[00:01] SPEAKER_00:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:15] SPEAKER_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined again on the podcast by my friend, Dr. Barbara Blackburn. Barbara is the author of 18 books and a full-time consultant who works with schools around the world to help raise the level of rigor and motivation for both professional educators and students. Dr. Blackburn has been named to the Top 30 Education Gurus Three Years Running by Global Gurus, and she's the author of the new second edition of The Principalship from A to Z, which we're here to talk about today.
[00:47] Announcer:
And now our feature presentation.
[00:49] SPEAKER_01:
Barbara, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.
[00:51] SPEAKER_02:
Thank you, Justin. It's always a pleasure. Your listeners are so terrific.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01:
Great to have a chance to connect with you again and talk about school leadership, a passion that we both share. I wonder if we could start by talking about why you wrote this book. What did you see happening in the field? What needs did you see out there as you work with school leaders that prompted you to write The Principalship from A to Z? Because we know the profession encompasses a huge range of responsibilities. So, I mean, really, if the alphabet had 75 letters, I'm sure you would have had no trouble coming up with 75 chapters.
[01:25]
But what did you see out there that prompted you to write this book?
[01:28] SPEAKER_02:
Well, it's an interesting book. The first edition came out probably seven or eight years ago, and I co-wrote it and the second edition with Ron Williamson, who's a professor of ed leadership at Eastern Michigan University. And he had actually been one of my doctoral professors, and I just loved working with him so much. We continued that. And as he was working with principals, he was talking about how particularly for practicing principals, new ones or people who wanted to be principals, that there wasn't a good overview piece that was real practical. You know, there's certainly textbooks, but to really have practical tools, he didn't see it there.
[02:10]
And so We sat down and he was like, what do you think? And I had already written a couple of A to Z books for teachers. And I sat down, I remember we were sitting in a hotel lobby and I sat down and wrote out A to Z on a napkin and sketched the book out after he told me his topics because it was really easy to do that. There were so many topics. And our focus was what are practical tools that you can use that will immediately make a difference with what you are doing. So even something like the first chapter is about achievement, all about achievement, how realistically in today's society, that is what we're all about.
[02:51]
And so we give a main question that really everything we do, every decision we make should go through the filter of how does this positively impact student achievement? And that we should really make our decisions through that lens. I know a principal, he made a poster of it and put it on his door. And if a teacher came wanting to do something, he or she had to explain how it was going to impact student achievement in a positive way. And, you know, that sounds really simple. But if you're all about achievement, here's how that plays out.
[03:25]
We just had a candy drive and everybody who sold a certain amount gets to go walk around the track for the last 20 minutes of the day. Well, how does that positively impact student achievement? And it doesn't.
[03:39]
And so if you begin to think about that shift, then that gives you a different mindset. So we set up the chapter with that and then we give some other questions and then some practical ways to focus on achievement. So that's how every chapter is set up with a lot of practical. Here, you could take this and use this later today if you wanted to.
[04:02] SPEAKER_01:
Well, and I think the practical side comes in not because some of these aren't widely known. Like, everyone knows achievement matters, but the challenge is, yeah, people are going to come into your office and ask you to do things for other good reasons that directly conflict with that priority. you know, like the candy drive and the getting out of class and all of that. So having those tools, having that specificity there, I think is really powerful. And I wonder if we could talk about another topic that, you know, again, we all know about. We all know data is a big part of what principals are supposed to care about.
[04:34]
You know, we might have taken courses in working with data and making data-driven decisions, but D in the book is data-driven decisions. What are some of your approaches to guiding school leaders in working with data, figuring out how to make decisions, setting priorities and so forth when it comes to data?
[04:53] SPEAKER_02:
Well, I think the first thing that I recommend to leaders is that they step back because a mistake I believe we make is that we just have this data. So we take it and try to figure out what to do with it. But what we didn't do is was back up and say, hey, what do I want to know from this data? What is it that I'm working on? Am I trying to look at the difference in expectations we have of special needs students versus gifted? Am I trying to look at how one teacher does things differently than another teacher.
[05:34]
You know, what am I looking at? OK, because if I figure out what I'm looking at, then I look at the data and the data may not be the right data. So if I don't know what I'm looking for, then, you know, the data may or may not work. And this is a classic complaint you hear from teachers. We use standardized test scores to determine if they're a good or a bad teacher. And there are some places that look at growth and some places that take into account where students are, but there are still places that don't.
[06:04]
So I come across as a bad teacher because I've got lower level students or I've got more special needs students. So should I get punished because of that? Well, if I step back and say, OK, what I really do want to know is who's using better teaching practices, standardized testing might be a part of it. but there may be other data I need. So I really think the first thing is to step back and ask that question before you get into your data.
[06:32] SPEAKER_01:
Well, Barbara, I really appreciate your comments about stepping back and really trying to put that data in context, because I think one of the things that often catches new leaders off guard is that getting clear on your data, what the data say, you know, the picture that the data paints for you is just step one, right? And collectively, as a staff, we have to figure out what we do with that and what changes we make in response. If we want to improve our scores, if we want to close our gaps, it's not always obvious what to do to act on those insights and take action to change things for our students. So let's say we identify some issues with the way we're approaching grading, and we want to begin a conversation with staff about changing our grading practices. So G in the A to Z is around grading and assessment.
[07:23]
What are some of the big ideas that leaders need to keep in mind when it comes to grading?
[07:28] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, and assessment is a whole different issue, but grading is a really key part. And I think grading is one of those things that's like the last frontier of You know, teachers have come to understand that we're going to teach common standards. We're even going to use common assessments. But you know what? I get to grade the way I want to grade. And that is everything from I'm going to count homework to I'm not going to count homework to, you know, if they tried hard, I'm going to give them a B versus if they can't show it on the paper during the class, then they're not going to get a grade on it.
[08:01]
So grading is just all over the place. And There are certainly best practices in grading that really need to be considered. Ken O'Connor is a really good resource for that. But, you know, there are things you need to consider. Like I'm not a fan of extra credit because if they can't do it the first time, why are you giving them another chance? Now, I say that.
[08:23]
Also believing that if a student fails something, you should give them another chance because I believe you should give every student the chance to be successful. But this notion of just giving extra because you want to or they want to do it prettier. I'm not a big fan of extra credit. I just am not because I don't think we're really grading content when we do that. I also don't believe in giving zeros. Again, I think we should require students to complete the work.
[08:53]
And even if that takes them three times, I think they should be required to complete work at a satisfactory level. And so grading needs to reflect the principles that you believe in. So you may not agree with me, but what are the principles you believe in? And so I think one of the things that has to happen is you work with teachers and come up with these are the general principles we believe in. I'm not talking about, you know, that we believe in grading homework a certain way. What I'm saying is we believe in these principles.
[09:23]
We believe that students should be able to show what they know. OK, so that means we have to create things that allow them to do that. We believe that grades are based on students work. Okay, well, then that's going to impact what you send home because we've all seen those projects that the kids didn't do because they were just too polished to be a kid's project. So what do you believe now? How does the grading reflect that?
[09:51]
So if you believe grading is about helping students feel good about what they're doing, then maybe you're going to count effort. But if you believe that grading... should be a representation of what a student knows, then effort shouldn't count. Neatness shouldn't count.
[10:10]
Completion shouldn't count. Quality should count. And so I really recommend to principals that they have the conversation about the beliefs and then from that develop a grading policy. And the grading policy doesn't necessarily say you have to count each test for 10%. But it does give some broad guidelines that parents can understand. So we are going to use multiple assessments.
[10:38]
Some will be in classrooms, some will be at home. The ones that are done in class count more because we're able to see what your child is doing. So having a general policy, and I believe in having one at a minimum, it ought to be grade level wise. It's probably better to do it school-wide so that parents aren't comparing and picking and choosing. Because right now, one of the things that happens is I grade tougher than you do, and so they complain about me. So having a grading policy, again, at least for the grade level, minimizes those things, and it also makes clear what we believe about grading.
[11:16] SPEAKER_01:
I love that about starting with kind of the big ideas or the principles behind our approach, and then the policies we can debate and tweak and customize those, and they can change over time. But certainly beginning with the big picture in mind, such good advice.
[11:29] SPEAKER_02:
Well, it's not unlike the data piece. We don't back up and ask those questions. And I think sometimes in education, we make that mistake. We get so busy doing and we know we're supposed to change. So we're trying to figure out what to change. And I think sometimes we don't just stop and say, whoa, why are we doing this?
[11:50]
And then what are we doing?
[11:51] SPEAKER_01:
Well, that's a good transition into motivation then. Chapter M in the book is around motivating teachers. So let's say we are striving to make some changes in the way that we approach grading. And maybe we have some people who say, no, thank you. I am perfectly happy with the way I grade and would like to be left alone. And I don't want to change my syllabus or I don't want to change my policies.
[12:15]
What are some key thoughts for leaders when it comes to adult motivation? Because, you know, we're trained to think about student motivation, how to engage students. But as leaders, we have probably a tougher job, and that is motivating and moving staff. So what do you have for us in Chapter M on motivation?
[12:32] SPEAKER_02:
Well, first of all, sometimes, particularly if you've got a really resistant teacher, you're just going to have to not be nice about it. Okay. I just don't know another way to say it. But one of the principals I worked for, he had one teacher who was resistant to everything. And honestly, he was very nice. He was very professional, but he, You know what?
[12:53]
She ended up when there were duties, she ended up getting the one that really pretty much nobody wanted. And he didn't do that all the time, but he pretty much told her that she needed to get on board with school change. So sometimes you've got to be firm. Sometimes you've got to throw in your accountability pieces with evaluation. I'm not going to focus on that. I'm not very good at it to start with.
[13:17]
I just know that it works. Principals tell me it works. So you've got that. What I tend to focus on is how can you get most teachers to be intrinsically motivated? Because what Ron and I found is you've got 10 percent of your faculty that would jump off the building if you ask them to do it. You've got 10% of your faculty.
[13:38]
I don't care what you ask them to do. You could ask them to write their name down and they're not going to do it. And then you got 80% in the middle that you can get where you need to go. So I tend to focus on that 90%, you know, the ones that will already go with you and the ones you can get there. And I found there are two aspects of student motivation, which are also aspects of teacher motivation. I don't find that they're different.
[14:01]
They just play out in different ways. Everyone is motivated by two factors, value and success. So let's talk about value. Teachers are motivated by whether or not they see value in what they are doing. So if you want me to start integrating reading and writing in my math class, I need to understand why that's important to math. Not why it's important to you, but why is this important to my students who are trying to learn math?
[14:32]
So I need to see the value in that change. So relevance is a real critical, critical point. Now, another aspect of value is how you approach it in terms of activities. People are more motivated when they're doing something than when it's just sit and get. So getting teachers involved in the decision making process is important. If you're going to do staff development, let's go back to the one on integrating reading and writing.
[15:00]
And I've got content area teachers. If they come into a day or half a day of professional development and they're just sitting there and somebody's talking to them the whole time, they're not going to see any value in that and you're going to lose them. So you've got to really show relevance. You've got to give them active ways to be involved in the process. And then the third part of value is their relationship with you and other teachers. So if you think about the worst teacher in your building, the one who gives you the most trouble, And I know some of you right now are grinning because you have more than one.
[15:33]
I get that. But I want you to think about that one. You probably don't have a good relationship with him or her. And if you really want people to change, you need to have a positive relationship with them. Because the people who are going to go with you at least are neutral to you, hopefully positive. And so when we think about value, we do have to think about relevance.
[15:57]
We have to think about the actions that they can take. And we have to think about how you've built a relationship with them. And that has to happen long term. You know, that's not just going to happen in the middle of an initiative. You know, we just talked about value. But the other aspect of the equation is success.
[16:13]
And I find this to be true of everybody, but particularly true for teachers. We are very motivated by feeling successful. And one of the things that I think is very true about teachers is that when we fail, when we make a mistake, It's a very public failure because we do it in front of our students and then they go home and tell their parents. So I find that teachers are very concerned about success. So you tell me that you want me as a science teacher to incorporate more reading and writing. But you know what?
[16:49]
What if that doesn't work? What if that takes away from the science? What if my test scores go down? What if my students complain they're having to do too much writing? And so there's all these what ifs that go through my head. And so as leaders, in addition to making sure teachers understand the value, we really have to make sure we build success, whether that is providing professional development, whether that's a book study or whatever, but providing professional development, providing opportunities to see it in action, whether that's visiting another school or watching videos or just observing each other, perhaps providing help.
[17:26]
I was working with a middle school and their issue was they were trying to do increased student engagement, particularly by increasing small group activities. And I had brought them in a small questioning game that's very interactive. It's student led discussions and it's very structured. So it managed things for you. Well, one of the social studies teachers was very, very resistant. And so the instructional coach actually went in and sat down with him.
[17:58]
And the issue was he had been hired under, and every state calls this something different, but it was under like an emergency certification. He had not been through a traditional teacher education program. He had actually been a plant manager in a rural area and was coming into teaching as a second profession. And he was worried about classroom management because as a manager in a plant, he told his workers what to do and they did it. And he was learning that students don't work that way, particularly middle school students. And he was worried, oh, my gosh, if I put him in small groups, they're going to be chaotic.
[18:34]
And then y'all are going to think I'm a bad teacher. So what the coach did, she got a little bit of help. She got a parent to help and she got one other. They had someone else who worked with instruction. And for the activity, the students were being split into four groups. So they came in and helped him.
[18:53]
So he facilitated one group and each of the other three facilitated a group. And because it was a middle school, he had like five classes. So they were there to help him. And by about the third class, the parent and the other coach were able to leave. So just the instructional coach stayed. And after lunch, he asked her to leave.
[19:12]
And so what happened was that leadership team built in the support and scaffolding he needed for success. which is exactly what we do with students. But when we're asking teachers to do something new, we forget to do it.
[19:26] SPEAKER_01:
Well, and I think that focus on success is so critical. And I want to transition, if we could, into talking about teacher evaluation, because I think so many new leaders just think I should be able to tell the teachers what to do and they'll do it and they'll be successful because it's research based. And, you know, we forget what you just said about teachers having so many of the same needs that our students have. And if we want to set them up for success, it's not just a matter of saying, go do it. It's about providing that scaffolding. and providing that support.
[19:56]
So in chapter Q on quality teacher evaluation, what are some of the big ideas for particularly new administrators or people who are new to their role to keep in mind when working with adults or maybe even working with the same group of adults under a new evaluation system to conduct evaluations that are effective?
[20:15] SPEAKER_02:
I think the first big thing, and this isn't going to surprise you, is that you need to step back and make sure you know what your role is. Because in evaluation, there's a lot of different perspectives about what that role is. But if your role as a leader is making sure that we're focused on instructional achievement, then that's also what my role is as an evaluator, that I'm focused on instruction. And too often, that's not how teachers perceive it. It's this is a gotcha situation. This isn't about what I'm doing instructionally.
[20:49]
This is going to be about if a student's misbehaving. Well, it may be about a student misbehaving. But if it's about a student misbehaving, that's an issue because it's impacting student learning in this way. And so if instruction is our focus, then everything we do needs to link back to that versus it just being I caught you doing something. And if we believe that instruction is our focus and Then we also believe in growth, which means that evaluations are not just about measuring, but they're also about growing. So, you know, here's what is working.
[21:27]
Here's what's not. And helping the teacher understand what that not looks like. Probably my best example of this came when I was teaching at a college. I was supervising a student teacher and the mentor teacher was very good. A good friend of mine, very good teacher. And the student was frustrated because she says, she's just always telling me I need to fix my pacing.
[21:50]
And I don't even know what that means. And so I sat down with the teacher and we watched the student teacher together. And she would say, see, her pacing's off. And I'd say, OK, what you just told me was that she didn't have her materials ready. So she lost two minutes because she didn't hand out her materials on time. And she said, yeah.
[22:09]
And we went through the whole conversation that way. And at the end, we were able to give the student teacher a very solid list. And she was really frustrated. She looked at the mentor teacher and said, why didn't you tell me this? And the mentor teacher was just stunned. She didn't even know what to say.
[22:25]
And I said, because you forgot to think like a beginner. And I think sometimes we just assume, even with experienced teachers, that if we say something, they're going to understand what we mean. And that's not true. We need to be specific in what's going well, not just that they had a good classroom today that ran smoothly. What was good about it? and what needed to be improved with a focus on that improvement.
[22:51]
Now, I know that we have to use evaluation as a benchmark and sometimes we're having to use it for legal purposes, but I do think it's important when we're using it for improvement that we make sure we're being specific. And I was reading an article a couple of weeks ago that was talking about that when you're giving somebody feedback and it's positive and negative, that you should always end with something positive because that's pretty much the only thing they're going to remember is what you said at the end. And that if you end with a negative, then they just walk out with a negative perspective of everything and won't even go back and look at your notes. And it reminds me of a strategy I used to use as a teacher, which was that my praise and feedback was a sandwich. So I said something positive, then the meat in the middle was what they needed to work on. And then the other piece of bread was something positive again.
[23:44]
And I think that's very important because teachers and I'm going to tell you, even the best teachers, if I had somebody sitting in one of my workshops evaluating me, I would be stressed because we are very much perfectionist. But we're worried that you're going to tell us we're doing a bad job and we're all about success. Go back to the motivation. We're about success. So I get that there's things I need to improve, but please make sure you're telling me what's positive too.
[24:13] SPEAKER_01:
Well, and it reinforces to me the importance of relationship that, you know, we're not just robots performing tasks. We're people and people have, you know, emotional needs and people have feelings and emotions. You know, everybody brings all of that to school. So I appreciate your thinking about motivation and helping us frame some of those issues that we might be tempted, you know, especially when they're new to us, when something has changed or the context has changed or we're new to the role. We tend to focus on the task and forget that context of the relationship and the person who is involved. in that task.
[24:46]
So thank you for framing that up for us. So the book is The Principleship from A to Z. Barbara, if people want to learn more about your work or bring you in or just get in touch with you, where is the best place for them to find you online?
[24:59] SPEAKER_02:
The one-stop shop is my website, www. dot Barbara Blackburn online.com or you can Google Barbara Blackburn and rigor and it will take you straight there. And I will tell you that my 19 year old stepson, that's probably the only thing about me that impresses him is that you can Google me and find me.
[25:19] SPEAKER_01:
Good deal. Well, Barbara, thanks so much for joining me again on principal center radio.
[25:23] SPEAKER_02:
Thank you.
[25:24] SPEAKER_01:
and now justin bader on high performance instructional leadership so high performance instructional leaders what did you take away from my conversation with dr barbara blackburn about the principalship from a to z boy it is a huge job just the span and the scope of everything that we have to deal with as school leaders is immense and if it's new to you it can be intimidating and even if it's not new to you it can be overwhelming at times So, one of the things I want to encourage you to use this book to do is to go deeper on the topics where you need to brush up or where you're facing particular challenges. And there's a feature at the end of every chapter that I want to draw your attention to. For example, at the end of the chapter on motivation, Dr. Blackburn references additional readings. For example, on motivation, she refers to Daniel Pink's book Drive.
[26:16]
And in every chapter, you will find those additional reading recommendations. And she's got some great books recommended there. So that if that is the challenge you're facing, don't just wing it, but go and do some research. Read some books. Gain some expertise. Gain some insight.
[26:31]
Connect with experts. We may have had some of those experts on Principal Center Radio. You can listen to some more podcasts. But I want to encourage you to check out The Principal's Ship from Today. A to Z, as you face new challenges, as you encounter new situations, just to get an overview, flip to Dr. Blackburn's chapter on that topic, see what her recommendations are, see what her tools in the toolkit there are, and see what her additional reading recommendations are.
[26:58] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
