself as well. And I also think you need to grow your knowledge, grow it through books. I do audio books, that's how I grow my knowledge. I like to listen to things that's better for me. If I sit down and read, I'll get lost. So I just listen and I boom, visualize it. But also other podcasts. This is a great podcast. I love it that you're listening, but there's other great podcasts out there. And I actually can put a link about those podcasts in the show notes that you will take you to my pod role that I have on my site for my podcast for this podcast. That I will say I give recommendations of other people's podcasts, and a lot of them are educational, some of them aren't, but you know, at the same time, you don't need to do all educational stuff. Like I read books that are not educationally, you know, driven, but leadership driven. And I think those are important as well. Too. When it comes down to it, the call to action. Leadership is about people, not programs. You can get this nice, shiny program, you think, oh my gosh, I got this program, it's gonna work. Yeah, okay, it's not gonna work without the people running it. It's not gonna work if you don't have the people to run the program or the system. And that's what I want you to understand. Leadership is about people, the relationships you make, the connections you make, how do you make people feel when they're in their building, when they're at their job is really important. Because if you don't build the culture, the successes in the classroom won't come. They just won't. And I dare you to challenge me on that. They won't come if you don't have good culture. Now, what is one strategy you can take back to your building today? What is one strategy? How will you build intentional trust with your students or staff? How are you gonna build that? How are you gonna start communicating? How are you gonna are you gonna go start talking to them and getting to know them? Like when I first started popping in the classrooms, they're like, oh my gosh, the principal's here, but now it's like, oh, that's Mr. Linden. Yeah, he just checks up on us, like it's not a big deal anymore. But they also learn that I'm there to, you know, just check out what's going on, support them where I need to. So, how are you gonna build those relationships? How are you gonna be intentional with that? What system will you strengthen first? I know you guys have systems out there, but there might be something you can streamline or get it better, and that's kind of what we're doing. We're taking things that weren't working. Pink paper passes are out, e-haul pass in, you know, hall monitors, boom, are in. You know, cell phone policy, boom, in. Even though the state of Nebraska already passed a school, school policy band or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, school cell phone, they call it a band, but it's really nice, whatever you have to have a cell phone policy. So they passed that state legislation, but we already had it, so we're good. We're we're in cahoots with that. But how are you building the network of educational leaders? Who are you surrounding your people with? What educational leaders are you surrounding? Because you're sitting on a silo. I used to be out in the middle of nowhere. I've also been in, you know, you know, you know, bigger communities as well, but you still have to network with other people in the job so you know that you are you have people to go to when you need it. So I think that's important. So with this, what is something that you're curious about that you heard today? I would love to hear from you. Please drop me a note in the in the you know, an email or you can send it through a text. Like I said, there's a little little button that says send me a text and send me some. I'd love to hear from you on that. And so, with this, I would like to thank you guys for really, you know, allowing me to share this information with you. Of course, if you'd like to contact me, my contact information is in the show notes. Just connect with Principal JL. And I'd love to hear from you. So, without further ado, I really enjoyed sharing this information. I hope you got a lot out of it. If you did, I would love it if you would share with someone that needs to hear it. Subscribe to the podcast so you can not miss another great episode that's coming to you as well. So, without further ado, always be curious and remember to be 1% better.