Resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration are critical mindsets, and skill sets, for students to develop. For schools to support those outcomes, educators must have the opportunity to develop the same. Mitch Weisburgh, the author of, “Mindshifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success,” explores the importance and possibilities.

What’s the role of wellbeing and hope in achieving long term, deep learning?

Visit the Mindshifting Website & connect with Mitch here.

Download “Why We React Instead of Respond” — a free MindShifting Conversation Circle for your educator team here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.340] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.720] – Steve
Building resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration. Our podcast guest today is the author of, “Mind Shifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success,” Mitch Weisburgh. Mitch focuses on teaching people to reframe their thinking, confront unproductive narratives, and replace them with clarity and action. He provides professional development courses that equip teachers with research-backed cognitive strategies to transform the way they approach teaching, conflict resolution, and student engagement. I’m especially looking forward to learning about his insights on building resourcefulness, resilience and collaboration – all important for students, teachers, and school leaders. Welcome, Mitch, and thanks for joining us.

[00:01:31.130] – Mitch
Well, Steve, thank you for inviting me and looking forward to a spirited discussion. And we’re gonna be talking about these different topics, but please, anything that you disagree with or you question, let me know and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong. [laughter]

[00:01:46.750] – Steve
laughter] Okay, that’s great. So would you start with just some description of what you mean by mind shifting and the connection, you know, within the title of your book about sabotaging happiness and success?

[00:02:00.840] – Mitch
Sure. So basically, the way our minds operate, and it’s an oversimplification, is we have really two modes of operating. One is what I would call survival mode. And those parts of the brain evolved first. And survival mode is basically as it sounds. It’s allowing the organism to survive. And that part of the brain needs very, very little information to come to a conclusion and decide what to do. And it’s primarily looking for threats. That part of the brain wakes up in like 2/100ths of a second. So, you know, somebody bumps into us and in 2/100ths of a second, we start like, some reaction that, we have to push them back or we can ignore it or whatever the reaction is, it’s really quickly. Then the parts of the brain that we’re really trying to develop in school, which is the part that, you know, critical thinking, innovative thought, empathy, executive function, that part of the brain evolved much, much later in organisms. And it takes maybe 2 seconds to wake up. So you think about it, something happens, we come to some survival mechanism in order to handle it. And then our thinking part of the brain wakes up, it takes a look around and says, “oh, we’re doing this? This must be the reason we’re doing it.”

[00:03:27.230] – Mitch
And so we come up with a rationalization for whatever it is that we’re doing, whether we know we can’t do math, or we know we have to push back against this person, or we know we have to out-talk somebody, or whatever it is that we’ve decided to do, the rational part of the brain, by default, comes up with a reason why that’s the right path to take. But it also has the capability to be self-aware. And when we learn the techniques and how to recognize when we’re in survival brain, we can take a step back, pause, and come up with actions and feelings that are much more appropriate to the situation. Because very often, it isn’t a threat, but our survival brain has interpreted it as a threat. But we can say, well, wait a minute, you know, saying I’m just feeling a little bit uneasy about math, but I feel a little bit uneasy every time I try something new. That’s just part of getting ready and trying something new. And then we can change our whole attitude. And that would be a shift. We’re shifting from a survival mechanism into one that actually aligns more with what we really want to accomplish.

[00:04:36.770] – Steve
So does that shift generally require a pause?

[00:04:41.990] – Mitch
It’s funny as you said that – I’m thinking that shift always requires a pause. And actually what that shift requires is number one, a degree of self-awareness. And so part of what learning about mind shifting is learning to recognize the situations where we are in reactive mode and even better recognizing situations and preparing for situations where we will be in, where we would normally be in reactive mode so that we can prepare to be in resourceful mode when we confront them.

[00:05:20.640] – Steve
As I was listening to you, a piece that I hadn’t connected until I was hearing your explanation, but starting years back, one of the trainings I did in verbal communication skills was for people facilitating a group or leading a conversation and getting a resistant negative response from a member. I used to teach a skill called the supporting statement. But as part of the training, I suggest to people, when you hear it, you take what I was calling an aggressive step backwards. In other words, you aren’t running away, but you’re stepping back. You may even be spreading your feet a little bit because you’re now going to be in a position to explain yourself.

[00:06:14.840] – Mitch
Yep.

[00:06:15.420] – Steve
But without that step backwards, you tended to defend yourself instead of being able to explain yourself. That’s a mind shift.

[00:06:25.510] – Mitch
Yep, that’s a mind shift. And I’ll say, none of the things that I put into the courses that I teach or the two books that I wrote, none of them, or virtually none of them, are mine. They’re things that I’ve gotten from reading the research around psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, coaching, organizational development, military strategy, economics, decision-making, you know? So what I’ve tried to do is pull together these different things, just like your step back is how do you – how do successful people navigate these situations so that we can move forward instead of just constantly tearing at each other’s throats?

[00:07:08.420] – Steve
So I’m wondering what in your experiences or background led you to tackle working in this area?

[00:07:15.970] – Mitch
Well, I’ve always taken courses you know, in neurolinguistic programming back in the ’80s and ’90s. I took the Landmark series of courses, which stemmed from Werner Erhard. I’ve always been interested in books, but the thing, there are two things that really crystallized it for me is, you know, having been through all those, and I can’t remember the exact meeting where this occurred, but I was at this meeting with, you know, like 70, 80 people and somebody says, “Mitch, Why don’t you tell us about your mission?” And at the time, I was in education and it was like, “I don’t… My mission…” But I had to talk, right? So I stood up, you know, and it’s like, okay, so my mission is that education should be the mechanism where we give every kid a chance to live great lives as adults. That’s my mission. And if you look at it, we’re failing virtually every kid in this country right now because 20 to 30%— and this is like off the cuff, right? 20 to 30% of the kids who go through education, they don’t graduate.

[00:08:25.980] – Mitch
And if they don’t graduate, they’re behind – their life is over, basically. They have no chance. And then two-thirds of the kids that are left – by the time they graduate, they’re not ready for work, they’re not ready for school, for college, they’re not ready for families, they’re not ready to be citizens. And we failed all of those kids at all as well. And then the kids that are left, so many of them, they could have soared, you know, in 3rd grade, they could have been doing reading 9th grade books. They could have been doing 10th grade math. And what have we done to them? We’ve said, you know something, you’re in 3rd grade, you finish your work early, here’s another worksheet, do this again. And so we hold back all those kids, so we’re failing those kids also. And so as a country, as a society, we’re failing virtually every kid and we have to do something about it. And so that kind of crystallized in me that something was really wrong. Then, the second thing that happened is because I was known as kind of an expert in education technology, this is around 2017, I get an email from a university saying, “Mitch, can you talk to our undergraduates about, about edtech?”

[00:09:36.490] – Mitch
And I’m like, “no, I got into education because I thought edtech was gonna do this.” And 15 years later we’re no better off. So I’m not talking to them about edtech, but you know what I could do? I could talk to them about how successful people navigate situations so that they end up with the results that they really want. And how do they make sense of situations and proceed. And so we started negotiating because they’re saying, “Wow, that’d be really good. Why don’t you teach a semester course?” And I’m like, “I don’t think I can teach a semester course.” But we settled on a 2-day workshop. And we’re talking in like June 2017, and I was gonna give the workshop in February. And being kind of an entrepreneurial type person, it’s like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do this. I’ll teach it in February. It’ll be a 2-day workshop. It’ll be great.” Okay. We shook hands and it was free, but you know, it’s still, you know, closed the deal. And then like the next day, it’s like, Mitch, you idiot. How are you going to do this? You’ve never done this before. But I had 6 months.

[00:10:41.690] – Mitch
So, I read all these books on all these different, you know, as I said, economics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience. I put everything together, I go to teach the course, and after the 2-day workshop, the kids stood up and cheered. So it kind of confirmed to me all these skills are learnable. When people learn them, it’s like, oh my gosh, I can really use these. They’re teachable and we don’t teach them. And so that then became my mission. I switched over from advising schools and companies on education technology to doing mind shifting and developed this mission of like, what if we could get a critical mass of people on this planet who could be resourceful, resilient, and collaborative no matter what the situation is and return to that state? Wouldn’t that, A, allow them to live happier and more productive lives? But B, wouldn’t they then inspire the rest of us to live that way and start solving all these issues that we’re facing instead of fighting about them? And so kind of an arbitrary number. So I chose 5 million people.

[00:11:52.940] – Mitch
Like, how could we get 5 million people? And, you know, because my background is in education, it’s like, well, you know something, who are the, who are the people who most influence the next generation? Teachers, right? You know, teachers touch kids all the time. And so, how do I reach teachers so that teachers can teach these techniques to kids and learn them themselves? And so through dumb luck, really, I was able to get approved for the courses in the state of Washington. And then a couple years later in the state of New York. And so now I teach a course on resourcefulness, the course on resilience, and the course on conflict and collaboration. I teach them to educators in Washington and New York. Teachers take them free. And they register for the courses and teachers take the courses because they look at it and, and they say, you know, saying, the kids I’m teaching, they don’t have grit, or, they’re not innovative, they’re not using their creative thinking or not critically thinking. And this course says I can teach them that.

[00:13:06.690] – Mitch
And so I’m gonna take this course and they go into the course and then, and then within 15 minute, the teachers, the people in the course are like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not living this way. How do I learn to be more resourceful? How do I learn to be more resilient?” And then they start developing techniques that not only apply to the classroom, but it’s like, “Boy, I’ve been having this argument with my wife for 10 years, and I just realized those are just our survival reactions. And the issue really wasn’t important to either one of us.” You know, and so they learn that in the personal life. They learn with the kids, like, I always thought this kid was difficult, but you said for one of your exercises, you said I have to be empathetic for the entire day. And so every time I’m interacting with somebody, I have to think to myself, how would I respond if I was empathetic? So I saw this child there and they were frowning, and normally, I would have just let them go, but this time it’s like, how would I respond if I were empathetic?

[00:14:10.200] – Mitch
And I went to the child and I talked to them, and it turned out that their pet died the previous day, and we talked about it. And she says, and then at the end of the day, I’m walking out, and this child comes running to me, jumps up, and gives me a great big hug and said, I had the best day because of you. So, that’s how people are affected by this material. Yes, I put it together, but none of this stuff is mine.

[00:14:36.870] – Steve
Well, Mitch, as I looked at your work and dug into your website a little bit, I got very interested when you talked about the interconnectedness of resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration. And those words have all been big to me for a bunch of years, going back to looking at building the 4C’s into curriculum. And our company and my work years before that were talking about giving kids experiences with what we were calling, “live event learning.” It’s the real world is where those things are kind of likely to happen. But would you start first a little bit about how you describe that connectedness of resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration?

[00:15:36.770] – Mitch
Sure. So, I call those the three elements of mind shifting. And so the resourcefulness part of it is how do you control your own brain? And really, that’s the basis of everything, because if you really, really control your own brain, then that affects the way you look at situations, that affects how you work with other people. So how do you develop the capacity so that it becomes a habit to be monitoring, am I in survival mode? Am I in resourceful mode? Am I going into a situation where I would normally be in survival mode? How do I prepare myself to be resourceful throughout that situation? And so that’s number one, is your own brain. And then the second part of it, which is what I call the resilience part, is how do we react with situations? And again, you know, you can think about it with our brain, but with this situation, you know, we’re primed to think that every situation has a right solution. And then if we do that right solution, it’s going to solve the problem. And, actually neither one of those are generally correct. So very often we walk into a situation and there is no one right solution.

[00:16:51.940] – Mitch
There are many possible right solutions, and they need analysis, or they need expertise, or they need data. And you put them all together. And for example, if you wanted to build a school, okay, you could go to 5 different architects. They’re all experts. You’ll get 5 very different designs. Any one of them could work. Now, there may be trade-offs, you know, one may have bigger classrooms, might have, one might have bigger common areas, but basically any of them would work for a school. Okay, and that is what we call like a complicated issue. So that’s one way that one solution isn’t necessarily the right solution. And the other thing is that so many of the things that we do, nobody is an expert in. Just take a look at COVID – there was no expert in how we’re going to survive COVID, but people presented themselves like experts like, “oh, masks don’t do anything. So nobody wear a mask because it’s not going to do anything.” And then like, “oh no, I’m the same expert. And what I told you before, okay, no, as long as you wear a mask, it doesn’t matter what kind of a mask it is.

[00:18:00.380] – Mitch
Just put on a mask and nobody’s going to catch COVID.” And you know that we had this contradictory pronouncements by the experts time and time again when actually this was a brand new situation. Nobody was an expert. And And so those we call complex situations. And in a complex situation, since nobody’s an expert, then what we have to do is we have to come up with different things that we can try. And the things that we can try are not gonna really put us in harm’s way, but they’re gonna give us information back that we can then use to take the next step and go through an iterative approach. So then going from that, since most of the things we actually do, most of the problems we confront, are complex, then the question is, well, how do we deal with those complex situations? And what I recommend is an iterative process that was developed in the Air Force in the 1950s and 1960s, where it has its elements of observe, orient, decide, and act. And then it’s a loop because you go back and you observe again, and then you reorient to come up with what you do, and then you decide on something to do, and then you act, and then you observe again.

[00:19:06.620] – Mitch
And you’re prepared to go through that loop. So in resilience, it’s up to a large extent, how do you assess what type of a situation it is? And then once you’ve assessed the type of situation, how do you come up with different things that you could do? And if it’s a complex situation, how do you prepare for the fact that the first thing that you’re going to do is at best going to give you information, but it isn’t going to really completely solve the situation. And when you do that, this whole idea of grit and persistence melts away. Because if I go into a situation and I think I’m gonna succeed and I do something and it doesn’t work, I have to like say, “Okay, Mitch, you’re a failure. You screwed it up. But if you were a man, you would work your way through it and you would do it right. Now, come on, do it again.” And you know, that takes a lot of energy, right? So if I go into the situation understanding that it’s complex, it’s like, “Okay, you know something?” Here’s a situation, what can I do so that I can get some information back?

[00:20:04.190] – Mitch
And I do it, I don’t get angry at myself when it doesn’t work. I say, so what was the information? What was the gift here? And I look at the information. And to a certain extent, so you should see how that’s related to the resourcefulness, right? Because you’re kind of controlling your mind, but you’re doing it in relation to the situations.

[00:20:20.810] – Steve
Just before you jump there, because that’s really the definition of teaching. There’s certainly no one right answer.

[00:20:28.780] – Mitch
There isn’t? [laughter]

[00:20:31.640] – Mitch
Wait a minute, you mean all these people who said all we have to do is test, they were wrong? Come on.

[00:20:38.980] – Steve
[laughter] I mean, it’s really the whole built-in piece for me in my work of the coach being a thinking partner. So the coach is collecting data that the teacher perhaps didn’t see or hear, and then creating the opportunity for the teacher to add that data to the data the teacher was able to collect. And then the teacher to think through what’s the next step.

[00:21:10.050] – Mitch
So as you’re saying that, the thing that that triggers in my mind is also is we have a choice with information like that. We can use the information in order to improve or we could use that information to punish or reward. But we can’t use the information for both because as soon as we use the information to punish or reward, we’re changing the whole behavior to get to avoid the punishment and to get the reward. And so that’s one of the big problems that we have in this country is that we use grades and test scores in order to punish or reward kids.

[00:21:48.100] – Steve
Right. We try to use teacher evaluation to improve teaching. It ain’t never gonna happen.

[00:21:52.740] – Mitch
It’s not because we’re also using it, you say, you know, to fire or promote or whatever. So yeah, you know, and I know, you know, we may be touching on AI, but that’s part of it with AI also is that if we’re gonna reward or punish results, then the use of AI is going to get corrupted to produce quicker results or better results. Whereas what we really want for education is building skills.

[00:22:17.500] – Steve
So build the collaboration part in yet for us, because it’s almost sounding as I was getting to talk out loud to you about the concept of coaching, tackling that resilience issue of there isn’t a right answer, that almost seems in my head like I’m setting up collaboration there.

[00:22:37.980] – Mitch
It really does, yes. That’s a perfect segue. Because if we’re going into coaching and we’re sure we have the right answer, then the person we’re coaching, what they’re going to be picking up is, this person thinks I’m bad. This person is attacking me. Whereas, if we’re picking up the information, what we really want to happen is like, okay, here is teaching, these are the results we wanted, but these are the results that we get. How can you and I work together so we get closer to the results that we want? So instead of me telling you what to do, it’s how do you and I attack this problem together. And so that’s, you know, part of what we’re doing in collaboration or conflict and collaboration. Anytime where we see, we want a person to do something different from what they would normally do, whether acquire more skills, that sets up a possibility for conflict. And so, we should be prepared for that. We wanna learn how to present the information in a way that’s non-threatening so that there’s a much less likelihood of a conflict. And when there is a conflict, we have to learn the techniques of how to defuse the conflict.

[00:24:00.600] – Mitch
And our natural ways of doing that don’t work because rewards and punishments, they might work in the short term and they might elicit compliance, but nobody is for the long term is motivated, or very, very few people are motivated purely by rewards or punishments. You learn how to manipulate the system in order to be rewarded or to avoid the punishment. Facts and logic, that’s not how people make decisions. Decision-making actually takes place in the limbic, in the emotional parts of the brain. So we rationalize it by facts and logic, but presenting facts and logic don’t win people over. People are won over when they have a connection to you and when they feel that you’re really interested in them. So how do you develop the techniques to be able to phrase things in a way that people are willing to collaborate? And I will say, that’s not saying that everything has to be in negotiation because there are times where you’re in a position of authority and you need to make the decision and you need people to follow what you do.

[00:25:10.350] – Mitch
You know, there’s a fire or a kid isn’t doing their homework or a kid is misbehaving or you’re a parent and it’s bedtime for your child. So how do you phrase that in a way that makes it clear that you are the authority? You’re doing this because you believe it’s their best interest, but it’s the rule and they have to do it. So learning how to phrase things, learning how to establish those connections, learning how to build a long-term connection so that you can move forward, that’s the whole basis of the Conflict and Collaboration course, or that’s the whole basis of the Mindshifting Conflict and Collaboration book.

[00:25:50.590] – Steve
So what do kids need to be experiencing in school?

[00:25:55.530] – Mitch
Oh, that’s such a broad question.

[00:25:57.910] – Steve
To move us in that, I mean, you’re describing a really important, powerful direction.

[00:26:06.060] – Steve
I wonder if there’s a big – is there a big picture of what does a school look like and feel like that heads us in that direction?

[00:26:16.950] – Mitch
So long-term deep learning takes place from a feeling of well-being and hope.

[00:26:25.620] – Steve
Powerful words. Can you repeat them?

[00:26:28.260] – Mitch
Okay. I’m probably not going to get it exactly, but long-term deep learning takes place from a position of well-being and hope.

[00:26:41.340] – Steve
That’s quotable, Mitch.

[00:26:43.080] – Steve
Very quotable.

[00:26:43.600] – Mitch
Oh, thank you. So if schools can help kids get into a place, if teachers can do this, if the environment of the school can do this, and if the environment of the school can do this for the teachers as well, where the teachers also – especially because you want the kids to have it, the teachers have to feel –

[00:27:03.920] – Steve
Absolutely.

[00:27:04.400] – Mitch
Well-being and hopeful as well. So if we can build school communities where the participants in the community are coming from a position of well-being and hope and self-confidence, then, that’s the whole basis.

[00:27:22.580] – Steve
So administrators and instructional coaches, in effect, need to be modeling that in the way that they work with staff.

[00:27:35.660] – Mitch
Well, only if they want to build deep learning and happy lives for the kids. Okay, and I’m half joking, but practically, administrators, coaches, they have their jobs. And to the extent that society says it’s test scores, then they have it’s a really difficult balance because, you’re being judged on the test scores, but the test scores aren’t really what builds the school. They can be used as a result of all these other things that you do, but the pressure is like, okay, do the things that improve the test scores. And then that destroys the long-term effects of learning skills because learning is something, something that’s really enjoyable if you’re coming from a place of well-being.

[00:28:29.620] – Steve
I implemented a phrase years ago that the job of effective leaders is to protect the people you’re working with from the system.

[00:28:39.080] – Mitch
Wow.

[00:28:40.540] – Mitch
Oh, that’s so powerful.

[00:28:41.680] – Steve
So if you carry that back, it’s the teacher’s job in the classroom.

[00:28:45.980] – Mitch
Yep.

[00:28:46.470] – Steve
There’s a curriculum, there’s standardized tests, there’s things that we have to happen here at school. And part of my job as the teacher is to protect the kids from those things. And if I move it up to administration, if I move it up to I move it up to superintendent and board, the system is gonna exist. And sometimes, hopefully, I can change and modify the system. But a lot of my time as a leader has to be spent – I need the system in order to have the school open and have the kids there. So I can’t shut down the system, but I have to do my best to have the system not serve the system instead of the people that it’s supposed to be serving.

[00:29:29.920] – Mitch
And that’s a balance. And that’s an art. And it’s complex.

[00:29:37.620] – Steve
Yeah. Mitch, you touched a little bit on AI and knowing that’s a hot topic now, you got a little bit more you wanna say about how you see AI fitting in here? How does AI help us build resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration? And how can AI get in the way of those things happening? I’m assuming we’re gonna be dealing with the same kind of balance question.

[00:30:04.040] – Mitch
Right, yep. So I’m gonna say, I’m gonna first talk, I guess, a little bit about how it gets in the way, okay? And I think the reason it gets in the way is we have this emphasis in education on results. So we test based on, you know, test scores. And, you know, and so when we want kids to produce essays, we want kids to produce presentations, and so then we judge those presentations. And if the emphasis on education continues to be on the end products then AI will really prevent kids from learning the skills because you can always produce something faster and probably better in AI than if you did it yourself. If we can change the emphasis in schools into skills, skill development and knowledge development, and I realize that you test it based on, or you assess it based on the outcomes. But if you can build in your assessments so that they’re non-rewarding and non-punitive, and so just like if I’m playing a sport, I know I win by winning the points or I win by scoring baskets or whatever it is, but I’m really conscious of building the skills and I get good feedback like, okay, I’m not dribbling well or I’m not hitting my backhand well.

[00:31:37.770] – Mitch
Or when I’m doing dance, I’m not doing this well. Or when I’m playing notes, I’m not doing that. You know, I’m getting great feedback as I do things. And my whole mindset is I’m doing these things to develop the skills because I love doing it. And if I compete, it gives me a better chance of winning. And so with AI, we have to change the emphasis to skill development so that the kids are motivated to develop their skills. And the teachers are there to help the kids develop their skills, and the education system is there to help kids move up to become good adults, rather than where it’s become the tail wagging the dog. It’s like everything comes from the tests, and the tests determine – if you don’t get the high test score, then you get punished, or you get the high test score, then you get, you get rewarded. So in Conflict and Collaboration, we talk about really three mechanisms that we can use to go into a collaborative mode. One is strength-based feedback, one is motivational interviewing, and one is nonviolent communication. And I’m not going to go into them now.

[00:32:47.500] – Mitch
But if you’re going in, if you’re a teacher and you’re about to meet with a parent and you know that the parent is coming loaded for bear, right, you can put into AI, you know, something – “Here is the situation with the child. I’m talking with the parent. Here’s how the parent is likely to respond. I want to use strength-based feedback, motivational interviewing, and nonviolent communication despite the fact that this parent is likely to give triggering statements 3 or 4 times no matter what I do. Give me an example of how that conversation might look.” Whatever it comes back with, it’s not gonna be right or wrong, but I will guarantee you it’s gonna give you different ways of expressing things than you would’ve come up with on your own.

[00:33:35.370] – Steve
So Mitch, I think I’m at the same place you are. I’ve been using the word process where you’re using skills, and I think I want to bring that out. So if teachers have to switch their assessment and feedback to kids so that their assessment and their feedback is on the process rather than the assessment and the feedback on the finished product.

[00:34:00.420] – Mitch
100%. Well, 90%. And the reason I say 90% is it pains me to say the teachers have to do this because we always dump it on the teachers. And I think the teachers are doing – we’re all doing the best that we can. And when we come back and say, you know, teachers, you only have to do this, it makes it sound like, okay, nobody else is at fault. We have this whole system that we have to protect the kids from.

[00:34:29.790] – Steve
That’s the system. I have to protect the teachers from that system.

[00:34:33.000] – Mitch
Exactly. Exactly.

[00:34:34.160] – Steve
If I’m higher up.

[00:34:34.950] – Mitch
Yep.

[00:34:35.830] – Steve
But actually, it kind of fits my coaching approach because the process, if I’m giving feedback to the teacher, the process is important. So we can have a lesson where the kids learned a lot, but they didn’t learn the tested outcome.

[00:35:00.060] – Mitch
Yep.

[00:35:00.880] – Steve
Or the teacher learned a lot. The teacher learned a lot from a lesson that didn’t work.

[00:35:05.680] – Mitch
Yep. And teaching teachers, teaching people, to look for the gifts from things that didn’t work out rather than look for validation of I did it right or I did it wrong. So the gifts are,this is what I learned, this is what I got a chance to practice, or I’m just going to reward myself for having tried this and it didn’t work out. But still, I’m going to go for a pedicure because I tried this and I’m going to congratulate myself for trying it.

[00:35:37.150] – Steve
Well, Mitch, you’re going to have to come back on.

[00:35:40.850] – Mitch
Oh, I’d love to. I’d love to.

[00:35:42.360] – Steve
This is too much fun for me.

[00:35:46.140] – Mitch
Oh, thank you.

[00:35:47.470] – Steve
I hope the listeners can get as caught up in it as I am. But before we move on, would you, would you talk a little bit about the resources that you have available that listeners can, can follow up with and how they can go about that?

[00:36:03.310] – Mitch
Sure.

[00:36:04.120] – Steve
I only mentioned one of your books and you got two other books. How do people find out about those?

[00:36:09.860] – Mitch
Okay. So basically you can find out pretty much everything at my website, which is mindshiftingwithmitch.com. So if you go to the website, there’s two books out. One is, “The Mind Shifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success.” And then what should be the third book, but was the second one that I wrote because it seems to be this time of divisiveness, but it’s, “Mind Shifting: Conflict and Collaboration,” is volume 3 of a 3-part series. And this summer I’m going to start working on volume 2, which is the one on resilience. And I teach 3 courses. I’d love to get those courses accredited in more states so more teachers can take them. Those courses are free. And right now they’re, if you in New York State, if you go to New York State Teacher Center, you can look up MindShifting. If you’re in the state of Washington and you go to PDEnroller and you look up MindShifting, you can find the courses there. So I’d love to be in more states. And then also, again, so my mission is to get more people who are thinking this way. And so outside of the books and outside of the courses, I have a weekly newsletter which people can see on the website, but I also am putting together conversation guides so we can get these conversations going within schools and within PLCs and within districts.

[00:37:32.180] – Mitch
And the first one, the link will be on the show notes, but it’s how do you lead a discussion about why we react instead of respond. So you put together your PLC, you put together the school, and it’s understanding the mechanisms within the brain that get us to react instead of respond. It’s a discussion of how these things apply and what happens in schools with the administrators, with the teachers, with the counselors, with the kids, why each one of these different constituencies is reacting instead of responding. And then start discussing, well, what are some of the things that we can do so that we’re more likely to respond? So these discussion will be however long you wanna make them, but they’re designed to be 45 to 60 minutes. And the first one is out. They will always be free. And the link to the first one will be in the show notes on why we react instead of respond.

[00:38:28.910] – Steve
Thanks so much, Mitch. I know listeners are gonna wanna follow up with that. And as I said, I will be following you.

[00:38:37.080] – Mitch
Okay.

[00:38:37.400] – Steve
And I’ll be back to you to, schedule a return. And if something sparks you that, man, Steve and I ought to talk about this, feel free to reach out to me before I reach out to you. Yeah, thanks a lot, Mitch.

[00:38:53.330] – Mitch
Okay, thanks, Steve.

[00:38:56.450] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn @SteveBarkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs blogs at barkleypd.com.

What would be the benefits of ALL students being taught and coached to develop leadership skills? Maureen Chapman and James Simons, authors of, “Leaders of the Class,” share the needs, benefits, and processes for students to leverage motivation, perseverance, communication, and collaboration. Consider how to build stronger, healthier relationships with students as they discover their potential as purposeful, impactful leaders.

Educators grow their own leadership skills as they develop other’s leadership.

Visit Maureen and James’ website here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.000] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.720] – Steve
“Leader-full” Classrooms and Schools. Do you believe that leadership can be taught, modeled, coached, and developed? Do you believe that all students and teachers should be building their leadership skills and mindsets? Do you believe we all benefit from a leadership culture? Our podcast guests today hold those beliefs. Maureen Chapman and James Simon are the co-directors at CORE Creative Partners and the authors of Leaders of the Class. They both bring years of school-based experience to their work supporting educators in building their own and their students’ potential as purposeful, impactful leaders. Welcome Maureen and James. Thank you.

[00:01:16.460] – James
Thank you, Steve. Happy to be here today.

[00:01:16.460] – Maureen
Thank you so much. We’re so happy to be here, Steve.

[00:01:18.700] – Steve
Glad you’re here. I’m wondering, for a starter, in the experiences that you’ve both had as teachers and as school leaders, what do you think it is that pointed you in the direction of all – and I want to… that’s be my focus word throughout our conversation today, this idea of “all” students developing leadership potential.

[00:01:42.420] – James
That’s a great question, Steve. I would say In my personal experience, I had moments as a kid where I was tapped on the shoulder and recognized as a leader, an opportunity to have a role in a school play or be a captain on a sports team. And I also just felt a sense of belonging in school. I really enjoyed school. I tended to find success through academic work. And becoming an educator was an opportunity to widen my perspective and realize, oh, that is not everyone’s experience. I remember my first year as an English teacher sitting on the floor with essays just sprawled out all over the rug, and my wife was looking at some of the scores, and she said, “Oh, my gosh, you’re mean!” Like me, she had tended to see academic success in school and just assumed, yeah, these are the kinds of grades that come back on essays. I had to say to her, “No, when you’re working with 100 kids, there’s some kids at any given moment who are thriving, some kids who are doing all right, and some kids who are really struggling.” And so I think early on, that was helpful learning for me.

[00:03:06.100] – James
And then more and more in my work, I found I was gravitating towards those kids who are not finding a sense of belonging, who are not experiencing the success that they deserved. Early in my career, I switched to become a dean of students, and then I was later a principal. And in those roles, I was the ambulance driver. When there was a crisis, when there needed to be someone showing up rapidly to the scene, that was me. I had the privilege of sitting with individual students, sitting with families when they were really struggling in different ways. I quickly realized the more I got to know these individuals, just how profound their potential was. Time and time again, I would be experiencing this cognitive dissonance where I was in the staff room hearing teachers talk about some demon child who is making it impossible for anyone to learn. Then 10 minutes later, I would be sitting in my office with this child and seeing the spark in their eye and hearing how smart, how caring, how charismatic these individuals were. I would think, whoa, you could be leading the world if you just believed that you had that potential, and if those around you believed that you had the potential, and with that belief, I know you’re capable of building the skills that would back up that belief.

[00:04:45.410] – James
There’s no reason that you shouldn’t be the star of the play, the captain of the team, the student who is in the front row with their hand just miles high in the sky. And so I think that is a big part of what drew me to this work of how can I help every kid see in themselves what I am seeing in them.

[00:05:09.400] – Steve
You’ve given me a whole bunch of questions, but I want to catch Maureen’s response to that first.

[00:05:16.600] – Maureen
Yeah. James and I met by teaching on the same middle school team. Then we also both found ourselves later in formal leadership roles. I think this idea that everyone’s a leader is a little bit of distance when you think about the captain of the team or the star of the play, because that’s one person. But what does it mean for everyone to feel like a leader? I taught required middle school Latin, so I had 90 middle school students who are wondering why in the world this terrible thing had happened to them. [laughter] And some of them didn’t think it was a terrible thing. Some kids came first day of school, Percy Jackson under their arm, super excited. And then my job was to not let the other kids feel like, oh, this class is only for them, and to really have them believe me when I said, we are all going to be Latin stars in here. In this room, we’re going to bring out our inner nerd, and we’re going to do the thing. And so that looks different ways for different kids for them to know that I believed in them and that I wanted to hear their answer, and I wanted them to know so that we were only successful if we were all successful.

[00:06:28.960] – Maureen
And when I became as a school leader myself, I think what I came to appreciate about my own areas for growth was a lot of the own personal emotions that would get in the way when I was supposed to have a hard conversation, if I was supposed to share that something was upsetting me, if I was supposed to just, not even in an upset way, but just to give feedback after a classroom observation. I was so worried that somebody wouldn’t like me or that I would become too emotional in those conversations. It was helping me relate to what students are experiencing in the classroom all the time when they’re worried to raise their hand and take the academic risks they need to take in order to make the mistake and grow and learn. For me, those particular sorts of leadership skills to have the hard conversation, it just felt debilitating at times. I know I need to have this conversation, and I’m just a knot in my stomach dreading it. I didn’t have any training on that. And James and I really supported each other. And I think we had different areas of strength or comfort.

[00:07:36.860] – Maureen
But that was something he really helped me practice and just do. And so I would gain the experience and realize, no, I’m still safe or no, this person actually on the other side, I’m not trusting them enough to engage in this conversation with me. It was something that I needed to grow in. And so I think part of what’s really important to me in this book and in this work is building the emotional intelligence and those sorts of skills you need to have the conversations you need to have to feel better and to repair relationships or to serve kids or to serve the others in the world that you want to serve with your leadership. Why are we waiting until people are adults to get into it when those emotions in particular are so present and what make us so human. And also we see it again and again in coaching that people can really feel debilitated by just stuck in an emotion that is unpleasant and just feeling maybe ashamed of having them rather than knowing what to do. I think building some of those skills through the academic work so kids can be successful, I think also sets them up to have the impact in the way that their leadership is hopefully going to let them shine and the things that they care about shine as they get older.

[00:08:51.200] – Steve
I want to check my thinking with you. As I’m listening to the two of you, it’s striking me that our traditional school approach, our traditional classroom approach, has too few opportunities for too few students to practice, exhibit, and learn leadership.

[00:09:18.080] – James
I would agree with that. I’ve been in so many classes where the teacher will say, “Who wants to bring down the attendance sheet?” The number of hands that go up in the air is comical. It just illustrates how few opportunities there are for kids to take a meaningful role, to help out in some way. We are motivated to contribute to our social group, and particularly during adolescence. Through evolution, we survived because of our social impulses. We stuck together so we could find food and find protection. During adolescence, that impulse that has served all humans so well for thousands and thousands of years becomes even greater. You’re no longer this adorable baby that everyone’s going to protect just because of how Pixar cute you are. Suddenly, you need to demonstrate your worth to the group. When you’re sitting with a group of young people, they want to help out, they want to lead, but there are so few opportunities. So yes, when we are talking about student leadership, we are talking about student engagement. A culture of leadership is a culture where everyone is doing something. We’re not just listening. We’re not just filling in blanks in a worksheet.

[00:10:53.120] – James
We are communicating. We are collaborating. We are moving around the room making meaning. And so, yes, it is about leadership, but it is also about academics. It is about an academic setting where we are all engaged and active learners.

[00:11:13.500] – Steve
So it is leader-full.

[00:11:15.720] – James
That’s right, yeah.

[00:11:18.800] – Steve
Maureen, I’m hearing the SEL, executive functioning directions that schools are taking or wanting to take would connect with the leadership development?

[00:11:34.540] – Maureen
Absolutely. I think it’s a really astute observation. This work has been around since ancient times. We hear from forever, people considering moral development or character development or whole child development or college and career readiness and civic readiness and whatever you want to call it. But the stuff that makes us able to show up in the world the way we want to show up, to do hard things, including the academic hard things that every kid has the right to become a powerful learner so they can make the impact. But to be able to face those hard things requires you to draw upon your inner stuff. And that is so worthy. And academics are just one arena in which we can encounter hard stuff that gives us the opportunity to reflect upon who we are and how we’re bringing ourselves to hard things. So many schools, especially in the pandemic, sprung up with social emotional learning programs, and then they were trying really hard. I mean, just people working so hard to get 30 minutes once a week. So we could do this off the shelf curriculum so we can try to do something to help kids.

[00:12:53.270] – Maureen
This is how James and I came to found this consultancy. Our consultancy is named CORE, Creative Partners, and CORE is Latin for heart. We’re trying to make an impact and move the needle a bit on contributing to a culture in which people love school. I think that these SEL programs are also trying to get at that. I think the way that we want to contribute in service of that need is how to do it in your classroom where we spend most of the minutes anyway, and how to provide teachers who are… I always wanted to be a teacher. My dad’s teacher, my sister’s a teacher. This profession means everything to me. To see how much suffering there was for teachers who wanted to do that work when kids were really struggling and are really struggling, but feeling overwhelmed, that things were disconnected, they’re happening outside of the classroom. They didn’t write it. It’s not graded. Everyone knows it’s a joke, or it’s not enough. We wanted to offer something that made sense in the secondary classroom because the primary school classroom is just developmentally different with SEL, and it’s more about that morning circle and that discrete lesson on being a good friend, et cetera.

[00:14:07.060] – Maureen
In secondary, where you’re supposed to weave it in, how do you do that in a way that doesn’t take too long? You’ll have to have time to do all your academics, but it does give the space to sequentially build those skills through the year so that by the end of the year, it is really a student-led classroom where students are really feeling and seeing the growth that only happens when you do not too much at once. If you’re doing everything all at once, it almost feels like nothing’s important and you’re not moving in any way. So this book really offers a sequenced set of units. You could just do one of them. You could pick one. It’s really flexible. But if you did them in sequence, they naturally build so that students can really see their growth over time, and they’re tracking that growth in little quick ways. They can look back and say, wow, this is what I thought at the start of the year. And here’s how I’m seeing myself now as a leader in this room. I’m not the only leader, but I’m also believing in my peers as leader and intentionally building those beliefs so that students are safe with each other.

[00:15:09.820] – Steve
As I work through the book, you talk about four foundational leadership skills and four foundational conditions. I’m wondering if one of you would give us a run-through of the foundational practices and the foundational conditions. Which one should go first? In that sequence, which goes first?

[00:15:33.560] – James
Let me first share the practices, and then Maureen, you can fill in the conditions and anything else I’ve inevitably missed. The book presents a framework for building the skills that students need for motivation, perseverance, communication, and collaboration in the secondary classroom. And so there’s a unit related to each of those competencies. And in each unit, there is a specific practice, as you named, Steve, and also a specific condition that the class in particular is focusing on. Ideally, a teacher is pairing these units with their academic units and finding logical places to integrate the leadership routine teams that will help students gradually build their skills over time. So the four practices are, in motivation, students focus on the skills of reflecting and setting goals.

[00:16:47.140] – Steve
Two biggies. Those are both really big issues.

[00:16:50.000] – James
They are really big ones. And there’s a lot of research about how hard it is for us to just sit quietly with our thoughts, to really tune into what our bodies are telling us. There is so much noise around us. There is music and podcasts and videos and food. If we’re looking to be distracted from how we’re feeling and what we’re thinking, there are a million ways to do so. And so we really build in deliberate practice in reflecting. So you’ve engaged in some academic endeavor. Let’s take a minute and reflect, how did that go? What were your strengths during that time? What were your struggles. And we really believe in the same way that you would build up one’s reading skills. You wouldn’t say, you’re learning to read, go read for 45 minutes. Similarly, reflection should be in short, manageable bites. And over time, someone may finally have capacity to sit down and eat a full meal of reflection. But early on, it’s like, let’s just do some quick hits. And so early on, we’re reflecting on our motivation, and we’re setting a goal related to the academic work. And then through the subsequent units, individuals keep practicing those skills of reflection and goal setting tied to very specific academic endeavors.

[00:18:34.420] – James
And then in the second unit, perseverance, the leadership practice is experimenting with strategies. So now we’ve decided what is motivating us to pursue success in this class. But when something gets in the way of us and our goals, what are we going to try? And so classes co-construct strategy banks and individuals decide hat are the strategies they want to experiment with? And so kids are really empowered to be driving their own learning. It isn’t the teacher saying, whenever you’re distracted, do this. It is the whole community saying, what would work for you? What do you want to try? Let’s see how that goes. And then let’s track our data to see what is working, what isn’t, what do we want to keep, what do we want to throw out, what do we want to change? Those first two practices are really based in a level of collaboration and sharing, but also our individual pursuits. This is my goal. This is my strategy. In the back half of the framework, it is much more about, now that I’ve built these skills of self-awareness and of self-management, how can I contribute to this team? And so the third big unit is communication.

[00:19:55.280] – James
And here, individuals are practicing exchanging feedback with their peers, with their teacher. And then in the culminate and collaborate unit, students get together on an authentic, academic, collaborative task, and they practice the final routine, which is advocating for self and others.

[00:20:20.400] – Maureen
And then with the conditions, we can’t just expect to go through the motions. There are units you can follow step by step in the book. But if we’re not thinking deeply really about the conditions of our room, we aren’t going to be ready for that to actually go well. So the conditions that need to be in place, and it’s actually something really useful if you’re working with a coach or you’re working with a grade-level team, maybe your middle school eighth grade team is trying this together, and there are special directions on what to adjust if you’re doing this with the whole team. So kids aren’t like, “We already did this.” But it really is useful to process those conditions upfront as a whole, but then any each unit to really focus on one. So one is, as I reference, the safety to take risks. Students need us – and if you talk to kids, they’ll tell you what they need from you, which is to address it. If somebody does so little, it’s roll their eyes at them because they’re so invested in their peers’ perception of them. And so if anybody might do something that impacts their sense of status and you don’t address it, they’re going to shut down.

[00:21:26.950] – Maureen
So we need to feel safe enough in secondary years to to give the wrong answer, et cetera. We need belief in self and others. If we don’t believe that that teacher cares about me or thinks I can do it, and you can spot that quickly, oftentimes, if the belief isn’t there. And that’s often just a reflection of our own belief in ourselves as being able to reach the kid that seems so hard. If we feel threatened that it might make us look like a bad teacher, we might subconsciously put it to the student’s fault. It’s not productive. How do we just keep coming back to a belief believing stance and demonstrate that belief in each other. And then another one is motivating work. Is the work feeling worthy of doing? Are there ways I can tie the work to things I care about? And then the last one is opportunities to lead. If students are sitting and listening all the time, when are they supposed to develop leadership skills? They’ve got to get into groups, talk to each other, have new ideas, be heard, see things changing because of what they’re saying. So in the units, there are structures where before the unit, there is a prep the unit section where teachers, they do things like rotate the roles or change the objective on the board, but they’re also reflecting on their own experiences with those things.

[00:22:43.100] – Maureen
Do I believe…Why do I believe in myself as a leader? How do I believe in my students? And then they’re also looking at the unit ahead to see what are those key points in the unit I have planned where students will get to encounter this leadership competency. So if it’s communicate, what are the communications coming up? And if you’re doing that with a coach, maybe there is a chance to add more than you had planned. Or what are the opportunities for students to persevere? Where does this unit get hard enough that kids will get frustrated, which should happen when we’re becoming powerful learners? Where are those key difficult points where I’m going to then offer that reflection to go with it? How did you persevere through this, et cetera? Those talking points or those prep the unit sections offer some good questions that are helpful to process with the team if you’re lucky enough to have a coach or a team. And then there are team discussion questions at the end, too, which allow you to either just try those exercises students did as a team, and they’ll learn a lot about each other, or do a quick case study on a student who is really struggling with motivation or perseverance.

[00:23:49.080] – Maureen
And then it just guides you through some steps of how you can really use that as a useful way to think about it. Because we offer some scaffolds knowing that from our instructional coaching, some kids will need more. They’re not just going to magically now be the most motivated kid ever. And we have four or five things that we’ll usually try. But it’s so useful to talk it out in your school with other people who know you and know your kids and where you feel the safety to take the risk to say, “This didn’t go well, and what else can I try?”

[00:24:19.880] – Steve
As I’m listening, actually, I wrote the phrase down and it jumped in my head, but I’m almost hearing leading myself is the piece that the learners, that you have learners dealing with. Generally, you think about leading others, but I’m hearing leading myself in there. Does that make sense?

[00:24:43.420] – Maureen
Are you thinking about that for the teacher as well when you’re saying that?

[00:24:46.960] – Steve
Now you’re moving it to another level. I’m almost always sure that as a teacher, whatever it is I’m teaching, I’m learning more than the students are, so that’s there for sure. But as I was listening to the two of you walk through the elements, I’m seeing a learner becoming empowered him or herself, which is what I would call leading myself. Then because of that, I’m in a role for my leadership to be shared with others.

[00:25:16.080] – Maureen
Absolutely. Some of the things that you just come back to when you do different leadership research is you do have to love yourself to persevere through – to look in the face of your mistakes and your academic failures and to say, okay, what’s next? You can only do that with a healthy dose of self-love and self-compassion. And so we hope that this book contributes to a sense of identity development in these years that is a healthy balance of, I can keep doing better, and I’m already enough. And then you can have that confidence to lead yourself and know that you can do that safely with others because you are on your own trajectory, reaching your beautiful leadership potential.

[00:26:08.980] – James
Yeah. I would add, I’ve worked with many kids who struggled to find motivation in the academic setting. Sometimes it’s tempting to go, this kid is just not motivated, or even this kid’s lazy. So often that child is very motivated just in a different setting. They’re home taking care of their sibling or their home home playing a video game till 2:00 in the morning. I’ve worked with a lot of kids who love gaming. And part of that is because you’re the main character when you’re playing a video game. And so many kids come to school and they feel like what they call a non-player character, an NPC. You’re just in the background. You’re sitting there and the teacher is the main character. And so you’re absolutely right. This framework is an invitation for you to go, this is my game. I’m the one holding the controller and making the shots. The same, as Maureen mentions, goes for teachers. Some of the reasons that SEL curricula don’t always take off is because teachers don’t feel ownership. They take it off the shelf and they go, okay, I got 30 minutes. I’m going to read this script in a robotic voice, and go…

[00:27:27.210] – James
Sometimes you’ll hear teachers go, “They want me to tell you.” As soon as you hear it, you’re going to say, hey, you’re in the curriculum, you know you’re in trouble. With this curriculum, we offer a framework, we offer routines, and then we empower the teacher to lead that curriculum. You decide, where would this routine go? How often do you want to use it? What would it look, sound, and feel like for you? Like the student, you are the leader of your game. So yeah, I think that’s a really insightful observation that you’re making.

[00:28:03.220] – Maureen
And which of my stories about myself with perseverance through learning this subject do I want to insert? It really offers a chance for teachers to select from their own class and their own lives what will go in there. So it is really coming through in an authentic voice, and it takes a little more time for the teacher, but I think it’s really enjoyable for them to do that because we hold these stories and we don’t always see a spot for them to come through. But taking that story-based leadership stance is such a common theme in leadership. The right story can carry a lot of weight in building the momentum in the room so that you can step aside and the kids will pick it up from there. So, yeah, the adult as the lead learner in the room and the lead leader, as we often call them, we hope that this book is also rewarding for them, not only in their own individual thought process about themselves as leaders, but also in the relationship that will become stronger with their students and that the work will be more rewarding because it’s this space where these kinds of deeper and really important conversations come out appropriately.

[00:29:13.560] – Steve
The other thing that’s striking me as I’ve been listening to you and got a chance to walk through your book – a lot of schools I work with have a profile of a graduate that sounds really great, but I’m hard-pressed often to find what people are doing about it. I get the sense that if I were to sit down with the school’s profile of a graduate and your book, I’d find a lot of alignment, providing a way for teachers to focus on that particular element or many of the elements of a portrait.

[00:29:56.120] – Maureen
Yes, we definitely see that, and we really value value cohesion. I think that’s why we want to put these skills cohesively into a classroom. But when we partner with a school, we really do pay attention to their particular language and match it up. It’s usually not hard. Leader is usually somewhere or any of the words of these units. But how do we just make sure the language is landing cohesively? And so then we also do have little measures, whether it’s a student report or an observation report. There are little assessments, too, where you could track progress toward, here’s how we know whether we’re doing a good job of having kids believe in themselves as leaders. In one school, we did a three-year project and just ask kids that question as question one, are you a leader? Why or why not? You can just see who’s saying yes and who’s saying no, and is that changing? It just gives you something a little bit more specific where we often don’t have anything specific when we’re talking about the profile of a learner and then our graduate, and then it’s just floating around sounding good. People are all, I’m sure teachers are spotting it for what it is if it’s not really living.

[00:31:05.560] – Maureen
This helps us – if we want to do a good job, if we take this stance, everyone wants to do a good job. Kids want to do a good job if we show them what we’re looking for. Teachers want to do a good job in building that vision, too. This gives you some really specific things you can try and feel like, okay, we’re making progress. I’m doing the thing, and it’s feeling good, and it makes sense in my class.

[00:31:26.000] – James
I’ll just add, we have a lot of experience with College and future planning support. We each oversaw in the school where we worked, the College and Future Planning counselor. Maureen developed and oversaw an advisory strand that was a 5 through 12 curriculum preparing individuals for what awaits after 12th grade. She also launched a senior internship program. And in our consultancy, we partner with many schools to support their own College and Future readiness programs. And it’s very important to us that what is happening every day leading up to graduation connects to what is going to be happening every day after graduation. As Maureen was talking, I was just remembering a student that we both worked very closely with who was so shut down in school. The number of disciplinary hearings I attended with him, the number of dropout prevention programs that the two of us sat in on, the number of just in the hall conversations of what do you need are just too many to count. I remember a few years after he graduated, he came back in a police officer’s uniform with this big grin on his face, and he said, “I love this work.”

[00:32:56.600] – James
I was just like, I knew it. I knew there was a spot somewhere in there. I’ve reflected a lot about what more could have we done so that it did not take this individual so long to realize he has a place in this world. He is good and he can contribute to increasing the amount of goodness in the world. And there’s so many ways to contribute. And I really do believe a framework like this helps us ignite that spark for each individual just sooner. So you don’t have to wait years and years and years for someone to come back and say, I finally found my place. I found my people. I found my purpose. We want them to be finding it every day every grade level in every class.

[00:33:48.320] – Steve
You caught my attention when you first used that big word, “all” with the students and leadership. It’s been great having this conversation with you, having that reinforced. Before we close out, anything else about the book, Leaders of the Class, that you didn’t get a chance to lay out here to folks, or the work that you’re doing in your core creative partners that you’d like folks to know about?

[00:34:20.920] – James
Yeah, so I’ll jump in. We are Boston-based, but we travel all over, and we love being in different regions, different districts, different schools, and just learning from educators because everything we hear and see when we’re working with educators helps us support others in different settings more effectively. We do workshop series and PLCs and keynotes and consulting projects. Basically, we just look to see where is support needed. We really believe in this framework as a way to provide that support. You can adopt the whole framework. You can pick one routine. There are so many entry points. We would love for people to read the book, “Leaders of the Class” from SolutionTree. We would love for people to practice those routines and share with us how it’s going. You can reach us. Our website is corecreativepartners.com. Each of our emails are james@corcreativepartners.com or maureen@corcreativepartners.com. We’re always so thrilled to hear from fellow educators.

[00:35:27.900] – Maureen
I am obsessed with getting messages. I always have been. Find me on LinkedIn, email me. I promise I’ll write you back. We would love to hear if you’ve got the book, and if you have thoughts or you’re trying stuff out, we would be so grateful.

[00:35:39.760] – Steve
Terrific. Thanks so much, guys.

[00:35:41.140] – Maureen
Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Steve. We really enjoyed the conversation.

[00:35:47.420] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

“Super-facilitators are people with a talent for bringing individual group members together, combining each one’s unique strengths to promote optimal team performance.  They integrate diverse expertise, promote equitable contributions, and cultivate trust among teammates, generating collective intelligence—a group’s ability to solve problems together.”

That’s the description Jamil Zaki provides in a HBR article titled, “Every Team Needs a Super Facilitator.” Zaki’s adds an important point, “We can become them (super facilitators) ourselves. With the right mindset and a few key practices, anyone can turn talent into trust, and groups into something greater than the sum of their parts.”

He suggests three super facilitator powers to build:

• Attunement to Emotions – Because empathy is socially magnetic, connecting with others’ emotions provides a sharper grasp of the team’s makeup and encourages maximizing members contributions.
• Communication – Super facilitators communicate their beliefs in their colleagues and highlight each teammates potential, encouraging the same practice among members.
• Distribution – During collaboration super facilitators distribute time and attention so that everyone contributes and no one dominates.

Elizabeth Dity provides some insights for facilitators to consider for the opening, middle, and end of sessions.

Opening – Most of us need to warm up to get into a creative spirit. Neuroscience tells us that to do this well, people must feel welcome and connect with one another. As a rule, the sooner people speak, the more engaged they will be throughout the meeting. In a smaller group, provide an opening question for everyone to respond to. (When did a student put a smile on your face this past week?) If your group is larger form pairs or triads? Key is that everyone talks. Next, it’s the facilitator’s job to bring the purpose to life, to activate people’s interest in the challenge or task at hand. This is a reason that I am big on PLC’s having minutes and agendas. Notes from our last session and an agenda for this one. If our last meeting ended by setting an agenda for this PLC, we should be ready to move forward and make progress.

 

Middle –  Choose a “prompt” to focus the discussion. Usually framed as a question, a strong prompt is specific enough that people can respond without too much effort, and broad enough to invite diverse views and new thinking. The ideal stimulus meets three criteria: it gets people oriented or reoriented to the task and relevant context; it adds something new to their thinking; and, if possible, it sparks some emotion. The more vivid and concrete, the better.

I describe this element as the facilitator providing a spark. The spark, most often students’ work or concern, leads to conversation among the participants with the facilitator recognizing when the time is right to move to the next step or action. Taking action is key to PLC colleagues finding value in PLC time.

“PLC time is supposed to be sacred; a space for educators to collaborate, reflect, and, most importantly, move the needle for students. But somewhere along the way, many teams lost steam. Meetings became routine. Goals got fuzzy. And what was once a promising structure started to feel like…just another meeting.”

(Otus.com)

Ending – Tight timelines, such as the start of the next class period, can lead to rushed endings that at times leave members feeling stressed with what was left “in the air” or sensing that their time was just wasted. Doty provides suggestions for facilitators concerning meeting endings:

• Cue the close– A usual meeting process is open-narrow-close. Cuing the members to be narrowing can increase the likelihood of ending with action. I’ve suggested for most PLCs that 20 minutes of discussion should lead to action. That action may not be that we have a plan to implement. It could be that we have raised questions that need to be explored so that we start the next meeting with information that leads us forward. Discussing a struggling student, members might ask about information from last year’s teacher, specialist teachers’ experiences, or the student’s interests outside school. The team can make commitments for different members to gather pieces of information prior to the next PLC meeting.
• Call for the decision– Agreement on how a decision will be reached should be part of the PLC norms and/or decided upon before the group begins exploring options on a particular decision. Is the group under a fixed deadline for a decision to be reached in this meeting or is there time to leave the meeting to explore further and decide at the next meeting? Is the decision a critical one and time is available for coming to a consensus or is a majority view decision agreeable to members. Commitment to the decision is needed in either case.
• Outline next steps and open questions– If a decision was reached and action is to begin, it is critical that next steps with a suggested timeline are stated. If the decision was delayed, what are the questions that still need to be explored? What research does the group desire to gather? I am a big fan of minutes being taken at PLC meetings and forwarded to members along with the agenda for the next meeting. Most PLC sessions end with homework to be completed prior to the next session. Nothing is worse than starting the next meeting with different expectations of what was agreed to be done or data to be collected and brought to the meeting. Minutes encourage the commitment of team members. I also believe that reading minutes assists administrators in assessing how PLC time is being invested. Some schools share minutes with everyone or with all PLC facilitators to encourage teaming across PLCs, using each other as resources.

Having quality PLC time requires each member to take some responsibility for the group’s effectiveness. All members learning facilitation skills, (which also apply in the classroom) advances greater learning and success. School leaders should provide opportunities for training and coaching feedback in facilitation skills. As members fulfill PLC commitments, trust builds among the team. Increased trust leads to members being more vulnerable which increases risk-taking and increases member learning, leading to increased student success. A strong upward spiral!

In part 1 of this blog, examined emotional feedback that supports student’s feelings, confidence, and mindset—how they feel about learning, themselves, and the task. In part 2 I’ll explore behavioral feedback that supports actions and habits, addressing effort, participation, and behaviors related to learning. It can target:

• Work habits (focus, effort, persistence)
• Collaboration and communication
• Help-seeking vs task-avoidance behavior
• Time management or self-monitoring

Behavioral feedback helps students understand not only what to learn, but how to learn. It turns invisible learning habits—like persistence, focus, or collaboration—into visible, valued, and improvable actions. While academic success often appears to be about mastering content, the engine behind that success is a set of student learning production behaviors. These are the actions students take to engage, persevere, problem-solve, and self-regulate throughout the learning process. Without deliberate reinforcement and feedback from teachers, these behaviors often go unnoticed or worse, unshaped.  The AVID framework emphasizes teaching students how to develop the behaviors and habits for college and career readiness. It supports students in building the skills to access, organize, and apply content through strategies like focused note-taking, collaborative study, and structured inquiry. Behavioral feedback from teachers can reinforce these strategies and support students in internalizing them as tools for ownership over their learning. It might sound like this:

“I noticed you came back to the task even after getting distracted. That persistence matters.”

“When you listened to your partner before speaking, the team worked better together. Let’s keep that going.”

“Asking for clarification like you just did shows you’re managing your learning—keep doing that.”

“You got started right away today—that gave you more time to work deeply.”

Behavioral feedback might also identify behaviors that interfere with a student’s progress toward a goal. This kind of feedback is not about catching mistakes or calling students out. It’s about calling them forward, helping them see how their actions affect their learning outcomes and providing guidance to shift course. Effective behavioral feedback doesn’t shame; it names the behavior and connects it to the learning goal. It might sound like this:

“I noticed you stopped working after the first challenge. Let’s talk about one step you could try next time to keep going.”

“You seemed unsure today but didn’t ask for help. Remember, using your resources, including your teacher, is part of learning.”

“When you talked over your teammate, we missed out on hearing their thinking. How can we make space for each other next time?”

“You started packing up early, which cut short your opportunity to finish strong. How could you manage time differently tomorrow?”

This kind of feedback helps students build self-awareness, responsibility, and ownership of their behaviors—not just for school, but for life. When paired with a classroom culture rooted in respect and growth, redirective feedback like this becomes part of a supportive learning environment where every student understands that effort and habits matter as much as knowledge.

The power of behavioral feedback was illustrated by legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, known for his unmatched record of 10 NCAA championships. A landmark study by Gallimore & Tharp, (“What a Coach Can Teach a Teacher”) analyzed Wooden’s coaching and found about 75% of his feedback during practice was behavioral in nature; including instructions, modeling, praise, and corrective cues aimed at habits, effort, technique, and timing—not just outcomes. He focused much of his feedback on habits and effort during practice. Most of his feedback consisted of brief, clear, and targeted cues on behavior —what to do, how to do it better, and why it mattered.

“Bend your knees.”

“Quicker pass.”

“That’s the right way. Do it again.”

This kind of instructional feedback loop mirrors what teachers do when they notice and name student learning behaviors like collaboration, help-seeking, or time management in action. Just as Wooden built a team culture where success came from refining the how of play, teachers can build classroom cultures where achievement emerges from refining the how of learning.

Teachers don’t need elaborate systems to observe and respond to learning behaviors. Often, the most powerful feedback grows out of intentional noticing. Paying close attention to patterns of focus, engagement, collaboration, and help-seeking provides ongoing insight into what behaviors are supporting or hindering student progress. A teacher might jot quick observational notes during group work, reflect after a lesson on which students persevered through difficulty, or simply tune into who is asking questions and who is opting out. These informal check-ins become a valuable source of formative assessment of learning behaviors that drive mastery. When teachers make a habit of noticing and naming productive behaviors and gently redirecting those that aren’t, they help students internalize the idea that how they learn is both visible and changeable.  A peer or instructional coach can observe students’ learning behaviors and the feedback you provide to students. Coaching increases consciousness.

From her career as a teacher and school leader in public, independent, and international schools and having opened three new schools, Barbara Smith proposes the importance of situating responsibility with students and teachers.  She describes why change is urgent and needs to be transformative. Just as teachers need to be facilitators of student responsibility to create their learning, school leaders need to be facilitators of teachers’ responsibility. Time and space for teacher collaboration and learning is a key.

Connect with Barbara & visit the ZPD website here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.290] – Steve [Intro]

Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.950] – Steve

A thriving school culture through a path of student and teacher responsibility. The author of, “Urgent Care for Schools: Situating Responsibility in an Engaging Way for Students To Transform School Culture,” is our podcast guest. Barbara Smith has been a teacher and school leader in public independent charter and international schools, as well as being engaged in three graduate and undergraduate schools of education. Throughout her career, Barbara has opened three schools and now spends her time writing about innovative ways to support engaging school cultures. Welcome, Barbara.

[00:01:14.910] – Barbara

Oh, thank you. Nice to be here, Steve.

[00:01:18.240] – Steve

Glad you’ve joined us. The title of your book, I caught the words “urgent” and “transforming school culture.” So I wonder if, for starters, you’d talk about the urgency and what needs transforming.

[00:01:38.410] – Barbara

Well, I think I use the word urgent because it’s used often in testing situations in schools. There’s just a sense of urgency to be on top and people are clamoring over other people in other schools to say we’re number one. And I think that that is the reason why wanted to talk about things that weren’t necessarily part of that end goal of school. That is like testing in a score and testing should not be the end. If you want a quality school, then you need to have qualitative data and evidence to show that. I’m concerned about engagement, not just of students, but of teachers in schools. I think that when you have an emphasis on accountability, it is at the expense of quality schooling. I’ll say that in such a way that throughout my career, I thought that, well, any accountability or testing that’s going on would really just substantiate and support great practice. And that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, I believe that a ranking system of education cannot coexist with school improvement. I’ve actually come to that realization. Because what happens when you have so many schools that are all trying to be at the top of the food chain, that means that the system itself accepts that there’s going to be schools at the bottom, and that includes students at the bottom and teachers with those students at the bottom and schools at the bottom.

[00:03:22.900] – Barbara

So that, to me, is not a healthy society to know that there’s always going to be this system in place. And I’m not against the idea of competition, but I’m not sure that that should be the end goal of school because 100% of the taxpayers pay for students to learn. And I think we need better models of learning. And when we look at engagement, that’s where it begins. How does mastery happen in school? So I felt it was urgent that we look at education differently than what seems to be the trend right now, which is all about getting the high scores on testing or numbers only tell you the story of a quality school. This is incorrect on so many levels. And researchers know this, and I really hope that they step up and challenge what’s been happening for the last 30, 40 years. Not that you want to go back to what was 50 years ago, but there was much more creative things and innovative things happening in education. Even though we have all the bells and whistles of technology now, there are many more innovative ideas on how to promote deep learning happening in the ’70s and ’80s than are happening now.

[00:04:40.650] – Barbara

There’s been too many years that the system itself has been fixed. And really, why do you need a curriculum that’s innovative? And why do schools need to have different visions or different missions if really you think that there’s only one way to do school? I think there’s an urgent need to change that. I think that the path to having better school cultures means that we need to actually start paying attention and implementing what informed practices that are backed by peer review research have been suggesting for quite a long time. And so that was really the idea behind writing the book about urgent care for schools, because I think that they do need more than just a handbook on how to do classroom management to control kids. I think they need a handbook on culture engagement.

[00:05:36.870] – Steve

You brought a scary flashback to me of the day I pulled into the parking when they had the billboard outside the school where they had placed their excitement of the average SAT scores that had come in. All I could get out of the car thinking, I got busses pulling in here every morning telling half the kids on the bus, you’re below average. And then I’m sending them into some classroom where some teacher is supposed to excite them. How badly have you lost the picture of what we’re supposed to be doing here? That’s what we’re going to measure. So your book focuses on situating responsibility with students, and I’m wondering if you can describe that for us, especially with the varied experiences you’ve had as an educational leader. What are some of the things you made happen and you saw happen in the various schools that you’ve been in?

[00:06:46.440] – Barbara

Well, you’re going to have probably many educators who support students who want to be empowered doing more than just being a student. And that, I think, can take many shapes. So when I put an all call out to as many people as I could to say, I’m writing a book about students that feel empowered and engaged in schools, and can you tell me what they’re doing and how did they get there? They sent me all sorts of stories, and I had to group them because we had 32 guest authors in this book. They fell into six categories. One was service provision. Those students who do these global campaigns. When there was an explosion in Lebanon, for example, they tried to raise money to support them. Another group of students supported the Doctors Without Borders, so they created a campaign locally to be able to support them. But then we had at the school level, we had students creating their own stores in the school. We had a lot of extra resources and so on that the parents would buy for a quarter and take home that we felt would go to some good use to create personal libraries at home.

[00:08:02.270] – Barbara

We created all sorts of mural making and so on. So students took on, and when I was teaching a leadership course there, I had probably 36 projects going on at one time. So it was overwhelming. It would have been wonderful to have at least 10 staff members say, well, I’ll take on two or three of those projects with you. But they needed to first see these things operating and see how excited and see the buzz that was happening when the students were doing these particular projects. And they did a teacher talent show during COVID. So we started with teacher talent, then we turned it into a school talent show. Students would dance, but they had to create the whole script, but the students did all this work. There’s an enormous amount of intellectual power, capacity, that’s built when you have to organize all of these details details. And so to make a project happen, that there is no blueprint in place, that they have to design the blueprint based on the context of what they’re in, has been very fulfilling and exciting for the students. And I use the term “memory making” as being a litmus test, be able to look at, well, you think that’s situating responsibility?

[00:09:24.080] – Barbara

Well, let’s ask those students how they felt about it 10 years from now. Do they even remember it? I did work on peer teaching, and that involves a lot of coordination for the teacher between classes and schedules and so on. But when you have students regularly going in and teaching in other classrooms, then you’re actually moving beyond the walls of the classroom in that way. So the students themselves have to really think about what it’s like to become a teacher and what does it involve. And it involves planning, it involves reading, it involves actually doing the, and I would say, applying the skills that you need in all of your coursework that you have. I think that’s the way I would approach it. That’s a way to think about education beyond what we typically see as the teacher-directed approach at the front of the classroom. You want to be able to see teachers disappear. You don’t even know where they are because the kids are still engaged in what they’re learning. There doesn’t have to be what are your incentives for attendance? And I said, It’s all about what context you’re creating for learning. It shouldn’t be about stickers and special phone calls or billboards of saying, gee, look at that.

[00:10:49.330] – Barbara

We had 98% attendance today. That’s amazing. Well, that should just be expected because whatever you’re doing, they want to be there.

[00:11:01.280] – Steve

That thought of walking into a classroom and having trouble figuring out who the teacher is because of the excitement and engagement, that’s a real obvious indicator. A lot of our listeners to this podcast are instructional coaches and school leaders, both in administration as well as middle-level leaders. What support do teachers need from those folks in order to work in this a engage student responsibility?

[00:11:42.300] – Barbara

Well, they need support on a scheduling level. The schedule is a very important tool for educators, and especially decision-makers in education, to use to help teachers have the time they need to be able to make engaging experiences happen for students. It cannot happen in a 45-minute planning period once a day. Impossible. They can get together and collaborate a little bit, talk about what they’re doing, but boom, by 40 minutes in, they have to change. They can’t set up any individual plans for students in that time frame, and they certainly can’t do some co-planning about how their particular curriculum meets with others. What they need is half a day, every day. And that sounds very radical, but if you think about it, if you were in a business and you had an important presentation to do, and it was going to be happening in three months time, you might have upwards of three months to be able to plan for it. You might even have four or five millions that are going to run around and do all your graphics on your view graphs and your slides. And you might have lots of time to be able to look at the draft of the slides and make edits.

[00:12:59.980] – Barbara

Our teachers do not have that. So we expect them to do quality work without the quality planning time. And I won’t use planning time. I’m going to say professional learning time that they do, because every time they’re planning something of significance that matters, that’s going to be a memory maker, that’s a big project that has different layers to it, then they need time to be able to make that happen. And they need to read about what are other people doing similar to that. What other resources can be supportive of this? What are other people in the community that we can bring in? All of that really requires time. And if time is used well in the afternoons, for example, if they teach all morning, then they can be co-teaching with other teachers. The mentor teachers can’t just go in and watch them and give them a little coaching tip at the end of the day. They can actually spend an hour, let’s say, on Monday afternoon with one of their mentees, and they co-plan a lesson together. And then the next day, they can go in in the afternoon in that time, and they can co-teach that together.

[00:14:11.130] – Barbara

So it’s not just a matter of planning for your own classroom that you need the time, but you also professionally are learning when you can establish how can your mentor system be integrated into that planning time that is given. But all of that becomes professional learning because the dialog bug that happens if you have 40 of those encounters during a school year, for example, we did this in Washington, DC, those 40 encounters wound up being 40 personalized professional learning experiences. We need to use time differently. You can’t just ship them off and say, okay, you’ve had three days at a conference. Now come back and try to influence the culture. If everybody has this ongoing professional learning happening, then the culture is not going to be fixed in terms of thinking there’s only one way moving forward. They should always be saying, what’s next? And that can come from what’s happening directly with students and what are students wanting next? And so I think it’s a good question about how do you create those situations. But I think it has a lot to do with the schedule and a lot to do with not having so many students in classrooms.

[00:15:29.090] – Barbara

If you put 25, 30 kids in a classroom, how are you ever going to know that they’ve mastered something? You don’t. So it’s an easy way to say, oh, well, there’s a bell curve, and not everyone will get 80%, but that’s okay. Well, that’s not okay because that’s not what their parents taxes are going towards. They want their students to learn at least 80% of what’s going on. So this elaboration of what’s a 62 and what’s a 55 or 57 and what’s a 71? It doesn’t matter because they’re not going to be happy. And the parents aren’t going to be happy either because the parents all want them to be at the top of that food chain. And there’s only so much room in a ranking system. So I think we really do need to blow up that ranking system and look at what’s engaging and certainly transform schools so that we have a society that’s productive and industrious.

[00:16:29.970] – Steve

I’m laughing because you jumped to the word before I got there. I was saying, I’m certainly hearing urgent and transforming in your message. There is a phrase I’ve used – people would come to me in my consultant role and ask me, what’s the best schedule for the school to take on? Are we going to block schedules, A/B every other day thing at the high school? How do you schedule the elementary? And the response I finally came back with was when instruction is driving the schedule rather than the schedule driving instruction, you know you’ve moved in the right direction.

[00:17:14.660] – Barbara

Yeah.

[00:17:15.150] – Steve

It really has to be a form of flexibility where the learners and the facilitators can be modifying it. I did work with one middle school where the teachers were given a chunk of uninterrupted time. And between them, they could decide during those two hours which kids were where, engaged in what. And nobody had to be leaving for a PE class or their music class. So there was at least a chunk of time that they could start with.

[00:17:55.460] – Barbara

Well, it reminds me of a school in Toronto, the Bly School, where they have in their 11 and 12 programming, students only take two classes at one time. So they take them for two months. And that means physics can have robotics built into it because it’s an application of physics. And then it also makes me think that there’s teachers always worried about, what am I going to do if I have them for an hour or 90 minutes? I don’t know what to do because I know I can’t teach or direct for 90 minutes. I said, yeah, you’re right. You probably would be the kiss of death if you did. But the fear of not knowing necessarily what’s going to happen when they have that applied time. And so I think these old pillars between the practical arts and the academic classes, there’s this industrial arts over here and so on. I said, well, hold on. When you’re actually making plans to put a plumbing system into a public washroom, for example, as one of your intern projects, you’re telling me that’s not physics? I mean, that definitely is the application of all sorts of principles in physics, for example.

[00:19:07.980] – Barbara

This is where the trends have enormous amount of rich experiences to be able to offer the applied part of what should be happening in academic courses because they get to university and they’re like, they still have just this theoretical understanding of a lot of things. And math does not have to be something that isn’t in the real world. It can be something they experience in an applied way. So I think people need to revisit the status of the word applied because applied means you’re really getting evidence of their learning and their capacity to apply it as much a higher, deeper learning than certainly just memorizing a bunch of facts or determining which is the most correct answer on a multiple choice test.

[00:20:00.350] – Steve

I think I’m hearing that in order to situate responsibility with students, we’ve got to situate responsibility with teachers.

[00:20:12.980] – Barbara

We do. And we have to look at traditional roles. We used to have vice principals in 1950, and we had assistant principals in 1950 and so on. I said, well, maybe now there’s time for the service learning assistant principal or the service learning of director of the school and have – flatten your leadership model so that more educators that are in a school are having a say in where the school is going. I think that that’s a part of it. So they need time to be able to develop their leadership skills. And I think these old models are dated. I think we need new kinds of… What about a vice-principal school culture? And why wouldn’t that person be responsible for the curriculum of character education, leadership, and service learning. So there really has to be some new examples out there. And I really think that universities need to get back to designing those lab schools so that there’s places for us to look and see.

[00:21:19.940] – Steve

You’re talking to a lab school grad.

[00:21:23.200] – Barbara

There we go.

[00:21:26.330] – Steve

I spent my entire university senior year in a laboratory school working with master teachers and visiting professors. Then when I got my first job teaching in a school in New Jersey, that was in Pennsylvania, School in New Jersey. Yeah, actually set it up so that my school became a laboratory school for the university.

[00:21:57.620] – Barbara

Oh, wonderful.

[00:21:58.550] – Steve

As a first year teacher, eight students from the university I was at spent the entire year as part of our K-8 staff. That was their learning practicum, one of the professors to be on site with them, but the rest of their time was working with kids and teachers. It was a long time ago. When the dollars came short at state level, they started closing those laboratory schools in the States. And I never understood it because you were at a university where at that time, close to 90% of the graduates were in teacher education, and you didn’t have a laboratory school on campus.

[00:22:58.650] – Barbara

Well, society can lead or society can follow. If you don’t have things like lab schools, then you’re going to be following some other lab schools like schools in Finland. For example, they’re not official lab schools. However, they’re leaning towards much more innovative types of experiences that the students have. And so that’s the question I have. You want to be a leader in education or you want to follow? Certainly, if it’s something that’s fixed, it’s going to be a follow-up situation. But I mean, education should be a moving target. It really should. It should just be constant so that what these students can leave with are the skills to be able to solve problems that don’t exist today.

[00:23:48.440] – Steve

As a leader, maybe looking at my school as a lab.

[00:23:53.650] – Barbara

Yes.

[00:23:54.530] – Steve

Groups of teachers and groups of kids, in effect, running the experiment to discover what we could be.

[00:24:03.430] – Barbara

Yes. I think more of it and more vaired examples. They’re not all the same, but that’s why I started three schools, and all three were completely different. I didn’t go in with a blueprint. And this is what I’m trying to apply everything here. One was an entrepreneurial school, one was a Da Vinci school, and one was a leadership school. And they all were very different. They definitely grew where they were planted and really understand that the chemistry of all the people in those schools are not the same as what might be in a school in California. I think high tech high in California does incredible things because it can, but it’s a model of a school that probably has to fight the system because it still has to go through testing and things like that. But that would erode the kinds of great things that they’re doing.

[00:24:57.750] – Steve

Well, Barbara, it’s been great reminiscing with you some, dreaming with you some. Just as I listen to you, I’m reinforced that we really need to be creating the space for kids and teachers to have what they deserve. People in leadership have to be driven in that direction every day.

[00:25:26.360] – Barbara

That’s right. Leadership is key. It’s key. They have to have courage to do what’s not the same as what everybody else is doing next door. There’s no point in having a mission or a vision. If it’s the same thing, why don’t you just run off the top of what someone else is doing? But those people who are not, there are examples of them that are doing incredible things, and they inspire me. So I like to write above their stories, and I like to ask them to be part of the books that I’m putting out on situating a responsibility.

[00:26:00.300] – Steve

Tell the listeners how they can follow you, learn about you, learn about the book.

[00:26:07.060] – Barbara

Well, I have my own website, which is ZPD, which stands for the Zone of Professional Development in. But that is there, and it has all sorts of free resources on it, if anybody’s interested in adapting them or just being inspired by them. Right now, for two publishers, although one publisher on all the books that are relating to situating responsibility is through Brill Publishers. You can just look them up on Google and you can just put my name in there and the books will come up. I also write for Rowan and Littlefield, and they have many books that are related to school assessment, innovative designs for them, and how much does the school cost. So if I’m speaking to a lot of educational leaders right now. People will always say money is going to be the deterrent, but there’s examples of budgets that do show that you can have 10 to 1 in a classroom as a ratio and so on. So there’s lots of resources there that might come in handy if you’re looking for something to back up some new directions you want to move in. And I’m always available. My email is on the website, so you can contact me anytime, and I’m happy to to connect.

[00:27:31.890] – Steve

Well, thank you. We’ll put your website in the podcast lead-in and make it easier for folks to find.

[00:27:38.220] – Barbara

Okay, thanks.

[00:27:38.940] – Steve

Thanks so much. I look forward to continue to follow you and keep up with what you’re writing next.

[00:27:48.430] – Barbara

Okay. Well, I want to stay in touch, too. Thanks again.

[00:27:51.490] – Steve

You bet. Have a great day.

[00:27:53.240] – Barbara

You, too.

[00:27:55.670] – Steve [Outro]

Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

In my very first book on coaching, Quality Teaching in a Culture of Coaching, I wanted to encourage readers to envision coaching beyond an isolated activity that was implemented from time to time and instead as an ongoing feature of the teaching and learning process. Establishing a coaching culture within schools fosters continuous improvement by reshaping operational dynamics to emphasize growth, collaboration, and personalized professional development. It transcends mere skill enhancement, aiming to unlock potential by encouraging individuals and teams to explore and expand their capabilities.

In such environments, coaching is not limited to addressing underperformance but is integral to achieving high performance across the board.  A robust coaching culture cultivates trust and openness, enabling teachers to share challenges, celebrate successes, and engage in constructive feedback. This collaborative atmosphere supports continuous improvement through ongoing feedback, reflection, and action, ultimately enhancing teaching practices and student outcomes.

• Michael Fullan underscores the importance of fostering a “culture of collaboration and coherence” where coaching aligns with a school’s broader goals. He emphasizes that meaningful change occurs when educators see coaching as a partnership that builds collective efficacy.
• Elena Aguilar, in The Art of Coaching, advocates coaching as a relational practice that empowers teachers to reflect deeply on their practice and build resilience. She suggests that coaching is integral to a culture that values professional agency and growth.
• Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, in The Fourth Way, describe how coaching can help schools move beyond prescriptive reforms to focus on humanizing the profession. They argue that when schools prioritize peer-to-peer coaching, they create networks of mutual support that lead to sustained innovation. A culture of coaching is a powerful lever for building both professional communities and improved student outcomes.

I recently spent two days with an international school staff focused on expanding earlier work that we had done building teacher leaders’ coaching practices and introducing peer coaching to the entire staff. Working with the leadership team we looked to identify what signs of a coaching culture were currently present and what progress would look and sound like. With a picture of the desired progress, we explored possible leadership actions.

With the help of ChatGPT, I developed this rubric to initiate our assessment and plan for the next steps.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on how this continuum might help leaders and teachers in understanding what a coaching culture could be. When coaching transforms teaching into a collaborative, reflective, and public act with colleagues, it becomes a powerful lever for building both professional community and improved student outcomes.